they did not, however, dissolve the whole fabric.  On the contrary, in both cases they regenerated the deficient part of the old Constitution through the parts which were not impaired.  They kept these old parts exactly as they were, that the part recovered might be suited to them.  They acted by the ancient organized states in the shape of their old organization, and not by the organic moleculae of a disbanded people.  At no time, perhaps, did the sovereign legislature manifest a more tender regard to that fundamental principle of British constitutional policy than at the time of the Revolution, when it deviated from the direct line of hereditary succession.  The crown was carried somewhat out of the line in which it had before moved; but the new line was derived from the same stock.  It was still a line of hereditary descent; still an hereditary descent in the same blood, though an hereditary descent qualified with Protestantism.  When the legislature altered the direction, but kept the principle, they showed that they held it inviolable.

On this principle, the law of inheritance had admitted some amendment in the old time, and long before the era of the Revolution.  Some time after the Conquest great questions arose upon the legal principles of hereditary descent.  It became a matter of doubt whether the heir per capita or the heir per stirpes was to succeed; but whether the heir per capita gave way when the heirdom per stirpes took place, or the Catholic heir when the Protestant was preferred, the inheritable principle survived with a sort of immortality through all transmigrations,—­

                            Multosque per annos
    Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum.

This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.  Whoever came in, or however he came in, whether he obtained the crown by law or by force, the hereditary succession was either continued or adopted.

The gentlemen of the Society for Revolutions see nothing in that of 1688 but the deviation from the Constitution; and they take the deviation from the principle for the principle.  They have little regard to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that it leaves positive authority in very few of the positive institutions of this country.  When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.  Do these theorists mean to imitate some of their predecessors, who dragged the bodies of our ancient sovereigns out of the quiet of their tombs?  Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?  Do they mean to invalidate, annul, or to call into question, together with the titles of the whole line