Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/62

, at that time, would not have voted the death of their sovereign; but this was not owing to any want of a just sense of the wrongs he had done them, but to an opinion of the sacredness of kingly power, from which very few of the friends of liberty in those times, especially among the Presbyterians, who were the majority, could intirely divest themselves. Such a transaction would have been an immortal honour to this country, whenever that superftitious notion shall be obliterated: A notion which has been extremely useful in the infant state of societies; but which, like other superstitions, subsists long after it hath ceased to be of use.

The sum of what hath been advanced upon this head, is a maxim, than which nothing is more true, that every government, in its original principles, and antecedent to its present form, is an equal republic; and, consequently, that every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully