Dr. Price, in this sermon, condemns very properly the practice of gross,
adulatory addresses to kings. Instead of this fulsome style, he proposes
that his majesty should be told, on occasions of congratulation,
that "he is to consider himself as more properly the servant than the
sovereign of his people." For a compliment, this new form of address
does not seem to be very soothing. Those who are servants in name, as
well as in effect, do not like to be told of their situation, their duty
and their obligations. The slave, in the old play, tells his master,
"Haec commemoratio est quasi exprobatio." It is not pleasant as
compliment; it is not wholesome as instruction. After all, if the king
were to bring himself to echo this new kind of address, to adopt it in
terms, and even to take the appellation of Servant of the People as his
royal style, how either he or we should be much mended by it, I cannot
imagine. I have seen very assuming letters, signed, Your most obedient,
humble servant. The proudest denomination that ever was endured on earth
took a title of still greater humility than that which is now proposed
for sovereigns by the Apostle of Liberty. Kings and nations were
trampled upon by the foot of one calling himself "the Servant of
Servants;" and mandates for deposing sovereigns were sealed with the
signet of "the Fisherman."
I should have considered all this as no more than a sort of flippant,
vain discourse, in which, as in an unsavoury fume, several persons
suffer the spirit of liberty to evaporate, if it were not plainly in
support of the idea, and a part of the scheme, of "cashiering kings for
misconduct." In that light it is worth some observation.
Kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the servants of the people,
because their power has no other rational end than that of the general
advantage; but it is not true that they are, in the ordinary sense (by
our constitution at least), anything like servants; the essence of whose
situation is to obey the commands of some other, and to be removable at
pleasure. But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other
persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to
him a legal obedience. The law, which knows neither to flatter nor to
insult, calls this high magistrate, not our servant, as this humble
divine calls him, but "OUR SOVEREIGN LORD THE KING;" and we, on our
parts, have learned to speak only the primitive language of the law, and
not the confused jargon of their Babylonian pulpits.