Selected quad for the lemma: justice_n
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A46957
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Notes upon the Phœnix edition of the Pastoral letter Part I / by Samvel Johnson.
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Johnson, Samuel, 1649-1703.
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1694
(1694)
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Wing J835; ESTC R11877
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45,073
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120
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Battery more I remember my Lord Russel was mightily pleased with the Courage of the Citizens at that time and particularly of Alderman Cornish who slighted these Preparations against them by saying they might indeed do some Dammage to some of their Chimneys I need not mention the Intended Cittadel of Chelsey-College to straiten the City on that Side nor their greatest Cittadel of Westminster-Hall where they had perverted all Law and plainly put a stop to it by dismissing a Grand Jury before their time At the Notorious Case of Fitz Harris my Lord was present for which Serjeant Pemberton can give the best Reasons because he reserved them at that time and no doubt they are improved by this and brought up a Fashion which we do not find in the Year-Books for Judges to give no Reasons for their Judgments As to the Case of the City Charter it was so very plain that I desired Sir George Treby now Lord Chief Justice who was to argue for it to use only this short Argument to carry Magna Charta in one Hand and a Penknife in the other and to desire the Court to cut out the Chapter of Magna Charta where the Rights of the City of London and the other Vills and Burghs and Cinque-Ports are confirmed and when their hand was in to make but one Business of it and to cut out all the rest I am sure the City of London will give me leave to say that they and their Chamber which was the best Fund in England was at that time broke and when it will be repaired I know not but they may easily know whom to sue for Dilapidations and in what High Court that ought to be done And the ready way is to Extend the Estates of all those that treacherously destroyed that City and made it the finest Village in Europe and saluted the King King of London as if he had not been compleat King of it till it was Ruin'd I need not mention their Standing Guards in time of Peace of which the Parliament-men used to say There go our Masters and so they had reason after Sir Iohn Coventry's usage and which all the great Lawyers of England declared to be Illegal from the first and such a Force upon the Nation as the Law abhors The Lord Chief Justice Vaughan had the Honesty and Courage to tell my late Lord Macclesfield so though he then Commanded and was at the Head of them My Lord very honourably remembered this as an Instance of that Great Man's Integrity And who that ever had the Honour of knowing the last Great Man can ever forget His But the Guards became more Formidable afterwards when an Undertaker offered with a Thousand of their Horse of which they had always more to go and conquer the City of London in a contemptuous manner and when with their Detachements and filling up again with new Men they could at any time Form an Army They had likewise their Nursery of Tangier within call and when they saw their time it came over Ever since the last Sentence that passed upon me I am somewhat out of conceit with the Name of Guards For having made as Honest an Address to the Army as the World can shew any thing and being run down for it as a High Misdemeanour I took my Exceptions to the Information amongst other things that there was no averrment of any Army in it and I said there could be no such thing because it was Contrary to the Law of England Whereupon both the Attorney General Sawyer and the Court of King's-Bench said that the Camp at Hownslow-Heath was not an Army but only the King's Guards I replied that I thought they were too far off for Guards and too great a Number To which the Lord Chief Justice Herbert answered that the King wanted a Greater Number to Defend him from my Papers At which I could only smile to see a Rag or two of the Press made a Pretence to keep up a Great Army But as I intimated before Guards shall be an Army and an Army shall be Guards when such Men think fit Aristotle in his Politicks is very severe upon Guards and says That it is the Mark of a King 's turning Tyrant if he require a Guard and says further that if a King demand a Guard to defend him against his People his People ought to demand a Guard to defend them against him And it is very plain that the Additional Guards of Horse and Foot in the two last Reigns for there were never any before but the Band of Pensioners and the Band of Archers now Yeomen who were the Antient Establishment for the Preservation of the King's Person were not intended for the King's Preservation for that was done to their hand but to awe the Nation to animate Judges in false Judgments and to back Officers in illegal Proceedings for where the Law would not hold out in the way of a Legal Writ it was as well supplied by an Arbitrary Command and two or three Files of Musketteers I will name but one thing more which was Occasioned by the Bill of Exclusion That Bill was carried Nemine Contradicente several times in the House of Commons but when it came in the Westminster Parliament to be carried up by my Lord Russell to the House of Lords it was so ill received there â—hat the Bishops were for throwing it out to rights However after a Reading and after a Debate which lasted till about Midnight it was thrown out That Learned Nobleman the Great Earl of Essex was pleased to tell me what Arguments he insisted upon in that Debate The first was that the Regality of England was an Office concerning which the 17 th Chapter of King Edward the Confessor's Laws is wholly spent and it is so Declared to be in Many Acts of Parliament as low as Queen Mary's Time and that a Woman as well as a Man might be invested with the Regal Office Hereupon he said that a Person Unqualified as all the World knew the Duke of York was could not be admitted to that Office Upon discourse about this I remember his Lordship was pleased to take down Lambert's Saxon Laws and shew me several Particulars in that 17 th Chapter which I had forgot His second Argument was to prove that if the Duke of York had Unqualified himself for that High Office as he plainly had for the meanest Office in England then the Parliament had undoubtedly Power to foreclose him and set aside his Remainder in the Crown because they had Power to do more This he said was the known Law of England and agreed upon by the Lord Chancellor More and Richard Rich then Sollicitor General and afterwardsâ— Lord Rich as a First established Principle upon which they argued about the Supremacy It stands thus in the Record as we have it p. 421. of the Lord Herbert's History The Sollicitor Demanded if it were enacted by Parliament that Richard Rich should be King and
Popish Successor and to make him the Sign of a King and not to leave him the real Authority of a Thirdborough though those things were no more like to have been enacted than the Bill there was this That an Association should be drawn up as was done in the Reigns of Edward the Third and Queen Elizabeth A Noble Peer who was very much out at Court not for the Court Drudgery he had done but because he would do no more though of course he was very ungratefully loaded by themselves for what he had done was some time afterwards accused by the suborned Perjured Irish Court-Witnesses of an Oxford Plot. The Evidence to the Grand Jury of which that true Lover of his Countrey Sir Samuel Barnardiston was Foreman was in a new way given in Court and afterwards was printed I refer the Reader to the perusal of their own Printed Paper alone to see the open Perjury in that Case and some bold Stroaks of Pemberton-Law and what a Train was laid for the Lives of the Honest Lords and Commons of England Every body in England knows that there was no more of an Oxford Plot than there is on the back of my Hand but that on the other side a great number of Lords in an Address Signed by them and Presented by the Earl of Essex besought the King they might not meet at Oxford as doubting of their sitting in Safety having been threatned by several blabbing Life-Guard-Men what they would do when they had them there In short there never was more foul Play from the beginning of the World than was in the Prosecution of my Lord Shaftsbury for an Oxford Plot and in the practice of Subornation upon Captain Wilkinson to put a Force upon him to Swear against that Lord and in the Consequence of it against a vast number of the Best Men in England For the Captain was brought to a Dilemma and was placed just in the midst betwixt Ch. Finche's Two sorts of Advancement which with as much Wit as Honesty he put the Captain in mind of at that time For he was either to â—ccept of a Great Sum of Money or the Duke of York's 500 l. a Year Land to Swear against my Lord Shaftsbury or else to be hanged himself before my Lord Shaftsbury with whiâ—h Ch. Finch threatned him But the brave old Souldier was proof against both for he abhorred the Wages of Unrighteousness and the Price of Blood neither did he fear a Halter which I believe loses its roughness and feels soft to the last to an Honest Man Perhaps the Captain did not expect to be so slighted for his Honesty under a Revolution nor to see his Dear sworn Friend and the Lieutenant of his Oxâ—ord Troop Advanced over his Head But he may thank himself for it for not Reprinting his Narrative which consisted of so clear Matter of Fact that though the Suborners gnashed their Teeth at it yet they durst not even then touch it For our People in England are very forgetful a new Coronation two or three Lord Mayors Shews and the new Project of a Million Fund to make provision for younger Children will put all old things out of their Heads And besides we have Scotch Doctors to teach us the Art of Forgetfulness Pray you have Gude Memories Gude Memories do not Remember Bad things meaning the Murders and Oppressions of the last Reigns â—ut keep your Memories for Gude Things have Gude Memories So that we forfeit the Goodness of our Memories and have Evil ones if we remember our Headless Great Men the Best Blood in England spilt like Water upon the Ground Men Murdered in cold Blood and hung up in sport by eleven or twelve at a time according as the Clock struck Men Hanged and then brought to Life again to extort from them a Confession of Passive Obedience but it was then too late for Falshood and Flattery And lastly for I do not mention the Widows Fatherless or starved Families of any of these Men several Hundreds now lying unregarded in Exile and sold into Slavery only for endeavouring to Redeem their lost Countrey from Slavery who did an Hundred times more towards this Revolution than some that have been made Dukes and Earls for nothing that I know of but coming to see England But I marvel where these Men learn'd their good Memory not out of Scripture I am sure for there it is made the Mark of a Wicked Memory not to remember Joseph but forget him that is a Sufferer who was the Means of their own Deliverance and when they lie at Ease themselves not to be grieved for the Afâ—liction of Joseph which I think is not possible when Men have studiously forgot it and discharged their Memory of it Nor have they learn'd this sort of Memory out of any good Book of Politicks because such a Good Memory extinguishes our Happy Deliverance For what were we Delivered from but the Tyranny and Oppressions of the former Reigns which if they are to be forgotten as if they had not been then we are Delivered from nothing that is to say we have no Deliverance Look see read the Prince of Orange's two Declarations Did not he come to help the Nation to see Justice done for these things so that if we must forget these things then we must forget how he came to Town and what Business he had here And this very thing of stifling and palliating the Violences and Injustice of the late Times has given encouragement to King Iames to look Homewards and to meditate a Return and has given occasion to the Princes Abroad to look upon him as an Injured Prince for if he had not done great Wrong to this Nation first we have done a great deal to him since and yet there is not one Instrument of his Tyranny that has Answered for it but have been all Protected if not very highly Promoted and by the very means of a Gude Memory But after all it is impossible for a vast Number of People in England ever to attainâ— to this Gude Memory because they have continually evil Remembrancers to the Contrary some their broken Fortunes and Estates and want of Bread some the loss of their near Relations whom they dearly miss some the thoughts of their Great Father's Heads sticking upon Poles and as for me while a certain Traveller was making his Court to the Cardinals at Rome I got such an Almanack in my Bones that I am sure I shall never learn this Scotch Trick of a Gude Memory I will sooner be hang'd and forget all I wonder therefore that Dr. Burnet should send to me in the time of the First Parliament in this Reign when my Illegal and Barbarous Usage lay before them Not to name Persons I know the Language of that Day was Do not smut that is let the Oppressors of your Country and of you go off Clear and scape Scotfree I gave an English Reply to that Message Let him mind His Business I will