are by the law hereditary, or descendible to the
heirs of the owner; but still there exists a power, by which the
property of those lands may be transferred to another person. If this
transfer be made simply and absolutely, the lands will be hereditary
in the new owner, and descend to his heirs at law: but if the transfer
be clogged with any limitations, conditions, or entails, the lands
must descend in that chanel, so limited and prescribed, and no other.

[Footnote b: 1 Hist. P.C. 61.]

IN these four points consists, as I take it, the constitutional notion
of hereditary right to the throne: which will be still farther
elucidated, and made clear beyond all dispute, from a short historical
view of the successions to the crown of England, the doctrines of our
antient lawyers, and the several acts of parliament that have from
time to time been made, to create, to declare, to confirm, to limit,
or to bar, the hereditary title to the throne. And in the pursuit of
this enquiry we shall find, that from the days of Egbert, the first
sole monarch of this kingdom, even to the present, the four cardinal
maxims above mentioned have ever been held the constitutional canons
of succession. It is true, this succession, through fraud, or force,
or sometimes through necessity, when in hostile times the crown
descended on a minor or the like, has been very frequently suspended;
but has always at last returned back into the old hereditary chanel,
though sometimes a very considerable period has intervened. And, even
in those instances where the succession has been violated, the crown
has ever been looked upon as hereditary in the wearer of it. Of which
the usurpers themselves were so sensible, that they for the most part
endeavoured to vamp up some feeble shew of a title by descent, in
order to amuse the people, while they gained the possession of the
kingdom. And, when possession was once gained, they considered it as
the purchase or acquisition of a new estate of inheritance, and
transmitted or endeavoured to transmit it to their own posterity, by a
kind of hereditary right of usurpation.

KING Egbert about the year 800, found himself in possession of the
throne of the west Saxons, by a long and undisturbed descent from his
ancestors of above three hundred years. How his ancestors acquired
their title, whether by force, by fraud, by contract, or by election,
it matters not much to enquire; and is indeed a point of such high
antiquity,