the support of the
just principles of our Constitution a task somewhat invidious. These
sophisters substitute a fictitious cause, and feigned personages, in
whose favor they suppose you engaged, whenever you defend the
inheritable nature of the crown. It is common with them to dispute as if
they were in a conflict with some of those exploded fanatics of slavery
who formerly maintained, what I believe no creature now maintains, "that
the crown is held by divine, hereditary, and indefeasible right." These
old fanatics of single arbitrary power dogmatized as if hereditary
royalty was the only lawful government in the world,--just as our new
fanatics of popular arbitrary power maintain that a popular election is
the sole lawful source of authority. The old prerogative enthusiasts, it
is true, did speculate foolishly, and perhaps impiously too, as if
monarchy had more of a divine sanction than any other mode of
government,--and as if a right to govern by inheritance were in
strictness _indefeasible_ in every person who should be found in the
succession to a throne, and under every circumstance, which no civil or
political right can be. But an absurd opinion concerning the king's
hereditary right to the crown does not prejudice one that is rational,
and bottomed upon solid principles of law and policy. If all the absurd
theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which
they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the
world. But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no
justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous
maxims on the other.

* * * * *

The second claim of the Revolution Society is "a right of cashiering
their governors for _misconduct_." Perhaps the apprehensions our
ancestors entertained of forming such a precedent as that "of cashiering
for misconduct" was the cause that the declaration of the act which
implied the abdication of King James was, if it had any fault, rather
too guarded and too circumstantial.[82] But all this guard, and all this
accumulation of circumstances, serves to show the spirit of caution
which predominated in the national councils, in a situation in which men
irritated by oppression, and elevated by a triumph over it, are apt to
abandon themselves to violent and extreme courses; it shows the anxiety
of the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that great
event to make the R