It then
becomes a case of war, and not of constitution. 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 case in which any war, and much more
a civil war, can be just. "_Justa bella quibus_ NECESSARIA." The
question of dethroning, or, if these gentlemen, like the phrase better,
"cashiering kings," will always be, as it has always been, an
extraordinary question of state, and wholly out of the law: a question
(like all other questions of state) of dispositions, and of means, and
of probable consequences, rather than of positive rights. As it was not
made for common abuses, so it is not to be agitated by common minds. The
speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and
resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable. It
is not a single act or a single event which determines it. Governments
must be abused 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 disease
is to indicate the remedy to those whom Nature has qualified to
administer in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a
distempered state. Times and occasions and provocations will teach their
own lessons.
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