all Emergencies and occasional Mischiefs and Inconveniencies without being cloathed with and having in some Sense inherent in it an absolute and arbitrary Power So that taking the whole compound and all the constituent Parts of the English Government in their Bulk and Complex together our Government is no less arbitrary and unconfined than the Government of France is But then that arbitrary and unrestrained Power as it referreth and belongeth not to the Executive Part of Government but meerly and solely to the Legislative so it appertaineth not to any that have Accession unto and Share in the Legislative separate and apart from one another or as they are taken disjunctively and distributively but as they act in conjunction and are taken collectively That is although the whole Executive Power of the Government be in the King only and alone and not any ways in others than as they derive and receive the respective Authorities and Branches of Power which the Law vests in such and such Officers by and from his Nomination and Commission yet neither the King singly and apart and much less either or both Houses in separation and disjunction from the King can either Make and Enact or Repeal and Abrogate Laws But then whereas the whole Executive Power of the Government lodged and trusted with the King is in all the Parts of it placed in and and committed to him under the Direction and Circumscription of known and existent Laws so that his very Prerogative which no Laws have nor can give particular Directions for the Exercise of it in all Cases and to all the Degrees and Dimensions that it may be needful as well as convenient is nevertheless in all the just Exertions of it only besides the Laws but never can be put forth righteously no more than it can be wisely in opposition unto or against them Yea all the honourable Exercises of the Royal and Sovereign Prerogative are for and in order to the great End of the Laws namely the Publick Good and thereby lie under the Guidance and Conduct of the first and highest Law of the Society which is that of Salus Populi It is much otherwise as to the Legislative Part by which the King with the Consent of the two Houses may without any foregoing Restriction or Limitation arbitrarily and with an absoluteness of Power either enact and establish or cancel and abrogate whatsoever Laws he pleases provided they overthrow not the Constitution nor alter the first and main Essentials of it Nor is the Legislative Power of France more despotical and arbitrary than this is and no Man will say that the French King is arbitrary or acts otherwise than according to his own Edicts in the Executive Part only we give it that Name because the whole Legislative Right and Authority is lodged entirely in that King without the Intervention Concurrence or Consent of any others save what is meerly obediential in Registring his Edicts but not Consultative and much less in any Sense Authoritative whereas we preclude the Terms absolute arbitrary and despotical out of the Stile of our Legislation notwithstanding it be in reality and effect so meerly because the whole Power of making Laws is not so solely lodged in the King as that he can do it without the Concurrence and previous Consent of the two Houses I said that the Power of enacting and abrogating Laws is unlimitted and arbitrary in the King and the two Houses He and they acting conjunctly and each in their own and proper Spheres provided they be not such Laws nor Repeals of Laws as do overthrow the Constitution or alter or change the chief and principal Essentials of it For the preservation of and adherence to the Constitution is the Measure and Standard of the whole Legislative Power and Authority of England Nor can the King grant nor the two Houses desire or accept nor all of them together in their several and respective ways of Concurrence and Influence into the making Laws enact any such Things Quae neque dari neque accipi salva Republica possint that I may use the Words of Tacitus which may subvert or change the Nature of the Government For as the Parliament is become an Ingredient into the Constitution in order to preserve the Liberties and Privileges of the People and not to betray them so they stand confined limitted and restrained by the Form Nature and Quality of the Constitution from all Right Authority and Power of making us Slaves Bondmen and Villains and from surrendring giving up and parting with our Fundamental Freedoms Title to Property in our Goods and Estates or any Thing reserved unto us when we entered into Society and became Subjects of the English Monarchy And on the other hand the King hath also by the Frame and Condition of the Constitution such Monarchical Powers and Prerogatives vested in him of which he is not Proprietor to dispose and alienate but Trustee to keep and maintain descendable to his Royal Successors having himself no higher or farther Interest in them than of Tenent Right for Life so that he stands restrained and disabled by the Constitution from parting with them Nor can any Bill that hath both passed the two Houses and which is by the Royal Assent ratified into an Act of Parliament divest him of or take them from him 'T is true that it falleth under the Power of a Parliament not only to make a Grant and Gift to the King of so much of the Goods and Estates of the Subjects as may be either necessary for the support and splendor of his Sovereign Dignity or needful to empower him upon all Emergent Occasions to defend the Kingdom but they may likewise alienate and take from a People Qui nec totam servitutem pati possunt nec totam libertatem Who can as ill bear too much Liberty as too much Slavery all those pretended Privileges and claimed Rights and Immunities which naturally tempt if not enforce them to be Restless Turbulent and Seditious But no Parliament hath or can have Authority to divest the Subjects of a Title or Right to the Freedom of their Persons and of a Property in their Estates save in Cases wherein by the common and known Laws they are forfeited And on the other hand it lies under the Royal Power of the King to make such Acts at the Desire and Petition of the Lords and Commons in the way of Bills by which those Flowers Ornaments and Prerogatives of the Crown may be alienated and granted away from it which were needless burthensom and obviously dangerous to the People That thereupon Sovereignty in the Prince may amicably consist with Freedom and Safety in the Subject and that our Princes may have the Honour and Praise which Tacitus gives Nerva when he tells us That res olim dissociabiles miscuit Principatum ac Libertatem He reconciled Sovereignty in the Monarch with Liberty in the People But then they can make no such Acts and Statutes nor
will the Constitution allow they should by which the King may either be barred of the Allegiance Fealty and Obedience of his Subjects or be deprived and divested of the Counterpart of it inseparaby appendent unto and resident in himself namely of Trust and Power to rule and defend his People And should either a Parliament be so passionate and encroaching as to present and demand these Things in Bills or a King so weak or indiscreet as to raise them unto the Title of Laws by giving the Royal Assent to them yet they never would be good and legal Acts nor have the force and virtue of Laws though they carried the Name but they would ipso facto be void in themselves as being directly repugnant unto and perfectly subversive of the Constitution So that how large extensive and unlimitted soever the Power of a King and Parliament acting in conjunction may be yet there are some Essentials and Fundamentals of the English Government whereof a few relate to Privileges incident to the People of England as they are a free Nation and divers are intrinsical to the Royal Authority and inseparable from the Person and Dignity of the King that the very Constitution makes them Sacredly unchangeable and sets them out of the reach of King and Parliament to meddle with And should they ever attempt it they would thereby immediately destroy themselves and become divested of all the Power and Authority they have or claim because deriving all their Jurisdictions from the Constitution and having no other Title to them but what that gives whensoever that is overturned and subverted all other Powers sink and fall with it Nor is there any Thing more common in our Books than that notwithstanding the Almightiness of Parliaments yet there are some Things that cannot be taken away by them As no Attainder by Parliament lies against a King rightfully gotten into the Possession of the Crown but he stands ipso facto Guiltless and Innocent in the esteem and account of the Law Nor is it in the Power of a Parliament to take away or dispose of the Right of a Kingdom as the Case has it 1 Hen. 7. Neither can a Parliament barr a King of the Right of his Regality as that no Lands shall hold of him and therefore when there was an endeavour carrying on in the beginning of the Reign of King James the First to have taken away all Tenures by Act of Parliament it was resolved by all the Judges That such a Stature had it been enacted would have been a void Statute This might be enlarged in many other Instances but these are enough to illustrate and confirm what I have mentioned only before I dismiss this Head give me leave to make those Reflexions upon the two Revolutional Parliaments and their pretended Parliamentary Proceedings as will serve to set it in a Meridian Light That they have not only exceeded the Bounds prescribed in and by the Nature Frame and Quality of the Constitution but they have altered changed subverted and overthrown the very Constitution itself and thereby destroyed the Ancient Legal Government of England and have acted Traiterously towards their Country as well as Treasonably and Rebelliously against the King And to begin with some Instances in matter of Fact wherein they have departed from and have acted in opposition unto all those main Essentials of the Constitution which relate to the Community whose Trustees they were originally intended to be for the preserving the Constitution entire and inviolated to them and to their Posterity For Parliaments are so far from being by their primitive Institution appointed to be the Representatives of the People to destroy that which was and rightfully still is the English Government that the great end of their Ordination and of their being successively chosen trusted and empowered by the People is that they may assert maintain and uphold it Nor can Five or Six hundred Men though they were both elected by Six hundred thousand which I am sure is a far greater Number than all the allowed Electors of Members to Parliaments amounts unto and though they should receive Credentials and Authorities from those Electors to alter the Government stand empowered by those means to do it but they should and ought previously to the attempting of it to have either an antecedent Signification of the Will and Pleasure of the many Millions of the Community and the Nation besides those or to receive a Substitution by and from them by which they are made their Representatives and Plenepotentiaries to act for them in that matter as they in their Wisdom shall find to be most for the Safety Good and Interest of the whole Society or of the universal Body of the People But instead of this neither was the Community in the least consulted with either as to the knowing their Mind and Sense in that Affair or as to the obtaining from them a Deputation to act and do in their Names and Room whatsoever they in the Place and Quality of Deputies should judge to be necessary and most useful Nor yet came these Parliaments together authorised and empowered for any such matter by those few upon whom the Right of electing Members of Parliament is devolved for the transacting Affairs in subordination unto consistency with and subserviency to the maintenance of the Constitution Neither indeed could these Electors conveigh any such Right Authority or Power unto them seeing all that they stood in a Capacity to chuse them for was that they might be their Representatives for the preserving of the Constitution and for the upholding of the Government on the Basis and Foundation upon which it was originally established and did then stand And yet these Parliaments have in defiance of all the Rules and Measures of the Constitution and in a treacherous Violation of all the Trust and Confidence reposed in them by their Country changed the whole Essential and Fundamental Frame of the Government of England and from an Hereditary Monarchy have made it an Elective For abstracting from the barbarous and treasonable Injustice they have done the King till hereafter they have broken the Chain of the Lineal Succession and by dissolving that Link in the Instrument and Machine of our Government they have destroyed it as to what it was and what it still ought to be according both to the Fundamentals of our first Establishment into a Polity and the Common and Statute Laws of the Kingdom And this they are become guilty of before God and accountable for in their Lives and Fortunes to their Country not only by barring the Right of the Prince of Wales who is lineal lawful and immediate Heir to the King his Father and by their vesting the Regal Administration in the Prince of Orange previously unto the Claim and Title of the late Princess of Orange but by postponing and justling out of its natural lineal and due Place the Right of the Princess of Denmark And herein our unthinking
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
need or suppose there were or be any other existent standing Law adjusting and defining the Times and Seasons within the Compass and Circle of which we ought and are to have them Yet it is not only from the Regal Authority in granting those Laws that it comes to be our Claim to have them within the Bounds of such Periods of time but the performing and putting in Execution what such Laws enact and direct is still so lodged in the King that unless he pleaseth to call them by his Royal Writs they have no Power to meet notwithstanding those Laws And should a King omit the issuing out his Writs whereby to call them at and within those Seasons it would possibly be a Failure in his Administration and in the executive Part of his Government but our Remedies in that Case were only Patience and humble Applications to the King by decent and modest Petitions for his vouchsafing to give us the Benefit of those Laws For after all the Laws that can be made for adjusting and determining the Times for the meeting of Parliaments yet the Power to call them remains still so inseparably inherent in the King that they cannot assemble nor rise and spring up into Being but in the Virtue and by the constitutive Power of his Writs Nor when assembled can they continue a Moment longer in their Existence than he thinketh fit to allow but they are dissolvable and become actually dissolved when he pleaseth to pronounce them to be so And were there a Pretence of Claim resulting to Parliaments when once called and assembled that they should continue to sit till all the important Petitions of the Subjects were answered as is said to have been the Practice during the Reigns of Hen. 4. Hen 5. and some part of the Reign of Hen. 6. yet this would not disable the King from dissolving them in the Interim and antecedently to their making Answers to such Petitions though possibly his doing so may be stiled Irregular And as Parliaments both come into Existence and fall into Dissolution by the Will and Pleasure of the King exerted in the known Methods of Regal Administration So while they are permitted to sit they can neither make nor repeal a Law without the Royal Assent giving the legislative and enacting Efficacy to their Bills which in the Language of former Ages was called the giving Answers to their Petitions Nay should Parliaments prepare Bills containing in them no new Demands or Provisions of Safety and Advantage to the People but only claiming a declarative Confirmation of what already belongeth to the Subjects by Antient Laws yet even a Bill of that Nature which hath the quality of a Petition of Right cannot grow up and commence into a Law but by the King's Soit Droit fait comme il est desire Let Right be done as is desired I might add how Parliaments are under the Direction of the Laws both with Reference to all the several Capacities in which they sit and with Respect to all the principal Matters they are to meddle with For Example whereas the House of Commons being once legally met doth sit in a fourfold Capacity namely as the great Representative of the Community for relieving the King's Wants and enabling him both to defend the Kingdom and to live in a Port answerable to his Royal Dignity And as the grand Inquest of the Nation for inquiring into Grievances and prosecuting Offenders And as a part of the King 's great Council to give him Advice in the quibusdam Arduis about which he calls them And as part of the Legislative Body of the Kingdom to prepare or concur to such Bills as are to be offered to the King for the Royal Assent Now in all these several Capacities they are to act under the Regulations and Restrictions of the Law Nor are they in any of them to act Arbitrarily but to behave themselves in every one of them according to the Laws and Customs of the Land the Rules and Methods of Parliament and the Paterns and Examples of foregoing Ages Now it were easy to shew beyond all possibility of being rationally contradicted how the two late Assemblies abusively stiled Parliaments have in all those Capacities departed from exceeded and transgressed against the known Laws of the Kingdom and the Rules of Parliaments and the Examples and Presidents of former Ages For as the present Assembly of Men at Westminster which passeth under that Name met and have sat upon the Writs of an Usurper who hath no more legal Power to call and summon a Parliament than a Jack Kade or a Perkin Warbeck have So that Company stiled a Convention came together upon the Invitation of a Person who at that time even upon their own Principles had not a Shadow or Umbrage of Right for calling them but what a Masianello or a fortunate Robber may at any time claim And their meeting under the Notion and in the Quality of a Convention which is a Term that hath no Existence in our Law clearly demonstrates That the Thing so denominated must by consequence be altogether and wholy illegal Nor had they any more Right for their coming together and acting upon the Prince of Orange's Invitation than a Rout and an Assembly of Rioters have to dispose of other Mens Properties and to transfer their Estates And it is without President in any Age save in Times of acknowledged Usurpation and Rebellion That a Company of Men pretending to no other Stile save that of a Convention should change and transform themselves into a Parliament and be the Creators of themselves into a Creature which they were not before Nor are any of the Metamorphosations in Oivd though all meerly Poetical and Fabulous so ridiculous and extravagant as that of the Conventions translating it self into a Parliament For all those of that ingenious and witty Poet save where the feigned and imagined Gods themselves put on and assumed new Shapes were the Effects and Operations of pretended Deities upon inferior and different Beings But that Parliament made of a Convention was a Production and Generation of it self into a Creature specifically distinct from it self and that by no higher or other Power than its own And were it not for the woful and ruinous Effects which they have caused and produced the reasonable Part of Mankind would have lookt upon that Transformation as a Piece of Legerdemaine and a Trick of Mountebanks whereby to divert the Idle and make sport to the Kingdom And it is hard to forbear being pleasant upon it and the exposing it with all the keeness and piquancy of a just and deserved Railery but that the many Mischiefs which they did the Nation and the Poverty Slavery and Bondage which they have derived upon us will not allow but do forbid the being merry and jocose I might subjoin how both the Parliaments since the Revolution have shamefully exceeded the Bounds which Laws and Presidents should have restrained them unto and
Derision in all the Regal Acts of the Government by having his Name mentioned while others have the Exercise and are in the Exertion of the whole and entire Sovereign Power Nor was the late Princess of Orange upon the Abdication of the King and the Exclusion of the Prince of Wales meerly seised and possessed of the Sovereign and Royal Dignity over this Realm as she was next lineal and immediate Heir to his Majesty but she had also the legal Authority and Power granted and conveyed unto her by the Gift and Donation of the Convention which the present Parliament instead of controuling retracting and annulling did recognize own and confirm Nor had she meerly the bare and naked Name of Queen given and conveyed unto her but she was declared to be vested with the whole and entire Royal and Sovereign Power save that the Exercise of it was limitted and confined to the Prince of Orange Now you must not think that I am so thoughtless and weak as to endeavour to prove her being possessed of the Sovereignty and her being cloathed with the Royal Jurisdiction because Treason might have been committed against her yea and against her natural Person seeing it was not only made High Treason by the Statute of the 2 Parl. in the first Year of Queen Mary to compass the Death of King Philip or to deprive him of the Stile or Kingly Honour of this Realm but because it had also anciently been made Treason by the Statute of the 25 Ed. 3. to compass the Death of the King 's eldest Son and Heir to violate the King's Companion or the King 's eldest Daughter unmarried or the Wife of the King 's eldest Son and Heir or to slay the Chancellor Treasurer or the King's Iustices of the one Bench or the other Iustices in Eyre or Iustices of Assise and all other Iustices assigned to hear and determine being in their Places and doing their Offices But I will do it by laying before you so much of the late Act of Parliament as relates to my purpose which that I may give the greater light strength and vigour unto I shall likewise represent to you the Act of the 2 Parl. of Queen Mary which was held in the first Year of her Reign that by your Observation thereupon in what different Terms and enlarging Expressions of Power the Princess of Orange was made declared and enacted Queen from those by which Philip was precluded and shut out from the having or exercising the Regal Power even when he was honoured with the Regal Stile and Dignity you may easily and fully know that the whole Sovereignty and Regal Power and Jurisdiction were in the late Princess whereas no part of them was allowed to Philip For at the same time and by the same Statute when and by which Philip had the Royal Stile Title and Honour given and imparted unto him and was constituted and pronounced King elevated above the Quality of a Subject which a King or Queen Consort are not it was ordained and enacted That the Queen might and should solely and as sole Queen use have and enjoy the Crown and Sovereignty of and over all these Realms Dominions and Subjects with all the Preeminencies Prerogatives Dignities Authorities Iurisdictions and Honours thereunto belonging c. And that no Right or Claim of Sovereignty should be given come or grown unto the said Philip over these Realms and Dominions But now the Act of Settlement in and by which a Donation is made of the Crown and Royal Dignity to the Prince and Princess of Orange runneth in a much other and far different Stile For after that Assembly had assumed and usurped to it self a Right and Authority of disposing and bestowing the Crown of this Kingdom and after they had in their signal Goodness Condescention and Bounty made a Donation of it and of the Sovereign and Royal Dignity to the Prince and Princess of Orange declaring that thereby they did become our Sovereign Liege Lord and Lady King and Queen of England c. they then further add to those Princely Persons the Royal Estate Crown and Dignity of these Realms with all Honours Stiles Titles Regalities Prerogatives Iurisdictions and Authorities to the same belonging are most Fully Rightfully and Entirely invested incorporated united and annexed So that we may by comparing the Communication of the Royal Name Stile and Dignity made by the former Act with the Conveyance of the same with the subjoined and annexed Jurisdiction c. made by the later Act come to understand that the whole Sovereign Royal Power and Authority over these Realms became vested in the Princess as well as the Prince of Orange which they were not in Philip but only in Queen Mary But to all that which I have already advanced I go on further to add That even on the Principles of the Gentlemen of the two Revolutional Parliaments the whole Sovereignty was not only as wholy and as entirely in the Princess of Orange as it was in the Prince but that it was one and the same Individual Sovereignty though lodged in two different and distinct Persons and I must withall say That though they were Two in genere Physico in the Predicament of Substances yet they were but One in conspectu Legis in the esteem and account of the Law The Royalty and Legal Authority was not divided between them one Share falling to the Lot of the Prince and another becoming the Portion of the Princess but it was the same entire undivided numerical Sovereignty in them both For this the Act of Settlement doth as plainly declare as Words can express it namely That the Prince and Princess of Orange being become our King and Queen that therefore in and to their Persons are the Regal Estate Crown c. fully entirely invested incorporated united and annexed And therefore all Commissions Grants and the many other Exercises of Sovereignty were ordained to be and have accordingly been in both their Names Nor did that Union and Conjunction of their Names in all Cases wherein the Royal Authority did or could exert it self proceed from a Contribution of Regal and Sovereign Efficacy and Authority which each of them gave to every Act of Jurisdiction both clubbing those distinct Shares and Parts of Regal Power which they possessed separately and by Moyeties but it had its Foundation in and flowed from that numerical Unity of Regal Power Authority and Jurisdiction which they stood vested with as one legal Sovereign though two physical Persons In a Word though William and Mary were two several and distinct individual Persons of the human Species they were but un Roi one singular King in their Politick Station And to place iâ— beyond being contradicted by any reasonable and discreet Man that the Sovereignty was as fully in her as in him and that it was but one and the same Sovereignty lodged in both not only all the Acts flowing from the executive Part of the Government do run
be a Parliament notwithstanding the Death of the late Princess nor can either the Wit or the Malice of Man invent and produce more and therefore I shall represent them in all the fairest Colours of Beauty and Strength that they are capable of having put upon them and then I shall give those irresistable Answers to them that Men must sacrifice Reason to Passion and prefer Darkness to Light that can have the Face to alledge them again in behalf of the Westminster Iuncto's remaining to be a Parliament The first is That though by the Act of Settlement there was a Donation made of the Crown to William and Mary and the whole and compleat Sovereignty placed and settled Joyntly in them both as one Regal Head of the Kingdom yet by the same Act The entire and full exercise of the Royal Power and Government was only to be in and to be executed by William in the Names of them both And therefore that the issuing forth of the Writ by which this Parliament was called and had a legal Existence and Being given unto it being an Act of the executive Part and Power of the Government and done by William alone in persuance of that Right and Authority vested in him by the Act of Settlement and he still surviving that consequently this Parliament surviveth also and will continue so to do until he either dissolve it by an Exertion of his Sovereign Regal Authority or until it come to be dissolved by his Death which when it comes I do suppose the Gentlemen of the Club in St. Stephen's Chapel will not be so frontless as not to acknowledge it to be a Demise Now to this Objection I shall take the Liberty and be at the Pains of returning three Answers and all of them evidently Clear and demonstratively Satisfactory The first is That it is not the bare having the Right of executing the Regal Power and Government that enableth a Person to give Being to a Parliament but it is the whole and entire Sovereignty vested in such a Person and then exerted in some executive Act that can and doth give a legal Existence unto it That is every Act that is or can be constitutive of a Parliament must have its Foundation and flow and result from the whole Sovereignty before the exercise and application of such an Act in the issuing out of Writs can in that way of Power that is meerly executive be capable of giving a Legality to what is done And therefore the most Rightful King that is and who hath both the whole and entire Sovereignty and the legal Authority and Power of executing it fully and inherently lodged and vested 〈◊〉 him may nevertheless command and do Things illegal and arbitrary if he extend his executive Power in commanding and doing those Things which by the Rules of the Constitution and the Laws of the Land do lie out of the Verge of his Royal and Sovereign Power For every act that a Prince exerteth his Authority in and about must first lie within the Circle and Precinct of his Sovereign and Legal Power before his Exercise of his Authority in and concerning it can be Lawful and Justifiable otherwise all Exercises of Executive Royal Power though by the most legitimate and lawful King are so far from being legal Acts that they are Acts of force and violence No Man will deny but that King James was a Lawful and Rightful King and that he had both the entire Sovereignty and the executive Power of Government fully and legally vested in him and yet the Convention in their Act of Donation of the Crown to William and Mary and which Act stands confirmed by this Parliament do not only declare that the Power to which he pretended of dispensing with the Laws or the execution of the Laws by Regal Authority was illegal and that his issuing out a Commission for erecting the late Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes and all other Commissions and Courts of the like Nature are illegal and pernicious Not to mention that large Roll of many Exeâ—â—ises of his executive Power which they do there declare to have 〈◊〉 also illegal but they make assign and lay them down as the Grounds Reasons and Motives why they withdrew their Allegiance from him and abdicated and renounced him Now when the present Parliament was called the Prince of Orange had no Sovereign Power distinct and separate from the Sovereign Power that was vested in the Princess but the entire Sovereignty was incorporated in them both Joyntly as one political Head And therefore there being an Abatement by her Death of the Validity of those Writs by which this Parliament both received its Being and was supported and upheld in it it unavoidably followeth That the Parliament became thereupon actually dissolved through the ceasing of the Legal Authority of the Writs upon which its Existence depended For her Sovereignty being once absolutely necessary to give Vertue Vigour and Authority to those Writs and to make them good in Law and operative to the Ends for which they were issued forth and that Sovereignty of hers being wholy departed the Writs and they thereupon in Law being become Nullities it naturally and uncontroulably follows that through the Nullity that by her Death hath overtaken those Writs that which was once a Parliament upon their Hypotheses of Government is also become cassed disabled and annulled from remaining one any longer For as the Author of the Letter to a Friend in the Country hath very well observed It is not Sovereignty in genere that preserveth the Life Power and Authority of a Parliament but it is the Sovereignty of the same individual Royal Person that gave Validity and Efficacy to the Writs by which it was at first called For otherwise as a King never dyes so no Parliament could ever be dissolved by the Death of any nor could any Thing dissolve a Parliament but his pronouncing it to be so that first called it By our Law the King is immortal he never dyeth the King liveth over 〈◊〉 the Regal Dignity and Power do always subsist though there be a Change of the Persons in whom it was inherent 1 Com. 177. 11 Rep. 7. 21 Ed. 4 c. so that according to our Law there is never a Cessation of the Sovereignty but only a Cessation of this or that individual Subject or Person in whom while he survived it was incorporated and inherent So that upon the whole unless you can make William alone to be both William and Mary and can render one single individual Person to be two the Sovereign that we have noâ— is not the same identical Sovereign that we had before the Death of the late Princess And by consequence this Parliament mast in Law be actually dissolved seeing its whole Being and Existence depended upon the Life of the Sovereign we had then and that preclusively from all legal Capacity and Possibility of borrowing a Duration and Continuance in its Existence
therefore proved this Parliament to be in Law dissolved beyond the possibility as well as suspition of having any just and reasonable Answer made and returned to what I have said I cannot in duty to my Country and Posterity forbear adding something of and concerning the Criminalness of those Persons in both Houses who since the Death of the late Princess have coninued to sit and act under the Name and Sâ—ile and with the pretended Power and Authority of a Parliament and to imprison the Persons and to dispose of the Properties of the Subject and Free-born People of England And I am not ignorant how that besides the Hazards I shall thereby expose my self unto unless I get to the other side of the great Ditch I shall likewise be esteemed guilty of Rudeness as well as of ill Breeding in bestowing upon them the Titles and Appellations and in treating them in the manner that they deserve And therefore whatsoever Names of Epithets I may unavoidably be obliged to dignify them with as they claim and challenge the being a Parliament and thereupon usurp an Authority of invading and breaking in upon the Liberties and of alienating transferring and giving away the Estates of the People and that to a degree and measure unpresidented in all former Ages and which no lawful Parliament ever ventured upon or thought consistent with the Duty that they owed to those whom they represented and by whom they were entrusted to act for their Safety and Advantage and not for their Impoverishment Enslavement and Ruin yet neither will I forget what becomes my own Character nor what is due to them answerable to their several and respective Conditions and Qualities abstracting only from their being a Parliament and much less will I borrow any of that undecent unclean and ribaldry Language to give them which was not without demerit thrown upon the Rump when the lampooning of it was for a great while made the Sport and Divertisement of the Kingdom For the wost terms I will allow my self to use shall be to call a Spade a Spade and to fasten upon them the Characters and Titles which Law and Reason instruct and authorise me to give them and which our English Dialect enables me to do and which I am sure ought in Justice to be so far from being held and accounted Scandalous that it falls below being piquant and keeps within the Limits and Precincts of modesty The first Thing then which they are hereby become guilty of is their having rendered the continuance of the Session of all Parliaments for the future uncertain and arbitrary For by their destroying all the legal Security we have of defining and determining the period of a Parliaments Right of remaining to sit and act they have done what they can to make the Session of any Parliament perpetual at least arbitrary unless it come to be turned out of the House by Violence and armed Force as Oliver 1653. drove away the Rump For the tenor of the Writ by which a Parliament is called being all the legal Security we have both for the Declaration of the use and end it is called for and for the giving Power Strength and Authority for its whole legal Existence it undeniably follows That whensoever it goes beyond the Boundaries and Confinements of that Writ that from thence forward the time of their sitting is made arbitrary and put out of the Power of the Law to determine And a Parliament being equally if not more dissolved by a Demise in the Sovereign by whose Regal Power it was raised than it is by any King 's pronouncing it dissolved in the Virtue of his Sovereign executive Power it naturally follows That this Assembly may not only as well but better refuse to dissolve upon William's pronouncing and declaring them dissolved than it hath withstood the being dissolved by the Death and Demise of Mary So that by the President of these Mens continuing to sit it is put out of the Power of the Prince unless backed by force as well as out of the Power of the Law to dissolve a Parliament And it is but for Five hundred People to get in the customary and usual way into St. Stephen's Chapel and they are then as safe as in an enchanted Castle and may there sit act and reign as long as they please and that with a Despoticalness becoming the Grand Seigniors of the Republick And having superceded the Law and manumitted themselves from the Authority of it it is but for them to bribe the Mob or wheedle the soft-headed People of the City to come down to Westminster to be their Guard and then they will sit encircled and fenced against the military Power of the King as well as against his Sovereign Regal and Executive Authority And seeing the present Assembly has thought fit to continue and act as a Parliament in contempt and defiance of the Law and in a direct transgression of all the Limits and Boundaries that it had set them and have put themselves out of the reach and power of coming ever to be dissolved by Law I have only this Advice to give them That they would gain Capt. Tom and his Legions to befriend and protect them and then the great Hero of the Age will find it more hazardous though in the Head of his invincible Dutch to attack them or to interrupt disturb and determine their sitting than ever Don Quixot found it to combat the Wind-mills But waving being further pleasant upon so melancholy a Theme and Subject as this is I will only add that by the Example which the present Juncto which stiles it self a Parliament has made for all those that shall be assembled hereafter both the whole Constitution and all the Laws of England that relate to the calling regulating and determining the Sittings of Parliaments are plainly subverted and overthrown which may be of that fatal consequence to Posterity as no Words can serve fully to express The next Crime therefore whereof they were accusable for continuing to sit and act as a Parliament since and notwithstanding the Death of the late Princess is That they have thereby broken and falsified all that Trust which was placed and reposed in them by their Country Now a Trust is or at least should be one of the most sacred Things of the World because not only much of all the Intercourse that is among Men depends upon it but because it is the Bafis of every Society and the Foundation of the Fabrick of all Governments be the Kind and Species of them what it will And by how much the Trust is the more extensive and great by so much it is in Justice as well as Honour to be the more punctually observed and persued and the breach of a Trust does not only imply and include Falsehood and Infidelity in him that violateth it but it imports and involves the blackest Treachery towards those that had reposed their Confidence in them Now the Members of the
House of Commons are not only to represent those that elect them and Millions more but they become constituted and formal Deputiei with whom the whole People of England deposite and lodge all their Concerns For at first and during a long time all the Free-men of England had a Right in their respective Shires Cities and Burroughs of chusing those that were to represent them in Parliament till in the time of Hen. 6. it came to be ordained That because the Election of Knights had been with great Outrages and excessive Number of People of which most were of no Value and yet pretended a Voice equivalent to worthy Knights and Esquires whereby many Riots and Manslaughters were and were likely to be that therefore from thence forward the Knights of Shires should be chosen by People dwelling in the Counties every one having Lands or Tenements of 40 s. Value per Annum But though only those of that yearly Value are now allowed to be capable of chusing Knights of Shires yet the Concerns of all others as well as those are put into their hands Nor are they the small and trifling Concerns of the Kingdom that come to be consigned unto and trusted with the Members of the House of Commons but they are those mighty and momentuous ones which may affect their Liberties and Lives as they always will and do their Fortunes and their Estates Which most of the Electors in England in all likelihood do little think of as appeareth by the moral and intellectual Qualities of many of those whom they elect and return Nor do most of those that chuse Members to Parliament act so much under the Conduct Influence and Sway of their own true Interest as upon the Motives either of Party Faction and Bigottry or of Entertainments Treats and petty Recompences Nevertheless whosoever they are that come to be chosen they are immediately constituted the Trustees of the People and accordingly have their Names inserted in Indentures annexed to the Writ importing the Power given unto and the Trust reposed in them by the Free-holders or Burgesses persuant and answerable to the tenor of the Writ which both gave Authority for making the Election and expressed the Duty and Power of those that should be elected Now how treacherously as well as dishonourably have the Members of this Meeting which continue to sit and act as a Parliament departed from and openly violated all that Confidence and Trust which were reposed in them by those that chose them For whereas the People only intrusted and impowered them to represent unto and to do with William and Mary and meerly to consent to such Things as should be agreed upon and ordained in the Parliament of William and Mary and to no other they by a most reproachful Breach both of their own Faith to the People and of the Trust which the People devolved upon and reposed in them have continued to consent with William alone And though by the Death of the late Princess all the Power Authority and Trust conveyed unto and lodged with them by the People did fully and wholy cease and expire yet they with an unparalelled Infidelity go on to sit and act in the Names and as the Assignees of the People of England as if the Authority committed to them by the Assigners were still good and authentick and in its full vigour and force And I am loath to say how much many of them have hereby disabled and incapacitated themselves from being trusted again or what Opinion the thinking part of Mankind will have of the Free holders and Burgesses of England if after they have been so grosly and in a matter of this weight and moment deceived by these Men once they shall be so ridiculously and contemptibly weak as ever to place Confidence Trust and Power in the hands of many of them again There are two other Crimes vastly more heinous than those I have mentioned whereof they are become notoriously and scandalously Guilty in their continuing to sit and act as a Parliament since and after they became in Law dissolved by the Death of the Princess of Orange But they being of so high a Nature as may affect their Estates Honours Lives and their Posterity unless the Nation has more Mercy and forgiveness than they have had Wisdom I shall therefore do little more than Name them least should I proceed to speak of them in a Language either suitable to the Nature of the Offences or in proportion to my own and every honest Man's Resentment and Indignation I might not be able to keep within the Bounds of temper and moderation and those Measures of deference to them as they are Gentlemen which I will always confine my self unto The Crimes I mean are the Exercises of an usurped Power both in disposing away and alienating the Properties and Estates of the Subjects and in preparing and concurring unto Bills relating to many other Things as well as Money which is the executing the whole Power that belongs to a legal Parliament in the order and degree which appertains to the House of Commons in the matter of Legislation And were another to give the Character of those Transgressions Robbery and Treason would be the modestest terms he would express and describe them in And undoubtedly he would endeavour to raise and inhance the guilt of them by shewing how this Assembly doth both Plunder us and arbitrarily impose Laws upon us by virtue of a pretended Warrant under our own hands whereas the Indenture by which we vested them with a Power over our Persons and Fortunes is out of date and expired and become cancelled and null in Law since the 28th of December last But so much lying aâ— hand with every Man of common and ordinary Sense to be said on these Heads I will say no more upon them but will only add That what I have already laid before you on this Subject though spoken de Parliamento of the Parliament yet it is not intended by me nor ought to be interpreted by others as if it were meant de singulis Membris Parliamenti of every Member of the Parliament For I do both believe and know That there are a great many as worthy and deserving Gentlemen within those Walls as any in the Kingdom are and that they continue not to sit there from the Belief that this is a Parliament but that they may prevent your Whartons Montagues Smiths c. from ruining the Nation who would be sure to remain to sit and act in the Quality of a Parliament should others withdraw A President whereof we had heretofore in that Rump which continued to sit as a Parliament after they had drove away Four parts of Five of their Members And these honourable and worthy Gentlemen whose Names I am obliged to conceal have not only sufficiently attoned for their Fault in sitting and acting since the Death of the late Princess but they have merited the Thanks of the Nation by their