It was at least not a Scottish one in the days of Buchanan,--nor for a century after, as we may learn very conclusively, not from Buchanan himself, nor his followers--for the political doctrines of a school of writers may be much at variance with those of their country--but from the many Scottish controversialists on the antagonist side, who entered the lists against both the master and his disciples. Buchanan maintained, in his philosophical treatise, _De Jure Regni apud Scotos_, that there are conditions by which the King of Scotland is bound to his people, on the fulfilment of which the allegiance of the people depends, and that 'it is lawful to depose, and even to punish tyrants.' Knox, with the other worthies of the first Reformation, held exactly the same doctrine. The _Lex Rex_ of Rutherford testifies significantly to the fact that among the worthies of the second Reformation it was not suffered to become obsolete. It takes a prominent place in writings of the later Covenanters, such as the _Hind let Loose_; and at the Revolution it received the practical concurrence of the National Convention, and of the country generally. Now the doctrine, be it remembered, was an often disputed one. Buchanan's little work was the very butt of controversy for considerably more than an hundred years. It was prohibited by Parliament, denounced by monarchs, condemned to the flames by universities; great lawyers wrote treatises against it at home, and some of the most celebrated scholars of continental Europe took the field against it abroad. We learn from Dr. Irving, in his _Classical Biography_, that it was assailed among our own countrymen by Blackwood, Winzet, Barclay, Sir Thomas Craig, Sir John Wemyss, Sir Lewis Stewart, Sir James Turner, and last, not least, among the writers who preceded the Revolution, by the meanly obsequious and bloody Sir George Mackenzie. And how did these Scotchmen meet with the grand doctrine which it embodied? The 'old maxime of the state of England,' had it extended to the sister kingdom, would have at once furnished the materials of reply. If constitutionally the King of Scotland could do no wrong, then _constitutionally_ the King of Scotland could not be deposed. But of an entirely different complexion was the argument of which the Scottish assailants of Buchanan availed themselves. It was an argument subversive to the English maxim. Admitting fully that the king _could_ do wrong, they maintained merely that, for whatever wrong he did, he was responsible, not to his subjects, but to God only. Whatever the amount of wrong he committed, it was the duty of his subjects, they said, passively to submit to it. On came the Revolution. In England, in perfect agreement with the doctrine of the king's impeccability--in perfect agreement, at least, so far as words were concerned--it was declared that James had abdicated the government, and that the throne was thereby vacant; and