The same consistent patriot and loyalist, the Sir Robert Filmer of the day, asked some time ago—‘Where is the madman that believes the doctrine of Divine Right? Where is the madman that asserts that doctrine?’ As no one else was found to do it, he himself, the other day, took up his own challenge, and affirmed, with a resolute air, that—‘Louis XVIII. had the same right to the throne of France, independently of his merits or conduct, that Mr. Coke, of Norfolk, had to his estate at Holkham.’ He did not say whether James II. had the same right to the throne of England, independently of his conduct or merits, that Louis XVIII. has to the throne of France: but the inference of course is that the people of France belong to Louis XVIII. just as the live stock on a farm belongs to the owner of it, or as the slaves in the West Indies belong to the owners of the plantation, and that mankind are neither more or less than a herd of slaves, the property of kings. This is at least as good a thing as the doctrine of divine right. We do not wonder that the writer, after this ‘delicious declaration,’ thought it proper to apologize to his court-readers for expressing his approbation of the abolition of the Slave Trade, as indirectly compromising those principles of legitimacy, which make one part of the species the property of another, and which we have seen so successfully established in Europe as the basis of liberty, humanity, and social order! THE OPPOSITION AND ‘THE COURIER’ _July 19, 1817._