Selected quad for the lemma: country_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A50102
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The case of allegiance in our present circumstances consider'd in a letter from a minister in the city to a minister in the country.
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Masters, Samuel, 1645 or 6-1693.
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1689
(1689)
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Wing M1067; ESTC R7622
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29,404
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42
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ultimately resolved they allow to an English Parliament no more power than to give some inauthoritative Advice which the King may use or neglect as he thinks fit They think a Coronation Oath whatever it may be with respect to God yet with respect to the People is only a customary Ceremony or insignificant Formality They suppose all legal limitations of the Government to be but the King 's arbitrary and temporary Condescentions which he may retract without doing any Injury to the People and in a word that all our Laws are entirely dependent on His Pleasure for their Being Continuance and Influence but his Will is in all Cases unaccountable and irresistible Such Maxims as these quite alter the Frame of our English Government raise up our King into a Tyrant and depress his Subjects into Slaves and serve only to render the King odious and his People miserable and therefore as no wise Man can forbear wishing that they may not be true so upon enquiry we shall find that they have been advanced either by the Fondness of some who frame Schemes of Government in their own imagination or by the Ignorance of others who are deceiv'd with the sound of the aequivocal Name of King or by the Craft of those who make a Trade of advancing the Prerogative in order to their own Advancement Indeed if the preceding Principle had proved true That Monarchy is a Divine Institution it would be necessary for us to grant that no other Form of Government could be mix'd with it or That be restrained by any Limitations because it cannot be lawful for Man to adulterate or infringe the Ordinance of God But seeing the Jus Divinum doth not appear we have reason to suppose that our English Government is built on the Topical Constitutions of this Countrey and may differ from the Government of other Countreys as much as our Tempers Interests and Circumstances do For if the Supreme Governor of the VVorld hath not thought fit to prescribe One Form of Government to be every-where observed he hath permitted to every Nation a Liberty of framing to themselves such a Constitution as may be most useful and agreeable and as it is inconceivable that all Nations should conspire in the same Platform of Governments so it is most unreasonable to seek in Judea Italy or France for the Measures or Properties of the English Government which was made and is therefore to be found only at Home and should be describ'd rather from its own Laws and Constitutions than any fine Notions we can conceive of what it might or should be And if we contemplate the Government it self we may easily discover what its essential Forms and Properties are for surely a Government that hath been publickly transacted through so many Ages and hath made so great a Figure in the world cannot remain an imperceptible Secret or an unintelligible Mystery and I cannot forbear suspecting those who disguise it with so many Uncertainties and Obscurities that they design to mislead us into a mistake of that which they will not allow us to understand A little skill in our English History will suffice to inform us That the Saxons and English from whom this Nation is chiefly descended did first introduce the Form of our English Government and that it was the same they had been inur'd to in Germany where as Tacitus observes Regibus nec infinita aut libera potestas Kings had not an Absolute or Unlimited Power Tacit. de morib Germ. Sect. 3 5. And from the ancient Records of those early Times we are assur'd That the Consent of the People in a Convention or Parliament did always concur to the making of Laws and also their Consent in a Jury of Peers was always admitted in the Execution of Them VVhence the People of England have been always acknowledged to be Free-men And tho we read that the Saxons were subdued by the Danes yet we find not that their Government was changed but that after a short Interruption the Government and Country returned entirely into the Hands of the Saxons The Duke of Normandy whom we call the Conqueror was such only with respect to Harold who usurp'd the Crown but not with respect to the Kingdom which he claimed as Successor to King Edward to whom he was related by whom he was adopted and from whom he had received a solemn Promise of the next Reversion and accordingly we find that tho be made some external Changes in the Government yet he made no essential Alteration in the Form of it and the same kind of Government hath been transmitted by succeeding Kings to the present Age with some accidental Improvements as our Ancestors grew wiser by Experience or the Necessities and interests of the Nation did require Now inasmuch as our English Government was at first transplanted out of another Countrey and hath been ripened into a Perfection by several degrees through a long tract of Time it would be very fanciful to suppose one solemn time when the Original Compact between the King and People was first made or to ask after a Book in which it is in a certain Form recorded that Compact being nothing else than a tacit Agreement between the King and Subjects to observe such common Usages and Practices as by an immemorial Prescription are become the Common-Law of our Government And to understand these so far as our present Case requires there it no necessity that should read over all the Records in the Tower or all the Volumes of our English History there being several ancient Forms and Customs among us which fall under easie Observation that are sufficient to inform us of the Nature of our English Government For when at a Coronation we see a King presented to the People and their Consent solemnly asked and given what can we reasonably inser from thence but that anciently Kings were advanced to their Thrones by the Consent and Agreement of the People When we hear the King solemnly Promise and Swear to maintain to the People their Rights and Liberties to conserve the Laws and cause them to be observed must we not conclude from thence that there are Rights and Liberties reserved to the People that the Will of the King is limited by the Law of the Realm and that he is bound by His Oath to conserve the Laws as we are by Ours to observe them When we are taught to call the King our Leige-Sovereign and our selves his Leige-Subjects do not those Terms import that he is bound to protect Us in All our Rights as we are bound to obey Him in All his Laws When we read in the Preamble of every Statute That it is enacted not only by the Authority of the King 's most Excellent Majesty but also by the Authority of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and of the Commons assembled in Parliamen is it not very evident from hence that the Parliament hath a share in the Legislative Power which is an eminent Branch