The house of Lancaster ruled in this island about sixty years, yet the partisans of the white rose seemed daily to multiply in England. The present establishment has taken place during a still longer period. Have all views of right in another family been extinguished, even though scarce any man now alive had arrived at years of discretion when it was expelled, or could have consented to its dominion, or have promised it allegiance? A sufficient indication surely of the general sentiment of mankind on this head. For we blame not the partisans of the abdicated family merely on account of the long time during which they have preserved their imaginary fidelity; we blame them for adhering to a family which, we affirm, has been justly expelled, and which, from the moment the new settlement took place, had forfeited all title to authority.
But would we have a more regular, at least a more philosophical, refutation of this principle of an original contract or popular consent, perhaps the following observations may suffice. {p186}
All moral duties may be divided into two kinds. The first are those to which men are impelled by a natural instinct or immediate propensity which operates in them, independent of all ideas of obligation and of all