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
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
First they had a legal Right to continue to sit until both themselves should consent that they might be dissolved and until an Act were past for their dissolution I do confess that the Statute 1640. which I have mentioned was one of the greatest Encroachments upon the Regal Power that ever was and therefore in my Opinion was void in it self because of the direct repugnancy in which it lies to the Essential Rights of the Sovereign and of its Irreconcilableness to those Incidents which are inseparable from Royal Power And as it proved by the Event The day that King Charles gave the Royal Assent to that Bill he put the Scepter out of his own hand and the Sword into the hands of his Enemies Which made the Earl of Dorset salute the King the next Morning after his passing the Bill by the Stile of Fellow Subject because he had by that Act transferred Crown Sword and Scepter to the Parliament And Archy the King's Fool being asked whether the King had done well in passing that Bill Answered That he knew not whether the King was the greater Fool to pass it or they the greater Knaves to ask it And I have been told that the greatest Lawyers at that time in the Kingdom said That it was void in it self And indeed the Law presupposeth that all the Grants and Concessions of the King are to be construed to be made with this Proviso That they are granted salvo jure Coronae But to proceed in what I have undertaken to lay open and demonstrate namely That supposing the King to have been legally and justly Abdicated and Deposed and that his Son the Prince of Wales was rightfully and lawfully Barred and Precluded upon the Score and Foot of Supposititiousness from succeeding immediately to his Father though all that was done Traiterously and Rebelliously yet this Parliament ceased to exist and became dissolved by the Death of the Princess of Orange For these very Gentlemen will not deny neither can they upon their own Principles that upon the Abdication of the King and the Exclusion of the Prince of Wales the Princess of Orange became immediately vested in the Sovereignty as having therein an Estate Tayle unless she had been shut out by some Act or Statute expresly made to exclude and barr her though indeed such a Statute would have been in it self void and treasonable For according to the standing known and acknowledged Laws of this Kingdom the Crown of England upon every Voidance of the Throne is to descend to the next lineal and immediate Heir Female as well as Male and the said Heir according to their own disloyal Hypotheses unless barred by some Act of Parliament becomes actually vested in all the Rights of the Sovereignty Accordingly we have not only a Law in force at present by which it is declared that the Law of the Realm is and ever hath been and ought to be understood that the Kingly and Regal Office of this Realm and all Dignities and Prerogatives Royal c. being invested either in Male or Female are be and ought to be as fully wholy absolutely and entirely deemed judged accepted invested and taken in the one as in the other c. 2 Par. 1 Mar. cap. 1. but we have also another Statute in actual being stiled an Act of Recognition that the Crown of England is lawfully descended to King James viz. the First his Progeny and Posterity which containeth the Words following That we being bound thereunto by the Laws of God and Man do recognize and acknowledge that immediately upon the Dissolution and Decease of Queen Elizabeth the late Queen of England the Imperial Crown of the Realm of England and of all the Dominions and Rights belonging to the same did by inherent Birth-right and lawful and undoubted Succession descend and come to your most Excellent Majesty as being Lineally Iustly and Lawfully next Heir of the Blood-Royal of this Realm c. So that nothing can be more demonstratively Evident than that upon whatsoever Hypotheses or Principles the Conventionists and those who have succeeded them in this Parliament have acted yet that immediately upon the Voidance of the Throne by the abdication of the King and the barring the Prince of Wales to succeed the whole Royal Power became vested in the Princess of Orange And though the exercise and execution of that Power came to be lodged in the Prince her Husband yet that it was in the Administration of the Power of Sovereignty which by the Laws appertained unto and was essentially stated in her which they neither did nor pretended to take from her but the whole which they assumed and took upon them a Right to do was to make a Donation Communication and Conveyance of the same Royal Dignity with all its Powers Prerogatives and Jurisdictions unto him And whereas therefore the Regal Power was owned and acknowledged to reside likewise in the Princess thence it was that her Name was used in the whole executive Part of the Government and that not in Compliment and meerly to testify Respect and Deference but as indispensably Necessary on the foot of the Sovereignty Regal Authority and Power whereof she stood indefeasably seised possessed and vested So that unless her Name had been mentioned in all the executive Acts of Government all those Acts would have been in themselves void illegal and null through the want of the Stamp and Impression upon them of a Person that stood cloathed with the Sovereignty And as to that separating in the late Princess of Orange the exercise of the Regal Power from the Royal Dignity and from the Jurisdictions and Authorities belonging to the same it not only looks like unto and indeed is a plain and manifest Contradiction but it was done in revival of that old Republican and Traiterous Proposition and Notion of distinguishing and severing between the King's Person and his Authority and was intended by the crafty Suggestors of it for the Service of a Commonwealth Design when an Opportunity and a convenient Season do offer For if one Parliament can take the entire and full Exercise of the Royal Power and Government from and out of the hands of a Queen whom themselves acknowledge to have been vested in the Royal Dignities with all the Honours Stiles Titles Regalities Prerogatives to the same belonging another Parliament may by the same Right and with the like Justice take the whole executive Power and the entire Administration of the Government from any King or Queen whatsoever and may place it in both or in either of the Houses or in whom else they please So that a King of England may come in time and by this President if allowed cannot avoid it to be a meer Pageant a King having a glorious and guilded Title but made wholy useless to all the great Ends and Purposes of one and who will serve only to be gazed upon to have the Knee bowed to him and to be made a publick Mockery and
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
from the Life of any other though of one then vested with the Sovereignty if he was not sole and alone Sovereign But to advance to my second Answer to the forementioned Objection I do say that at some Times and upon some Occasions the executive Power of the Government hath been by Acts of Parliament transferred unto and settled upon those who had no Share or Portion in the Sovereignty and Regal Dignity I will not enquire whether it was done either wisely or legally it being enough for my purpose that it has been done and that oftner than once Of which the first Instance and Example I will assign is that of the 10th Year of Rich. 2. and the 20th Year of his Age For a Parliament being then held and having found that during his Minority there had through the ill Council and Advice of some Persons that were much in his Favour and Confidence been many and great Miscarriages in the Government they thereupon prepared a Bill which upon their obtaining the Royal Assent unto it became an Act or Statute wherein they awarded a Commission to Twelve several Peers and others of great Wisdom and Fidelity giving them Power and Authority in all Things concerning the King's Houshold Courts of Iustice Revenue and every thing else that concerned the good of the Realm to put in execution and finally determine for the Honour of the King Relief of the People and the better Government of the Peace and Laws of the Realm and this Commission to remain in force for a Year at the end whereof the King would be of Age. Now I suppose that no Man will have the Folly as well as the Impudence to say that the Sovereign and Regal Power was vested and inherent in those Commissioners and yet they were possessed of and had thereby given unto them the whole executive Power of the Government So that how much soever this was or at least looks like a Derogation of the Crown an Usurpation upon the Royal Power and a Disherison of the King yet we find it hath been awarded authorised and enacted by a Parliament which demonstratively sheweth That the executive Power of the Government has not only been thought separable but has been actually separated from the Sovereignty and Regal Dignity And consequently that the Prince of Orange's having the full and the sole Exercises of the Regal Power given unto him by the Act of Settlement and his having in the virtue thereof issued out the Writs for the calling of this Parliament doth not entitle it to a Continuance or a Right to sit after the Death of the late Princess there being now a Change and Alteration in the Sovereignty of what it was at the time of calling the said Parliament and before the Death of Mary Forasmuch as the Regal Dignity which was then incorporated in two natural Persons though only one political is now become vested in one single Individual one But the second Instance which I shall mention is yet both more plain and more directly home to the Matter and Subject which I am upon and that is the Statute of the 17 Car. 1. for the calling and holding Triennial Parliaments in which it was ordained and enacted That if the King did not by such a time as was there expressed issue out his Writs for the calling and assembling of a Parliament that then upon such a Failure of the King 's in the executive Part of the Government the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper for the time being and so onwards to others till in case of the Neglect of all those whom they there mention and do both empower and require to do it they give Authority to the Freeholders themselves to meet at or before such a day and to chuse and elect Members Now it will not be denied but that as the Right of calling Parliaments is one of the most noble inherent and essential Prerogatives of the Crown so the exertion of this Sovereign Royal Power in the sending forth of Writs for the actual chusing and assembling of one is one of the most eminent and illustrious Acts and Exercises of the executive Power of Government And here by a Statute introductive of a new Law which had no Foundation in the Common Law and which was besides very derogatory to the Crown was there a Power of issuing out Writs for the calling and assembling of a Parliament transferred unto and devolved upon such as had nothing of the Sovereignty and Regal Dignity Now if through the King 's failing to call a Parliament within the time which was prefixed and limitted by that Act the Lord Chancellor or any of those that were empowered to call it upon the King's neglect to do it should have issued out Writs in persuance of the said Act for the calling and assembling of one all which in fact might very well have been seeing we are to suppose nothing in Statutes to have been idle and impertinent Yet any such Parliament and so called would have been as much and as really dissolved by the Death of the King as if the Writs for the calling of it had been issued out by himself and by his own Personal Authority and Command For through their being called by an Exertion of the King 's Regal and Sovereign Power though applied and exercised by one distinct from him and through the Writs being issued forth in his Name whosoever were the Issuers of them and through the Members being chosen in the Virtue and Persuance of those Writs and through their coming together entrusted by the Electors to confer with the King about the quadam ardua Regni such a Parliament upon the Death of the King in whose Name and Time it was chosen could not escape the being dissolved So that nothing can be more alien to the Matter under debate as well as weak in it self then to pretend because the Prince of Orange is yet Living in whom the Exercise of the Government was at the time of the issuing forth of those Writs by which this Parliament was called that therefore the Parliament it self remains still in Being and is in Law indissolved Seeing in this Case it is not in whom the Right and Power resided to put forth exercise and apply the Sovereignty that the Duration Continuance and Existence of a Parliament does bear and depend but in whom the full and entire Sovereignty and Regal Dignity was then vested and settled preclusive of all others And I am sure that no Man who stands not a Candidate for a Preferment in Bedlam will say That the whole and full Sovereignty was then in William to the barring and excluding of Mary But to add a third Answer to the foregoing Objection I do say That the very placing of the Exercise of the Royal Power in the Prince of Orange in the manner it was done by the Convention and as it stands expressed in the Act of Settlement and is confirmed by this Parliament does beyond all contradiction
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
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
the confluence of People when they meet a Billingsgate Especially when in the Place of continuing to be the Guardians of our Rights they prove the Betrayers of them and for Pensions and Bribes sacrifice those to the ambitious and covetous Lusts of an Usurper whose Properties Liberties and Privileges they were chosen to maintain and defend And whensoever they degenerate into this the carrying and maintaining the Name of a Parliament will be so far from preserving unto them the Love Esteem and Reverence of their Country that it will inflame their Rage and quicken and heighten their Revenge For when Parliaments not only forget their own Quality and thereby tempt others to forget also but when they trangress and go beyond all the Limits unto which they are circumscribed and confined by the Constitution and especially when they come to persue Ends directly opposite to those they were at first Erected and Ordained for they will then provoke the People after their Patience is spent and their Pressures increased not only to despise but to disclaim them And when those Assemblies have under the Pretences of vindicating and asserting the Liberties of their Country proceeded to abdicate their King and to bring the Kingdom into an expensive and ruinous War and yet in the mean time have under that Vizard and Mask proved Instruments of bringing the Nation into Poverty and Slavery and of promoting the Tyranny of the Usurper they will thereby exasperate the People how much soever it may be against their future and true Interest not only to abandon the love and claim of Parliaments but to be even desirous to have them annulled and laid aside as judging aliter illorum flagitiis subveniri non posse that they cannot otherwise punish stop and give check unto their Crimes as I have borrowed the words of Tacitus to express it Nor can I better give the Character of the two Revolutional Parliaments and particularly of the Whig Members of them than in the Words of the same Author namely Ut Imperium evertant libertatem praeferunt si perverterint libertatem ipsam aggrediuntur that in order to depose and drive away the King they set up for and made a Shew of acting for Liberty but having compassed that they have assaulted and subverted Liberty it self So that all they protested to have undertook and executed against his Majesty for the Recovery and Security of our National and Legal Freedom was only that by enriching themselves they might bring the Kingdom into Indigency Dishonour and Bondage Nor are all their Votes Resolutions and Acts capable of any other Construction or of having another Inscription over them than that quanto majore libertatis imagine tegebantur tanto eruptura ad incensius servitium the more they flattered us with the Expectations and Hopes of Liberty the more they were intended at least lay in a Subserviency to hasten and augment our Servitude and Thraldom Yet as to all the heinous Miscarriages I have now mentioned I look no otherwise upon them than a Disease and Plague that Parliaments are liable to degenerate into under an Usurper and that under a lawful and legal King they will again recover their sound healthful and athletick Temper And that as they will not cease to be a necessary and useful part of our Constitution so they will always be held worthy of the love and esteem of the People and both held and confided in as the Trustees for their Liberties and the Guardians of their Privileges and Rights Yea many Persons in both those Assemblies which I have reflected upon have offended more through the Example of him they advanced over them than through the efficacy of their own ill Principles and have acted rather under the malignant Influence of the Prince of Orange with whom instead of being punishable to do ill it is meritorious than from their own Inclinations and Choice So that their Faults may be called rather the Vices of the Age than of Men and more the Effects of an unjust Government than of personal Corruption and Pravity And they may be said to have done them rather that they might be in the Fashion than that they approved and liked them For as honest just and honourable Things are only then in most esteem when they are most practised so dishonest and unjust are not thought very disgraceful when they are the Modes of the Court. For it is unlikely but that M. Hungerford might think it a slight and venial Offence to take Twenty Guineas of the Chamber of London as he was Chair-man of the Committee of the Orphans Bill when the Prince of Orange and his Broker Benting are said to have received very large Bribes of the East India Company for their Charter which the House of Commons expected should have been given gratis And undoubtedly the worst Things practised by some have been hitherto winked and connived at by others not out of enmity to their Country but in hatred to the Usurper that by the Mischiefs accompanying Rebellion those Subjects that have only been so weak and foolish as to suffer themselves to be misled may be the better cured of their Disloyalty And that by what they feel and suffer under an unnatural Intruder into his Uncle and Father in Law 's Throne they may be the sooner and more effectually converted to their Rightful Sovereign And as for those who have practised those Crimes from Inclination and corrupt Temper they serve to shew what a miserable Government this is where either a few little profligate Wretches or such of higher Rank as are the most vitious and depraved in their Country come to make a Figure as if they were a needful part of the State And to fill those Seats Places and Posts which used under good Reigns and during the Sovereignty of Rightful Princes to be both the Badges and Rewards of Vertue and Desert Nor ought we to despair but a time will come when the Nation will so far recover its Wits as well as its Loyalty as to make the Punishment of those Miscreants and Assassinates of their Country a terrour to all others from offending hereafter in the like kind But though Parliaments have either originally from the first Frame of our Government or by acquisition from Royal Grants obtained that Room Place and Share in our Constitution as gives them a great honourable and necessary Figure in the English Government and whereof no King can deprive them while he acteth legally and according to the tenor of our Laws yet they are so far from having an universal unlimitted and arbitrarious Power that besides those Restrictions and Limitations which they are under by our Statute and Common Laws whereof hereafter they do also stand confined and regulated by the Nature and Quality of the very Constitution as to all the great Ends and principal Exercises of Parliamentary Power For though Government taken in the whole complex of it cannot safely subsist and much less provide against
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
some Judges eluded and we have not had the speedy and full Benefit of them but there was never a Law before these unhappy and disloyal Parliaments made one by which we were to be robbed of our Liberties without a Forfeiture of them and be made Prisoners without cause For by those Repeated Acts by which they suspended the Habeas Corpus Law they turned every English Man out of his Birth-right and stript him of the most valuable Blessing and Privilege of which he stood vested and possessed by the Fundamental Laws of the Government And by the Authority which they took upon them to conveigh to the Usurper a Power of imprisoning some and detaining them in Custody without either shewing Cause or allowing the Injured those Reliefs reserved for us in the Constitution he and his Ministers might have imprisoned One hundred thousand if they had pleased to say they suspected so many And that more were not thrust into Goals than there were was not from a narrowness of Power given to the Prince of Orange to whom they never gave any Thing confined within the bounds of Discretion and Modesty no more than of Justice but from a Scarcity of honest Men at that time in the Nation to merit his Jealousy And it doth deserve your Observation That by their suspending the Habeas Corpus Act they not only also suspended Magna Charta and the Petition of Right but they shut us out both from the Benefit of the whole Common Law so far as it related to Liberty and from all the Succours and Advantages to which we stood entitled by the Essentials of the Constitution upon which the Common Law is only a Comentary For by all these we had a Right either to sue out a Habeas Corpus or to betake our selves to some of the other Methods as those de homine repleviendo de odio atia c. which the Laws had provided for the Vindication and Recovery of our Freedom But by one Blow we were barred the relief and help of all the Laws of England and were not only brought into a State of Bondage and Villainage but were put into a worse Condition than Bondsmen and Villains are Seeing the Lord of a Villain could not command another to imprison his Villain without cause as appears in the two Book Cases of the 7 Ed. 3. fol. 50. and 32 Ed. 3. fo 253. But the Prince of Orange had a Power given him to require his Secretaries or the Members of his Privy Council to imprison whomsoever he or they pleased without the assigning of his Cause for it save that they thought fit to suspect them And whereas Villains when thrown into Prison by their Lords were not barred the suing out of a Habeas Corpus or of using some other legal means for the Recovery of their Liberty many of the Peers Gentry and Free-men of England have by two several Acts of these Revolutional Parliaments been precluded from all ways and means of regaining their Freedom in a course of Law and thereby were reduced during the time of the force and operation of those Statutes into a worse State than that of Slaves and Bondmen And it would seem they had a mind by those Acts to establish and confirm the Usurper's Conquest over the Kingdom and to make us as much his Vassals as the Lloyds and Burnets have endeavoured to render us and to the disgrace of the Nation have hitherto escaped the being impeached for it And as these Parliaments have in their Actings towards the People trangressed all the Bounds to which they were circumscribed and confined by the form and quality of the Constitution so they have departed more extravagantly from all the Fundamental Rules of our Government in those Things which they have acted traiterously and rebelliously against the King Nor is there so much as one step that they have taken in their Behaviour and Proceedings towards him but what is directly repugnant unto and utterly subversive of the Constitution It is true that by the Nature Kind and Quality of our Government every King of England ought to rule over us as over Free-men and according to those Laws which should at any time be enacted by our Sovereigns by and with the consent of their great Council but it was withall provided and taken care for in the very Mould and Frame of our Constitution that the Person of the King his Crown and Royal Dignity should be always sacred and inviolable I do not say that it was made Lawful for a King to oppress us or to treat us in what manner he pleased but instead of that he was taught by the very Form of our Government that he was to rule over us for our Safety and Good and to govern by such Laws as we should chuse Nor can any King do otherwise without becoming guilty before God both of great Injustice and of Infidelity in the Trust that was reposed in him But in case that through any intellectual and moral Defects in himself or through the Influence and Advice of evil Men about him he should be misled and carried to do otherwise all that is then allowed us is to address God by Prayers and him by Petitions and after our refusing to be our selves the Instruments in executing his Arbitrary and Illegal will both to complain of those that are and to persue all the Methods of Law for getting them punished We always may and ought to pray that our Kings may be good but we are to bear with and patiently to suffer under them if they be bad Bonos voto expetere qualescunque tolerare as Tacitus expresses it And he must be a very weak and unwise King that will not study to carry so as that his People may not wish another in his room But should they either be such bad Men themselves as be inclined in their own Natures to oppress their People or should they be so weak as to be the meer Properties of bad Men admitted into their Confidence like him of whom Tacitus says Cui non Iudicium non odium â—rat nisi indita Iussa who did nothing on his own Judgment and Choice but every thing at the Pleasure and Instigation of his Minions Yet we are to endure it and only to refer the revenging of our Condition to God who can make those Kings that are hurtful to their People either a terrour to themselves through inward Vexation and Horrour while they are here or take them hence and call them to a severe Account at his own impartial and righteous Tribunal Accordingly it hath always been the Opinion of our Lawyers save in Rebellious Times That though the King be under the Directive Power of the Laws yet he is not under the Coercive And suffer me to cite a Passage of Bracton's to this purpose where speaking of the King of England as he is and ought to be by the Constitution he says Nec potest ei necessitatem aliquis imponere
prove that this Parliament was is and became dissolved by the Death of the late Princess of Orange For whereas the Exercise of the Regal Power did not become limitted and confined unto nor settled solely and fully in the Prince of Orange through his being vested in the Sovereignty because on that Foot Foundation and Bottom the whole Exercise and Administration of the executive Part of the Government would have been no less in Mary than it was in William Seeing the Sovereignty Crown and Royal Dignity being incorporated Joyntly in both as one political Ruler it was as much in her as it was in him and whatsoever resulted from it to the one should have accrued from it to the other But he came to be possessed of the Exercise of the Royal Power by a superadded Gift that wâ—s different and contradistinct from that by which he stood vested in and came to inherit the Crown So that from hence we are furnished with a clear and câ—nvincing Argument why this Parliament was in Law dissolved upon the Death of the late Princess namely That the only personal Right which he then had to the Administration accrued to him by a Deputation and was conveyed to him in the way manner and nature of a Warrant of Attorney which being expired and determined by the Death of the aforesaid Princess all that Virtue is by consequence departed from the Writs by which this Parliament was both brought into and kept in Existence For I do suppose that though the Convention thought it safe as well as feasable to settle the Crown and Royal Dignity in William and Mary Joyntly yet they could not be unsensible of what danger it would have been to place the Exercise of the Regal Power in more than one Person because the Administration of the Government would not only have thereby been embarrassed but indeed might have been rendered impracticable through the Differences which might have arisen in and about the Exercise of the executive Power should two Persons have been equally vested in it And as Mary's Title in Tayle to the Crown on the Hypotheses and Principles upon which the Conventionists went would not allow them to barr her from the Sovereignty so the Pride and Haughtiness of William would never have suffered him to submit to the Princess being vested with the sole and full Exercise of the Regal Power nor would have given him the Advantage he has had of impoverishing us and of enriching the Dutch And the weak unthinking People of England who truly loved and esteemed the Princess thought themselves happy and her as great as they could make her in the having her called their Liege Lady Sovereign and Queen but they had not wit enough to consider That all this was but Pageantry and she in the mean time a Queen of Clouts while the executive Power was lodged solely in him and which he put forth imperiously enough towards her as well as arbitrarily towards the People And let me add That by and since the Death of the late Princess William has the Exercise of the Royal Power by another Claim and Title than he had it before For whereas before and antecedently to the Death of the Princess he had no otherwise the sole Right to it than by a Donation contradistinct from that by which he had the Crown and Regal Dignity he now possesseth it as the natural and immediate Privilege Prerogative and Right accruing and resulting from his Sovereignty and Royal Dignity So that by the Extinction of that executive Power or if you please through the Cessation of that Title and Claim by which he formeâ—ly possessed the executive Power this Parliament which received its Being by an Exertion of his executive Power on the foot which he then had it and which neither did nor could in Law subsist a Moment but in the Virtue of that Power as he was then vested in and exercised it must have also ceased and died with it For having then the Exercise of the Regal Power preclusive of the Princess meerly in the way of a Deputation it immediately follows That upon the Expiration of it every Thing which neither had nor could receive from it a permanency of Existence before it did expire but which hourly subsisted by and upon the actual Influence of the Deputation as the Being and Continuance of this Parliament did must of necessity have ceased and expired with and upon the Decay and Determination of that Deputation So that having said enough in answer to this first Objection alledged in opposition to this Parliaments being dissolved by the Death of the late Princess I shall now proceed to the second and examine it with all the speed and brevity I can The Objection then is this namely That by the Death of the late Princess the Sovereignty that was before lodged in William and Mary Joyntly is now become solely and entirely vested in William alone by Right of Survivorship and therefore that through his being possessed as Survivor of the whole Sovereignty that at first gave Life and Efficacy to those Writs by which this present Parliament was called they consequently do and must retain the same Virtue Power and Force which was in them and which they had antecedently to the Death of Mary In reply to which I do in the first place say That the Prince of Orange instead of acquiring by the Death of the late Princess any sole single or individual Interest in the Sovereign Power and Royal Dignity he hath actually lost and forfeited and is become in Law deprived and outed of what he had For admitting all the illegal disloyal and treasonable Proceedings of the Convention and of this other Revolutional Parliament against the King and the Prince of Wales to have been not only lawful just and legal but to have been also necessary and expedient upon those Reasons and Motives laid down in the Declaration of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons assembled at Westminster and by them presented to William and Mary in February 1689. Yet both that Declaration and the Act of Settlement are now in Law and by all the Fundamental Rules of the English Government and Monarchy perfectly exstinguished become void and annulled For admitting that there might be not only Reasons for deposing the King but that he had of himself abdicated the Government and that as thereby the Throne was become vacant so that there was thereupon a Right and Power accruing to them to make a Donation of the Crown and Regal Dignity to William in joynt Partnership with Mary who was in their order of Reckoning next immediate and lineal Heir Yet all the said William did or could obtain hereby is now wholy lost and departed from him and the whole Sovereignty is by Law devolved upon and become vested in the Princess of Denmark by the Death of her Sister Neither could those two Assemblies or any other by what Names soever they should stile themselves barr the said
Existence of the present pretended Parliament upon other Reasons and Grounds than those of Illegalities in the manner of Election of Members and in their Actings when assembled we might also upon those Motives strangely shake the legal Being of it And to name but one which lately fell out since the Death of the late Princess in this Assembly which persevereth to call it self by that Name namely That when a Question was started by the Earl of Nottingham in the House of Lords whether since the Demise of Mary this was a Parliament or not How it was replied by the Earl of P. That it was not a Question fit to be mentioned and less fit to be debated Which besides it importing in it a debarring a Liberty of Speech without which a Parliament cannot be a legal Parliament because not a free Parliament It likewise imported in it That though this Parliament was in Law dissolved yet it must still sit and no Man be allowed to question the Lawfulness of its doing so because of Reasons of State And so the whole Constitution and all the Laws of England must be sacrificed to the Lunatick and Disloyal Bigottry of keeping King James out of his Dominions and from reascending his Throne For that is the whole Paraphrase of the Text of the Necessity of its continuing to sit in order to raise Money for carrying on a vigorous War against France But it being dissolved by the Death of the late Princess before any Bills had passed for the granting of Money it will argue great Sottishness as well as Tameness in the People of England if this Government be not disappointed in that end of their keeping it on foot For those Papers which are published under the Stile of Acts do oblige no Man in duty to pay nor can they authorise any Officer in case of Refusal to distrein They in St. Stephen's Chapel have no more legal Power to dispose of the Property of the Subjects than the Committee of Officers have who sit in the Guard-house by Whitehall And all those Acts of Assesments which they have emitted are but so many Denunciations of War against the People and proclaiming them obnoxious to arbitrary Executions upon their Estates real and personal Such who are so pusillanimous as to chuse to be robbed may submit to it but as no Warrants can legitimate the doing of it so all Men who have Courage to resist they have the Authority of all the Laws of England for the doing of it And as they have no Right of sitting as a legal Court so they cannot be said to take away Mens Goods by any better Name than that of a Company of Banditi nor do People use to be so silly as to part with any Thing to such but when they are too strong to be withstood And I think it was never yet known That Five hundred were powerful enough to rob and plunder above Five millions of Persons What a Noise a few Years ago did the Erection of a Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes beget in the Nation and how strenuously was it improved for the driving the King from his Throne and Kingdom And do we now sit silent under a Company of Men erecting themselves into a Court of Legislation to vote away near the Moiety of every Man's Estate whether he be Laick or Ecclestastick Shall we who were so busy scandalously to Censure and traiterously to endeavour to redress the few and little Miscarriages of our ancient and legal Government suffer with a sottish Tameness those far more and vastly greater of an usurped unlawful and tyrannous one This hath not been the Practice of any People or Age till of ours and of us That of Tacitus being at all times heretofore an infallible Maxim namely That Novae aulae mala aeque gravia sed non aeque excusata a new Government doth not offend with that Connivance and Safety that an ancient might And it is now as much become our Interest to call home the King to relieve us as it is our Duty to restore him to his Right And as it was at no time unlawful to fly to force for rescuing our selves from the Power of an Usurper so it is now become necessary when meliorem in bello causam quam in pace habemus Our Condition will be better in a War than it is in Peace as Tacitus expresseth it And the Establishment of this Man into a King being done by an usurpation of Power which all the Laws of England precluded the Conventionists from that common Saying obtains That de facto factum potest de facto tolli What hath its Existence meerly by Fact may by Fact be lawfully overthrown And as we may be sure That the Prince of Orange who hath so abominably cheated and wronged us already cannot but detest and hate us for the future that of the same Author being unchangeably true viz. Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laseris It is the Nature of Man to hate those whom he hath injured I will therefore bespeak my Country-men as Boadicea did the Ancient Brittains If they will not resolve cadere aut vincere either to perish or to vindicate their Liberties that then viverent servirent let them chuse to Live and be Slaves Only let me add for their Encouragement to assert their Laws and Rights That the Prince of Orange's Affairs in England do magis fama quam vi stare are upheld rather by that Opinion which Men conceived of him before they had an Opportunity to know him than by any Power Strength Interest or new Reputation he has to support himself or them Nay I will say That he is sunk into that Contempt as well as Impotency that all the Power he hath left is only to do hurt but that he hath neither Power nor Authority to do good or to hinder evil So that what Tacitus says of Otho is verified of William Othoni nondum auctoritas inerat ad prohibendum scelus jubere poterat That he may encourage and command Mischief but he is in no Capacity to discountenance and prevent it The very Mob whom by fictitious Lyes and Falshoods of a few Irish being every where burning Houses and cutting Throats he decoyed and enflamed into an insolent and brutal Rage against their Rightful King and who became the Ladder unto and the great Pillars of his Throne having now understood how they were cheated in that and in all Things else they have not only forsook but are justly enraged against him Nor are they only ready to do the same towards him that they did towards the King but they are fully prepared to treat him as the Rabble did Vitellius of whom Tacitus says Vulgus eadem pravitate insectabatur mortuum qua foveret viventem they are as forward to curse and tear him in Pieces as they were formerly to huzza and idolize him Yea even such as do most flatter him do it only in order to deceive and
soft headed Church of England Monarchical Men have suffered themselves to be wheedled by the Republican Whigs into a Conspiracy and Co-operation with them for the destruction of Regal Government And by their having concurred to break the Line of the Descent of the Crown they have made it impossible on the Principles they have acted to assert the Regal Form of Government in any consistency with themselves when they come to be pressed on that hand by the Commonwealth-men For by the same Topicks of Argumentation they may as well be prevailed upon to put by and lay aside any Heir to the Crown as to shut out and debar the Right one For as all that your Democratical People designed by setting up the Man at Kensington was only to make a President whereby to usher in and give countenance to an Attempt against Royalty it self so having compassed their end they are endeavouring all they can to drop that Gentleman and to walk him as fast as they can out of the Kingdom And to be prepared for the effecting of what they have in Projection they are studying by all fraudulent Arts towards the Prince of Orange and by all the Methods of Treachery to their Country to wind themselves into those Posts and Places of Interest Authority and Power by which they may be put into a condition and enabled to accomplish it For though an Elective Monarchy is the worst Government that a People can fall under yet the Republican Whigs will not be willing to allow us so much as that but have in prospect the laying aside Kingship it self For as they know that if the choice of a King were to be made by the Pole they are too few to carry it for one of that Faction by majority of Votes being in themselves a very diminutive and narrow Party and only believed to be numerous because they are more noisy than their Neighbours So they would be loath to have it come to the Saber in the choice of a King as is sometimes practised in the Dyets of Poland the generality of the Faction being dastardly and cowardly though extreamly huffy while they imagine themselves out of the danger of Blows And by that little knowledge I have of them they will always be found more faithless treacherous and worse Friends than daring and brave Enemies But it is hoped that the old Loyalty of the Church of England Party will rouse it self out of that Lethargicalness into which they have been thrown by their Enemies concealed and covered under the Name of Friends and that upon revival and restoration of their former measure of Sincerity and Zeal for Monarchy they will not only obviate and defeat the Designs of the Republicans but make them feel their Resentments for having withdrawn misled and perverted them from ancient Principles And indeed how artfully Zealous and Industrious soever your Trenchards Sommers Riches Clarks and your Commonwealths Men are who being so well known I need not Name them for the extirpating of Monarchy yet they are not very likely to compass the extinguishing and abolishing of that primitive and ancient Government of this Kingdom though they may possibly if longer connived at embroil the Nation and retard the Restoration for a while But that is the most they can effect seeing as they have no large or considerable Interest either in City or Country so they have neither Vertue Honour or any of those Qualities which may gain the People either to esteem or to place confidence in them and much less to follow them with hazard of Lives and Fortunes But in the mean time what becomes true English Men to think of and to do to these Parliaments which have altered and overthrown the Constitution that gave them the Right and Title to all they had either in the Freedom of their Persons or in the Property of their Goods For they that have subverted the Fundamental Laws will much more do the same by other Laws if their Power were but answerable to their Will And they who have disseised the King Prince of Wales and Princess of Denmark of their Right do not out of Principles of Conscience and Justice forbear to treat all Mankind at the same rate Nor have these two Revolutional Parliaments been contented with the altering of the Government which both the Constitution barrs them from all rightful Capacity of doing and which through the Interest that every Subject has in it is the highest Injury and Wrong that can be done to every English Man for whose good Parliaments were originally designed and not for their hurt but these two Parliaments have in Contempt of and with the highest Violation of the very Fundamentals of the Constitution made a Sacrifice to the Man at Kensington of the Freedom and Liberty of our Persons contrary to all the Provisions wrapt up in the Constitution for the preserving and securing them unto us For Sir suffer me to tell you That a Right and Title to the Freedom of our Persons save where we are precluded from that Right by Crimes against the Government or against that Justice which is necessary or convenient to be observed amongst Men doth not accrue and arise unto us either from Magna Charta the Petition of Right or the Statute of Habeas Corpus but it was reserved unto us and we were kept in Possession of it by the very Nature and Frame of our Constitution For our whole Government was founded upon that Supposal and Concession That it was to be a Government of and over Free-men and not of and over Villains and Slaves And the Great Charter and the other Laws which I have mentioned did not create and give us a Right to the Freedom of our Persons but they did only assert vindicate and fence it about They were not Laws of manumission from Bondage but declaratory of our antecedent and inherent Title to Liberty They wrested no new Privilege or Inheritance from the Crown for us they only repossessed us in what we had been illegally and forceably ejected from They do not make us a Title where we antecedently had not one but do only clear up the Title which we had and set it in a brighter Light For we had the same Claim to the Freedom of our Persons before those Laws were made which we have now though through the Fault of those that misled Princes we were sometimes wrongfully outed of it and had not those ready and effectual Remedies for recovering it as we have by Magna Charta and those other subsequent Laws Nor is it unworthy of Remark that though some Kings through the Influence and Advice of some ill Ministers had now and then entrenched and made an Invasion upon that Liberty of our Persons reserved unto us in those Fundamental Rules upon which the Government was established yet Parliaments were always heretofore Advocates and Patrons of the Subjects Liberties Laws relating to the Freedom of our Persons have been in some Reigns and by
quod injuriam suam corrigat emendet cum superiorem non habeat nisi Deum satis erit ei ad paenam quod Dominum expectet ultorem None can correct the King in that he hath no Superior but God and that will be sufficient Punishment that he expect the Lord for his Avenger Indeed the Constitution both instructs Princes for what end we pitched upon this Species and Kind of Regal Government and directs them to rule for the Safety Interest and Prosperity of their Subjects but there is no Original Contract nor Stipulatory Agreement by which it is provided That if Princes do not as they should they do either forfeit their Sovereign Authority or that we may lawfully rebel against and dethrone them Nor do any Presidents or Examples of that kind as those of deposing Edward the Second and Richard the Second shew that it was lawful or a Thing that either the Constitution or subsequent Laws did authorise and countenance but they only declared what a provoked People will sometimes do though it be never so much against their Allegiance and Duty to their King and most highly offensive to God However vivendum est legibus non exemplis we are to live according to the Laws and not according to a few occasional ill Practices and Examples And via facti is not always via juris Nor will the Repetition of evil Things change the Nature of them and render them Justifiable For as Civilians say Multitudo criminum peccantium non parit crimini patrocinium What can be more inconsistent with the Legality of the Abdication than the King 's being vested by the Constitution with such Incidents to Government as lie in a direct Contradiction to our being allowed either a legal or moral Capacity of doing it namely That no act of Parliament can barr the King of his Regality and thereupon that the Allegiance and Fealty of his Subjects to him are indefeasable and that they can neither be lawfully withheld nor transferred from him That the Power and Right of Peace and War are wholy solely and unalienably in the King and that all the Subjects of England cannot make and denounce War Indicere bellum without him as Coke tells us in his 7 Rep. 25. Nor need we go farther for understanding the Nature of our Institution in this matter and for knowing what was involv'd and implied in it relative to the particular before us than to those many Statutes that are Declarative and Explanatory of the meaning of it As that 13 Car. 2. act 6. wherein it is enacted That the Sole Supreme Government Command and Disposition of the Militia and all Forces by Sea and Land c. is and by the Laws of England ever was the undoubted Right of the Kings and Queens of England And that both or either Houses of Parliament cannot nor ought not to pretend to the same nor can or lawfully may raise or levy any War offensive or defensive against his Majesty his Heirs and lawful Successors And that other Act 13 Car. 2. wherein it is ordained That whosoever shall hold that both Houses of Parliament or either House of Parliament have or hath a Legislative Power without the King shall incur the danger and penalty of a Premunire according to the Statute of the 16 Rich. 2. And that other of the same Year of Car. 2. Which made it Treason during his Life to compass imagine invent devise or intend to deprive and depose him from the Stile Honour or Kingly Name of the Imperial Crown of this Realm The President whereof we had 23 Eliz. namely That whosoever shall wish or desire the Death or Deprivation of the Queen that every such Offence shall be adjudged Felony To which I would only subjoyn that known Statute which makes it Treason to take up Arms against the King upon any Pretence whatsoever And to shew the Impudence that always attendeth Disloyalty notwithstanding all that these Parliaments have perpetrated they have suffered all these Laws to remain still unrepealed to remain Monuments of their Treasonable Guilt and to abide Warnings to all Kings that shall come after how little Safe they are under the Fence Covering and Protection of Laws when they have false and treacherous Men to deal with And that which heightens the Crime and enhaunceth the Guilt of those Parliaments is that they have usurped and exerted a Power inconsistent with and subversive of the Constitution in the abdicating and driving away a Prince who was the least chargeable with Miscarriages and Excesses in his Government of any that ever fat upon the Throne For as his greatest pretended Faults were rather Mistakes he was led into by others than Injuries he chose to do of himself so most of them proceeded from an excess of Love to his People and from an Ardour of making them happier than they were willing to be and not from Disaffection to them or a Design to render them miserable Nor did those flight Grievances of which his People so clamourously complained flow from his being a bad King but from the having bad and treacherous Friends about him For though no Prince did ever by Condescention Bounty and Confidence deserve to have had better Ministers and Friends yet with respect to too many about him few Princes ever less had them So that what Tacitus says of one may with a great deal of Truth be applied to his Majesty though not so much to his Dishonour as to the Infamy of those whom he employed and trusted namely That Amicos meruit magis quam habuit He was worthy of faithful Friends rather than had them I would not be thought to intend what I have said of all that had the Honour to be esteemed his Friends Ministers and Servants it being only designed to affect a few of them but they were such as had frequentest and nearest Access to him and greatest Interest in and Influence upon his Councils whom he trusted too much to be well served by them and put himself too much in their Power to have them remain Faithful For that of Tacitus will always hold true Nec unquam satis fida potentia ubi nimia est In a word never did a People run head-long into Rebellion and War upon so few and small Faults in Government and so easy to have been borne with or obviated in modest and legal ways So that had the means which we fled unto for Relief been Lawful whereas they were Criminal and Treasonable in the highest degree yet it was the height of Folly and Madness to use them upon such flight Occasions where the Remedy hath been a Thousand times worse than ever the Disease could have been Common Prudence had we renounced Loyalty should have taught us That Force is never to be practised where Laws and humble Applications would have served and that violent means should not have been used where gentle would have done Non utendum Imperio says Tacitus and I will add
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
Princess of Denmark from her lineal and hereditary Right so long and while she had no way incapacitated and disabled her self to inherit nor had any Causes or Reasons alledged or produced against her for putting her by the Ascent to the Throne in the Order and Rank of Succession which God Nature and the Laws of the Realm had chalked out fixed and determined Nor could the Princess of Denmark depart from and surrender her Legal and Rightful Place and Room of succeeding to the Crown had she been never so inclinable and willing to have done it seeing it comes to her by the Constitution and by the Common and Statute Laws as a Right meerly to possess and enjoy but not to transfer and alienate For the Sovereignty and Regal Dignity descend not upon any King or Queen as an Estate or Property which they may at pleasure part with resign or make away to another but it comes to them as a Trust of which they are indeseasably Tenants for Life and the constituted and limitted Guardians for their next lineal and legal Heirs or Successors So that upon the Principles of all in the two Revolutional Parliaments that are not downright Republicans but who retain a Love and Zeal for Monarchy and the old English Constitution all that accrued to William by the Death of the late Princess is that he is now become a Robber an Usurper over and a Traitor against the Princess of Denmark as he was all those before in reference to the King and that under the highest Aggravations of Ingratitude Treachery and Unnaturalness that could possibly attend such Crimes Nor is he upon the Hypotheses of most who promoted and came into the Revolution any other since the Death of the late Princess than a King de Facto which being interpreted into English is no less nor better than an Usurper while in the mean time by their own Principles the Jus and Right is become settled and vested in the Princess of Denmark And they who are not direct Commonwealths Men if they will not pay a Loyalty Duty and Obedience to King James who is indeed the only Lawful and Rightful King of these Realms they ought if they have any Honour Justice or Conscience to yield them to her Royal Highness Princess Ann Nor do I believe any Man so void of Sense as to talk of William's continuing since the Death of his Wife to possess the Sovereignty by the Curtesy of England which entitleth a Husband in some Ceses to enjoy his Wives Estate for his Life after her decease Seeing as the Crown Throne and Sovereignty of England are both in themselves and descend to those that inherit them as a Depositum and Trust for the Peace Safety and Prosperity of the Kingdom and not as an Estate either real or personal So the Preclusion of King Philip of Spain on the Death of his Wife Queen Mary from all Right Claim and Pretence to the Regal Dignity and Crown shews the Vanity and Ridioulousness of such a Plea and Allegation should any have the Folly and Impudence to start and urge them in Favour and Justification of William's continuing to Exercise the Sovereignty But then I add in the second Place That allowing not only that William is Survivor to the late Princess which these Nations find by daily and woful Experience to be too true but admitting also that through his Survivorship the whole Regal Dignity which was before lodged with him and his Wife joyntly is now come to be vested in him alone yet this will signify nothing in favour of the present Assemblies at Westminster continuing to be a legal Parliament seeing as that they cannot pretend now to sit by any other Claim Title or Right than that by which they were at first called chosen and came together so it being made impossible by the Death of the late Princess in whose Name and by whose Sovereign Authority they were elected entrusted and assembled as well as in the Name and by the Authority of the Prince that they should continue to sit by the same Claim and Title as they did at first it therefore followeth That his Survivorship neither doth nor can advantage them any Thing in this Matter because it can neither give life to that which is dead nor revive that which irrecoverably is extinguished 'T is true he may as Survivor by new Writs give being to another Parliament but he cannot preserve and support this in its legal Existence by reason of the impossibility of continuing that in those Writs which is finally and irrecoverably departed from them namely the actual Sovereignty of the late Princess And according both to all our Laws and all the Maxims of Reason and good Sense for a Parliament to change its Claim and Title of sitting is to acknowledge some where or other a Demise in the Sovereigns that constituted it Yea the very mentioning the Prince of Orange's Survivorship is an Acknowledgment both that there was once a Sovereignty in the Person of Mary and that this Sovereignty which was once there is now departed thence which importing the whole that the Law intends by a Demise the Parliament that then was if we will either speak or act consistently with Law or with good Sense must thereupon be held taken and acknowledged to be dissolved For if it was not by a legal Authority solely wholy and exclusively of all others Resident in Prince of Orange that they met fat and acted at first then they cannot now by his coming as Survivor to be vested in the whole and sole Regal Dignity justify their remaining as a Parliament nor vindicate themselves from being Usurpers over the People in their continuing to sit and act And as they can have no more nor other Power now nor derive it from any other Persons or any other way than they had and derived it from the first Moment of their being elected and assembled together So that being by and since the Death of the late Princess become even physically impossible it is most arbitrary and illegal in them to continue to sit and to act upon that Bottom or any other that they vainly fancy themselves to be settled upon For it being in the Virtue Force and Authority of the Writs as they were at first issued out and according to the Tenor and Importance of the Words in which they were at first written and made authentick and legal that this Parliament came into Being and stood authorized to sit and act so the very mention of Survivorship in Regal Power makes it as plain and certain as any Problem in Euclid is That there is no possibility of either answering corresponding or complying with the Words and Tenor of the Writs or of subsisting and being upheld by the Identical Sovereignty that infused Virtue and Efficacy and stampt Power and Authority upon them and by consequence it immediately follows that since the Princess Death this neither was could be nor is a Parliament Having