the parts which were not impaired. They kept these old parts exactly as they were, that the part recovered might be fuited to them. They acted by the ancient organized ftates in the fhape of their old organization, and not by the organic molecula of a difbanded people. At no time, perhaps, did the fovereign legislature manifeft a more tender regard to that fundamental principle of British conftitutional policy, than at the time of the Revolution, when it deviated from the direct line of hereditary fucceffion. The crown was carried fomewhat out of the line in which it had before moved; but the new line was derived from the fame ftock. It was ftill a line of hereditary defcent; ftill an hereditary defcent in the fame blood, though an hereditary descent qualified with protestantism. When the legiflature altered the direction, but kept the principle, they fhewed that they held it invio

lable.

On this principle, the law of inheritance had admitted fome amendment in the old time, and long before the æra of the Revolution. Some time after the conqueft. great queftions arose upon the legal principles of hereditary defcent. It became a matter of doubt, whether the heir per capita or the heir per ftirpes was to fucceed; but whether the heir per capita gave way when the heirdom per firpes took place, or the Catholic heir when the Proteftant was preferred, the inheritable principle furvived with a sort of immortality through all tranfmigrations-mul

tofque

tofque per annos ftat fortuna domus et avi numerantur avorum. This is the fpirit of our conftitution, not only in its fettled 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 fucceffion was either continued or adopted.

The gentlemen of the Society for Revolutions fee nothing in that of 1688 but the deviation from the conftitution; and they take the deviation from the principle for the principle. They have little regard to the obvious confequences of their doctrine, though they must fee, that it leaves pofitive authority in very few of the pofitive inftitutions of this country. When fuch an unwarrantable maxim is once eftablished, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded their æra of fictitious election can be valid. Do thefe theorists mean to imitate fome of their predeceffors, who dragged the bodies of our antient fovereigns out of the quiet of their tombs? Do they mean to attaint and difable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and confequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual ufurpation? Do they mean to invalidate, annul, or to call into queftion, together with the titles of the whole line of our kings, that great body of our ftatute law which paffed under those whom they treat as ufurpers? to annul laws of inestimable value to our liberties-of as great

value

value at least as any which have paffed at or fince 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 ftatute de tallagio non concedendo?-of the petition of right?—of the act of babeas corpus? Do these new doctors of the rights of men prefume to affert, that King James the Second, who came to the crown as next of blood, according to the rules of a then unqualified fucceffion, was not to all intents and purposes a lawful king of England, before he had done any of thofe acts which were justly construed into an abdication of his crown? If he was not, much trouble in parliament might have been faved at the period thefe gentlemen commemorate. But King James was a bad king with a good title, and not an ufurper. The princes who fucceeded according to the act of parliament which fettled the crown on the electrefs Sophia and on her defcendants, being Proteftants, came in as much by a title of inheritance as King James did. He came in according to the law, as it stood at his acceffion to the crown; and the princes of the House of Brunswick came to the inheritance of the crown, not by election, but by the law, as it ftood at their feveral acceffions of Proteftant descent and inheritance, as I hope I have fhewn fufficiently.

The law by which this royal family is fpecifically destined to the fucceffion, is the act of

the

the 12th and 13th of King William. The terms of this act bind "us and our heirs, and our

pofterity, to them, their heirs, and their poste"rity," being Proteftants, to the end of time, in the fame words as the declaration of right had bound us to the heirs of King William and Queen Mary. It therefore fecures both an hereditary crown and an hereditary allegiance. On what ground, except the constitutional policy of forming an establishment to fecure that kind of fucceffion which is to preclude a choice of the people for ever, could the legislature have faftidiously rejected the fair and abundant choice which our own country prefented to them, and fearched in ftrange lands for a foreign princefs, from whofe womb the line of our future rulers were to derive their title to govern millions of men through a series of ages?

The Princefs Sophia was named in the act of fettlement of the 12th and 13th of King William, for a stock and root of inheritance to our kings, and not for her merits as a temporary administratrix of a power, which she might not, and in fact did not, herself ever exercise. She was adopted for one reason, and for one only, because, fays the act, "the most excellent "Princess Sophia, Electrefs and Dutchefs Dow

ager of Hanover, is daughter of the most "excellent Princefs Elizabeth, late Queen of "Bohemia, daughter of our late fovereign lord "King James the First, of happy memory, and is hereby declared to be the next in fucceffion

"in the Proteftant line," &c. &c.; " and the "crown fhall continue to the heirs of her body,

being Proteftants." This limitation was made by parliament, that through the Princefs Sophia an inheritable line, not only was to be continued in future but (what they thought very material) that through her it was to be connected with the old ftock of inheritance in King James the Firft; in order that the monarchy might preferve an unbroken unity through all ages, and might be preferved (with fafety to

religion) in the old approved mode by defcent, in which, if our liberties had been once endangered, they had often, through all ftorms and ftruggles of prerogative and privilege, been preferved. They did well. No experience has taught us, that in any other courfe or method than that of an hereditary crown, our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preferved facred as our bereditary right. An irregular, convulfive movement may be neceffary to throw off an irregular, convulfive disease. But the course of fucceffion is the healthy habit of the British conftitution. Was it that the legiflature wanted, at the act for the limitation of the crown in the Hanoverian line, drawn through the female defcendants of James the Firft, a due fenfe of the inconveniencies of having two or three, or poffibly more, foreigners in fucceffion to the British throne? No! they had a due fenfe of the evils which might happen from fuch foreign rule, and more than a due fenfe of

them.