Selected quad for the lemma: head_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
head_n	act_n	king_n	parliament_n	2,685	5	7.0065	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A25599	The Answer to the letter written to a member of Parliament upon the occasion of some votes of the House of Commons against their late speaker and others		1695 (1695)	Wing A3417; ESTC R110	23,110	60

Gratuity a Speaker may take or leave it if Law does not confine him Sordid Principle is no mannerly Expression Than suffer by his Injustice Here is great Ignorance Is not the Constitution of our House exactly known Is the Speaker more than a Member of 513 Has he more than one Vote Is not there a Door every where open to your Complaint or Petition or Diligence in your Affair until it be finished Your general Reflexion against such as take Money is of a greater Extent than every one is aware of You do not spare the Head of the Government the King himself notwithstanding his retriving you from Misery and Starving For what Money is given by Act of Parliament towards the War his Majesty cannot so much as apply honourably or charitably one Farthing otherwise without your Anathema And yet when a quite contrary Expression suited your own Interest you were as much upon the King's Part in your Observator N. as now you are violent against him in this your Letter But let us look a little into your own Practice and find how well your Actions agree with your Precepts You declare publickly against every Man's taking a Bribe or Reward for serving honest Men in Acts of Justice But how does that answer your having taken from several Gentlemen Presents Bribes and other Implements Nay rather then fail you have taken them to the small Value of 40 s. You know what in some measure chased you from Home where you betrayed a young Lady contrary to the Oaths and other Obligations you lay under to her Father which Action of it self is of force to lay you under a perpetual Stigma and brand of Infamy Neither can I let pass your immoral and ungentile Dealing with some Merchants to whom you made Application that they might lend you Threescore Guineas in your Necessity and told them withal That you had such Interest with their Majesties and particularly the Queen that you was sure to obtain any thing at Court It fell out that the same Merchants had a Ship carried into St. Sebastian's by a Spanish Privateer upon pretence of carrying contreband Gounds they proffered you the Money desired if you should obtain a Letter to the English Envoy at Madrid to cause Release the Ship you undertook the Matter as you usually do with all the Impudence in the World but having neither the Interest nor good Sense to manage it you gave them a Letter quite contrary to what their Affair required And though it had been stipulated by you to return the Money in default of obtaining their Suit you have hitherto fraudulently retained the same it being not in their Power to obtain it of you by the ways of either Honour or Justice though they would gladly give a Part to save the Whole And is not this Sir both to rob and defraud with a Witness If one you say be possessed of a Thousand Pounds of your Money whom neither Law nor Honour can oblige to restore you it you will rather give a Hundred Pounds than lose all He is a Knave to keep your Money but you may treat him as a Robber on the High-way give a Part to save the Whole Here is a Supposition wherein is neither Sense Reason good Manners nor Similitude The Speaker was possessed of no part of the Orphans Money and no Restitution could be demanded of him in any manner of way If the Argument was betwixt you and the Squanderers of that Money you had Reason to take rather one Shilling in the Pound than lose all Neither is their any civil Country where the Law will not restore you if the Debtor be solvent or deliver you his Person If insolvent he is a Knave to keep your Money Who is the Knave This Expression is very suitable to your Mouth and Manners but in no case to the Speaker If you chance to meet a Robber on the High-way with a Hundred Pounds about you 't is Ten to One but you will think your self well come of and give the Whole to save your Bacon What you talk of Canon Law is impertinent You do not understand the Canon Law The Orphans Bill was the Noblest and Justest ever came within these Walls and the Managers saw it impossible to carry it on without a Gratuity I thought there had been no Rule without Exceptions What do you think of all the Bills for Settling the present Government in Church and State For the Money Bills to carry on the War for the Liberties of Mankind over almost all the World But if the Noblest and Justest why did not the Nation interpose of course in the Orphans Favour without so much trouble You seem of your own Head to put all the Power of the Commons in the Speaker's Person If it be so the Government is very unsafe and liable to terrible Convulsions And if the Managers saw it impossible to carry it on without a Gratuity then they had Reason to give it But it will follow by the same Supposition That there was an absolute Necessity upon the Speaker to take it by the Rule that Necessity and Impossibility are inseparable in one and the same Contingent Read a little more and you will find That Themistocles having sent to those of the Isle of Andros for Tribute caused tell them that he had sent for that end the powerful Goddesses Love and Force The Andrians who understood better their Morals and Politiques than you seem to do made answer That they had Two as powerful to hinder them from paying which were Necessity and Impossibility by which you see how nigh these two lodge The Example you bring of a Stoick Philosopher to aggravate the Speaker's Fault you charge him withal is no proper Similitude A Speaker of the House of Commons has no Power in his Person by the Quality of his Office to refuse Justice in his Station that is entirely lodged in the Privilege of the House to reject or pass a Bill The Managers of the Orphans Bill though they saw it very possible to obtain their Suit whatever you are pleased to say of its being impossible were willing as a Mark of their own Esteem and for the Pains took by Speaker in that Affair in which the Honour of the City as well as the Estates of the injured Orphans lay at Stake to think it their Duty to offer him a Gratuity seeing there was no Law nor Practise upon any Record to impede them Dionysius the Sicilian Tyrant had usurped upon his Fellows in the State had obtained to be Master did Arbitrarily what he pleased was a Sovereign above Law and Justice If in that case a Philosopher did against his Fundamental Principle of Philosophy humble himself to a Tyrant to obtain his End he did but what is usual at this Day in the obtaining of Suits over all Courts of the World even where Justice is said to Reign But the Misery is the just Courts in our Days are more nice and inexorable