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
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
have ventured upon Matters which lay wholy out of their Cognizance and beyond all the Precincts of their Legal Rightful and Parliamentary Power The time was when a House of Commons did so well understand the Limits of their own Sphere and the Boundaries within which they were to move that when lawful Kings have asked and prayed their Advice in matters out of the Circle of their Province they have excused themselves from giving it and have declared that they were Things of so high a Nature and so peculiarly incident to the Royal Dignity that they neither could nor durst meddle with them And therefore when Richard II. asked the Opinion and Advice of the House of Commons about the way and manner of prosecuting the War he was engaged in against France they answered Nec doit nec soloit appertaine al eux mes al Roi They neither ought nor used to belong unto them but the King see the Parliament Roll 6 Ric 2. par 2. pag. 9. And when Edward III. had desired the same Thing of the Commons in reference likewise to his War with France and about the guarding of the Sea Coast the Commons make Answer Quils ne sont charge a councell doner al chose des quel ils n'ont pas cognoisance That they desired not to be charged to give their Advice in a matter whereof they can take no Cognizance see the Parliament Roll of the 13 Ed. 3. par 1. n. 2. The like Answers were made by the House of Commons the 23th of Edw. 3. and the 7th of Ric. 2. And whereas in all the Regal Writs for the calling of Parliaments they are required to meet and come together to give the King their Advice it is always with this express Limitation That he desires their Advise pro quibusdam arduis negotiis nos defensionem Regni nostri Angliae Ecclesiae Anglicanae concernentibus About some Affairs which concern the Defence of himself the Kingdom and the English Church But these Parliaments instead of coming together to Advice and Provide for the Defence or for the Restoration of their Rightful King they first abdicated him and have then impoverished the Nation by maintaining an expensive War to hinder his Return Instead of confining themselves to quaedam ardua Regni they have struck at the King's Person Crown and Dignity and have medled as boldly in changing the Polity of England as if they had been determining about some little Privilege of their own House or had been meerly concerned about the Ejecting or Imprisonment of one of their Members But though all of them have been less or more involved in these Crimes yet many became Accessary to them to prevent worse namely to obviate a civil War and to hinder a Republick upon the next voidance of the Throne And they have submitted both to defile and wound their Consciences that they might testify their Love and Zeal for the Monarchy and cover and conceal their Loyalty to the King Rather than put themselves out of Capacity of asserting and upholding the old English Regal Form of Government when it comes directly to be attacked and of doing the King service when an Opportunity offereth they have been contented to undergo a Stain upon their Honour as well as the having their Loyalty brought under an Eclipse For it comes to pass in these Epidemical and Raging Distempers of Kingdoms as it did in the great Plague of Athens of which Thucydides speaks whereof as most died so those who escaped with their Lives were all left deformed and maimed one losing an Eye and another a Limb but hardly one preserved from visible and disfiguring Defects But while those wilful Crimes in many and human Frailties in all have cut out much work to themselves for Repentance so they will only serve to furnish the injured and good King with a large Occasion and an ample Theater of displaying his Mercy and Grace Nor are there any so heinous Offenders against him whom he is not ambitions as well as ready to forgive if they will but make themselves so far capable of Pardon as to desire and accept it And to have any despair of his Grace provided they will repent and return to their Duty would both more grieve and offend him than all they have done in deposing him and driving him from his Kingdoms Nor doth he question but that most of those who have both refused to have him Reign over them and have been ready to abjure him will whensoever they are converted be not only the most zealous in Loyalty themselves but the forwardest to confirm others in their Fealty Neither will any thing be more pleasing and delightful to the King than to see those love much to whom much hath been forgiven But abstracting from the Disloyalty of that Assembly stiled at present a Parliament and its Nullity on that foot to be legally one and granting to those Gentlemen all their own Hypotheses how treasonable and rebellious soever they be yet I say that according to all those Laws which themselves own and profess to be both under the Obligation and Guidance of they ceased to be a Parliament and became dissolved in Law upon the Death of the late Princess of Orange For admitting the Prince and Princess to have been King and Queen and that they had a Rightful and Legal Authority to call a Parliament and that this Parliament was duly chosen lawfully assembled and fat vested with all the Power of acting in that Capacity that ever any Parliament did yet I do both repeat and affirm it That since the Death of the Princess of Orange they have been no Parliament and have no otherwise continued to possess their Seats and to act in the Quality and by the Stile they have done than by a most illegal and unpresidented Usurpation Of all the Parliaments that ever were none had that seeming Security to make their Sitting everlasting as that which met the Third of November 1640. It having been enacted in favour of the Continuance of that Parliament That it should not be prorogued adjourned nor dissolved but by and with their own Consent and by Act of Parliament And yet all the Lawyers are of Opinion that it became dissolved An. 1648 by the Death of King Charles the First whose Writs had raised it into Being and given Existence to it And accordingly the Parliament of the 13 Car. 2. took it for granted That it was undoubtedly dissolved and determined and thereupon declared and adjudged it to be fully dissolved and determined Cap. 1. Though there had never any Act passed for the dissolving of it and consequently in the Opinion of those who made that Statute 166â— it must have come to be dissolved by the Death of King Charles the First who called it and to advise with whom it assembled and met For as to Oliver's turning those Members forceably out of the House that could be no legal Dissolution if after the Death of Charles the
be a Parliament notwithstanding the Death of the late Princess nor can either the Wit or the Malice of Man invent and produce more and therefore I shall represent them in all the fairest Colours of Beauty and Strength that they are capable of having put upon them and then I shall give those irresistable Answers to them that Men must sacrifice Reason to Passion and prefer Darkness to Light that can have the Face to alledge them again in behalf of the Westminster Iuncto's remaining to be a Parliament The first is That though by the Act of Settlement there was a Donation made of the Crown to William and Mary and the whole and compleat Sovereignty placed and settled Joyntly in them both as one Regal Head of the Kingdom yet by the same Act The entire and full exercise of the Royal Power and Government was only to be in and to be executed by William in the Names of them both And therefore that the issuing forth of the Writ by which this Parliament was called and had a legal Existence and Being given unto it being an Act of the executive Part and Power of the Government and done by William alone in persuance of that Right and Authority vested in him by the Act of Settlement and he still surviving that consequently this Parliament surviveth also and will continue so to do until he either dissolve it by an Exertion of his Sovereign Regal Authority or until it come to be dissolved by his Death which when it comes I do suppose the Gentlemen of the Club in St. Stephen's Chapel will not be so frontless as not to acknowledge it to be a Demise Now to this Objection I shall take the Liberty and be at the Pains of returning three Answers and all of them evidently Clear and demonstratively Satisfactory The first is That it is not the bare having the Right of executing the Regal Power and Government that enableth a Person to give Being to a Parliament but it is the whole and entire Sovereignty vested in such a Person and then exerted in some executive Act that can and doth give a legal Existence unto it That is every Act that is or can be constitutive of a Parliament must have its Foundation and flow and result from the whole Sovereignty before the exercise and application of such an Act in the issuing out of Writs can in that way of Power that is meerly executive be capable of giving a Legality to what is done And therefore the most Rightful King that is and who hath both the whole and entire Sovereignty and the legal Authority and Power of executing it fully and inherently lodged and vested 〈◊〉 him may nevertheless command and do Things illegal and arbitrary if he extend his executive Power in commanding and doing those Things which by the Rules of the Constitution and the Laws of the Land do lie out of the Verge of his Royal and Sovereign Power For every act that a Prince exerteth his Authority in and about must first lie within the Circle and Precinct of his Sovereign and Legal Power before his Exercise of his Authority in and concerning it can be Lawful and Justifiable otherwise all Exercises of Executive Royal Power though by the most legitimate and lawful King are so far from being legal Acts that they are Acts of force and violence No Man will deny but that King James was a Lawful and Rightful King and that he had both the entire Sovereignty and the executive Power of Government fully and legally vested in him and yet the Convention in their Act of Donation of the Crown to William and Mary and which Act stands confirmed by this Parliament do not only declare that the Power to which he pretended of dispensing with the Laws or the execution of the Laws by Regal Authority was illegal and that his issuing out a Commission for erecting the late Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes and all other Commissions and Courts of the like Nature are illegal and pernicious Not to mention that large Roll of many Exeâ—â—ises of his executive Power which they do there declare to have 〈◊〉 also illegal but they make assign and lay them down as the Grounds Reasons and Motives why they withdrew their Allegiance from him and abdicated and renounced him Now when the present Parliament was called the Prince of Orange had no Sovereign Power distinct and separate from the Sovereign Power that was vested in the Princess but the entire Sovereignty was incorporated in them both Joyntly as one political Head And therefore there being an Abatement by her Death of the Validity of those Writs by which this Parliament both received its Being and was supported and upheld in it it unavoidably followeth That the Parliament became thereupon actually dissolved through the ceasing of the Legal Authority of the Writs upon which its Existence depended For her Sovereignty being once absolutely necessary to give Vertue Vigour and Authority to those Writs and to make them good in Law and operative to the Ends for which they were issued forth and that Sovereignty of hers being wholy departed the Writs and they thereupon in Law being become Nullities it naturally and uncontroulably follows that through the Nullity that by her Death hath overtaken those Writs that which was once a Parliament upon their Hypotheses of Government is also become cassed disabled and annulled from remaining one any longer For as the Author of the Letter to a Friend in the Country hath very well observed It is not Sovereignty in genere that preserveth the Life Power and Authority of a Parliament but it is the Sovereignty of the same individual Royal Person that gave Validity and Efficacy to the Writs by which it was at first called For otherwise as a King never dyes so no Parliament could ever be dissolved by the Death of any nor could any Thing dissolve a Parliament but his pronouncing it to be so that first called it By our Law the King is immortal he never dyeth the King liveth over 〈◊〉 the Regal Dignity and Power do always subsist though there be a Change of the Persons in whom it was inherent 1 Com. 177. 11 Rep. 7. 21 Ed. 4 c. so that according to our Law there is never a Cessation of the Sovereignty but only a Cessation of this or that individual Subject or Person in whom while he survived it was incorporated and inherent So that upon the whole unless you can make William alone to be both William and Mary and can render one single individual Person to be two the Sovereign that we have noâ— is not the same identical Sovereign that we had before the Death of the late Princess And by consequence this Parliament mast in Law be actually dissolved seeing its whole Being and Existence depended upon the Life of the Sovereign we had then and that preclusively from all legal Capacity and Possibility of borrowing a Duration and Continuance in its Existence
therefore proved this Parliament to be in Law dissolved beyond the possibility as well as suspition of having any just and reasonable Answer made and returned to what I have said I cannot in duty to my Country and Posterity forbear adding something of and concerning the Criminalness of those Persons in both Houses who since the Death of the late Princess have coninued to sit and act under the Name and Sâ—ile and with the pretended Power and Authority of a Parliament and to imprison the Persons and to dispose of the Properties of the Subject and Free-born People of England And I am not ignorant how that besides the Hazards I shall thereby expose my self unto unless I get to the other side of the great Ditch I shall likewise be esteemed guilty of Rudeness as well as of ill Breeding in bestowing upon them the Titles and Appellations and in treating them in the manner that they deserve And therefore whatsoever Names of Epithets I may unavoidably be obliged to dignify them with as they claim and challenge the being a Parliament and thereupon usurp an Authority of invading and breaking in upon the Liberties and of alienating transferring and giving away the Estates of the People and that to a degree and measure unpresidented in all former Ages and which no lawful Parliament ever ventured upon or thought consistent with the Duty that they owed to those whom they represented and by whom they were entrusted to act for their Safety and Advantage and not for their Impoverishment Enslavement and Ruin yet neither will I forget what becomes my own Character nor what is due to them answerable to their several and respective Conditions and Qualities abstracting only from their being a Parliament and much less will I borrow any of that undecent unclean and ribaldry Language to give them which was not without demerit thrown upon the Rump when the lampooning of it was for a great while made the Sport and Divertisement of the Kingdom For the wost terms I will allow my self to use shall be to call a Spade a Spade and to fasten upon them the Characters and Titles which Law and Reason instruct and authorise me to give them and which our English Dialect enables me to do and which I am sure ought in Justice to be so far from being held and accounted Scandalous that it falls below being piquant and keeps within the Limits and Precincts of modesty The first Thing then which they are hereby become guilty of is their having rendered the continuance of the Session of all Parliaments for the future uncertain and arbitrary For by their destroying all the legal Security we have of defining and determining the period of a Parliaments Right of remaining to sit and act they have done what they can to make the Session of any Parliament perpetual at least arbitrary unless it come to be turned out of the House by Violence and armed Force as Oliver 1653. drove away the Rump For the tenor of the Writ by which a Parliament is called being all the legal Security we have both for the Declaration of the use and end it is called for and for the giving Power Strength and Authority for its whole legal Existence it undeniably follows That whensoever it goes beyond the Boundaries and Confinements of that Writ that from thence forward the time of their sitting is made arbitrary and put out of the Power of the Law to determine And a Parliament being equally if not more dissolved by a Demise in the Sovereign by whose Regal Power it was raised than it is by any King 's pronouncing it dissolved in the Virtue of his Sovereign executive Power it naturally follows That this Assembly may not only as well but better refuse to dissolve upon William's pronouncing and declaring them dissolved than it hath withstood the being dissolved by the Death and Demise of Mary So that by the President of these Mens continuing to sit it is put out of the Power of the Prince unless backed by force as well as out of the Power of the Law to dissolve a Parliament And it is but for Five hundred People to get in the customary and usual way into St. Stephen's Chapel and they are then as safe as in an enchanted Castle and may there sit act and reign as long as they please and that with a Despoticalness becoming the Grand Seigniors of the Republick And having superceded the Law and manumitted themselves from the Authority of it it is but for them to bribe the Mob or wheedle the soft-headed People of the City to come down to Westminster to be their Guard and then they will sit encircled and fenced against the military Power of the King as well as against his Sovereign Regal and Executive Authority And seeing the present Assembly has thought fit to continue and act as a Parliament in contempt and defiance of the Law and in a direct transgression of all the Limits and Boundaries that it had set them and have put themselves out of the reach and power of coming ever to be dissolved by Law I have only this Advice to give them That they would gain Capt. Tom and his Legions to befriend and protect them and then the great Hero of the Age will find it more hazardous though in the Head of his invincible Dutch to attack them or to interrupt disturb and determine their sitting than ever Don Quixot found it to combat the Wind-mills But waving being further pleasant upon so melancholy a Theme and Subject as this is I will only add that by the Example which the present Juncto which stiles it self a Parliament has made for all those that shall be assembled hereafter both the whole Constitution and all the Laws of England that relate to the calling regulating and determining the Sittings of Parliaments are plainly subverted and overthrown which may be of that fatal consequence to Posterity as no Words can serve fully to express The next Crime therefore whereof they were accusable for continuing to sit and act as a Parliament since and notwithstanding the Death of the late Princess is That they have thereby broken and falsified all that Trust which was placed and reposed in them by their Country Now a Trust is or at least should be one of the most sacred Things of the World because not only much of all the Intercourse that is among Men depends upon it but because it is the Bafis of every Society and the Foundation of the Fabrick of all Governments be the Kind and Species of them what it will And by how much the Trust is the more extensive and great by so much it is in Justice as well as Honour to be the more punctually observed and persued and the breach of a Trust does not only imply and include Falsehood and Infidelity in him that violateth it but it imports and involves the blackest Treachery towards those that had reposed their Confidence in them Now the Members of the
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
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
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
Derision in all the Regal Acts of the Government by having his Name mentioned while others have the Exercise and are in the Exertion of the whole and entire Sovereign Power Nor was the late Princess of Orange upon the Abdication of the King and the Exclusion of the Prince of Wales meerly seised and possessed of the Sovereign and Royal Dignity over this Realm as she was next lineal and immediate Heir to his Majesty but she had also the legal Authority and Power granted and conveyed unto her by the Gift and Donation of the Convention which the present Parliament instead of controuling retracting and annulling did recognize own and confirm Nor had she meerly the bare and naked Name of Queen given and conveyed unto her but she was declared to be vested with the whole and entire Royal and Sovereign Power save that the Exercise of it was limitted and confined to the Prince of Orange Now you must not think that I am so thoughtless and weak as to endeavour to prove her being possessed of the Sovereignty and her being cloathed with the Royal Jurisdiction because Treason might have been committed against her yea and against her natural Person seeing it was not only made High Treason by the Statute of the 2 Parl. in the first Year of Queen Mary to compass the Death of King Philip or to deprive him of the Stile or Kingly Honour of this Realm but because it had also anciently been made Treason by the Statute of the 25 Ed. 3. to compass the Death of the King 's eldest Son and Heir to violate the King's Companion or the King 's eldest Daughter unmarried or the Wife of the King 's eldest Son and Heir or to slay the Chancellor Treasurer or the King's Iustices of the one Bench or the other Iustices in Eyre or Iustices of Assise and all other Iustices assigned to hear and determine being in their Places and doing their Offices But I will do it by laying before you so much of the late Act of Parliament as relates to my purpose which that I may give the greater light strength and vigour unto I shall likewise represent to you the Act of the 2 Parl. of Queen Mary which was held in the first Year of her Reign that by your Observation thereupon in what different Terms and enlarging Expressions of Power the Princess of Orange was made declared and enacted Queen from those by which Philip was precluded and shut out from the having or exercising the Regal Power even when he was honoured with the Regal Stile and Dignity you may easily and fully know that the whole Sovereignty and Regal Power and Jurisdiction were in the late Princess whereas no part of them was allowed to Philip For at the same time and by the same Statute when and by which Philip had the Royal Stile Title and Honour given and imparted unto him and was constituted and pronounced King elevated above the Quality of a Subject which a King or Queen Consort are not it was ordained and enacted That the Queen might and should solely and as sole Queen use have and enjoy the Crown and Sovereignty of and over all these Realms Dominions and Subjects with all the Preeminencies Prerogatives Dignities Authorities Iurisdictions and Honours thereunto belonging c. And that no Right or Claim of Sovereignty should be given come or grown unto the said Philip over these Realms and Dominions But now the Act of Settlement in and by which a Donation is made of the Crown and Royal Dignity to the Prince and Princess of Orange runneth in a much other and far different Stile For after that Assembly had assumed and usurped to it self a Right and Authority of disposing and bestowing the Crown of this Kingdom and after they had in their signal Goodness Condescention and Bounty made a Donation of it and of the Sovereign and Royal Dignity to the Prince and Princess of Orange declaring that thereby they did become our Sovereign Liege Lord and Lady King and Queen of England c. they then further add to those Princely Persons the Royal Estate Crown and Dignity of these Realms with all Honours Stiles Titles Regalities Prerogatives Iurisdictions and Authorities to the same belonging are most Fully Rightfully and Entirely invested incorporated united and annexed So that we may by comparing the Communication of the Royal Name Stile and Dignity made by the former Act with the Conveyance of the same with the subjoined and annexed Jurisdiction c. made by the later Act come to understand that the whole Sovereign Royal Power and Authority over these Realms became vested in the Princess as well as the Prince of Orange which they were not in Philip but only in Queen Mary But to all that which I have already advanced I go on further to add That even on the Principles of the Gentlemen of the two Revolutional Parliaments the whole Sovereignty was not only as wholy and as entirely in the Princess of Orange as it was in the Prince but that it was one and the same Individual Sovereignty though lodged in two different and distinct Persons and I must withall say That though they were Two in genere Physico in the Predicament of Substances yet they were but One in conspectu Legis in the esteem and account of the Law The Royalty and Legal Authority was not divided between them one Share falling to the Lot of the Prince and another becoming the Portion of the Princess but it was the same entire undivided numerical Sovereignty in them both For this the Act of Settlement doth as plainly declare as Words can express it namely That the Prince and Princess of Orange being become our King and Queen that therefore in and to their Persons are the Regal Estate Crown c. fully entirely invested incorporated united and annexed And therefore all Commissions Grants and the many other Exercises of Sovereignty were ordained to be and have accordingly been in both their Names Nor did that Union and Conjunction of their Names in all Cases wherein the Royal Authority did or could exert it self proceed from a Contribution of Regal and Sovereign Efficacy and Authority which each of them gave to every Act of Jurisdiction both clubbing those distinct Shares and Parts of Regal Power which they possessed separately and by Moyeties but it had its Foundation in and flowed from that numerical Unity of Regal Power Authority and Jurisdiction which they stood vested with as one legal Sovereign though two physical Persons In a Word though William and Mary were two several and distinct individual Persons of the human Species they were but un Roi one singular King in their Politick Station And to place iâ— beyond being contradicted by any reasonable and discreet Man that the Sovereignty was as fully in her as in him and that it was but one and the same Sovereignty lodged in both not only all the Acts flowing from the executive Part of the Government do run
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
House of Commons are not only to represent those that elect them and Millions more but they become constituted and formal Deputiei with whom the whole People of England deposite and lodge all their Concerns For at first and during a long time all the Free-men of England had a Right in their respective Shires Cities and Burroughs of chusing those that were to represent them in Parliament till in the time of Hen. 6. it came to be ordained That because the Election of Knights had been with great Outrages and excessive Number of People of which most were of no Value and yet pretended a Voice equivalent to worthy Knights and Esquires whereby many Riots and Manslaughters were and were likely to be that therefore from thence forward the Knights of Shires should be chosen by People dwelling in the Counties every one having Lands or Tenements of 40 s. Value per Annum But though only those of that yearly Value are now allowed to be capable of chusing Knights of Shires yet the Concerns of all others as well as those are put into their hands Nor are they the small and trifling Concerns of the Kingdom that come to be consigned unto and trusted with the Members of the House of Commons but they are those mighty and momentuous ones which may affect their Liberties and Lives as they always will and do their Fortunes and their Estates Which most of the Electors in England in all likelihood do little think of as appeareth by the moral and intellectual Qualities of many of those whom they elect and return Nor do most of those that chuse Members to Parliament act so much under the Conduct Influence and Sway of their own true Interest as upon the Motives either of Party Faction and Bigottry or of Entertainments Treats and petty Recompences Nevertheless whosoever they are that come to be chosen they are immediately constituted the Trustees of the People and accordingly have their Names inserted in Indentures annexed to the Writ importing the Power given unto and the Trust reposed in them by the Free-holders or Burgesses persuant and answerable to the tenor of the Writ which both gave Authority for making the Election and expressed the Duty and Power of those that should be elected Now how treacherously as well as dishonourably have the Members of this Meeting which continue to sit and act as a Parliament departed from and openly violated all that Confidence and Trust which were reposed in them by those that chose them For whereas the People only intrusted and impowered them to represent unto and to do with William and Mary and meerly to consent to such Things as should be agreed upon and ordained in the Parliament of William and Mary and to no other they by a most reproachful Breach both of their own Faith to the People and of the Trust which the People devolved upon and reposed in them have continued to consent with William alone And though by the Death of the late Princess all the Power Authority and Trust conveyed unto and lodged with them by the People did fully and wholy cease and expire yet they with an unparalelled Infidelity go on to sit and act in the Names and as the Assignees of the People of England as if the Authority committed to them by the Assigners were still good and authentick and in its full vigour and force And I am loath to say how much many of them have hereby disabled and incapacitated themselves from being trusted again or what Opinion the thinking part of Mankind will have of the Free holders and Burgesses of England if after they have been so grosly and in a matter of this weight and moment deceived by these Men once they shall be so ridiculously and contemptibly weak as ever to place Confidence Trust and Power in the hands of many of them again There are two other Crimes vastly more heinous than those I have mentioned whereof they are become notoriously and scandalously Guilty in their continuing to sit and act as a Parliament since and after they became in Law dissolved by the Death of the Princess of Orange But they being of so high a Nature as may affect their Estates Honours Lives and their Posterity unless the Nation has more Mercy and forgiveness than they have had Wisdom I shall therefore do little more than Name them least should I proceed to speak of them in a Language either suitable to the Nature of the Offences or in proportion to my own and every honest Man's Resentment and Indignation I might not be able to keep within the Bounds of temper and moderation and those Measures of deference to them as they are Gentlemen which I will always confine my self unto The Crimes I mean are the Exercises of an usurped Power both in disposing away and alienating the Properties and Estates of the Subjects and in preparing and concurring unto Bills relating to many other Things as well as Money which is the executing the whole Power that belongs to a legal Parliament in the order and degree which appertains to the House of Commons in the matter of Legislation And were another to give the Character of those Transgressions Robbery and Treason would be the modestest terms he would express and describe them in And undoubtedly he would endeavour to raise and inhance the guilt of them by shewing how this Assembly doth both Plunder us and arbitrarily impose Laws upon us by virtue of a pretended Warrant under our own hands whereas the Indenture by which we vested them with a Power over our Persons and Fortunes is out of date and expired and become cancelled and null in Law since the 28th of December last But so much lying aâ— hand with every Man of common and ordinary Sense to be said on these Heads I will say no more upon them but will only add That what I have already laid before you on this Subject though spoken de Parliamento of the Parliament yet it is not intended by me nor ought to be interpreted by others as if it were meant de singulis Membris Parliamenti of every Member of the Parliament For I do both believe and know That there are a great many as worthy and deserving Gentlemen within those Walls as any in the Kingdom are and that they continue not to sit there from the Belief that this is a Parliament but that they may prevent your Whartons Montagues Smiths c. from ruining the Nation who would be sure to remain to sit and act in the Quality of a Parliament should others withdraw A President whereof we had heretofore in that Rump which continued to sit as a Parliament after they had drove away Four parts of Five of their Members And these honourable and worthy Gentlemen whose Names I am obliged to conceal have not only sufficiently attoned for their Fault in sitting and acting since the Death of the late Princess but they have merited the Thanks of the Nation by their