Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	act_n	law_n	parliament_n	2,185	5	6.6353	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41193	Whether the Parliament be not in law dissolved by the death of the Princess of Orange? and how the subjects ought, and are to behave themselves in relation to those papers emitted since by the stile and title of Acts : with a brief account of the government of England : in a letter to a country gentleman, as an answer to his second question.	Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714.	1695 (1695)	Wing F765; ESTC R7434	52,609	60

be a Parliament notwithstanding the Death of the late Princess nor can either the Wit or the Malice of Man invent and produce more and therefore I shall represent them in all the fairest Colours of Beauty and Strength that they are capable of having put upon them and then I shall give those irresistable Answers to them that Men must sacrifice Reason to Passion and prefer Darkness to Light that can have the Face to alledge them again in behalf of the Westminster Iuncto's remaining to be a Parliament The first is That though by the Act of Settlement there was a Donation made of the Crown to William and Mary and the whole and compleat Sovereignty placed and settled Joyntly in them both as one Regal Head of the Kingdom yet by the same Act The entire and full exercise of the Royal Power and Government was only to be in and to be executed by William in the Names of them both And therefore that the issuing forth of the Writ by which this Parliament was called and had a legal Existence and Being given unto it being an Act of the executive Part and Power of the Government and done by William alone in persuance of that Right and Authority vested in him by the Act of Settlement and he still surviving that consequently this Parliament surviveth also and will continue so to do until he either dissolve it by an Exertion of his Sovereign Regal Authority or until it come to be dissolved by his Death which when it comes I do suppose the Gentlemen of the Club in St. Stephen's Chapel will not be so frontless as not to acknowledge it to be a Demise Now to this Objection I shall take the Liberty and be at the Pains of returning three Answers and all of them evidently Clear and demonstratively Satisfactory The first is That it is not the bare having the Right of executing the Regal Power and Government that enableth a Person to give Being to a Parliament but it is the whole and entire Sovereignty vested in such a Person and then exerted in some executive Act that can and doth give a legal Existence unto it That is every Act that is or can be constitutive of a Parliament must have its Foundation and flow and result from the whole Sovereignty before the exercise and application of such an Act in the issuing out of Writs can in that way of Power that is meerly executive be capable of giving a Legality to what is done And therefore the most Rightful King that is and who hath both the whole and entire Sovereignty and the legal Authority and Power of executing it fully and inherently lodged and vested 〈◊〉 him may nevertheless command and do Things illegal and arbitrary if he extend his executive Power in commanding and doing those Things which by the Rules of the Constitution and the Laws of the Land do lie out of the Verge of his Royal and Sovereign Power For every act that a Prince exerteth his Authority in and about must first lie within the Circle and Precinct of his Sovereign and Legal Power before his Exercise of his Authority in and concerning it can be Lawful and Justifiable otherwise all Exercises of Executive Royal Power though by the most legitimate and lawful King are so far from being legal Acts that they are Acts of force and violence No Man will deny but that King James was a Lawful and Rightful King and that he had both the entire Sovereignty and the executive Power of Government fully and legally vested in him and yet the Convention in their Act of Donation of the Crown to William and Mary and which Act stands confirmed by this Parliament do not only declare that the Power to which he pretended of dispensing with the Laws or the execution of the Laws by Regal Authority was illegal and that his issuing out a Commission for erecting the late Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes and all other Commissions and Courts of the like Nature are illegal and pernicious Not to mention that large Roll of many Exe●●ises of his executive Power which they do there declare to have 〈◊〉 also illegal but they make assign and lay them down as the Grounds Reasons and Motives why they withdrew their Allegiance from him and abdicated and renounced him Now when the present Parliament was called the Prince of Orange had no Sovereign Power distinct and separate from the Sovereign Power that was vested in the Princess but the entire Sovereignty was incorporated in them both Joyntly as one political Head And therefore there being an Abatement by her Death of the Validity of those Writs by which this Parliament both received its Being and was supported and upheld in it it unavoidably followeth That the Parliament became thereupon actually dissolved through the ceasing of the Legal Authority of the Writs upon which its Existence depended For her Sovereignty being once absolutely necessary to give Vertue Vigour and Authority to those Writs and to make them good in Law and operative to the Ends for which they were issued forth and that Sovereignty of hers being wholy departed the Writs and they thereupon in Law being become Nullities it naturally and uncontroulably follows that through the Nullity that by her Death hath overtaken those Writs that which was once a Parliament upon their Hypotheses of Government is also become cassed disabled and annulled from remaining one any longer For as the Author of the Letter to a Friend in the Country hath very well observed It is not Sovereignty in genere that preserveth the Life Power and Authority of a Parliament but it is the Sovereignty of the same individual Royal Person that gave Validity and Efficacy to the Writs by which it was at first called For otherwise as a King never dyes so no Parliament could ever be dissolved by the Death of any nor could any Thing dissolve a Parliament but his pronouncing it to be so that first called it By our Law the King is immortal he never dyeth the King liveth over 〈◊〉 the Regal Dignity and Power do always subsist though there be a Change of the Persons in whom it was inherent 1 Com. 177. 11 Rep. 7. 21 Ed. 4 c. so that according to our Law there is never a Cessation of the Sovereignty but only a Cessation of this or that individual Subject or Person in whom while he survived it was incorporated and inherent So that upon the whole unless you can make William alone to be both William and Mary and can render one single individual Person to be two the Sovereign that we have no● is not the same identical Sovereign that we had before the Death of the late Princess And by consequence this Parliament mast in Law be actually dissolved seeing its whole Being and Existence depended upon the Life of the Sovereign we had then and that preclusively from all legal Capacity and Possibility of borrowing a Duration and Continuance in its Existence

Whether the Parliament be not in Law dissolved by the Death of the Princess of Orange And how the Subjects ought and are to behave themselves in relation to those Papers emitted since by the Stile and Title of Acts With a brief Account of the Government of England In a Letter to a Country Gentleman as an Answer to his second Question THough you have exceedingly mistook your Man in demanding my Opinion about a Case that lies so much out of my Province and Circle that it hath hardly come within the Boundaries of my Conversation either with Books or Men. Yet not being altogether a Stranger to the Nature of the Government and the Rules of the Constitution under which I live nor wholy unacquainted with the ancient and modern Transactions of my Country neither utterly ignorant of the Practices of Ages as they remain registred in Histories I will rather both venture my own Reputation and run the Risque of being censured for straying beyond the Limits of my proper Studies than not obey your Command in what you were pleased to require of me and thereby give you fresh and repeated Evidence both of the Authority you have over me and of the Deference I pay to your Merit as well as to your Quality And though I will not pretend to say the hundredth part of what might or ought to be said on this Subject yet by what I shall be able to lay before you in relation to it you will easily guess what might have been done or what yet may by a better and more proper hand Nor can I now without a Forfeiture of my Credit and a Departure from Truth refuse to give you my Thoughts in this Matter having in my Answer to your first Question stated and pledged my Honour and Faith that I would also reply to your second and having also told you that I had brought under the compass of my thoughts and in effect digested whatsoever was needful towards a clear though brief Resolution of it And I do lay claim to no such Privilege as the breaking of my Word but am willing to leave the Credit or Infamy of that to the Authors and Publishers of Hague Delarations Now I am so far from quarrelling at Parliaments or detracting from the Esteem they ought to be in or from the Respect that is commonly paid them that I preserve for them all the Honour and Veneration imaginable while they confine themselves to the Uses and Ends unto which they were primitively ordained and govern themselves by the Measures chalked out for them in the Constitution They are of that early Original and ancient Standing that for any Thing I know they are in some sense and degree though under difference variety and distinction of Names coeval with or very little subsequent and posterior to our Government Their Antiquity is such though not always under the same Appellation and by the same Stile nor with the same Allowances of Power and Authority that Caput inter nubila condunt their beginning is immemorial So I will not dispute and much less controul the Testimonies which we have in the Commentarios upon Littleton fol. 100. namely That before the Conquest and from thence downward till the end of Hen. 3. there had been no fewer than Two hundred and eighty Sessions of Parliament which doth much exceed the Number during the Reigns of Eighteen Sovereign Kings and Queens that have ruled over this Kingdom since But were their Institution as modern as some Men will have it and were they at first illegitimately obtained and wrenched from the Crown by Insurrections Tumults and Wars yet having once acquired an Establishment by Law confirmed by Custom and ratified by Charters and sworn unto by our Kings our Title to the having of Parliaments for the Ends and Uses whereunto they were appointed is not now precarious but in right belongeth unto us For unquestionably many Things were at first vested in the Crown which it having afterwards alienated and parted with either for the ease and safety of the Monarchy or for the good and advantage of the People it were unjust as well as unwise for any King to reassume them Whatsoever comes once to be Legally established by a plenary and lawful Power is not reversable at the Prince's Will nor doth it lie under his Authority to annul it at his Pleasure And therefore all who have written with any Judgment of Governments Laws and Politicks do unanimously tell us That amplitudo restrictio-potestatis Regum circa ea quae per se mala injusta non sunt pendet ex arbitrio hominum ex conventione vel pacto inter Reges Regnum that the extent and restriction of Royal Power in and about such Things as are not intrinsically evil and unjust do result and proceed from Agreements Stipulations and Compacts between Kings and those Communities over which they rule See Suarez de Legib. lib. 1. cap. 17. And indeed our Magna Charta and other Charters as likewise many of our Statutes are no other than enacted and declared Limitations and Restrictions of the Sovereign and Royal Power nor can our Kings lawfully depart from or exceed the Confinements and Boundaries of the English Monarchy which are therein stipulated fixed and settled The Books of the 24 Ed. 3 65. Stamford's Prerogative of the Crown fol. 10. and Coke's Institutes fol. 73. tell us That the first Kings of this Realm had all the Lands of it in their own hands and were the sole Proprietors of the whole Ground but it being now alienated and transferred from them either as Recompences for Services or as Gifts on the score of Friendship and Bounty or by way of Sale for a valuable equivalent in Money they that are become Possessors cannot be disseized of them without a Violation of Law Honour and Justice So that Parliaments howsoever and whensoever they came to be instituted they are now incorporated into the Constitution of England as Apelles Picture woven into Minerva's Shield and cannot cease to have an Ingrediency into the Government without a dissolution of the whole Frame of it Nor will it ever be the Interest of a King of England to lay aside Parliaments were it within the reach of his Power to do it and as a good and wise King will never attempt it so a tyrannous and arbitrary one will not be able to effect it were he never so inclinable provided they behave themselves so as not to forfeit their Credit in the Nation The only danger we can fall into of having Parliaments abolished is the Peoples growing weary of them and their being provoked to hate them and this they both may and will have cause for when Parliaments become not only useless but hurtful When instead of preserving the Gravity of a Legislative Assembly and maintaining the Character of the Representative Body of a great and wise People they turn more Mobbish than a Dover Court and more rude and tumultuous than