connivance, we may not believe them; as the boy served the shepherds about the coming of the wolf; or perhaps they scare us with the Pretender, because they think he may be like some diseases, that come with a fright. Do they not believe, that the queen's present ministry love her majesty, at least as well as some loved the church? And why is it not as great a mark of disaffection now, to say the queen is in danger, as it was some months ago to affirm the same of the church? Suppose it be a false opinion, that the queen's right is hereditary and indefeasible; yet how is it possible that those who hold and believe such a doctrine, can be in the Pretender's interest? His title is weakened by every argument that strengthens hers: it is as plain as the words of an act of parliament can make it, That her present majesty is heir to the survivor of the late king and queen her sister: is not that an hereditary right[1]? What need we explain it any farther? I have known an article of faith expounded in much looser and more general terms, and that, by an author, whose opinions are very much followed by a certain party. Suppose we go farther, and examine the word indefeasible, with which some writers of late have made themselves so merry: I confess, it is hard to conceive how any law, which the supreme power makes, may not by the same power be repealed; so that I shall not determine, whether the queen's right be indefeasible or not. But this I will maintain, that whoever affirms it is
- ↑ Our author's sentiments on hereditary right, as exhibited in this Examiner, and in vol. II, in "The Sentiments of a Church of England Man," are not easily reconcileable to a laboured tract on that subject, ascribed to him in 1775, under the title of "A Discourse on Hereditary Right, written in the year 1712, by a "celebrated Clergyman."
