under their engagements, as much as the whole state is bound to keep its faith with feparate communities. Otherwise competence and power would foon be confounded, and no law be left but the will of a prevailing force. On this principle the fucceffion of the crown has always been what it now is, an hereditary succession by law: in the old line it was a fucceflion by the common law; in the new by the statute law, operating on the principles of the common law, not changing the substance, but regulating the mode, and defcribing the perfons. Both these descriptions of law are of the fame force, and are derived from an equal authority, emanating from the common agreement and original compact of the ftate, communi fponfione reipublice, and as fuch are equally binding on king, and people too, as long as the terms are observed, and they continue the fame body politick. It is far from impossible to reconcile, if we do not fuffer ourselves to be entangled in the mazes of metaphyfick fophistry, the use both of a fixed rule and an occafional deviation; the facredness of an hereditary principle of fucceffion in our govern. ment, with a power of change in its application in cafes of extreme emergency. Even in that extre. mity (if we take the meafure of our rights by our exercise of them at the revolution) the change is to be confined to the peccant part only; to the part which produced the neceffary deviation; and 1.. even even then it is to be effected without a decomposition of the whole civil and political mass, for the purpose of originating a new civil order out of the first elements of fociety. A state without the means of fome change is without the means of its conservation. Without fuch means it might even risk the lofs of that part of the constitution which it wished the most religioufly to preferve. The two principles of conservation and correction operated strongly at the two critical periods of the restoration and revolution, when England found itself without a king. At both those periods the nation had lost the bond of union in their ancient edifice; they did not, however, diffolve the whole fabrick. On the contrary, in both cafes they regenerated the deficient part of the old constitution through 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 organised states in the shape of their old organisation, and not by the organick moleculæ of a disbanded people. At no time, perhaps, did the fovereign legiflature manifest a more tender regard to that fundamental principle of British constitutional policy, than at the time of the revolution, when it deviated from the direct line of hereditary succession. The crown was carried fomewhat out of the line in which it had before moved; but but the new line was derived from the same stock. It was still a line of hereditary descent; still an hereditary descent in the fame blood, though an hereditary descent qualified with prostetantifm. When the legislature altered the direction, but kept the principle, they shewed that they held it inviolable. On this principle, the law of inheritance had admitted some amendment in the old time, and long before the æra of the revolution. Some time after the conquest great questions 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 succeed; but whether the heir per capita gave way when the heirdom per ftirpes took place, or the catholick heir when the protestant was preferred, the inheritable principle survived with a fort of immortality through all tranfmigrations-multofquc per annos ftat fortuna domus et avi numerantur dvorum. This is the spirit of our constitution, 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 fociety for revolutions 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 confequences of their doctrine, though they may fee, that it leaves pofitive 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 æra of fictitious election can be valid. Do these theorists mean to imitate fome of their predeceffors, who dragged the bodies of our ancient fovereigns out of the quiet of their tombs? Do they mean to attaint and disable 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 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 ufurpers? to annul laws of inestimable value to our liberties of as great value at least as any which have passed 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 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 prefume to affert, that King James the second, who came to the crown as next of blood, according to the rules of a then unqua lified 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. But King James was a bad king with a good title, and not an ufurper. The princes who succeeded according to the act of parliament which settled the crown on the electress Sophia and on her descendants, 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 accession to the crown; and the princes of the house of Brunf wick came to the inheritance of the crown, not by election, but by the law, as it stood at their several accessions of Proteftant descent and inheritance, as I hope I have shewn sufficiently. The law by which this royal family is specifically destined to the succession, is the act of 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 posterity," being Protestants, 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 conftitutional policy of forming an establishment to se |