Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/428

376 I believe, as far from loving arbitrary government, as any others can be, who are born under a free constitution, and are allowed to have the least share of common good sense.

In this objection there are two questions included: first, whether upon the foot of our constitution, as it stood in the reign of the late king James, a king of England may be deposed? The second, is, whether the people of England, convened by their own authority, after the king had withdrawn himself in the manner he did, had power to alter the succession.

As for the first, it is a point I shall not presume to determine; and shall therefore only say, that to any man who holds the negative, I would demand the liberty of putting the case as strongly as I please. I will suppose a prince limited by laws like ours, yet running into a thousand caprices of cruelty like Nero or Caligula; I will suppose him to murder his mother and his wife; to commit incest, to ravish matrons, to blow up the senate, and burn his metropolis; openly to renounce God and Christ, and worship the devil: these and the like exorbitances, are in the power of a single person to commit, without the advice of a ministry, or assistance of an army. And if such a king, as I have described, cannot be deposed but by his own consent in parliament, I do not well see how he can be resisted, or what can be meant by a limited monarchy; or what signifies the people's consent in making and repealing laws, if the person who administers, has no tie but conscience, and is answerable to none but God. I desire no stronger proof that an opinion must be false, than to find very great absurdities annexed