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.

    THE second claim of the Revolution Society is "a right of
cashiering their governors for misconduct". Perhaps the
apprehensions our ancestors entertained of forming such a precedent as
that "of cashiering for misconduct" was the cause that the declaration
of the act, which implied the abdication of King James, was, if it had
any fault, rather too guarded and too circumstantial.* But all this
guard and all this accumulation of circumstances serves to show the
spirit of caution which predominated in the national councils in a
situation in which men irritated by oppression, and elevated by a
triumph over it, are apt to abandon themselves to violent and
extreme courses; it shows the anxiety of the great men who
influenced the conduct of affairs at that great event to make the
Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future
revolutions.

    * "That King James the Second, having endeavored to subvert the
constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original contract
between king and people, and, by the advice of Jesuits and other
wicked persons, having violated the fundamental laws, and having
withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, hath abdicated the Government,
and the throne is thereby vacant".

    No government could stand a moment if it could be blown down
with anything so loose and indefinite as an opinion of "misconduct".
They who led at the Revolution grounded the virtual abdication of King
James upon no such light and uncertain principle. They charged him
with nothing less than a design, confirmed by a multitude of illegal
overt acts, to subvert the Protestant church and state, and their
fundamental, unquestionable laws and liberties; they charged him
with having broken the original contract between king and people. This
was more than misconduct. A grave and overruling necessity obliged
them to take the step they took, and took with infinite reluctance, as
under that most rigorous of all laws. Their trust for the future
preservation of the constitution was not in future revolutions. The
grand policy of all their regulations was to render it almost
impracticable for any future sovereign to compel the states of the
kingdom to have again recourse to those violent remedies. They left
the crown what, in the eye and estimation of law, it had ever
been-perfectly irresponsible. In order to lighten the crown still
further, they aggravated responsibility on ministers of state. By
the statute of the 1st of King William, sess. 2nd, called "the act for
declaring the rights and liberties of the subject, and for settling
the succession of the crown", they enacted that the ministers should
serve the crown on the terms of that declaration. They secured soon
after the frequent meetings of parliament, by which the whole
government would be under the constant inspection and active control
of the popular representative and of the magnates of the kingdom. In
the next great constitutional act, that of the 12th and 13th of King
William, for the further limitation of the crown and better securing
the rights and liberties of the subject, they provided "that no pardon
under the great seal of England should be pleadable to an
impeachment by the Commons in parliament". The rule laid down for
government in the Declaration of Right, the constant inspection of
parliament, the practical claim of impeachment, they thought
infinitely a better security, not only for their constitutional
liberty, but against the vices of administration, than the reservation
of a right so difficult in the practice, so uncertain in the issue,
and often so mischievous in the consequences, as that of "cashiering
their governors".

    Dr. Price, in this sermon,* condemns very properly the practice of
gross, adulatory addresses to kings. Instead of this fulsome style, he
proposes that his Majesty should be told, on occasions of
congratulation, that "he is to consider himself as more properly the
servant than the sovereign of his people". For a compliment, this
new form of address does not seem to be very soothing. Those who are
servants in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told of
their situation, their duty, and their obligations. The slave, in
the old play, tells his master, "Haec commemoratio est quasi
exprobatio". It is not pleasant as compliment; it is not wholesome
as instruction. After all, if the king were to bring himself to echo
this new kind of address, to adopt it in terms, and even to take the
appellation of Servant of the People as his royal style, how either he
or we should be much mended by it I cannot imagine. I have seen very
assuming letters, signed "Your most obedient, humble servant". The
proudest denomination that ever was endured on earth took a title of
still greater humility than that which is now proposed for
sovereigns by the Apostle of Liberty. Kings and nations were
trampled upon by the foot of one calling himself "the Servant of
Servants"; and mandates for deposing sovereigns were sealed with the
signet of "the Fisherman".

    * Pp. 22-24.

    I should have considered all this as no more than a sort of