Such, in substance, were the political sentiments which were inculcated by our Reformer, and which were more than once acted upon in Scotland during his lifetime. That in an age when the principles of political liberty were only beginning to be understood, such sentiments should have been regarded with a suspicious eye by some of the learned who had not yet thrown off common prejudices, and that they should have exposed those who maintained them to a charge of treason from despotical rulers and their numerous satellites, is far from being matter of wonder. But it must excite both surprise and indignation, to find writers in the present enlightened age, and under the sunshine of British liberty, (if our sun is not fast going down,) expressing their abhorrence of these principles, and exhausting upon their authors all the invective and virulence of the former anti‑monarcho‑machi, and advocates of passive obedience. They are essentially the principles upon which the {307} free constitution of Britain rests; and the most obnoxious of them were reduced to practice at the memorable era of the Revolution, when the necessity of employing them was not more urgent or unquestionable, than it was at the suspension of the queen regent of Scotland, and the subsequent deposition of her daughter. I have said _essentially_: for I would not be understood as meaning to say, that every proposition advanced by Knox, on this subject, is expressed in the most guarded and unexceptionable manner, or that all the cases in which he was led to vindicate forcible resistance to rulers, were such as rendered it necessary, and as may be pleaded as precedents in modern times. The political doctrines maintained at that period received a tincture from the spirit of the age, and were accommodated to a state of society and government comparatively rude and unsettled. The checks which have since been introduced into the constitution, and the influence which public opinion, expressed by the organ of a free press, has upon the conduct of rulers, are sufficient, in ordinary cases, to restrain dangerous encroachments, or to afford the means of correcting them in a peaceable way; and have thus happily superseded the necessity of having recourse to those desperate but decisive remedies which were formerly applied by an oppressed and indignant people. But if ever the time come when these principles shall be generally abjured or forgotten, the extinction of the boasted liberty of Britain will not be far off.