ts which were not impaired. They kept these old parts exactly as they
were, that the part recovered might be suited to them. They acted by the
ancient organized states in the shape of their old organization, and not
by the organic _moleculae_ of a disbanded people. At no time, perhaps,
did the sovereign legislature manifest a more tender regard to that
fundamental principle of British constitutional policy than at the time
of the Revolution, when it deviated from the direct line of hereditary
succession. The crown was carried somewhat out of the line in which it
had before moved; but the new line was derived from the same stock. It
was still a line of hereditary descent; still an hereditary descent in
the same blood, though an hereditary descent qualified with
Protestantism. When the legislature altered the direction, but kept the
principle, they showed that they held it inviolable.

On this principle, the law of inheritance had admitted some amendment in
the old time, and long before the era of the Revolution. Some time after
the Conquest great questions arose upon the legal principles of
hereditary descent. It became a matter of doubt whether the heir _per
capita_ or the heir _per stirpes_ was to succeed; but whether the heir
_per capita_ gave way when the heirdom _per stirpes_ took place, or the
Catholic heir when the Protestant was preferred, the inheritable
principle survived with a sort of immortality through all
transmigrations,--

Multosque per annos
Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum.

This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course,
but in all its revolutions. Whoever came in, or however he came in,
whether he obtained the crown by law or by force, the hereditary
succession was either continued or adopted.

The gentlemen of the Society for Revolutions see nothing in that of 1688
but the deviation from the Constitution; and they take the deviation
from the principle for the principle. They have little regard to the
obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that it
leaves positive authority in very few of the positive institutions of
this country. When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that
no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who
preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid. Do these
theorists mean to imitate some of their predecessors, who dragged the
bodies of our ancient s