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
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
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
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
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
in both their Names but all the Acts of the legislative Part do so also Nor do the several Acts of Parliament which have passed during the Usurpation bear only the Stile of the Acts of William and Mary but the Royal Assent as it hath been miscalled was given in the Name of the Princess during her Life as well as in the Name of the Prince And to add that upon which the great Weight and Stress of this Point doth lie namely That the Writs by which this Parliament was called and had its Being in Law given unto it were issued out in both their Names and were the Writs of the Princess as well as of the Prince of Orange Nor is it necessary that I should insert here a Copy of the Writ any farther than that it runs Guilielmus Maria c. Angliae c. Rex Regina And as I have said before her Name was not used in it meerly from an honorary Esteem had of her but as indispensable and intrinsically Necessary to give the Writ its legal Power and Validity and without whose Name it had been void of all operative Virtue for the Constitution and Erection of such a Number of Men into a Parliament or for the giving Existence to a legal Court of that Denomination And had her Name been wanting in the Writ all those several Congregations of People in the Counties Cities and Burroughs for the electing their several and respective Quota's and Number of Members to represent them in the high Court of the Kingdom had been so many riotous and tumultuous Meetings and those chosen and elected by them to be to be their Substitutes and Deputies had been the illegal Creatures of a Riot and could not have acted in the Names and Stead of those that sent them without being highly Criminal in the Sight and Account of the Law Nor did the Writ only run in both their Names and flow and proceed from them and become impregnated with a creative and constitutive Power of giving Being to a Parliament in the Virtue of that individual and entire Sovereignty lodged in the Princess as well as in the Prince as in the one Politick Head of the Government but those who in persuance and execution of that Writ were chosen to be Members of this Parliament came together assembled and sat to confer and consult with and to give advice and aid to Mary as well as to William and the Power and Trust which they received from their several and respective Electors was to represent what came to be representable to the Prince and Princess joyntly and to act and concur in and to consent unto such Things as Mary as well as William were to have Colloquium Tractatum Conference and Transaction with them about For upon the execution of the Writ for the Choice of those who were returned the Members of the present Parliament the Trust that came to be conveyed transferred consigned and committed unto them was not to act singly and separately with William but with Mary also So that this being now become impossible by the Death of the late Princess the Trust that was lodged in those Gentlemen by their respective Counties Cities and Burroughs is fully determined and expired with reference to all the Ends and Purposes for which it was consigned and committed to them And had the People in order to the saving themselves repeated Trouble and renewed Expence been willing to have chosen those that were to constitute and make up the Assembly at Westminster to have been their Representatives for an Age and had accordingly authorised and empowered them to do and act in their Names during so long a time it was more than the Electors were in a legal Capacity or had a Right and Power to do in that all the Authority they had for their Choice Deputation and Authorization of their Representatives accruing and resulting unto them from the Writ of William and Mary and from the Nature and Quality of it as regulated and prescribed by the Law they could not extend or enlarge either the Measure or the Duration of the Trust they were to convey to their Representatives beyond the Limits and Boundaries set them in the Writ and that was to consult with give advice unto and to do and act in their Names with Mary as well as with William and consequently this Assembly became dissolved and disabled in Law from sitting and acting as a Parliament immediately upon the Death of the forementioned Princess Seeing then and thereby both the End they were called for and the Trust committed to them by the People for the complying with and answering of that End did not only cease and expire but in that it became physically as well as legally Impracticable to persue the End or to execute the Trust any longer I might farther add That for the Assembly at Westminster to have continued to sit and act as a Parliament after the Death of the late Princess of Orange is both inconsistent with the Rules and Practices of all Parliaments and directly repugnant to a known and standing Maxim in Law For it hath ever been received as a Rule in Law and the Course of Parliaments have been always correspondent thereunto namely That the Acts of every Parliament must relate unto and receive their Denomination from the first Day of their Session and by consequence it being impossible that the Acts made under the pretended Reign of William alone should be adjusted to the first Day of the Session that was in the supposed Reign of William and Mary it immediately follows That the Parliament which sat then under both cannot have a Right to sit now under one Nor can the Acts made under the Reign of William alone any more relate to the first Day of the Sessions which was in the Reign of William and Mary than they do to the Sessions of Parliaments under King Stephen or King John But this and most other Things needful to the setting this Subject in its proper Light having been briefly and yet fully done by the Author of a Letter to a Friend in the Country I shall wave the adding of any more either upon this Head or in confirmation that the Parliament was by Law dissolved by the Death of the late Princess of Orange And the rather in that what I have farther to say will be more pertinently offered in answering the Objections brought by the Partizans of that Assembly Only as I desire to mix my Thanks with those of all true English Men to that Author for the seasonable and useful Service he has done his Country so I do pay him my own particular Acknowledgments for the favour of having carried the Lantern before me and helpt me by the means and benefit of his Light the better to discern my own way and to avoid stumbling in these Paths that have not been much trodden There are but two Objections can be advanced in favour of this Assemblies continuing to
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
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
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
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
opposing and defeating the Design of an Universal Excise which your Montagues Smiths and many others had projected and resolved to impose upon the Kingdom which could they have effected as they had promised the Gentleman at Kensington to do we should in a little time have been made greater Slaves than the Turks are and William had been put into a Condition of ruling as despotically as the Grand Seignior does But how strangely are English Men degenerated since they got a Dutch King that there should be so many Advocates for that now that our Subjection to it could not have been avoided without much Art Industry and Courage in a few generous Patriots which but to have mentioned within these Walls some Reigns ago would have drawn both a Punishment and Disgrace upon him that did it For when Sir Dudley Carleton who was then Secretary of State did but once Name it in that House though to no ill Intent he was not only called to the Bar but hardly escaped being sent Prisoner to the Tower But since Members have learned to sell their Honours and Consciences as well as their Votes and thereby their Country for Places and Pensions let no man marvail That what was heretofore the Bugbear of all in a House of Commons should now become the Idol of too many there All that doth remain to be represented to you in relation to the present Subject is in what Esteem and Account the Acts of this pretended Parliament ought to be with the People And suffer me upon this Occasion to tell you That no Man alive has a greater Respect for a legal Parliament called by the Authority of a Rightful and Lawful King and answering the Ends for which they were originally instituted than I have But for every Assembly that hath called it self a Parliament and which in some unhappy times have been generally owned as such I do confess to you that I have not the same Veneration For when I do read how many Parliaments have preferred Usurpers before the Rightful Heirs and that never any Person invaded the Throne though never so traiterously and unjustly but that he always found a Parliament to recognise and support him I cannot have that Esteem for every Convocation of Men that goes by that honourable Name as some have who will Worship the Tree on which their Father was hanged if it be put shaped into the Image and get the Title of a Madona Richard the Third and Oliver Cromwel had Parliaments who as much adored them and as readily gave Subsidies and Taxes for answering the Occasions of these Usurpers as ever Queen Elizabeth or Edward the Sixth had Nor can I so far conquer my Understanding or get the Victory over my Conscience as to have a reverend Opinion of those Parliaments in Henry the Eighth's time Whereof one enacted That Proclainations should be equivalent to Laws and another ordained That he might by his last Will and Testament appoint whom he pleased to be his Successor How many Parliaments might be named that have been the Tools of a haughty Prince's Tyranny and the Panders of a lascivious King's Lusts who have been of a Complexion to worship the Devil that he might do them no hurt with the same readiness that they do God Almighty who bestowed upon them all that is good Nor am I willing to omit mentioning how those few Men whom Oliver Cromwel called together by his private Letters without any previous Choice of them by the Nation had not only the Impudence to call themselves a Parliament but that even a great many People who laid claim to more of Religion than they had right to do to good Sense were ready to fall down and worship them as such And permit me here to tell you one Thing in reference to that Assembly which hath been commonly stiled Oliver's little Parliament which though it may seem a Digression from the present Subject yet it will not be unseasonable for me to relate nor unfit for you to know Namely That whereas Oliver pretended to call them together towards settling the Nation upon the Motive and Merit of their Piety yet the true Reason of it was the Jealousy he had least they should supplant him in the Power he had assumed which they stood the better qualified for effecting by means both of the Reputation they had among the Partizans against Kingship and of the Interest they had in many of his own Army And therefore Oliver knowing the Temper and Bigottry of the Men and that if they came together and were allowed to meddle with Affairs of State and the general Concerns of the Kingdom how they would by their wild and extravagant Proceedings not only lose all the Esteem they had acquired in their private Stations but render themselves the Scorn and Contempt of Mankind and thereby lose all Capacity of undermining him in his Seat or of doing him afterwards any hurt upon these Motives he called them together and upon no other whatsoever he pretended All which not only came to pass as he had projected and foresaw but even while they were together they were through the Folly and Frantickness of their Actions the Derision of the few wise Men that were among themselves Of which I shall recount one pleasant Instance viz. That being endeavouring with great Zeal and Earnestness to engross and monopolize all Power and Places into their own hands and into the hands of those they stiled Saints in that such only had right to govern the Earth all Dominion being founded in Grace they were baffled and bantered out of their Design by a cunning Man's standing up in the House and telling them that it was true the Saints deserved all Things but that publick Employment was so great a Drudgery in it self and so strong a temptation to Sin that it would be unjust to condemn the Godly to it and that the best Service they could do for the Common-wealth was in a pious Retirement to intercede for it at the Throne of Grace But to return to what I am upon no Man that is not a perfect Stranger to England can be ignorant of the three Essential Properties belonging to a Parliament namely Fairness of Elections Fulness of Members and Freedom of Speech and that several Parliaments have laboured under Deficiencies of one or another of them And there are Instances where one Parliament hath declared a former Parliament void and null in it self because of some Irregularity either in their being chosen or in their fitting though called by a Lawful and Rightful Prince Thus the Parliament of the first of Hen. 4. declared that of the 21. Rich. 2. to have been a void Parliament Roll. 21. 22. Nay Sir Edward Cook whom all must acknowledge to have been a Champion for Parliaments especially for a House of Commons yet he declareth that Parliaments have been often utterly misled and deceived and that in Cases of the greatest moment And had we not overthrown the legal