The doctrine of legitimacy is peculiarly valuable in a limited monarchy, because it affords a degree of stability otherwise unattainable. The principle of hereditary monarchy, joined to that which declares that the King can do no wrong, provides for the permanence of the executive government, and represses that ambition which would animate so many bosoms, were there a prospect of the supreme sway becoming vacant, or subject to election from time to time. The King's ministers, on the other hand, being responsible for his actions, remain a check, for their own sakes, upon the exercise of his power; and thus provision is made for the correction of all ordinary evils of administration, since, to use an expressive, though vulgar simile, it is better to rectify any occasional deviation from the regular course by changing the driver, than by overturning the carriage. Such is the principle of legitimacy which was invoked by Louis XVIII., and recognised by the allied sovereigns. But it must not be confounded with the slavish doctrine, that the right thus vested is, by divine origin, indefeasible. The heir-at-law in private life may dissipate by his folly, or forfeit by his crimes, the patrimony which the law conveys to him; and the legitimate monarch may most unquestionably, by departing from the principles of the constitution under which he is called to reign, forfeit for himself, and for his heirs if the legislature shall judge it proper, that crown, which the principle of legitimacy bestowed on him as his birth-right. The penalty of forfeiture is an extreme case, provided, not in virtue of the constitution, which recognises no possible delinquency in the sovereign, but because the constitution has been attacked and infringed upon by the monarch, and therefore can no longer be permitted to afford him shelter. The crimes by which this high punishment is justly incurred, must therefore be of an extraordinary nature, and beyond the reach of those correctives for which the constitution provides, by the punishment of ministers and counsellors. The constitutional buckler of impeccability covers the monarch (personally) for all blameworthy use of his power, providing it is exercised within the limits of the constitution; it is when he stirs beyond it, and not sooner, that it affords no defence for the bosom of a tyrant. A King of Britain, for example, may wage a rash war, or make a disgraceful peace, in the lawful, though injudicious and blameworthy exercise of the power vested in him by the constitution. His advisers, not he himself, shall be called in such a case, to their responsibility. But if, like James II., the sovereign infringes upon, or endeavours to destroy, the constitution itself, it is then that resistance becomes lawful and honourable; and the King is justly held to have forfeited the right which descended to him from his forefathers, by his attempt to encroach on the rights of the subjects.