ubted right to succeed, unless God make
them, or they make themselves uncapable of reigning." So that
according to them, if either of those two impediments shall happen,
then it concerns the protestants of England to do that something,
which, if they had spoken out, had been direct treason. Here is fine
legerdemain amongst them: they have acknowledged a vote to be no more
than the opinion of an house, and yet from a debate, which was
abortive before it quickened into a vote, they argue after the old
song, "that there is something more to be done, which you cannot chuse
but guess." In the next place, there is no such thing as incapacity to
be supposed, in the immediate successor of the crown. That is, the
rightful heir cannot be made uncapable on any account whatsoever to
succeed. It may please God, that he may be _inhabilis_, or _inidoneus
ad gerendam rempublicam_,--unfit or unable to govern the kingdom; but
this is no impediment to his right of reigning: he cannot either be
excluded or deposed for such imperfection; for the laws which have
provided for private men in this case, have also made provision for
the sovereign, and for the public; and the council of state, or the
next of blood, is to administer the kingdom for him. Charles the Sixth
of France, (for I think we have no English examples which will reach
it) forfeited not his kingdom by his lunacy, though a victorious king
of England was then knocking at his gates; but all things under his
name, and by his authority were managed. The case is the same, betwixt
a king _non compos mentis_, and one who is _nondum compos mentis_; a
distracted or an infant-king. Then the people cannot incapacitate the
king, because he derives not his right from them, but from God only;
neither can any action, much less opinion of a sovereign, render him
uncapable, for the same reason; excepting only a voluntary resignation
to his immediate heir, as in the case of Charles the Fifth: for that
of our Richard the Second was invalid, because forced, and not made to
the next successor.

Neither does it follow, as our authors urge, that an unalterable
succession supposes England to be the king's estate, and the people
his goods and chattels on it. For the preservation of his right
destroys not our propriety, but maintains us in it. He has tied
himself by law, not to invade our possessions; and we have obliged
ourselves as subjects to him, and all his lawful successors: by which
irrevocable a