call Nero
Augustus. They were perfectly at liberty to chase him beyond the
Euphrates, to leave him a pensioner on the bounty of the Parthians,
to withstand him by force if he attempted to return, to punish all who
aided him or corresponded with him, and to transfer the Tribunitian
power and the Consular power, the Presidency of the Senate and the
command of the Legions, to Galba or Vespasian.

The analogy which the Archbishop imagined that he had discovered between
the case of a wrongheaded King and the case of a lunatic King will not
bear a moment's examination. It was plain that James was not in
that state of mind in which, if he had been a country gentleman or a
merchant, any tribunal would have held him incapable of executing a
contract or a will. He was of unsound mind only as all bad Kings are of
unsound mind; as Charles the First had been of unsound mind when he went
to seize the five members; as Charles the Second had been of unsound
mind when he concluded the treaty of Dover. If this sort of mental
unsoundness did not justify subjects in withdrawing their obedience from
princes, the plan of a Regency was evidently indefensible. If this
sort of mental unsoundness did justify subjects in withdrawing their
obedience from princes, the doctrine of nonresistance was completely
given up; and all that any moderate Whig had ever contended for was
fully admitted.

As to the oath of allegiance about which Sancroft and his disciples were
so anxious, one thing at least is clear, that, whoever might be right,
they were wrong. The Whigs held that, in the oath of allegiance, certain
conditions were implied, that the King had violated these conditions,
and that the oath had therefore lost its force. But, if the Whig
doctrine were false, if the oath were still binding, could men of sense
really believe that they escaped the guilt of perjury by voting for a
Regency? Could they affirm that they bore true allegiance to James
while they were in defiance of his protestations made before all Europe,
authorising another person to receive the royal revenues, to summon and
prorogue parliaments, to create Dukes and Earls, to name Bishops and
judges, to pardon offenders, to command the forces of the state, and to
conclude treaties with foreign powers? Had Pascal been able to find, in
all the folios of the Jesuitical casuists, a sophism more contemptible
than that which now, as it seemed, sufficed to quiet the consciences of
the fathers o