ce of
public order; and could never be pleaded to the overthrow of national
tranquillity, and the subversion of regular establishments; that the
principles of liberty, no less than the maxims of internal peace,
were injured by these pretensions of the house of York; and if so many
reiterated acts of the legislature, by which the crown was entailed on
the present family, were now invalidated, the English must be considered
not as a free people, who could dispose of their own government, but as
a troop of slaves, who were implicitly transmitted by succession from
one master to another that the nation was bound to allegiance under the
house of Lancaster by moral no less than by political duty; and were
they to infringe those numerous oaths of fealty which they had sworn to
Henry and his predecessors, they would thenceforth be thrown loose from
all principles, and it would be found difficult ever after to fix and
restrain them: that the duke of York himself had frequently done homage
to the king as his lawful sovereign, and had thereby, in the most solemn
manner, made an indirect renunciation of those claims with which he now
dared to disturb the tranquillity of the public: that even though the
violation of the rights of blood, made on the deposition of Richard, was
perhaps rash and imprudent, it was too late to remedy the mischief; the
danger of a disputed succession could no longer be obviated; the people,
accustomed to a government which, in the hands of the late king,
had been so glorious, and in that of his predecessor, so prudent and
salutary, would still ascribe a right to it; by causing multiplied
disorders, and by shedding an inundation of blood, the advantage would
only be obtained of exchanging one pretender for another; and the
house of York itself, if established on the throne, would, on the first
opportunity, be exposed to those revolutions, which the giddy spirit
excited in the people gave so much reason to apprehend: and that, though
the present king enjoyed not the shining talents which had appeared
in his father and grandfather, he might still have a son who should
be endowed with them; he is himself eminent for the most harmless and
inoffensive manners; and if active princes were dethroned on pretence
of tyranny, and indolent ones on the plea of incapacity, there would
thenceforth remain in the constitution no established rule of obedience
to any sovereign.

Those strong topics in favor of the house of La