Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/213

Ch. 3. ther elucidated, and made clear beyond all dipute, from a hort hitorical view of the ucceions to the crown of England, the doctrines of our antient lawyers, and the everal acts of parliament that have from time to time been made, to create, to declare, to confirm, to limit, or to bar, the hereditary title to the throne. And in the puruit of this enquiry we hall find, that from the days of Egbert, the firt ole monarch of this kingdom, even to the preent, the four cardinal maxims above-mentioned have ever been held the contitutional canons of ucceion. It is true, this ucceion, through fraud, or force, or ometimes through neceity, when in hotile times the crown decended on a minor or the like, has been very frequently upended; but has always at lat returned back into the old hereditary chanel, though ometimes a very coniderable period has intervened. And, even in thoe intances where the ucceion has been violated, the crown has ever been looked upon as hereditary in the wearer of it. Of which the uurpers themelves were o enible, that they for the mot part endeavoured to vamp up ome feeble hew of a title by decent, in order to amue the people, while they gained the poeion of the kingdom. And, when poeion was once gained, they considered it as the purchae or acquiition of a new etate of inheritance, and tranmitted or endeavoured to tranmit it to their own poterity, by a kind of hereditary right of uurpation. Egbert about the year 800, found himelf in poeion of the throne of the wet Saxons, by a long and unditurbed decent from his ancetors of above three hundred years. How his ancetors acquired their title, whether by force, by fraud, by contract, or by election, it matters not much to enquire; and is indeed a point of uch high antiquity, as mut render all enquiries at bet but plauible guees. His right mut be uppoed indiputably good, becaue we know no better. The other kingdoms of the heptarchy he acquired, ome by conent, but mot by a voluntary ubmiion. And it is an etablihed maxim in civil polity, and the law of nations, that when one country is united to another in uch a manner, as that one keeps it’s government and