"far as the succession may have been otherwise limited by "the same parliamentary authority (a)." [And this proposition it will be the business of this chapter to prove, in all its branches; first, that the crown is hereditary; secondly, that it is hereditary in a manner peculiar to itself;] thirdly, that the right of the reigning prince to it may be set aside, in favour of another party, by parliament; lastly, that, except as otherwise limited by parliament, it is hereditary, as before, in the new proprietor.

1. [First, it is in general hereditary, or descendible to the next heir, on the death or demise of the last proprietor. All regal governments must be either hereditary or elective; and, as no instance is known wherein the crown of England has ever been asserted to be elective, except when it was maintained to be so by the regicides at the infamous trial of King Charles the first, it must of consequence be hereditary. Yet, by the assertion of hereditary, a jure divino title to the throne is of course by no means intended. Such a title may be allowed to have subsisted under the

theocratic establishments of the children of Israel in Palestine but it never yet subsisted in any other country, save only so far as kingdoms, like other human fabrics, are subject to the general and ordinary dispensations of Providence. Nor indeed have a jure divino and an hereditary right any necessary connection with each other, as some have very weakly imagined. The titles of David and Jehu were equally jure divino, as those of either Solomon or Ahab; and yet David slew the sons of his predecessor, and Jehu his predecessor himself. And when our kings

(a) The maxim, according to Blackstone, is as follows:-"That the "crown is, by common law and con"stitutional custom, hereditary; and "this in a manner peculiar to itself; "but that the right of inheritance "may from time to time be changed "or limited by act of parliament;

"under which limitations the crown "still continues hereditary." (1 Bl. Com. p. 191.) It is conceived that his meaning is the same as that expressed in the text, but that his words do not convey that meaning with the degree of precision that is desirable.

upon

[have the same warrant as they had, whether it be to sit the throne of their fathers, or to destroy the house of the preceding sovereign, they will then, and not before, possess the crown of England by a right like theirs, immediately derived from heaven. The hereditary right which the laws of England acknowledge, owes its origin to the founders of our constitution, and to them only. It has no relation to, nor depends upon, the civil laws of the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, or any other nation upon earth: the municipal laws of one society having no connection with, or influence upon, the fundamental polity of another. The founders of our English monarchy might, perhaps, if they had thought proper, have made it an elective monarchy; but they rather chose, and upon good reason, to establish originally a succession by inheritance. This has been acquiesced in by general consent; and ripened by degrees into common law: the very same title that every private man has to his own estate.]

[It must be owned, an elective monarchy seems to be the most obvious, and best suited of any, to the rational principles of government, and the freedom of human nature and accordingly we find from history, that, in the infancy and first rudiments of almost every state, the leader, chief magistrate, or prince, hath usually been elective. And, if the individuals who compose a state could always continue true to first principles, uninfluenced by passion or prejudice, unassailed by corruption, and unawed by violence,] it might be plausibly argued that [elective succession were as much to be desired in a kingdom, as in other inferior communities,] for that [the best, the wisest, and the bravest man, would then be sure of receiving that crown, which his endowments have merited; and the sense of an unbiassed majority would be dutifully acquiesced in by the few who were of different opinions. But history and observation will inform us, that elections of every kind (in the present state of human nature) are too frequently

[brought about by influence, partiality, and artifice: and, even where the case is otherwise, these practices will be often suspected, and as constantly charged upon the successful, by a splenetic disappointed minority. This is an evil to which all societies are liable; as well those of a private and domestic kind, as the great community of the public, which regulates and includes the rest. But in the former there is this advantage; that such suspicions, if false, proceed no farther than jealousies and murmurs, which time will effectually suppress; and, if true, the injustice may be remedied by legal means, by an appeal to those tribunals to which every member of society has (by becoming such) virtually engaged to submit. Whereas, in the great and independent society, which every nation composes, there is no superior to resort to but the law of nature; no method to redress the infringements of that law, but the actual exertion of private force. As therefore between two nations, complaining of mutual injuries, the quarrel can only be decided by the law of arms; so in one and the same nation, when the fundamental principles of their common union are supposed to be invaded, and more especially when the appointment of their chief magistrate is alleged to be unduly made, the only tribunal to which the complainants can appeal is that of the God of battles; the only process by which the appeal can be carried on is that of a civil and intestine war. An hereditary succession to the crown is therefore now established in this and most other countries, in order to prevent that periodical bloodshed and misery, which the history of antient imperial Rome, and the more modern experience of Poland and Germany, may show us are the consequences of elective kingdoms.

2. But, secondly, as to the particular mode of inheritance it in general corresponds with the feodal path of descents, chalked out by the common law in the succession to landed estates. Like estates, the crown will descend

[lineally to the issue of the reigning monarch; as it did from King John to Richard the second, through a regular pedigree of six lineal generations. As in common descents, the preference of males to females, and the right of primogeniture among the males, are strictly adhered to. Thus Edward the fifth succeeded to the crown, in preference to Richard, his younger brother, and Elizabeth, his eldest sister. Like lands or tenements, the crown, on failure of the male line, descends to the issue female; according to the antient British custom remarked by Tacitus (c); ]

neque enim sexum in imperiis discernunt (d)." [Thus Mary the first succeeded to Edward the sixth; and the line of Margaret Queen of Scots, the daughter of Henry the seventh, succeeded on failure of the line of Henry the eighth, his son. But, among the females, the crown descends by right of primogeniture to the eldest daughter only and her issue; and not, as in common inheritances, to all the daughters at once; the evident necessity of a sole succession to the throne having occasioned the royal law of descents to depart from the common law in this respect: and therefore Queen Mary on the death of her brother succeeded to the crown alone, and not in partnership with her sister Elizabeth. Again: the doctrine of representation prevails in the descent of the crown, as it does in other inheritances; whereby the lineal descendants of any person deceased stand in the same place as their ancestor, if living, would have done. Thus Richard the second succeeded his grandfather Edward the third, in right of his father the Black Prince, to the exclusion of all his uncles, his grandfather's younger children. Lastly, on failure of lineal descendants, the crown goes to the next collateral relations of the late king; provided they are lineally descended from the blood royal, that is, from that

(c) In Vit. Agricolæ.

(d) The citation of this passage in Blackstone is different, and not accu

rate. See Coleridge's Blackst. vol. i. p. 194, n. (1).

Thus

[royal stock which originally acquired the crown. Henry the first succeeded to William the second, John to Richard the first, and James the first to Elizabeth, being all derived from the Conqueror, who was then the only regal stock. And herein there never was any objection] (as there was, until of late, in the case of ordinary descents (e)) [to the succession of a brother, an uncle, or other collateral relation, of the half blood; that is, where the relationship proceeds not from the same couple of ancestors (which constitutes a kinsman of the whole blood) but from a single ancestor only; as when two persons are derived from the same father, and not from the same mother, or vice versâ ; provided only, that the one ancestor, from whom both are descended, be that from whose veins the blood royal is communicated to each. Thus Mary the first inherited to Edward the sixth, and Elizabeth inherited to Mary; all children of the same father, King Henry the eighth, but all by different mothers.

3. The doctrine of hereditary right does by no means imply an indefeasible right to the throne. No man will, we think, assert this, that has considered our laws, constition, and history, without prejudice and with any degree of attention. It is unquestionably in the breast of the supreme legislative authority of this kingdom, the sovereign and both houses of parliament, to defeat this hereditary right; and, by particular entails, limitations and provisions, to exclude the immediate heir, and vest the inheritance in any one else. This is strictly consonant to our laws and constitution; as may be gathered from the expression so frequently used in our statute book, of " the king's majesty, "his heirs, and successors." In which we may observe, that as the word "heirs" necessarily implies an inheritance or hereditary right, generally subsisting in the royal person; so the word "successors," distinctly taken, must imply that this inheritance must sometimes be broken through ; or, that there may be a successor without being the heir of

(e) Vide sup. vol. 1. p. 413.