According to this spiritual doctor of politics, if his majesty does not
owe his crown to the choice of his people, he is no LAWFUL KING. Now
nothing can be more untrue than that the crown of this kingdom is so
held by his majesty. Therefore, if you follow their rule, the king of
Great Britain, who most certainly does not owe his high office to any
form of popular election, is in no respect better than the rest of the
gang of usurpers, who reign, or rather rob, all over the face of
this our miserable world, without any sort of right or title to the
allegiance of their people. The policy of this general doctrine, so
qualified, is evident enough. The propagators of this political gospel
are in hopes that their abstract principle (their principle that a
popular choice is necessary to the legal existence of the sovereign
magistracy) would be overlooked, whilst the king of Great Britain was
not affected by it. In the mean time the ears of their congregations
would be gradually habituated to it, as if it were a first principle
admitted without dispute. For the present it would only operate as a
theory, pickled in the preserving juices of pulpit eloquence, and laid
by for future use. Condo et compono quae mox depromere possim. By this
policy, whilst our government is soothed with a reservation in its
favour to which it has no claim, the security, which it has in common
with all governments, so far as opinion is security, is taken away.
Thus these politicians proceed, whilst little notice is taken of their
doctrines; but when they come to be examined upon the plain meaning
of their words, and the direct tendency of their doctrines, then
equivocations and slippery construction come into play. When they say
the king owes his crown to the choice of his people, and is, therefore,
the only lawful sovereign in the world, they will perhaps tell us they
mean to say no more than that some of the king's predecessors have been
called to the throne by some sort of choice; and therefore he owes his
crown to the choice of his people. Thus, by a miserable subterfuge, they
hope to render their proposition safe by rendering it nugatory. They
are welcome to the asylum they seek for their offence, since they take
refuge in their folly. For, if you admit this interpretation, how does
their idea of election differ from our idea of inheritance? And how does
the settlement of the crown in the Brunswick line derived from James
I. come to legalize our monarchy, rather than that of any of the
neighbouring countries? At some time or other, to be sure, all the
beginners of dynasties were chosen by those who called them to govern.
There is ground enough for the opinion that all the kingdoms of Europe
were, at a remote period, elective, with more or fewer limitations
in the objects of choice. But whatever kings might have been here
or elsewhere a thousand years ago, or in whatever manner the ruling
dynasties of England or France may have begun, the king of Great Britain
is, at this day, king by a fixed rule of succession, according to the
laws of his country; and whilst the legal conditions of the compact of
sovereignty are performed by him (as they are performed), he holds his
crown in contempt of the choice of the Revolution Society, who have
not a single vote for a king amongst them, either individually or
collectively; though I make no doubt they would soon erect themselves
into an electoral college, if things were ripe to give effect to their
claim. His majesty's heirs and successors, each in his time and order,
will come to the crown with the same contempt of their choice with which
his majesty has succeeded to that he wears.
Whatever may be the success of evasion in explaining away the gross
error of FACT, which supposes that his majesty (though he holds it in
concurrence with the wishes) owes his crown to the choice of his people,
yet nothing can evade their full explicit declaration concerning the
principle of a right in the people to choose; which right is directly
maintained, and tenaciously adhered to. All the oblique insinuations
concerning election bottom in this proposition, and are referable to it.
Lest the foundation of the king's exclusive legal title should pass
for a mere rant of adulatory freedom, the political divine proceeds
dogmatically to assert, that, by the principles of the Revolution, the
people of England have acquired three fundamental rights, all of which,
with him, compose one system, and lie together in one short sentence;
namely, that we have acquired a right,