Passive Obedience, as professed and practised by the Tories.

They think that in every government, whether monarchy or republic, there is placed a supreme, absolute, unlimited power, to which passive obedience is due.  That wherever is entrusted the power of making laws, that power is without all bounds, can repeal or enact at pleasure whatever laws it thinks fit, and justly demands universal obedience and non-resistance.  That among us, as every body knows, this power is lodged in the king or queen, together with the lords and commons of the kingdom; and therefore all decrees whatsoever, made by that power, are to be actively or passively obeyed.  That the administration or executive part of this power is in England solely entrusted with the prince, who in administering those laws, ought to be no more resisted than the legislative power itself.  But they do not conceive the same absolute passive obedience to be due to a limited prince’s commands, when they are directly contrary to the laws he has consented to, and sworn to maintain.  The crown may be sued as well as a private person; and if an arbitrary king of England should send his officers to seize my lands or goods against law, I can lawfully resist them.  The ministers by whom he acts are liable to prosecution and impeachment, though his own person be sacred.  But if he interposes his royal authority to support their insolence, I see no remedy, till it grows a general grievance, or till the body of the people have reason to apprehend it will be so; after which it becomes a case of necessity, and then I suppose a free people may assert their own rights, yet without any violation to the person or lawful power of the prince.  But although the Tories allow all this, and did justify it by the share they had in the Revolution, yet they see no reason for entering upon so ungrateful a subject, or raising controversies upon it, as if we were in daily apprehensions of tyranny, under the reign of so excellent a princess, and while we have so many laws[4] of late years made to limit the prerogative; when according to the judgment of those who know our constitution best, things rather seem to lean to the other extreme, which is equally to be avoided.  As to the succession; the Tories think an hereditary right to be the best in its own nature, and most agreeable to our old constitution; yet at the same time they allow it to be defeasible by Act of Parliament, and so is Magna Charta too, if the legislature thinks fit; which is a truth so manifest, that no man who understands the nature of government, can be in doubt concerning it.