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Monarchs, my Lord, have hitherto generally treated their subjects as if they were only their slaves. They have deemed them as private property, like their goods and chattels. For how few were the Princes that ever properly valued the lives and the liberties of their people? Elected by their fellow-creatures as their chief magistrates, to guard their persons and property, they have often been the first; to destroy that which they were called to protect.—Civil wars were the result of such conduct. The people were compelled, in defence of their freedom, to attempt to resume that power which they had delegated to one of their number for their mutual protection. If they failed, they were enslaved. But if they prevailed, they either sacrificed the tyrant, and expelled his race, or assumed a share in the government themselves, to be a check on the Monarch, and reduce his power within the limits of certain laws of their own framing.
Thus were the Grecian and Roman Senates, the Jewish Sanhedrims, the German
