But the course of succession is the
healthy habit of the British Constitution. Was it that the legislature
wanted, at the act for the limitation of the crown in the Hanoverian
line, drawn through the female descendants of James the First, a due
sense of the inconveniences of having two or three, or possibly more,
foreigners in succession to the British throne? No!--they had a due
sense of the evils which might happen from such foreign rule, and more
than a due sense of them. But a more decisive proof cannot be given of
the full conviction of the British nation that the principles of the
Revolution did not authorize them to elect kings at their pleasure, and
without any attention to the ancient fundamental principles of our
government, than their continuing to adopt a plan of hereditary
Protestant succession in the old line, with all the dangers and all the
inconveniences of its being a foreign line full before their eyes, and
operating with the utmost force upon their minds.
A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of
supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but
this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught,
avowed, and printed. The dislike I feel to revolutions, the signals for
which have so often been given from pulpits,--the spirit of change that
is gone abroad,--the total contempt which prevails with you, and may
come to prevail with us, of all ancient institutions, when set in
opposition to a present sense of convenience, or to the bent of a
present inclination,--all these considerations make it not unadvisable,
in my opinion, to call back our attention to the true principles of our
own domestic laws, that you, my French friend, should begin to know, and
that we should continue to cherish them.
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