I have seen very assuming
letters, signed, Your most obedient, humble servant. The proudest
denomination that ever was endured on earth took a title of still
greater humility than that which is now proposed for sovereigns by
the Apostle of Liberty. Kings and nations were trampled upon by the
foot of one calling himself "the Servant of Servants;" and mandates
for deposing sovereigns were sealed with the signet of "the
Fisherman."
I should have considered all this as no more than a sort of flippant,
vain discourse, in which, as in an unsavoury fume, several persons
suffer the spirit of liberty to evaporate, if it were not plainly in
support of the idea, and a part of the scheme, of "cashiering kings for
misconduct." In that light it is worth some observation.
Kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the servants of the people, because
their power has no other rational end than that of the general
advantage; but it is not true that they are, in the ordinary sense (by
our constitution at least), anything like servants; the essence of whose
situation is to obey the commands of some other, and to be removable at
pleasure. But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other
persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to
him a legal obedience. The law, which knows neither to flatter nor to
insult, calls this high magistrate, not our servant, as this humble
divine calls him, but "OUR SOVEREIGN LORD THE KING;" and we, on our
parts, have learned to speak only the primitive language of the law, and
not the confused jargon of their Babylonian pulpits.
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