ncaster, were opposed
by arguments no less convincing on the side of the house of York. The
partisans of this latter family asserted, that the maintenance of order
in the succession of princes, far from doing injury to the people, or
invalidating their fundamental title to good government, was established
only for the purposes of government, and served to prevent those
numberless confusions which must ensue, if no rule were followed but the
uncertain and disputed views of present convenience and advantage:
that the same maxims which insured public peace, were also salutary to
national liberty the privileges of the people could only be maintained
by the observance of laws; and if no account were made of the rights of
the sovereign, it could less be expected that any regard would be paid
to the property and freedom of the subject: that it was never too late
to correct any pernicious precedent; an unjust establishment, the longer
it stood, acquired the greater sanction and validity; it could, with
more appearance of reason, be pleaded as an authority for a like
injustice; and the maintenance of it, instead of favoring public
tranquillity, tended to disjoint every principle by which human society
was supported: that usurpers would be happy, if their present possession
of power, or their continuance for a few years, could convert them into
legal princes; but nothing would be more miserable than the people, if
all restraints on violence and ambition were thus removed, and a full
scope given to the attempts of every turbulent innovator: that time
indeed might bestow solidity on a government whose first foundations
were the most infirm; but it required both a long course of time to
produce this effect, and the total extinction of those claimants whose
title was built on the original principles of the constitution: that the
deposition of Richard II., and the advancement of Henry IV., were not
deliberate national acts, but the result of the levity and violence of
the people, and proceeded from those very defects in human nature which
the establishment of political society, and of an order in succession,
was calculated to prevent: that the subsequent entails of the crown
were a continuance of the same violence and usurpation; they were not
ratified by the legislature, since the consent of the rightful king was
still wanting; and the acquiescence, first of the family of Mortimer,
then of the family of York, proceeded from present nec