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
opposing and defeating the Design of an Universal Excise which your Montagues Smiths and many others had projected and resolved to impose upon the Kingdom which could they have effected as they had promised the Gentleman at Kensington to do we should in a little time have been made greater Slaves than the Turks are and William had been put into a Condition of ruling as despotically as the Grand Seignior does But how strangely are English Men degenerated since they got a Dutch King that there should be so many Advocates for that now that our Subjection to it could not have been avoided without much Art Industry and Courage in a few generous Patriots which but to have mentioned within these Walls some Reigns ago would have drawn both a Punishment and Disgrace upon him that did it For when Sir Dudley Carleton who was then Secretary of State did but once Name it in that House though to no ill Intent he was not only called to the Bar but hardly escaped being sent Prisoner to the Tower But since Members have learned to sell their Honours and Consciences as well as their Votes and thereby their Country for Places and Pensions let no man marvail That what was heretofore the Bugbear of all in a House of Commons should now become the Idol of too many there All that doth remain to be represented to you in relation to the present Subject is in what Esteem and Account the Acts of this pretended Parliament ought to be with the People And suffer me upon this Occasion to tell you That no Man alive has a greater Respect for a legal Parliament called by the Authority of a Rightful and Lawful King and answering the Ends for which they were originally instituted than I have But for every Assembly that hath called it self a Parliament and which in some unhappy times have been generally owned as such I do confess to you that I have not the same Veneration For when I do read how many Parliaments have preferred Usurpers before the Rightful Heirs and that never any Person invaded the Throne though never so traiterously and unjustly but that he always found a Parliament to recognise and support him I cannot have that Esteem for every Convocation of Men that goes by that honourable Name as some have who will Worship the Tree on which their Father was hanged if it be put shaped into the Image and get the Title of a Madona Richard the Third and Oliver Cromwel had Parliaments who as much adored them and as readily gave Subsidies and Taxes for answering the Occasions of these Usurpers as ever Queen Elizabeth or Edward the Sixth had Nor can I so far conquer my Understanding or get the Victory over my Conscience as to have a reverend Opinion of those Parliaments in Henry the Eighth's time Whereof one enacted That Proclainations should be equivalent to Laws and another ordained That he might by his last Will and Testament appoint whom he pleased to be his Successor How many Parliaments might be named that have been the Tools of a haughty Prince's Tyranny and the Panders of a lascivious King's Lusts who have been of a Complexion to worship the Devil that he might do them no hurt with the same readiness that they do God Almighty who bestowed upon them all that is good Nor am I willing to omit mentioning how those few Men whom Oliver Cromwel called together by his private Letters without any previous Choice of them by the Nation had not only the Impudence to call themselves a Parliament but that even a great many People who laid claim to more of Religion than they had right to do to good Sense were ready to fall down and worship them as such And permit me here to tell you one Thing in reference to that Assembly which hath been commonly stiled Oliver's little Parliament which though it may seem a Digression from the present Subject yet it will not be unseasonable for me to relate nor unfit for you to know Namely That whereas Oliver pretended to call them together towards settling the Nation upon the Motive and Merit of their Piety yet the true Reason of it was the Jealousy he had least they should supplant him in the Power he had assumed which they stood the better qualified for effecting by means both of the Reputation they had among the Partizans against Kingship and of the Interest they had in many of his own Army And therefore Oliver knowing the Temper and Bigottry of the Men and that if they came together and were allowed to meddle with Affairs of State and the general Concerns of the Kingdom how they would by their wild and extravagant Proceedings not only lose all the Esteem they had acquired in their private Stations but render themselves the Scorn and Contempt of Mankind and thereby lose all Capacity of undermining him in his Seat or of doing him afterwards any hurt upon these Motives he called them together and upon no other whatsoever he pretended All which not only came to pass as he had projected and foresaw but even while they were together they were through the Folly and Frantickness of their Actions the Derision of the few wise Men that were among themselves Of which I shall recount one pleasant Instance viz. That being endeavouring with great Zeal and Earnestness to engross and monopolize all Power and Places into their own hands and into the hands of those they stiled Saints in that such only had right to govern the Earth all Dominion being founded in Grace they were baffled and bantered out of their Design by a cunning Man's standing up in the House and telling them that it was true the Saints deserved all Things but that publick Employment was so great a Drudgery in it self and so strong a temptation to Sin that it would be unjust to condemn the Godly to it and that the best Service they could do for the Common-wealth was in a pious Retirement to intercede for it at the Throne of Grace But to return to what I am upon no Man that is not a perfect Stranger to England can be ignorant of the three Essential Properties belonging to a Parliament namely Fairness of Elections Fulness of Members and Freedom of Speech and that several Parliaments have laboured under Deficiencies of one or another of them And there are Instances where one Parliament hath declared a former Parliament void and null in it self because of some Irregularity either in their being chosen or in their fitting though called by a Lawful and Rightful Prince Thus the Parliament of the first of Hen. 4. declared that of the 21. Rich. 2. to have been a void Parliament Roll. 21. 22. Nay Sir Edward Cook whom all must acknowledge to have been a Champion for Parliaments especially for a House of Commons yet he declareth that Parliaments have been often utterly misled and deceived and that in Cases of the greatest moment And had we not overthrown the legal
multo minus bello ubi legibus agi possit And the mildest Character I can fasten upon our two Revolutional Parliaments abstracting from their Disloyalty and Treason is that they have been graviores remediis quam delicta erant they have almost ruined and destroyed the Nation on pretence of redressing Trifles Nor indeed was it any Thing he either had done or designed to do that threw us into that brutal and disloyal Rage but he was a Catholick and the Demagogues and Indendiaries had taught the weak and bigotted part of Protestants to hate him for his Religion invisâ— semel Principe seu bene seu male facta premunt When a Prince is once wormed out of the Love of his People whatsoever he then doth though it be never so much for the Benefit of his Subjects it will be misinterpreted as done to their hurt Nor will it ever cease to be an Aggravation of the Guilt of our Rebellion that we feared his Majesty's redressing what we had gotten represented unto and believed by the Nation to have been illegal grievous and arbitrary For most Men do now know That if the Submission which they of Magdalen College sent up to my Lord S to be laid before the King had come to his hands it would immediately have stopt all Proceedings against them and have restored them fully to his Favour and Grace But that Submission was concealed from his Majesty not only out of Treachery to him but out of Design to serve the Prince of Orange in keeping on foot one of the great Designs of his Invasion And although the King gave large and uncontroulable Proofs of having Royal Inclinations beyond what any King ever had that sat upon the Throne of this Kingdom of retracting and redressing all those Things which he came to be convinced of to have been done amiss and illegally yet that would not allay the Furious and Rebellious heats of those who had a mind to enrich themselves with the Spoils of the Crown and Kingdom And therefore when all Things were restored to the State and Condition which his most peevish Enemies would have wished or desired to have had them yet the traiterous Ferment was kept up still in the former height Nor doth any Thing better demonstrate how imprudently as well as wickedly we abdicated the King than that Four parts of Five of the Kingdom would be glad to have him here again upon the Terms he offered before we drove him away and very many would think themselves happy and account it a good Bargain to have him here upon any How little does the King's employing a few Catholicks in Civil and Military Trusts weigh and amount unto when laid in one Scale against all the Blood that has been spilt and all the Losses that have been sustained and all the Treasure that hath been consumed for supporting of this Rebellion when they are laid in the other Scale And the Exchange we have made so infinitely for the worse sheweth both our Folly and is a just Punishment of our Sin in making of it Nor wanted there Truth or good Sense in the Reply which a plain Country Farmer made to his Neighbour who was complaining of the grievous insupportable Taxes and of the many other Losses Pressures and Oppressions under which the Nation groaneth viz. That these were the Blessings and Advantages which we had gotten and obtained by swopping of Kings For this Man 's little Finger is much heavier than the King's Loins were His Majesty loved his People and would have been contented to have made them happy at the Expence of his own Prerogative and with some diminution of his Sovereign Rights But this Intruder into the Throne hates both Country and People and only useth us in the Service of his own ambitious Ends and to gratify the Rapacity and Covetousness of his beloved Dutch And in the same manner that Solomon distinguished the true Mother from the false namely by the compassionate tender yearning Bowels of the one and the inhuman barbarous Cruelty of the other may we distinguish our Rightful King from the Usurper and learn which of them we are in Duty to chuse and obey I might add as a further Aggravation of the Folly of those two Parliaments in what they have done That by their violating the Constitution to the Injury of the King they have set a Pattern as well as given Provocation to some brave and daring Prince that may hereafter sit upon the Throne to do the like in prejudice of the Subject For it is the same Injustice abstracting from Treason in the People to rob the King of his Crown and Royal Dignity as it would be in a King to invade the Liberties and Properties of his People Nor is it more unlawful for the one to overthrow the Constitution and change the Government than it is for the other to do it Not that such a Thing is to be feared though we have deserved it For though some Subjects may grow Rich by spoiling the Crown yet no King of England can ever become Great or Opulent by breaking in upon the Privileges of the People And therefore he will forbear it out of Interest if he should not out of Duty And he will keep to the Terms of the Constitution upon Motives of Wisdom should he not be inclined to do it upon Inducements of Justice For whensoever a King of Great Brittain insults over his People he immediately sinks himself into a Condition of being contemned and despised by all the World I might also Sir lay before you how that Parliaments are not only in the Exercises of their Parliamentary Power under the Direction and Confinement of the Essential and Fundamental Rules and Measures of the Constitution but how they are under the Regulations Limitations and Restrictions both of our Common and Statute Laws For as their being is a legal Being their Capacities under which they sit and act legal Capacities their Business and Employment a legal Employment and the Ends they come together for legal Ends So they are in all these and in all the Concernments they assemble consult or act about under the Influences Direction Conduct and Restriction of the Laws Though there be a Provision made in the Constitution that at Times and Seasons and upon necessary Exigencies and Occasions and for needful and indisputable Ends there should be Parliaments and that it is the Right and Due of the People of England to have them yet they do receive their actual Existence and come into Being by the Fiat of Sovereign Authority and by the King's Writs that raise and assemble them And they would according to the Common Law be a riotous and tumultuous Rout and not a Parliament or a legal Assembly should they meet without being called and raised into their Existence by the creative Writs of the King And suppose that those Laws of Ed. 3. were yet in force for our having Parliaments once a Year or oftner if there be