Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
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A41185
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A letter to Mr. Secretary Trenchard discovering a conspiracy against the laws and ancient constitution of England : with reflections on the present pretended plot.
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Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714.
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1694
(1694)
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Wing F752; ESTC R32026
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71,664
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47
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so it gives too much ground for a Suspicion that either you or your Clerks find your Interest and Advantage in this Pillage But to wave the giving this Practice any further the Character which it justly deserves I shall only say that as it is highly illegal so it is extreamly inhumane and barbarous A Second Contempt of the Law as well as neglect of and deviation from it in the Execution of your Place is That tho you insert the Names of those in your Warrants whom you would have seiz'd yet you do not always express and specify the Crimes for which you require them to be apprehended Nor is this Method of your Administration less arbitrary and criminal than the former was For as no Title you bear or Character you are cloathed with empowers you to deseize any Man of his Liberty but whom the Law deseizeth nor for any Offence how much soever it may provoke and enrage Mr. Secretary Trenchard but that which the Law has made thereunto obnoxious so the Commanding to apprehend Men without mentioning their Crimes is the acting despotically and the advancing your Will and Passions into the place and room of Laws It is an Axiom in our Constitution That Corpus and Causa must go together and where there is not that which the Law accounts the last no man be his Title what it will is legally empowered to lay hands upon the other The Monarchy of England is not Seignioral but Royal being a Government under which we are Freemen having Rights and Properties not Villains and Slaves who have neither Right nor Property in any thing And therefore whatsoever the Subject has a Right in he must both be entituled peaceably and securely to enjoy it and have a Remedy for the recovering it if disseized and dispossessed And without these it 's in vain to talk of being governed by Laws all we are and have being subjected to Will and Pleasure But so provident is the Law in this matter that the King 's Writ under his Great Seal cannot imprison a Subject unless it shews a Cause And were a Writ of that nature sent to a Sheriff to be executed he may return it without doing what is required and he is no ways punishable for his Disobedience or Neglect the Writ having been void in Law And can we imagine that the King's Warrants issued out by a Secretary ought to have more power and efficacy by the Law than his Writ under his Brood Seal hath Surely we must renounce Sense and Understanding ere we sink into such a Belief And if the Law doth not give you a Power over our Lands and Goods nor any Prerogative wherewith the Kings of England are vested allows you to meddle with any Man's Estate or Chattels much less can you in their Name and by their Authority imprison our Persons seeing Scripture as well as Reason do assure us That the Body is more worth than Raiment where by Raiment according to all Expositors as well as the Canonists every thing that is outward is meant to distinguish it from Corporal For the Common Law hath so adjusted and circumscribed the King's Prerogative as that he cannot prejudice any Man in his Inheritance and the greatest Inheritance a man has is the Liberty of his Person all other things being subordinate and subservient to that Yea so tender is the Law of our Liberty that if a Wrong be done to a Man's Person it does not oblige him to sustain it and afterwards accept a Remedy This being a Rule in Law That Corporalis Injuria non receipt Estimationeme futuro that no Damages recovered by the Injured Person are a sufficient Recompence for a Wrong that is Corporal And therefore where the Law doth not deseize a Man of his Liberty and render him imprisonable it makes many things lawful in Defence of it which otherwise would in some particulars be Trespasses and in others very heinous Offences Accordingly it is a Maxim in the Law Quod quis obâ—tutelam Corporis sui fecerit id jure fecisse existimatur That whatsoever a Man does in the necessary Defence of his Person he is to be esteemed to have done it rightfully Nor can any man be innocent that you from Pique Revenge or Avarice have a mind to make guilty if your bare voting and pronouncing him so in a Paper with your Hand and Seal to it shall subject him to be treated as if he really were How often does it come to pass that a Matter which the Law makes no Offence may give more Provocation to a Minister of State than that which it declares and publishes a heinous Crime Must he therefore be allowed to wreck his Spleen in punishing the former more than he does imploy his Justice in chastising the latter For example Should any one write a Satyr on the present Government with the Wit and Acrimony that Petronius Arbiter writ one upon Nero's Court there are few Punishments so severe but the Law would adjudge the Author to them Whereas should the History of the last five or six Years Transactions be writ with the Truth that becomes an honest Man and with that seasoning which may make it palatable to the Age the Law would render this no Crime nor subject the Writer to any Penalty and yet some think that such a History would more provoke and enrage the Government as well as render it more ridiculous and contemptible than all the Satyrs in the World would So that when your Ministers are most angry there is not always the most legal cause for it And therefore if the reasons of every Apprehension and Commitment be not declared in the Warrant a Man may be treated as a Traytor against K. William and a Conspirator to overthrow the Government when at the bottom all that the Gentleman is taken up and thrown into Prison for may be only a piece of Banter upon the Green-Ribbon Secretary or a Lampoon upon the mighty States-man perfected in the Politicks by the Degrees he took at the Rose-Club For it is not your knowing my Name and the inserting it into a Warrant that gives you a Right over my Person and Freedom but my being chatged with some Offence for which the Law has made me forfeit my Freedom and rendered me imprisonable And if my Offence were not to be expressed in the Warrant I might come to lose my Liberty tho' innocent of any Crime against the State merely for being thought to know too much of the Treachery and Bribery of certain Ministers which an observing Person must shut his Eyes and stop his Ears as well as avoid all Conversation to remain long a stranger unto In a Word we hold not our Liberties by Law but precariously and at the Discretion of our Enemies and are no more Freemen but Slaves if we were not to be told why we were stript and divested of them A Third Thing whereof you are accusable as departing from and transgressing the Law In the execution
Treasonable Causes and to keep Prosecutions of that nature under his own Conduct doth therefore whatsoever lies in his Power to confine Aaron to a shorter Teâ—der than he is willing to be staked down unto for which he talks of Mr. Attorney with the utmost Contempt detracting both from his Knowlege and Integrity in all Companies Which Misunderstanding I leave to be arbitrated between themselves as being best acquainted with each others Intellectual and Moral Qualifications But why do I insist so much upon the unpresidented Illegalities of Aaron Smith when the very Secretaries of State themselves without regard to Law Honour Justice or Humanity cause seize and apprehend both Men and Women for no other Offence alleged against them but that they discâ—ver what they know of the Infamy of the Witnesses and take the Methods which the Laws have provided and chalk'd forth for bringing them to an accountableness for their Crimes And as the like was never practised under any of those Reigns of which we did most complain and as it appears since very unjustly so it is worthy of our Observation that when a Pack of Scandalous Rascals had combined in the Year 1681 to involve a great many Protestants in a Conspiracy of seizing King Charles and for altering the Government yet no one was molested either for detecting the Forgery of that Plot or for laying open and exposing the Crimes Villainies and Perjuries of those who were then stiled the King's Evidences Yea when three several Discourses all of them bearing the Title of No Protestant Plot were printed and published in Vindication of the Innocency of those that were suspected as well as of those that were apprehended and imprisoned and for detecting the Scandalousness and Legal Improbity of the Evidences and withal the Picquancy which the Author of those Discourses had either Spirit or Language to season them with yet they were not only read by every Man with Safety but openly sold by most Stationers about London without Animadversion or Controul Nor can any Age parallel such a Commitment or furnish us with a Warrant of the Tenor of that issued out by the present Secretaries upon this occasion whereof I shall subjoin a Copy that this Generation may see their Misery and the next laugh at our Folly Namely afterwards of course in all Warrants That they should apprehend and bring before them the Persons of together with their Papers for conspiring and endeavouring to suborn Witnesses against the Lives and Credit of several witnesses for their Majesties against Persons charged with High Treason c. Which looks like a summoning all the Malefactors in the several Goals of the Kingdom to come in and list themselves Witnesses for the Government with assurance not only of Protections and Rewards but that they shall have the Satisfaction and Pleasure to see those imprisoned and punished that shall dare to prosecute them for their Crimes tho they should be Murders and Burglaries as well as Felonies Were not the matter before me too open to be exposed as well as it is tempting to render me severe beyond my Temper and Inclinations I would add more upon this Theam But tho nothing can be rude and much less picquant enough against those that have had the Indiscretion if not the Malice to issue out a Warrant of this Nature yet I will so far both retain my Passions and regulate my Heat as only calmly to expostulate the matter in one Word Is the rescuing our Laws and the vindicating our Liberties which were the Pretences for the Prince of Orange's Descent into England and the great Motives to the late Revolution issued in this That we have neither Laws nor Liberties left us but that we must stand with our Mouths shut and our Hands bound till our Lives be destroyed and our Estates forfeited upon the Perjuries of the most Notorious as well as Hainous Villains that that ever the Earth bare And let me tell you That we think it much more eligible that you should command your Dutch Dragoons to cut our Throats if they can than that a Design should be carried on and thus countenanced by Authority of murthering us by Forms of Law For as in the one Case we should be sure to sell our Lives e're we lost them and should we miscarry in our own defence would hope to dye not only pitied but expect to have our Death 's revenged whereas in the other we fall with Disgrace and there are few have the Honour Zeal and Generosity to resent the Wrong and Injustice that are done us Yet it may be â—hat when proximus ardet Utalegon every Man will be allarm'd and that the Methods which render quilibet homo reus may in a little time make omnis homo miles And as I am very well assured That by the Course you take to destroy some all Men are threatned so I do not know but that the common hazard may run the Nation upon a Defence as universal as the Danger is But I return to a Representation of some more of your Witnesses and he whom I shall next unmask is Wilson who was formerly a Chamberlain at the Bear Inn in Smithfield but who I do suppose is by this time commenced Gentleman thro the Grace and Favour of Aaron Smith who takes upon him to be the Fountain of Honours But this Fellow Wilson having within these Two years been tryed and convicted of Felony before Mr. Baron Turton for stealing Four Bullocks and having thereupon been sentenced to be burnt in the hand which was accordingly executed I shall need to say no more to render him Infamous to all the sober and impartial part of Mankind Only I am sorry Sir that that you and the rest of the Powis-house Cabal should make it your Business so effectually to disgrace the Government whereof you are Ministers as you apparently do in using encouraging and maintaining such a Rascal for a Witness to destroy those whose Persons you hate and whose Estates you covet And as you cannot be ignorant of what I have now related concerning him so you might easily inform your selves if you preserved any respect to Justice that at those Seasons which Wilson swears he was in Lancashire and upon the treasonable Secrets of those Gentlemen against whom he hath deposed that he was at those times in Lo 〈…〉 on In a very mean and servile Employ But I will say no more of him seeing if what I have reported doth not render him infamous nothing will I shall therefore proceed to the Representation of a young Sprig of an Evideace but who being placed for a few years under the Cultivation of Harry Baker may grow up into an unquestionable Witness for the State if Treachery and Forgery can make him so His Name that it may not be forgotten when you and Ministers of your Complexion have occasion to make use of him is Stephen Chazall who having been formerly Servant to Mr. Berionde and dismissed by him about Two