Excerpt from An Historical Essay on the Real Character and Amount of the Precedent, Vol. 1 of 2 One would have thought that all the dangerous and visionary theories in regard to the origin of Governments; the rights of kings, whether supposed divine and indefeasible, or derived by election from the people; the right of resistance and insurrection at the will of that people, and their power to try and to punish sovereigns, as the French Assembly did by Louis XVI and as it was supposed that we did by Charles I. - one would have thought, I say, that all these questions, and the nature of the much abused term, the Sovereignty of the People, had long been set at rest, and buried in the graves of those who agitated them with so much ability and zeal on both sides. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.