It is common with them
to dispute as if they were in a conflict with some of those exploded
fanatics of slavery, who formerly maintained what I believe no
creature now maintains, "that the crown is held by divine hereditary
and indefeasible right".- These old fanatics of single arbitrary power
dogmatized as if hereditary royalty was the only lawful government
in the world, just as our new fanatics of popular arbitrary power
maintain that a popular election is the sole lawful source of
authority. The old prerogative enthusiasts, it is true, did
speculate foolishly, and perhaps impiously too, as if monarchy had
more of a divine sanction than any other mode of government; and as if
a right to govern by inheritance were in strictness indefeasible in
every person who should be found in the succession to a throne, and
under every circumstance, which no civil or political right can be.
But an absurd opinion concerning the king's hereditary right to the
crown does not prejudice one that is rational and bottomed upon
solid principles of law and policy. If all the absurd theories of
lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are
conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no
justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous
maxims on the other.
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