ruction of the nation; and even the
additional restraints, by discovering the public diffidence and
aversion, will serve him as incitements to put himself in a condition
entirely superior and independent. And as the laws of England still
make resistance treason, and neither do nor can admit of any positive
exceptions, what folly to leave the kingdom in so perilous and absurd a
situation, where the greatest virtue will be exposed to the most severe
proscription, and where the laws can only be saved by expedients, which
these same laws have declared the highest crime and enormity!

The court party reasoned in an opposite manner. An authority, they said,
wholly absolute and uncontrollable is a mere chimera, and is nowhere to
be found in any human institutions. All government is founded on opinion
and a sense of duty; and wherever the supreme magistrate, by any law or
positive prescription, shocks an opinion regarded as fundamental, and
established with a firmness equal to that of his own authority, he
subverts the principle by which he himself is established, and can
no longer hope for obedience. In European monarchies, the right of
succession is justly esteemed a fundamental; and even though the whole
legislature be vested in a single person, it would never be permitted
him, by an edict, to disinherit his lawful heir, and call a stranger or
more distant relation to the throne. Abuses in other parts of government
are capable of redress, from more dispassionate inquiry or better
information of the sovereign, and till then ought patiently to be
endured: but violations of the right of succession draw such terrible
consequences after them, as are not to be paralleled by any other
grievance or inconvenience. Vainly is it pleaded that England is a mixed
monarchy; and that a law, assented to by king, lords, and commons, is
enacted by the concurrence of every part of the state: it is plain, that
there remains a very powerful party, who may indeed be outvoted, but who
never will deem a law, subversive of hereditary right, anywise valid or
obligatory. Limitations, such as are proposed by the king, give no shock
to the constitution, which, in many particulars, is already limited;
and they may be so calculated as to serve every purpose sought for by
an exclusion. If the ancient barriers against regal authority have been
able, during so many ages, to remain impregnable, how much more those
additional ones, which, by depriving the monarc