Your throne cannot stand secure upon the principles of unconditional
submission and passive obedience; on powers exercised without the
concurrence of the people to be governed; on acts made in defiance
of their prejudices and habits; on acquiescence procured by foreign
mercenary troops, and secured by standing armies. These may possibly be
the foundation of other thrones: they must be the subversion of yours.
It was not to passive principles in our ancestors that we owe the honour
of appearing before a sovereign, who cannot feel that he is a prince,
without knowing that we ought to be free. The revolution is a departure
from the ancient course of the descent of this monarchy. The people at
that time re-entered into their original rights; and it was not because
a positive law authorized what was then done, but because the freedom
and safety of the subject, the origin and cause of all laws, required
a proceeding paramount and superior to them. At that ever-memorable and
instructive period, the letter of the law was superseded in favour of
the substance of liberty. To the free choice, therefore, of the people,
without either king or parliament, we owe that happy establishment,
out of which both king and parliament were regenerated. From that
great principle of liberty have originated the statutes, confirming and
ratifying the establishment, from which your majesty derives your right
to rule over us. Those statutes have not given us our liberties; our
liberties have produced them. Every hour of your majesty's reign your
title stands upon the very same foundation on which it was at first
laid; and we do not know a better on which it can possibly be placed.
Convinced, sir, that you cannot have different rights and a different
security in different parts of your dominions, we wish to lay an even
platform for your throne; and to give it an unmovable stability, by
laying it on the general freedom of your people; and by securing to your
majesty that confidence and affection in all parts of your dominions,
which makes your best security and dearest title in this the chief seat
of your empire.
Such, sir, being amongst us the foundation of monarchy itself, much more
clearly and much more peculiarly is it the ground of all parliamentary
power. Parliament is a security provided for the protection of freedom,
and not a subtile fiction, contrived to amuse the people in its place.
The authority of both houses can, still less than that of the crown, be
supported upon different principles in different places, so as to be,
for one part of your subjects, a protector of liberty, and for another
a fund of despotism, through which prerogative is extended by occasional
powers, whenever an arbitrary will finds itself straitened by the
restrictions of law. Had it seemed good to parliament to consider itself
as the indulgent guardian and strong protector of the freedom of the
subordinate popular assemblies, instead of exercising its power to their
annihilation, there is no doubt that it never could have been their
inclination, because not their interest, to raise questions on the
extent of parliamentary rights, or to enfeeble privileges which were the
security of their own. Powers evident from necessity, and not suspicious
from an alarming mode or purpose in the exertion, would, as formerly
they were, be cheerfully submitted to; and these would have been fully
sufficient for conservation of unity in the empire, and for directing
its wealth to one common centre. Another use has produced other
consequences; and a power which refuses to be limited by moderation
must either be lost, or find other more distinct and satisfactory
limitations.