Page:A Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature (1775) (IA declarationofpeo00shar).djvu/45

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Crown Law, respecting the due distinction between Murder and Manslaughter;” but as my sentiments on that head have since been censured , I hope it will not be thought too foreign to my present topic, if I insist that no act of injustice can be more flagrant than that of denying to any particular order of Men (whether Soldiers or others) their natural Right of appealing to the eternal Law, and of acting agreeable to the dictates of their own Reason and Conscience!

In my former Tract I remarked, that the Law will not excuse an unlawful Act committed by a Soldier, even though he commits it by the express Command of the highest military Authority in the Kingdom," &c. and that "Men of true Honour,” who have also a true Sense of Religion, will not only be mindful that they are Soldiers and Subjects to an earthly KING, but that they are also Soldiers and Subjects to the KING OF KINGS, whose Laws and Precepts they will, on all occasions, prefer to every other command,” &c.

But this has been denied, it seems, by a Critic, in the Monthly Review for January, 1774, who calls it “a strange Principle!” In an Age of infidelity, indeed,