as a right merely human,
but that the right of the King to the obedience of his people was from
above; that the Great Charter was a statute which might be repealed by
those who had made it, but that the rule which called the princes of
the blood royal to the throne in order of succession was of celestial
origin, and that any Act of Parliament inconsistent with that rule was
a nullity. It is evident that, in a society in which such superstitions
prevail, constitutional freedom must ever be insecure. A power which is
regarded merely as the ordinance of man cannot be an efficient check on
a power which is regarded as the ordinance of God. It is vain to hope
that laws, however excellent, will permanently restrain a King who,
in his own opinion, and in that of a great part of his people, has an
authority infinitely higher in kind than the authority which belongs to
those laws. To deprive royalty of these mysterious attributes, and to
establish the principle that Kings reigned by a right in no respect
differing from the right by which freeholders chose knights of the
shire, or from the right by which judges granted writs of Habeas Corpus,
was absolutely necessary to the security of our liberties.

Thus the Convention had two great duties to perform. The first was to
clear the fundamental laws of the realm from ambiguity. The second was
to eradicate from the minds, both of the governors and of the governed,
the false and pernicious notion that the royal prerogative was something
more sublime and holy than those fundamental laws. The former object was
attained by the solemn recital and claim with which the Declaration
of Right commences; the latter by the resolution which pronounced the
throne vacant, and invited William and Mary to fill it.

The change seems small. Not a single flower of the crown was touched.
Not a single new right was given to the people. The whole English law,
substantive and adjective, was, in the judgment of all the greatest
lawyers, of Holt and Treby, of Maynard and Somers, exactly the same
after the Revolution as before it. Some controverted points had been
decided according to the sense of the best jurists; and there had been
a slight deviation from the ordinary course of succession. This was all;
and this was enough.

As our Revolution was a vindication of ancient rights, so it was
conducted with strict attention to ancient formalities. In almost every
word and act may be discerned a profound revere