maxims of resistance—maxims which, it must be confessed, are in general so pernicious and so destructive of civil society. The first is that their antagonists carrying the doctrine of obedience to such an extravagant height as not only never to mention the exceptions in extraordinary cases (which might perhaps be excusable), but even positively to exclude them, it became necessary to insist on these exceptions, and defend the rights of injured truth and liberty. The second and perhaps better reason is founded on the nature of the British constitution and form of government.
It is almost peculiar to our constitution to establish a first magistrate with such high pre-eminence and dignity that, though limited by the laws, he is in a manner, so far as regards his own person, above the laws, and can neither be questioned nor punished for any injury or wrong which {p195} may be committed by him. His ministers alone, or those who act by his commission, are obnoxious to justice; and while the prince is thus allured by the prospect of personal safety to give the laws their free course, an equal security is in effect obtained by the punishment of lesser offenders, and at the same time a civil war is avoided, which would be the infallible consequence were an attack at every turn made directly upon the sovereign. But though the constitution pays this salutary compliment to the prince, it can never reasonably be understood by that maxim to have determined its own destruction, or to have established a tame submission where he protects his ministers, perseveres in injustice, and usurps the whole power of the commonwealth. This case, indeed, is never expressly put by the laws, because it is impossible for them in their ordinary course to provide a remedy for it, or establish any magistrate with superior authority to chastise the exorbitancies of the prince. But as a right without remedy would be the greatest of all absurdities, the remedy in this case is the extraordinary one of resistance, when affairs come to that extremity that the constitution can be defended by it alone. Resistance, therefore, must of course become more frequent in the British Government than in