Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/234

218 upon the new ettlement, the inheritance is conditional; being limited to uch heirs only, of the body of the princes Sophia, as are protetant members of the church of England, and are married to none but protetants. in this due medium conits, I apprehend, the true contitutional notion of the right of ucceion to the imperial crown of thee kingdoms. The extremes, between which it teers, are each of them equally detructive of thoe ends for which ocieties were formed and are kept on foot. Where the magitrate, upon every ucceion, is elected by the people, and may by the expres proviion of the laws be depoed (if not punihed) by his ubjects, this may ound like the perfection of liberty, and look well enough when delineated on paper; but in practice will be ever productive of tumult, contention, and anarchy. And, on the other hand, divine indefeaible hereditary right, when coupled with the doctrine of unlimited paive obedience, is urely of all contitutions the mot thoroughly lavih and dreadful. But when uch an hereditary right, as our laws have created and veted in the royal tock, is cloely interwoven with thoe liberties, which, we have een in a former chapter, are equally the inheritance of the ubject; this union will form a contitution, in theory the mot beautiful of any, in practice the mot approved, and, I trut, in duration the mot permanent. It was the duty of an expounder of our laws to lay this contitution before the tudent in it’s true and genuine light: it is the duty of every good Englihman to undertand, to revere, to defend it.