Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	bring_v	good_a	know_v	2,039	5	3.4458	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36630	His Majesties declaration defended in a letter to a friend being an answer to a seditious pamphlet, called A letter from a person of quality to his friend : concerning the kings late declaration touching the reasons which moved him to dissolve the two last parliaments at Westminster and Oxford.	Dryden, John, 1631-1700.	1681 (1681)	Wing D2286; ESTC R180	23,921	20

Church I shall only desire him and the dissenting Party to make the use they ought of the King Gracious Disposition to them in not yet proceeding with all the violence which the penal Laws require against them But this calm of my Author was too happy to last long You find him immediately transported into a storm about the business of Fitz-Harris which occasion'd the Dissolution of the Parliament at Oxford and accusing according to his sawcy Custom both his Majesty and the House of Lords concerning it As for the House of Lords they have already vindicated their own right by throwing out the Impeachment and sure the People of England ought to own them as the Assertors of the publick Liberty in so doing for Process being before ordered against him at Common Law and no particular Crime being laid to his Charge by the House of Commons if they had admitted his Cause to be tryed before their Lordships this would have grown a President in time that they must have been forc'd to judge all those whom the House of Commons would thrust upon them till at last the number of Impeachments would be so increas'd that the Peers would have no time for any other business of the Publick and the Highest Court of Judicature would have been reduc'd to be the Ministers of Revenge to the Commons What then would become of our ancient Privilege to be tryed per pares Which in process of time would be lost to us and our posterity except a proviso were made on purpose that this judgment might not be drawn into farther President and that is never done but when there is a manifest necessity of breaking rules which here there was not Otherwise the Commons may make Spaniels of the Lords throw them a man and bid them go judge as we command a Dog to fetch and carry But neither the Lords Reasons nor the King first having possession of the Prisoner signifie any thing with our Author He will tell you the reason of the Impeachment was to bring out the Popish Plot. If Fitz-Harris really know any thing but what relates to his own Treason he chuses a fine time of day to discover it now when 't is manifestly to save his Neck that he is forc'd to make himself a greater Villain and to charge himself with new Crimes to avoid the punishment of the old Had he not the benefit of so many Proclamations to have come in before if he then knew any thing worth discovery And was not his fortune necessitous enough at all times to catch at an impunity which was baited with Rewards to bribe him 't is not for nothing that Party has been all along so favourable to him they are conscious to themselves of some other matters than a Popish Plot. Let him first be tryed for what he was first accus'd if he be acquitted his Party will be satisfied and their strength increas'd by the known honesty of another Evidence but if he be condemn'd let us see what truth will come out of him when he has Tyburn and another World before his Eyes Then if he confess any thing which makes against the Cause their Excuse is ready he died a Papist and had a dispensation from the Pope to lie But if they can bring him silent to the Gallows all their favour will be to wish him dispatch'd out of his pain as soon as possibly he may And in that Case they have already promis'd they will be good to his Wife and provide for her which would be a strong encouragement for many a woman to perswade her Husband to digest the Halter This remembers me of a certain Spanish Duke who commanding a Sea-Port-Town set an Officer of his underhand to rob the Merchants His Grace you may be confident was to have the Booty and the Fellow was assur'd if he were taken to be protected It fell out after some time that he was apprehended His Master according to Articles brought him off The Rogue went again to his vocation was the second time taken delivered again and so the third At last the matter grew so notorious that the Duke found it would be both scandalous and difficult to protect him any longer But the poor Malefactor sending his Wife to tell him that if he did not save him he must be hanged to morrow and that he must confess who set him on His Master very civilly sent him this Message Prithee suffer thy self to be hanged this once to do me a Courtesie and it shall be the better for thy Wife and Children But that which makes amends for all says our Author is the Kings resolution to have frequent Parliaments Yet this it seems is no amends neither for he says Parliaments are like Terms if there be Ten in a Year and all so short to hear no Causes they do no good I say on the other hand If the Courts will resolve beforehand to have no Causes brought before them but one which they know they cannot dispatch let the Terms be never so long they make them as insignificant as a Vacation The King 's Prerogative when and where they should be call'd and how long they should sit is but subservient as our Friend tells us to the great design of Government and must be accommodated to it or we are either denyed or deluded of that Protection and Iustice we are born to My Author is the happiest in one faculty I ever knew He is still advancing some new Position which without proving he slurs upon us for an Argument though he knows that Doctrines without proofs will edifie but little That the Kings Prerogative is subservient or in order to the ends of Government is granted him But what strange kind of Argument is this to prove that we are cheated of that Protection to which we are born Our Kings have always been indued with the power of calling Parliaments nominating the time appointing of the Place and Dissolving them when they thought it for the publick good And the People have wisely consulted their own welfare in it Suppose for example that there be a Jarring between the three Estates which renders their sitting at that time Impracticable since none of them can pretend to Judge the proceedings of the other two the Judgment of the whole must either reside in a Superiour power or the discord must terminate in the ruine of them all For if one of the three incroach too far there is so much lost in the Balance of the Estates and so much more Arbitrary power in one 'T is as certain in Politiques as in Nature That where the Sea prevails the Land loses If no such discord should arise my Authors Argument is of no farther use for where the Soveraign and Parliament agree there can be no deluding of the People So that in short his quarrel is to the constitution of the Government And we see what nettles him That the King has learnt from the unhappy example of his Father not