In this proceeding the Whig principles, as applied to the Revolution and Settlement, are to be found, or they are to be found nowhere.  I wish the Whig readers of this Appeal first to turn to Mr. Burke’s Reflections, from page 20 to page 50,[13] and then to attend to the following extracts from the trial of Dr. Sacheverell.  After this, they will consider two things:  first, whether the doctrine in Mr. Burke’s Reflections be consonant to that of the Whigs of that period; and, secondly, whether they choose to abandon the principles which belonged to the progenitors of some of them, and to the predecessors of them all, and to learn new principles of Whiggism, imported from France, and disseminated in this country from Dissenting pulpits, from Federation societies, and from the pamphlets, which (as containing the political creed of those synods) are industriously circulated in all parts of the two kingdoms.  This is their affair, and they will make their option.

These new Whigs hold that the sovereignty, whether exercised by one or many, did not only originate from the people, (a position not denied nor worth denying or assenting to,) but that in the people the same sovereignty constantly and unalienably resides; that the people may lawfully depose kings, not only for misconduct, but without any misconduct at all; that they may set up any new fashion of government for themselves, or continue without any government, at their pleasure; that the people are essentially their own rule, and their will the measure of their conduct; that the tenure of magistracy is not a proper subject of contract, because magistrates have duties, but no rights; and that, if a contract de facto is made with them in one age, allowing that it binds at all, it only binds those who are immediately concerned in it, but does not pass to posterity.  These doctrines concerning the people (a term which they are far from accurately defining, but by which, from many circumstances, it is plain enough they mean their own faction, if they should grow, by early arming, by treachery, or violence, into the prevailing force) tend, in my opinion, to the utter subversion, not only of all government, in all modes, and to all stable securities to rational freedom, but to all the rules and principles of morality itself.

I assert that the ancient Whigs held doctrines totally different from those I have last mentioned.  I assert, that the foundations laid down by the Commons, on the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, for justifying the Revolution of 1688, are the very same laid down in Mr. Burke’s Reflections,—­that is to say, a breach of the original contrast, implied and expressed in the Constitution of this country, as a scheme of government fundamentally and inviolably fixed in King, Lords, and Commons;—­that the fundamental subversion of this ancient Constitution, by one of its parts, having been attempted, and in effect accomplished, justified the Revolution;—­that it was justified only upon the necessity of the case, as the only means left for the recovery of that ancient Constitution formed by the original contract of the British state, as well as for the future preservation of the same government.  These are the points to be proved.