This is the spirit of our
constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its
revolutions. Whoever came in, or however he came in, whether he
obtained the crown by law or by force, the hereditary succession was
either continued or adopted.
The gentlemen of the Society for Revolution see nothing in that of
1688 but the deviation from the constitution; and they take the
deviation from the principle for the principle. They have little
regard to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they must
see that it leaves positive authority in very few of the positive
institutions of this country. When such an unwarrantable maxim is once
established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act
of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be
valid. Do these theorists mean to imitate some of their predecessors
who dragged the bodies of our ancient sovereigns out of the quiet of
their tombs? Do they mean to attaint and disable backward all the
kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to
stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
Do they mean to invalidate, annul, or to call into question,
together with the titles of the whole line of our kings, that great
body of our statute law which passed under those whom they treat as
usurpers, to annul laws of inestimable value to our liberties- of as
great value at least as any which have passed at or since the period
of the Revolution? If kings who did not owe their crown to the
choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become
of the statute de tallagio non concedendo?- of the petition of right?-
of the act of habeas corpus? Do these new doctors of the rights of men
presume to assert that King James the Second, who came to the crown as
next of blood, according to the rules of a then unqualified
succession, was not to all intents and purposes a lawful king of
England before he had done any of those acts which were justly
construed into an abdication of his crown? If he was not, much trouble
in parliament might have been saved at the period these gentlemen
commemorate.
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