the Magi declared that the child would be a male; whereupon the royal ensigns were brought forth, they were placed on her majesty's belly, and the princes and the satrapes, prostrate, recognized the embrio monarch,

Some authors would have it believed, that when a family has been once admitted, and an hereditary right to the crown once recognised in it, that right cannot be forfeited, nor that throne become vacant as long as any heir of the family remains. How much more agreeable to truth and to common sense would these authors have written, if they had maintained, that every prince who comes to a crown in the course of succession, were he the last of five hundred, comes to it under the same conditions under which the first took it, and that royal blood can give no right. The first and the last hold by the same tenure.—

The notions concerning the divine institution and right of kings, as well as the absolute power belonging to their office, have no foundation in fact or reason, but have risen from an old alliance between ecclesiastical and civil policy. The characters of king and priest have been sometimes blended together: and when they have been divided, as kings have found the great effects wrought in government by the empire which priests obtain over the consciences of mankind, so priests have been taught by experience, that the best method to preserve their own rank, dignity, wealth, and power, all raised upon a supposed divine

E 2

divine right, is to communicate the same pretension to kings, and, by a fallacy common to both, impose their usurpations on a silly world. This they have done, and in the state, as in the church, these pretensions to a divine right have been generally. carried highest by those who have had the least pretension to the divine favour.-

A divine right to govern ill, is an absurdity; to assert it, is blasphemy.

SOME are born kings,

BOLINGBROKE.

Idea of a Patriot King.

Made up of three parts fire; so full of heaven,
It sparkles at their eyes; inferior souls
Know 'em as soon as seen, by sure instinct,
To be their lords, and naturally worship
The secret god within them!!

DRYDEN. Cleomenes, act it.

Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm from an anointed king; The breath of worldly men cannot depose The deputy elected by the Lord!!

SHAKESPEAR.

Richard II. act iii.

LET him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person;

There's such divinity doth hedge a king,

That treason can but peep to what it would,

Act little of his will!!

SHAKESPEAR.

Hamlet, act iv.

Christiern.

Of my misguided people held so light,

That thus thou'dst push them on the keen rebuke Of guarded majesty; where justice waits,

All awful and resistless, to assert

The impervious rights, the sanctitude of kings,
And blast rebellion?

Gustavus. Justice, sanctitude,

And rights! O patience! rights! what rights, thou

tyrant?

Yes, if perdition be the rule of

power,

If wrongs give right, O then, supreme in mis

chief,

Thou wert the lord, the monarch of the world!
Too narrow for thy claim. But if thou think'st
That crowns are vilely propertied, like coin,
To be the means, the specialty of lust,
And sensual attribution; if thou think'st
That empire is of titled birth, or blood;
That nature, in the proud behalf of one,
Shall disenfranchise all her lordly race,
And bow her general issue to the yoke
Of private domination; then, thou proud one,
Here know me for thy king. Howe'er be told
Not claim hereditary, not the trust

Of frank election,

Not even the high anointed hand of Heaven

Can authorise oppression, give a law
For lawless power, wed faith to violation,
On reason build misrule, or justly bind

Allegiance to injustice. Tyranny

Absolves all faith; and who invades our rights,

Howe'er his own commence, can never be

But an usurper.

BROOKE.

Gustavus Vasa, act ii.

PREROGATIVE! what's that? the boast of

tyrants;

A borrow'd jewel glittering in the crown
With specious lustre, lent but to destroy.
You had it, sir, and hold it-from the people.

Torrismond.

usurper]

T. FRANKLIN.

Earl of Warwick, act iii.

GRANT she be [a tyrant, an

When from the conqueror we hold our lives
We yield ourselves his subjects from that hour:
For mutual benefits make mutual ties.

Raymond (his father). Why can you think I
owe a thief my life,

Because he took it not by lawless force?
What if he did not all the ill he could?

Am I obliged by that t'assist his rapines,
And to maintain his murders?

Torrismond. Not to maintain, but bear 'em un-
revenged;

Kings titles commonly begin by force,

Which time wears off and mellows into right
'So power, which in one age is tyranny,
Is ripen'd in the next to true succession.
She's in possession.

Raymond. So diseases are.

Should not a ling'ring fever be remov'd,

because

Because it long has rag'd within our blood?
Do I rebel when I would thrust it out?

What, shall I think the world was made for one,
And men are born for kings as beasts for men,
Not for protection, but to be devour'd?
Mark those who dote on arbitrary power,
And you shall find them either hot brain'd youth,
Or needy bankrupts, servile in their greatness,
And slaves to some to lord it o'er the rest.
O baseness, to support a tyrant throne,

And crush your free born brethren of the world!
Nay, to become a part of usurpation;

To espouse the tyrant's person and her crimes,
And on a tyrant get a race of tyrants,

To be your country's curse in after-ages.

DRYDEN.

Spanish Friar, act iv.

THE man, who finds an unknown country out, By giving it a name acquires, no doubt,

A gospel title, tho' the people there,

The pious Christian thinks not worth his care.
Bar this pretence, and into air is hurl'd

The claim of Europe to the Western World.
Cast by a tempest on a savage coast,
Some roving buccaneer set up a post;
A beam, in proper form transversely laid,
Of his Redeemer's cross the figure made;
Of that Redeemer, with whose laws his life,
From first to last, had been one scene of strife;
His royal master's name thereon engrav'd,
the whole race enslaved ;

Without more process