diculous in the
composition of monarchy--it first excludes a man
from the means of information, yet empowers him to
act in cases where the highest judgment is
required. The state of a king shuts him from the
world, yet the business of a king requires him to
know it thoroughly; wherefore, the different
parts, by unnaturally opposing and destroying each
other, prove the whole character to be absurd and
useless."

In speaking of and to the king, he says:

"It has been the misfortune of your life, and
originally the cause of every reproach and
distress which has attended your government, that
you should never have been acquainted with the
language of truth until you heard it in the
complaints of your people."--Let. 35.

"A faultless, insipid equality in his character is
neither capable of virtue or vice in the extreme,
but it secures his submission to those persons
whom he has been accustomed to respect, and makes
him a dangerous instrument of their ambition.
Secluded from the world, attached from his infancy
to one set of persons and one set of ideas, he can
neither open his heart to new connections, nor his
mind to better information."--Let. 39.

"That the crown is this overbearing part in the
English constitution, needs not to be mentioned;
and that it derives its whole consequence merely
from being the giver of _places and pensions_, is
self-evident. Wherefore, though we have been wise
enough to shut and lock a door against absolute
monarchy, we at the same time have been foolish
enough to put the crown in possession of the key.

"The prejudice of Englishmen in favor of their own
government by king, lords, and commons, arises as
much or more from national pride than reason.
Individuals are undoubtedly safer in England than
in some other countries, but the will of the king
is as much the law of the land in Britain as in
France, with this difference: that, instead of
proceeding directly from his mouth, it is handed
to the people under the formidable shape of an act
of parliament. For the fate of Charles the First
hath only made kings more subtle--not more just."