ominions, and,
consequently, as one which pertained more to his personal interests
than to the public welfare of the realm.

While things were in this state the king fell sick. The mother of the
Duke of Buckingham undertook to prescribe for him. It was understood
that Buckingham himself, who had, in the course of the Spanish
enterprise, and since his return, acquired an entire ascendency over
Charles, was not unwilling that his old master should leave the stage,
and the younger one reign in his stead; and that his mother shared in
this feeling. At any rate, her prescriptions made the king much worse.
He had the sacrament administered to him in his sick chamber, and said
that he derived great comfort from it. One morning, very early, he
sent for the prince to come and see him. Charles rose, dressed
himself, and came. His father had something to say to him, and tried
to speak. He could not. His strength was too far gone. He fell back
upon his pillow, and died.

Charles was, of course, now king. The theory in the English monarchy
is, that the king never dies. So soon as the person in whom the royal
sovereignty resides ceases to breathe, the principle of supremacy
vests immediately in his successor, by a law of transmission entirely
independent of the will of man. The son becomes king by a divine
right. His being proclaimed and crowned, as he usually is, at some
convenient time early in his reign, are not ceremonies which _make_
him king. They only acknowledge him to be so. He does not, in any
sense, derive his powers and prerogatives from these acts. He only
receives from his people, by means of them, a recognition of his right
to the high office to which he has already been inducted by the fiat
of Heaven.

It will be observed, thus, that the ideas which prevailed in respect
to the nature and province of government, were very different in
England at that time, from those which are entertained in America at
the present day. With us, the administration of government is merely a
_business_, transacted for the benefit of the people by their
agents--men who are put in power for this purpose, and who, like other
agents, are responsible to their principals for the manner in which
they fulfill their trusts. But government in England was, in the days
of the Stuarts--and it is so to a great extent at the present day--a
_right_ which one family possessed, and which entitled that family to
certain immunities, powers, and prerogati