I have seen very assuming letters signed, "Your
most obedient, humble servant." The proudest domination that ever was
endured on earth took a title of still greater humility than that which
is now proposed for sovereigns by the Apostle of Liberty. Kings and
nations were trampled upon by the foot of one calling himself "The
Servant of Servants"; and mandates for deposing sovereigns were sealed
with the signet of "The Fisherman."
I should have considered all this as no more than a sort of flippant,
vain discourse, in which, as in an unsavory fume, several persons suffer
the spirit of liberty to evaporate, if it were not plainly in support of
the idea, and a part of the scheme, of "cashiering kings for
misconduct." In that light it is worth some observation.
Kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the servants 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 sense, (by
our Constitution, at least,) anything like servants,--the essence of
whose situation is to obey the commands of some other, and to be
removable at pleasure. But the king of Great Britain obeys no other
person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under
him, and owe to him a legal obedience. The law, which knows neither to
flatter nor to insult, calls this high-magistrate, not our servant, as
this humble divine calls him, but "_our sovereign 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.
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