proposition and are referable to it. Lest the foundation of the king's
exclusive legal title should pass for a mere rant of adulatory
freedom, the political divine proceeds dogmatically to assert* that,
by the principles of the Revolution, the people of England have
acquired three fundamental rights, all which, with him, compose one
system and lie together in one short sentence, namely, that we have
acquired a right:

    (1) to choose our own governors.

    (2) to cashier them for misconduct.

    (3) to frame a government for ourselves.

This new and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights, though made in the
name of the whole people, belongs to those gentlemen and their faction
only. The body of the people of England have no share in it. They
utterly disclaim it. They will resist the practical assertion of it
with their lives and fortunes. They are bound to do so by the laws
of their country made at the time of that very Revolution which is
appealed to in favor of the fictitious rights claimed by the Society
which abuses its name.

    * Discourse on the Love of our Country, by Dr. Price, p. 34.

    THESE GENTLEMEN OF THE OLD JEWRY, in all their reasonings on the
Revolution of 1688, have a revolution which happened in England
about forty years before and the late French revolution, so much
before their eyes and in their hearts that they are constantly
confounding all the three together. It is necessary that we should
separate what they confound. We must recall their erring fancies to
the acts of the Revolution which we revere, for the discovery of its
true principles. If the principles of the Revolution of 1688 are
anywhere to be found, it is in the statute called the Declaration of
Right. In that most wise, sober, and considerate declaration, drawn up
by great lawyers and great statesmen, and not by warm and
inexperienced enthusiasts, not one word is said, nor one suggestion
made, of a general right "to choose our own governors, to cashier them
for misconduct, and to form a government for ourselves".

    This Declaration of Right (the act of the 1st of William and Mary,
sess. 2, ch. 2) is the cornerstone of our constitution as
reinforced, explained, improved, and in its fundamental principles for
ever settled. It is called, "An Act for declaring the rights and
liberties of the subject, and for settling the succession of the
crown". You will observe that these rights and this succession are
declared in one body and bound indissolubly together.

    A few years after this period, a second opportunity offered for
asserting a right of election to the crown. On the prospect of a total
failure of issue from King William, and from the Princess,
afterwards Queen Anne, the consideration of the settlement of the
crown and of a further security for the liberties of the people
again came before the legislature. Did they this second time make
any provision for legalizing the crown on the spurious revolution
principles of the Old Jewry? No. They followed the principles which
prevailed in the Declaration of Right, indicating with more
precision the persons who were to inherit in the Protestant line. This
act also incorporated, by the same policy, our liberties and an
hereditary succession in the same act. Instead of a right to choose
our own governors, they declared that the succession in that line (the
Protestant line drawn from James the First), was absolutely
necessary "for the peace, quiet, and security of the realm", and
that it was equally urgent on them "to maintain a certainty in the
succession thereof, to which the subjects may safely have recourse for
their protection". Both these acts, in which are heard the unerring,
unambiguous oracles of revolution policy, instead of countenancing the
delusive, gipsy predictions of a "right to choose our governors",
prove to a demonstration how totally adverse the wisdom of the
nation was from turning a case of necessity into a rule of law.

    Unquestionably, there was at the Revolution, in the person of King
William, a small and a temporary deviation from the strict order of
a regular hereditary succession; but it is against all genuine
principles of jurisprudence to draw a principle from a law made in a
special case and regarding an individual person. Privilegium non
transit in exemplum. If ever there was a time favorable for
establishing the principle that a king of popular choice was the
only legal king, without all doubt it was at the Revolution. Its not
being done at that time is a proof that the nation was of opinion it
ought not to be done at any time. There is no person so completely
ignorant of our history as not to know that the majority in parliament
of both parties were so little disposed to anything resembling that
principle that at first they were determined to place the vacant
crown, not on the head of the Prince of Orange, but on that of his
wife Mary, daughter of King James, the eldest born of the issue of
that king, which they acknowledged as undoubtedly his. It would be
to repeat a very trite story, to recall to your memory all those
circumstances which demonstrated that their accepting King William was
not properly a choice; but to all those who did not wish, in effect,
to recall King James or to deluge their country in blood and again
to bring their religion, laws, and liberties into the peril they had
just escaped, it was an act of necessity, in the strictest moral sense
in which necessity can be taken.

    In the very act in which for a time, and in a single case,
parliament departed from the strict order of inheritance in favor of a
prince who, though not next, was, however, very near in the line of
succession, it is curious to observe how Lord Somers, who drew the
bill called the Declaration of Right, has comported himself on that