No government could stand a moment, if it could be blown down with anything so loose and indefinite as an opinion of “misconduct.”  They who led at the Revolution grounded their virtual abdication of King James upon no such light and uncertain principle.  They charged him with nothing less than a design, confirmed by a multitude of illegal overt acts, to subvert the Protestant Church and State, and their fundamental, unquestionable laws and liberties:  they charged him with having broken the original contrast between king and people.  This was more than misconduct.  A grave and overruling necessity obliged them to take the step they took, and took with infinite reluctance, as under that most rigorous of all laws.  Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.  The grand policy of all their regulations was to render it almost impracticable for any future sovereign to compel the states of the kingdom to have again recourse to those violent remedies.  They left the crown, what in the eye and estimation of law it had ever been, perfectly irresponsible.  In order to lighten the crown still further, they aggravated responsibility on ministers of state.  By the statute of the first of King William, sess. 2d, called “the act for declaring the rights and liberties of the subject, and for settling the succession of the crown,” they enacted that the ministers should serve the crown on the terms of that declaration.  They secured soon after the frequent meetings of Parliament, by which the whole government would be under the constant inspection and active control of the popular representative and of the magnates of the kingdom.  In the next great constitutional act, that of the 12th and 13th of King William, for the further limitation of the crown, and better securing the rights and liberties of the subject, they provided “that no pardon under the great seal of England should be pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons in Parliament.”  The rule laid down for government in the Declaration of Right, the constant inspection of Parliament, the practical claim of impeachment, they thought infinitely a better security not only for their constitutional liberty, but against the vices of administration, than the reservation of a right so difficult in the practice, so uncertain in the issue, and often so mischievous in the consequences, as that “cashiering their governors.”

Dr. Price, in this sermon,[83] condemns, very properly, the practice of gross adulatory addresses to kings.  Instead of this fulsome style, he proposes that his Majesty should be told, on occasions of congratulation, that “he is to consider himself as more properly the servant than the sovereign of his people.”  For a compliment, this new form of address does not seem to be very soothing.  Those who are servants in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told of their situation, their duty, and their obligations.