ection of one king was a precedent for the election
of another; and the government, by that means, would either degenerate
into a republic, or, what was worse, into a turbulent and seditious
monarchy: that the case was still more dangerous, if there remained a
prince who claimed the crown by right of succession, and disputed, on so
plausible a ground, the title of the present sovereign: that though the
doctrine of non-resistance might not, in every possible circumstance,
be absolutely true, yet was the belief of it very expedient; and to
establish a government which should have the contrary principle for
its basis, was to lay a foundation for perpetual revolutions and
convulsions: that the appointment of a regent was indeed exposed to many
inconveniencies; but so long as the line of succession was preserved
entire, there was still a prospect of putting an end, some time or
other, to the public disorders: and that scarcely an instance occurred
in history, especially in the English history, where a disputed title
had not, in the issue, been attended with much greater ills, than all
those which the people had sought to shun by departing from the lineal
successor.

The leaders of the whig party, on the other hand, asserted that if
there were any ill in the precedent, that ill would result as much from
establishing a regent, as from dethroning one king and appointing his
successor; nor would the one expedient, if wantonly and rashly embraced
by the people, be less the source of public convulsions than the other:
that it the laws gave no express permission to depose the sovereign,
neither did they authorize resisting his authority, or separating the
power from the title: that a regent was unknown, except where the king,
by reason of his tender age or his infirmities, was incapable of a will;
and in that case, his will was supposed to be involved in that of the
regent; that it would be the height of absurdity to try a man for acting
upon a commission received from a prince whom we ourselves acknowledge
to be the lawful sovereign; and no jury would decide so contrary both to
law and common sense, as to condemn such a pretended criminal: that even
the prospect of being delivered from this monstrous inconvenience was,
in the present situation of affairs, more distant than that of putting
an end to a disputed succession: that allowing the young prince to be
the legitimate heir, he had been carried abroad; he would be educated in
p