an arbitrary
king of England should send his officers to seize my lands or goods
against law, I can lawfully resist them. The ministers by whom he acts
are liable to prosecution and impeachment, though his own person be
sacred. But if he interposes his royal authority to support their
insolence, I see no remedy, till it grows a general grievance, or till
the body of the people have reason to apprehend it will be so; after
which it becomes a case of necessity, and then I suppose a free people
may assert their own rights, yet without any violation to the person or
lawful power of the prince. But although the Tories allow all this, and
did justify it by the share they had in the Revolution, yet they see no
reason for entering upon so ungrateful a subject, or raising controversies
upon it, as if we were in daily apprehensions of tyranny, under the reign
of so excellent a princess, and while we have so many laws[4] of late
years made to limit the prerogative; when according to the judgment of
those who know our constitution best, things rather seem to lean to the
other extreme, which is equally to be avoided. As to the succession; the
Tories think an hereditary right to be the best in its own nature, and
most agreeable to our old constitution; yet at the same time they allow
it to be defeasible by Act of Parliament, and so is_ Magna Charta _too,
if the legislature thinks fit; which is a truth so manifest, that no man
who understands the nature of government, can be in doubt concerning it._

These I take to be the sentiments of a great majority among the Tories,
with respect to passive obedience: and if the Whigs insist, from the
writings or common talk of warm and ignorant men, to form a judgment of
the whole body, according to the first account I have here given, I will
engage to produce as many of their side, who are utterly against passive
obedience even to the legislature; who will assert the last resort of
power to be in the people, against those whom they have chosen and
trusted as their representatives, with the prince at the head; and who
will put wild improbable cases to shew the reasonableness and necessity
of resisting the legislative power, in such imaginary junctures. Than
which however nothing can be more idle; for I dare undertake in any
system of government, either speculative or practic, that was ever yet in
the world, from Plato's "Republic" to Harrington's "Oceana,"[5] to put
such difficulties as cannot be