If any of my countrymen have been deluded, by these modern pfeudo-evangelifts, into their practical leffons, *" to confider the world as new to them, as to the first man, that existed, and their natural rights in it of the fame kind; † that there is no political Adam, who has a power or right to bind all posterity for ever; that the rights of the living cannot be willed away, and controuled, and contracted for by the manufcript affumed authority of the dead, there being no authority. in the dead over the freedom and rights of the living; and that, therefore, || we are not to refer to mufty records and mouldy parchments for the rights of the living; and confequently, that they are in error, who reafon by precedent drawn from antiquity refpecting the Rights of Man," I fhall certainly make little impreffion upon them by the quotation of any written, historical, philofophical, or even legislative authority whatever. I must, however, in justice, remind thefe docile disciples of modern liberty of the lenient palliative, which their demagogue has thrown into his inftructions, left they may fwallow the envenomed

* Payne's Rights of Man, p. 46. I p. 10. H p. 15.

3

+ p. 13.

§ P. 44.

draught

binding effect

draught too hastily, without the application What gives
of the corrective folvent. * "It requires to laws.
but a very small glance of thought to per-
ceive, that although laws made in one gene-
ration often continue in force through fuc-
ceeding generations, yet that they continue to
derive their force from the confent of the liv-
ing. A law not repealed continues in force,
not because it cannot be repealed, but because
it is not repealed, and the non-repealing
paffes for confent."
Thefe written au-
thorities, or, in the fashionable phrase, these
affumed ufurpations of the dead over the living,
may be referred to by thofe, who will derive
from them the fatisfaction of example, illuf-
tration, and reafon.

In order to humour thefe neophites to
modern liberty, I fhall follow and argue upon
their own avowed principles and doctrines;
and I certainly so far go with them, that I do
not admit, that the truth of any principle can
be proved merely from its antiquity, or that
every right can be established merely by its
length of poffeffion. "For as time can
t
make nothing lawful or just, that is not so of
itself (though men are unwilling to change

* Payne's Rights of Man, p. 13.

+Algernoon Sydney's Difcourfes concerning Government, 380..

The truth of

principles not

to be proved
quity.

from its anti

that

1

The firft delegation of power

election.

that, which has pleased their ancestors, unless they discover great inconveniences in it) that, which a people does rightly establish for their own good, is of as much force the first day, as continuance can ever give to it; and, therefore, in matters of the greatest importance, wife and good men do not fo much enquire, what has been, as what is good, and ought to be; for that, which of itself is evil, by continuance is made worfe, and upon the first opportunity is justly to be abolished." Without, therefore, attempting to trace the origin, progrefs, and establishment of our conftitution and government, through the intricate mazes of historical darknefs, confufion, and uncertainty, I fhall keep conftantly in view the principles of civil liberty, which I have already laid down, and thereby endeavour to establish, in application to them, the force and energy of our present form of conftitution and government.

It is because the fovereignty of civil or politiin this inland by cal power originates from the people, and conftantly and unalienably refides in the people, that we find, from the earlieft credible accounts of our ancestors, that the political community of this ifland first delegated their power to an individual, by the actual election of the representative body or common council of the nation:

nation: * Summa imperii bellique adminiftrandi
communi concilio permiffa eft Caffivellano. Upon
this principle, and in exercife of the inde-
feafable right and power, upon which it is
grounded, did our ancestors continue this
form of elective monarchy, till they became
a province under the Romans; the diffolution
then of that government was effected, as Mr.
Locke expreffes, "by the inroad of a
t
foreign force making a conqueft upon them.
For in that cafe, not being able to maintain
and fupport themselves as one entire and
independent body, the union belonging to
that body, which confifted therein, must ne-
ceffarily ceafe." In execution of the
fame

Cæfar's Commentaries.

+ Locke of Civil Government, c. xix. p. 227.

No free exercife of a people's right can be fupposed to exist under the compulfive controul of a foreign enemy. Thus Mr. Locke (ibid, p. 217), "Though governments can originally have no other rife, than that before mentioned, nor polities be founded on any thing, but the confent of the people; yet such have been the diforders ambition has filled the world with, that, in the noife of war, which makes fo great a part of the hiftory of mankind, this consent is little taken notice of; and therefore many have mistaken the force of arms for confent of the people, and reckon conqueft as one of the originals of government. But conqueft is as far from Setting up any government, as demolishing a house is from building a new one in the place; indeed, it often makes way for a new frame of commonwealth, by deftroying

The govern

ment diffolv.

by force of

arms,

Saxon Heptar. chy.

Our monarchy. limited in its original creation.

fame rights and power, when they were left to themselves by their Roman conquerors, did they divide themselves into an heptarchy, or seven diftinct kingdoms, under the Saxons; and when they had experienced the inconveniences of these divergent fovereignties, they reconcentered the fupremacy in one monarch, as it has ever fince continued. In this fame spirit, and in the exercise of these fame rights, did the Saxon conquerors of our British ancestors, *" when they had fubdued the Britons, chuse to themselves kings, and required an oath of them to submit to the judgment of the law, as much as any of their fubGeneral view jects." So when the Saxons, as masters of the vanquished Britons, began to look upon themselves as the political community of this island, they †“ established a form of administration, which limited the prince, and required that public affairs fhould be fettled. by affemblies of the chief men of the nation. The privileges of the people were afterwards enlarged by the alterations, which the wife and virtuous Alfred introduced; and this confir

of our govern

ment.

ftroying the former; but, without the confent of the people, can never erect a new one."

* Mirror of Juftice, c. i. fect. 2.

+ Dr. Kippis' Sermon, preached at the Old Jewry, on the 4th Nov. 1788, p. 14.