rovide against both these evils,
has taken away the power of declaring war from kings and ministers, and
placed the right where the expense must fall.

When the question of the right of war and peace was agitating in the
National Assembly, the people of England appeared to be much interested
in the event, and highly to applaud the decision. As a principle it
applies as much to one country as another. William the Conqueror, as
a conqueror, held this power of war and peace in himself, and his
descendants have ever since claimed it under him as a right.

Although Mr. Burke has asserted the right of the Parliament at the
Revolution to bind and control the nation and posterity for ever, he
denies at the same time that the Parliament or the nation had any right
to alter what he calls the succession of the crown in anything but in
part, or by a sort of modification. By his taking this ground he throws
the case back to the Norman Conquest, and by thus running a line of
succession springing from William the Conqueror to the present day, he
makes it necessary to enquire who and what William the Conqueror was,
and where he came from, and into the origin, history and nature of what
are called prerogatives. Everything must have had a beginning, and the
fog of time and antiquity should be penetrated to discover it. Let,
then, Mr. Burke bring forward his William of Normandy, for it is to this
origin that his argument goes. It also unfortunately happens, in running
this line of succession, that another line parallel thereto presents
itself, which is that if the succession runs in the line of the
conquest, the nation runs in the line of being conquered, and it ought
to rescue itself from this reproach.

But it will perhaps be said that though the power of declaring war
descends in the heritage of the conquest, it is held in check by the
right of Parliament to withhold the supplies. It will always happen when
a thing is originally wrong that amendments do not make it right, and it
often happens that they do as much mischief one way as good the other,
and such is the case here, for if the one rashly declares war as a
matter of right, and the other peremptorily withholds the supplies as a
matter of right, the remedy becomes as bad, or worse, than the disease.
The one forces the nation to a combat, and the other ties its hands;
but the more probable issue is that the contest will end in a collusion
between the parties, and be made a scree