Page:The plot discovered; or, An address to the people, against ministerial treason (IA plotdiscoveredor00cole).pdf/33

25 and common sense struggle against obedience, to seize them as felons or slaughter them as rebels. If this clause had passed, the word "constitution" ought to have been erased. The Bill would have been not only in its consequences (such perhaps it still is) but in its immediate operation, a repeal of the Constitution. A government indeed we should have had: there is not a slave-plantation in the world that has not a government! but a Constitution, if it mean any thing, signifies certain known Laws, which limit the expectations of the people and the discretionary powers of the legislature. Such is the Bill of Rights; the most essential article of which would have been annulled: this clause therefore could not have become a law, or have been entitled to moral obedience. It would have been only an, which holding the pistol of military Despotism at our hearts, would have cried, "Stand and deliver up your Freedom!" Burleigh, who lived in the reign of Elizabeth, said truly, England can never be undone but by a Parliament:" for Burleigh said it before the contract of the Bill of Rights had been entered into by the people and their governors. But now we cannot be legally undone even by a Parliament: for (as Bolingbroke remarks) Parliament cannot annul the Constitution.