Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/425

Rh or application of medicines, or in prescribing the limits of duty; yet the difference between poisons and remedies, is easily known by their effects; and common reason soon distinguishes between virtue and vice: and it must be necessary to forbid both these the farther practice of their professions, because their crimes are not purely personal to the physician or the divine, but destructive to the publick. All which is infinitely stronger in respect to a prince, in whose good or ill conduct, the happiness or misery, of a whole nation is included: whereas it is of small consequence to the publick, farther than example, how any private person manages his property.

But granting that the right of a lineal successor to a crown, were upon the same foot with the property of a subject; still it may at any time be transferred by the legislative power, as other properties frequently are. The supreme power in a state can do no wrong, because whatever that does, is the action of all: and when the lawyers apply this maxim to the king, they must understand it only in that sense, as he is administrator of the supreme power; otherwise it is not universally true, but may be controlled in several instances easy to produce.

And these are the topicks we must proceed upon, to justify our exclusion of the young pretender in France; that of his suspected birth being merely popular, and therefore not made use of, as I remember, since the revolution, in any speech, vote, or proclamation, where there was an occasion to mention him. Rh