The Moderate Monarchy, Or Principles of the British Constitution, Described in a Narrative of the Life and Maxims of Alfred the Great and His Counsellors. From the German of Albert V. Haller

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Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1849 - 344 pages

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Page 279 - A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Page 280 - Have they never heard of a monarchy directed by laws, controlled and balanced by the great hereditary wealth and hereditary dignity of a nation, and both again controlled by a judicious check from the reason and feeling of the people at large, acting by a suitable and permanent organ?
Page 311 - A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection...
Page 286 - ... Though the legislative, whether placed in one or more, whether it be always in being, or only by intervals, though it be the supreme power in every commonwealth; yet first, it is not, nor can possibly be absolutely arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of the people: for it being but the joint power of every member of the society given up to that person, or assembly, which is legislator; it can be no more than those persons had in a state of nature before they entered into society, and gave up...
Page 341 - Children, I confess, are not born in this full state of equality, though they are born to it. Their parents have a sort of rule and jurisdiction over them when they come into the world, and for some time after, but it is but a temporary one.
Page 287 - Their power, in the utmost bounds of it, is limited to' the public good of the society. It is a power, that hath no other end but preservation, and therefore can never * have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subjects.
Page 287 - Secondly, the legislative or supreme authority cannot assume to itself a power to rule by extemporary arbitrary decrees, but is bound to dispense justice and decide the rights of the subject by promulgated standing laws, and known authorised judges.
Page 341 - Thus, the grass my horse has bit, the turfs my servant has cut, and the ore I have digged in any place, where I have a right to them in common with others, become my property without the assignation or consent of anybody. 'The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them.
Page 292 - When a king has dethroned himself, and put himself in a state of war with his people, what shall hinder them from prosecuting him who is no king, as they would any other man, who has put himself into a state of war with them, Barclay, and those of his opinion, would do well to tell us.

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