SUCCESSION to the Crown. See HEREDITARY RIGHT.—From the days of Egbert, the first sole monarch of England, even to the present, the four cardinal maxims mentioned in that article have ever been held constitutional canons of succession. It is true, as Sir William Blackstone observes, this succession, through fraud or force, or sometimes through necessity, when in hostile times the crown descended on a minor or the like, has been very frequently suspended; but has generally at last returned back into the old hereditary channel, though sometimes a very considerable period has intervened. And, even in those instances where the succession has been violated, the crown has ever been looked upon as hereditary in the wearer of it. Of which the usurpers themselves were so sensible, that they for the most part endeavoured to vamp up some feeble show of a title by descent, in order to amuse the people, while they gained the possession of the kingdom. And, when possession was once gained, they considered it as the purchase or acquisition of a new estate of inheritance, and transmitted or endeavoured to transmit it to their own posterity, by a kind of hereditary right of usurpation. See Blackst. Com. v. i. 197—216. From the historical view there given, it appears, that the title to the crown is at present hereditary, though not quite so absolutely hereditary as formerly: and the common stock, or ancestor, from whom the descent must be derived, is also different. Formerly, the common stock was king Egbert; then William the conqueror; afterwards, in James I.'s time, the two common stocks united; and so continued till the vacancy of the throne in 1688: now it is the princess Sophia, in whom the inheritance was vested by the new king and parliament. Formerly, the descent was absolute, and the crown went to the next heir without any restriction: but now, upon the new settlement, the inheritance is conditional; being limited to such heirs only, of the body of the princess Sophia, as are Protestant members of the church of England, and are married to none but Protestants.
And in this due medium consists the true constitutional notion of the right of succession to the imperial crown of these kingdoms. The extremes between which it steers are each of them equally destructive of those ends for which societies were formed and are kept on foot. Where the magistrate, upon every succession, is elected by the people, and may by the express provision of the laws be deposed (if not punished) by his subjects, this may sound like the perfection of liberty, and look well enough when delineated on paper; but in practice will be ever productive of tumult, contention, and anarchy. And, on the other hand, divine indefeasible hereditary right, when coupled with the doctrine of unlimited passive obedience, is surely of all constitutions the most thoroughly slavish and dreadful. But when such an hereditary right as our laws have created and vested in the royal stock, is closely inter-
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woven with those liberties which are equally the inheritance of the subject; this union will form a constitution, in theory the most beautiful of any, in practice the most approved, and, we trust, in duration the most permanent.