the conftant infpection of parliament, the prac tical claim of impeachment, they thought infi nitely a better fecurity not only for their conftitutional liberty, but against the vices of administration, than the refervation of a right fo difficult in the practice, fo uncertain in the issue, and often fo mifchievous in the confequences, as that of "cashiering their governors."

Dr. Price, in this fermon*, condemns very properly the practice of grofs, adulatory addreffes to kings. Inftead of this fulfome ftyle, he proposes that his majefty fhould be told, on occafions of congratulation, that "he is to confider "himself as more properly the fervant than "the fovereign of his people." For a compliment, this new form of addrefs does not feem to be very foothing. Those who are fervants, in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told of their fituation, their duty, and their obligations. The flave, in the old play, tells his mafter, "Hec commemoratio eft quafi exprobra"tio." It is not pleafant as compliment; it is not wholefome as inftruction. After all, if the king were to bring himself to echo this new kind of addrefs, to adopt it in terms, and even to take the appellation of Servant of the People as his royal ftyle, how either he or we should be much mended by it, I cannot imagine. I have feen very affuming letters, figned, Your most obedient, humble fervant. The proudest domination that ever was endured on earth took a title of

* P. 22, 23, 24:

ftill greater humility than that which is now propofed for fovereigns by the Apoftle of Liberty. Kings and nations were trampled upon by the foot of one calling himself "the Servant of Ser"vants;" and mandates for depofing fovereigns were fealed with the fignet of" the Fisherman."

I should have confidered all this as no more than a fort of flippant vain discourse, in which, as in an unfavoury fume, feveral perfons fuffer the fpirit of liberty to evaporate, if it were not plainly in fupport of the idea, and a part of the scheme of " cafhiering kings for mifconduct." In that light it is worth fome obfervation.

Kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the fervants 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 fenfe (by our conftitution, at leaft) any thing like fervants; the effence of whose situation is to obey the commands of fome other, and to be removeable at pleasure. But the king of Great Britain obeys no other perfon; all other perfons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience. The law, which knows neither to flatter nor to infult, calls this high magistrate, not our fervant, as this humble Divine calls him, but " our fove"reign 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.

As he is not to obey us, but as we are to

obey

obey the law in him, our conftitution has made no fort of provision towards rendering him, as a fervant, in any degree refponfible. Our conftitution knows nothing of a magistrate like the Jufticia of Arragon; nor of any court legally appointed, nor of any procefs legally fettled for fubmitting the king to the refponfibility belonging to all fervants. In this he is not diftinguifhed from the commons and the lords; who, in their feveral public capacities, can never be called to an account for their conduct; although the Revolution Society chooses to affert, in direct oppofition to one of the wifest and most beautiful parts of our conftitution, that " a king is no more than the first "fervant of the public, created by it, and refpon'fible to it."

Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deferved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no fecurity for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations, and precarious in its tenure; if they had been able to contrive no better remedy against arbitrary power than civil confufion. Let these gentlemen ftate who that representative public is to whom they will affirm the king, as a fervant, to be refponfible. It will be then time enough for me to produce to them the pofitive ftatute law which affirms that he is not.

The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which thefe gentlemen talk fo much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force. It then becomes a cafe of war, and not of consti

tution.

tution. Laws are commanded to hold their tongues amongst arms; and tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no longer able to uphold. The Revolution of 1688 was obtained by a just war, in the only cafe in which any war, and much more a civil war, can be just. Jufta "bella quibus neceffaria." The question of dethroning, or, if these gentlemen like the phrafe better, " cafhiering kings, will always be, as it has always been, an extraordinary queftion of ftate, and wholly out of the law; a question (like all other queftions of ftate) of difpofitions, and of means, and of probable confequences, rather than of pofitive rights. As it was not made for common abuses, fo it is not to be agitated by common minds. The fuperlative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end, and refiftance must begin, is faint, obfcure, and not eafily definable. It is not a fingle act, or a fingle event, which determines it. Governments must be abufed and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the difeafe is to indicate the remedy to those whom nature has qualified to adminifter in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter portion to a diftempered ftate. Times and occafions, and provocations, will teach their own leffons. The wife will determine from the gravity of the cafe; the irritable from fenfibility to oppreffion; the high-minded from difdain

and

and indignation at abufive power in unworthy hands; the brave and bold from the love of honourable danger in a generous caufe: but, with or without right, a revolution will be the very last resource of the thinking and the good.

The third head of right, afferted by the pulpit of the Old Jewry, namely, the "right to form a

government for ourfelves," has, at least, as little countenance from any thing done at the Revolution, either in precedent or principle, as the two first of their claims. The Revolution was made to preferve our antient indifputable laws and liberties, and that antient conftitution of government which is our only fecurity for law and liberty. If you are defirous of knowing the fpirit of our conftitution, and the policy which predominated in that great period which has fecured it to this hour, pray look for both in our hiftories, in our records, in our acts of parliament, and journals of parliament, and not in the fermons of the Old Jewry, and the after-dinner toafts of the Revolution Society.-In the former you will find other ideas and another language. Such a claim is as ill-fuited to our temper and wishes as it is unfupported by any appearance of authority. The very idea of the fabrication of a new government, is enough to fill us with difguft and horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now with, to derive all we poffefs as an inheritance from our forefathers.