sovereign power is an opposition to God's providential arrangements; and it is the more inexcusable, because the well-being of mankind is the general end for which government is obtained; and this end of government, under all its abuses, is generally answered by it for the good of government is perpetual and universal; the mischiefs resulting from the abuse of power, temporary and partial: insomuch, that in governments which are the worst administered the sovereign power, for the most part, is a terror not to good works, but to the evil; and upon the whole, far more beneficial than detrimental to the subject.' But this general good of government cannot be secured upon any other terms than the submission of the individual to what may be called its extraordinary evils." Such is the general scope and tenour of the argument by which St. Paul enforces the duty of the private citizen's subjection to the sovereign authority. He never once mentions that god of the republican's idolatry-the consent of the ungoverned millions of mankind he represents the earthly sovereign as the vicegerent of God, accountable for misconduct to * "Nulla tyrannis esse potest, quæ non aliqua ex parte subsidio sit ad tuendam hominum societatem." Calvin. in Rom. xiii. 1. where †The first mention that I remember to have found any of compact as the first principle of government is in the "Crito" of Plato; where Socrates alleges a tacit agreement between the citizen and the laws as the ground of an obligation to which he thought himself subject of implicit obedience even to an unjust sentence. It is remarkable, that this fictitious compact, which in modern times hath been made the basis of the unqualified doctrine of resistance, should have been set up by Plato in the person of Socrates as the foundation of the opposite doc. trine of the passive obedience of the individual. his heavenly Master, but entitled to obedience from the subject.* While thus we reprobate the doctrine of the first formation of government out of anarchy by a general consent, we confess, - with thankfulness to the overruling providence of God we confess, and we maintain, that in this country the king is under the obligation of an express contract with the people. I say, of an express contract. In every monarchy in which the will of the sovereign is in any degree subject (as more or less, indeed, it is in all) either to the control of custom or to a fixed rule of law, something of a compact is implied at least between the king and nation; for limitation of the sovereign power implies a mutual agreement, which hath fixed the limits: but in this country, the contract is not tacit, implied, and vague; it is explicit, patent, and precise: it is summarily expressed in the coronation oath; it is drawn out at length and in detail in the Great Charter and the corroborating statutes, in the Petition of Right, in the Habeas Corpus Act, in the Bill of Rights, and in the Act of Settlement. Nor shall we scruple to assert, that our kings in the exercise of their sovereignty are held to the terms of this express and solemn stipulation; which is the legal measure of their power and rule of their conduct. The consequence which some have attempted to deduce from these most certain premises we abominate and reject, as wicked and illegitimate, namely, that "our kings "Neque enim si ultio Domini est effrænatæ dominationis correctio, ideo protinus demandatam nobis arbitremur, quibus nullum aliud quam parendi et patiendi datum est mandatum." - Calvin. Inst. iv. 20. 31. "De privatis hominibus semper loquor."- Ibid. are the servants of the people; and that it is the right of the people to cashier them for misconduct." Our ancestors are slandered, their wisdom is insulted, their virtue is defamed, when these seditious maxims are set forth as the principles on which the great business of the Revolution was conducted, or as the groundwork on which that noblest production of human reason, the wonderful fabric of the British constitution, stands. Our constitution hath indeed effectually secured the monarch's performance of his engagements, not by that clumsy contrivance of republican wit, the establishment of a court of judicature with authority to try his conduct and to punish his delinquency, not by that coarser expedient of modern levellers, a reference to the judgment and the sentence of the multitude,— wise judgment, I ween, and righteous sentence ! but by two peculiar provisions of a deep and subtle policy, the one in the form, the other in the principles of government; which, in their joint operation, render the transgression of the covenant on the part of the monarch little less than a moral impossibility. The one is the judicious partition of the legislative authority between the King and the two houses of Parliament; the other, the responsibility attaching upon the advisers and official servants of the Crown. By the first, the nobles and the representatives of the commons are severally armed with a power of constitutional resistance, to oppose to prerogative overstepping its just bounds, by the exercise of their own rights and their own privileges; which power of the estates of Parliament with the necessity takes away the pretence for any spontaneous interference of the private citizen, otherwise than by the use of the elective franchise and of the right of petition for the redress of grievances: by the second, those who might be willing to be the instruments of despotism are deterred by the dangers which await the service. Having thus excluded all probability of the event of a systematic abuse of royal power, or a dangerous exorbitance of prerogative, our constitution exempts her kings from the degrading necessity of being accountable to the subject: she invests them with the high attribute of political impeccability; she declares, that wrong, in his public capacity, a king of Great Britain cannot do; and thus unites the most perfect security of the subject's liberty with the most absolute inviolability of the sacred person of the sovereign. Such is the British constitution, its basis, religion; its end, liberty; its principal means and safeguard of liberty, the majesty of the sovereign. In support of it the king is not more interested than the peasant. It was a signal instance of God's mercy, not imputing to the people of this land the atrocious deed of a desperate faction,-it was a signal instance of God's mercy, that the goodly fabric was not crushed in the middle of the last century, ere it had attained its finished perfection, by the phrensy of that fanatical banditti which took the life of the First Charles. In the madness and confusion which followed the shedding of that blood, our history holds forth an edifying example of the effects that are ever to be expected:in that example, it gives warning of the effects that ever are intended, by the dissemination of those infernal maxims, that kings are the servants of the people, punishable by their masters. The same lesson is confirmed by the horrible example which the pre sent hour exhibits, in the unparalleled misery of a neighbouring nation, once great in learning, arts, and arms; now torn by contending factions,-her government demolished, her altars overthrown, - her firstborn despoiled of their birthright, — her nobles degraded, her best citizens exiled, her riches sacred and profane given up to the pillage of sacrilege and rapine, atheists directing her councils, -desperadoes conducting her armies, wars of unjust and chimerical ambition consuming her youth, -her gra - naries exhausted, — her fields uncultivated, - famine threatening her multitudes, her streets swarming with assassins, filled with violence, deluged with blood! Is the picture frightful? is the misery extreme, the guilt horrid? Alas! these things were but the prelude of the tragedy: public justice poisoned in its source, profaned in the abuse of its most solemn forms to the foulest purposes, a monarch deliberately murdered, --a monarch, whose only crime it was that he inherited a sceptre the thirty-second of his illustrious stock, butchered on a public scaffold, after the mockery of arraignment, trial, sentence, - butchered without the merciful formalities of the vilest malefactor's execution, the sad privilege of a last farewell to the surrounding populace refused, - not the pause of a moment allowed for devotion, - honourable interment denied to the corpse, -the royal widow's anguish embittered by the rigour of a close imprisonment; with hope, indeed, at no great distance, of release, of such release as hath been given to her lord! This foul murder, and these barbarities, have filled the measure of the guilt and infamy of France. Omy country! read the horror of thy own deed in this recent heightened imitation! lament and weep that |