When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that
no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who
preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid. Do these
theorists mean to imitate some of their predecessors, who dragged the
bodies of our ancient sovereigns out of the quiet of their tombs? Do
they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have
reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of
England with the blot of a continual usurpation? Do they mean to
invalidate, annul, or to call into question, together with the titles of
the whole line of our kings, that great body of our statute law which
passed under those whom they treat as usurpers? to annul laws of
inestimable value to our liberties,--of as great value at least as any
which have passed at or since the period of the Revolution? If kings who
did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to
make laws, what will become of the statute _De tallagio non concedendo?_
of the _Petition of Right?_ of the act of _Habeas Corpus?_ Do these new
doctors of the rights of men presume to assert that King James the
Second, who came to the crown as next of blood, according to the rules
of a then unqualified succession, was not to all intents and purposes a
lawful king of England, before he had done any of those acts which were
justly construed into an abdication of his crown? If he was not, much
trouble in Parliament might have been saved at the period these
gentlemen commemorate.
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