orever, could
the legislature have fastidiously rejected the fair and abundant choice
which our own country presented to them, and searched in strange lands
for a foreign princess, from whose womb the line of our future rulers
were to derive their title to govern millions of men through a series of
ages?

The Princess Sophia was named in the act of settlement of the 12th and
13th of King William, for a _stock_ and root of _inheritance_ to our
kings, and not for her merits as a temporary administratrix of a power
which she might not, and in fact did not, herself ever exercise. She was
adopted for one reason, and for one only,--because, says the act, "the
most excellent Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess Dowager of
Hanover, is _daughter_ of the most excellent Princess Elizabeth, late
Queen of Bohemia, _daughter_ of our late _sovereign lord_ King James the
First, of happy memory, and is hereby declared to be the next in
_succession_ in the Protestant line," &c., &c.; "and the crown shall
continue to the _heirs_ of her body, being Protestants." This limitation
was made by Parliament, that through the Princess Sophia an inheritable
line not only was to be continued in future, but (what they thought very
material) that through her it was to be connected with the old stock of
inheritance in King James the First; in order that the monarchy might
preserve an unbroken unity through all ages, and might be preserved
(with safety to our religion) in the old approved mode by descent, in
which, if our liberties had been once endangered, they had often,
through all storms and struggles of prerogative and privilege, been
preserved. They did well. No experience has taught us that in any other
course or method than that of an _hereditary crown_ our liberties can be
regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our _hereditary right_. An
irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an
irregular, convulsive disease. But the course of succession is the
healthy habit of the British Constitution. Was it that the legislature
wanted, at the act for the limitation of the crown in the Hanoverian
line, drawn through the female descendants of James the First, a due
sense of the inconveniences of having two or three, or possibly more,
foreigners in succession to the British throne? No!--they had a due
sense of the evils which might happen from such foreign rule, and more
than a due sense of them. But a more decisive proof cannot b