Ibid,

And for those of the latter rank, how far their following the dictamen of their own conscience in points of Divinity may excuse them, I will not dispute, but certain I am, by the constitutions of this realm, in temporal things, it neither extenuates the crime, nor mitigates the punishment.

One sophism pervades the whole of this reasoning -pars pro toto-or the confusion of the individual and what he represents but does not possess. Our King represents the whole power of the nation and its Laws, but does not possess it.

Page 48.

By this it appears, that when the two Houses have passed a bill for an Act of Parliament, and to it the King's Royal assent is had, the Parliament's power ends, and then begins the authority of the Judges of the Realm, whose office is (the case being regularly brought before them) first to judge whether the Act itself be good, and, if binding, then to declare the meaning of the words thereof. And so the necessity of having a power upon emergent occasions to make new laws is supplied, and yet the fundamental grounds of the law, by this limitation of the power of the law-maker, with reference to the Judges to determine which Acts of Parliament are binding, and which void, is preserved.

In a state of society, in which the active and influencive portion of the inhabitants was small, scarcely perhaps trebling the number of the members of the two Houses the right and power here contended for might have been wisely vested in the Judges of the Realm.

It is curious to observe, that the thinner the realm was (the less both the wealth and influence, and the

less they were diffused,) the greater was the division of power. It is now almost merged in the House of Commons. Formerly, the Convocation, the Judges, &c., shared in it.

The dispensing power, as completory of the Law and supplying the inherent deficiency of all human provisions expressed in determinate words, is so natural and necessary a prerogative of the supreme Executive's trust, that Charles I. richly deserved death for this alone, that he had treacherously and treasonably perverted a power entrusted to him for the completion of Law, into a means of destroying Law, and of evacuating its essential purpose-viz., the ensurance of the subject against individual will. It was an abuse of terms to say, that the King has the right of dispensing with the Laws. It can only be asserted, the King had a dispensing power in such or such a case—or the King has a dispensing power in this case. The particular case must be known and specified in order to the determination of the Right for what is true of all ordinance is eminently true of this-the Reason and ultimate purpose of the ordinances must determine its interpretation.

Since the Revolution we have deemed it necessary to secure this principle, by throwing the onus probandi in each instance on the Dispenser, by presuming that he had not the power; and this is, perhaps, the wisest plan. But the substance is the same as is evident by the fact, that, in certain emergencies, the Parliament might, and would be bound to, impeach a Minister for not dispensing (advising the King to dispense) with an existing statute.

NOTES ON LIVES OF BRITISH STATESMEN.*

Life of Sir T. More. Page 70, note K.

Picus of Mirandola, whom he so much admired, was distinguished for the freedom of his religious opinions. He was during his whole lifetime, persecuted by the devotees of Rome, with charges of heresy, and saved from their hands probably by his rank.

* Utterly false. He was, or suffered himself, owing to his own superstition, to be seized by some accusers of his nine-hundred Theses, and his explanation of them. But this endured for a few years only, and never amounted to persecution. Innocent VIII., who first approved and then prohibited the discussion, at the same time expressly preserved the reputation of Picus as a faithful and dear son of the Church, and Alexander VI. cleared him still more honourably. In fact Count Mirandola was the idol of his ageand but for Savonarola's oath that, he had seen him in Purgatory, or rather that Picus clothed in flames had appeared to him and informed him that he was prevented from going immediately to Heaven by the crime of having delayed to become a Dominican Monk, he would probably have been beatified.

Life of Burleigh. P. 162.

Whitgift, the succeeding primate, taught by this example, proceeded to exercise severities which Parker would not have ventured to commit, nor the Queen, in the earlier part of her reign, have countenanced.

* Lives of British Statesmen. By John Macdiarmid. 4to. 1807.

Is it not then singular, that Richard Baxter (in his Life) should have mentioned Whitgift among the good and wise prelates of the early Church in contrast with their successors?

Life of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. P. 266.

At no period was the omnipotence of Parliament a more established doctrine [than in the time of Henry VIII.]. It was not enough that More confessed its power to make or depose a king; he suffered for a treasonable offence, because he would not acknowledge its right to confer a supreme control over men's consciences.

Is not this a contradiction, this very King being an essential part of this omnipotent Parliament? And would Henry have endured such a doctrine as that his Vassals and Subjects had the right to depose him?

Ibid. p. 269.

In this conjuncture two expedients seem to have been requisite for the prevention of violent civil dissensions; the limitation of the royal prerogative by such accurate and insuperable barriers as would for ever guard the persons and property of the subject from arbitrary encroachments, and the separation of the King's private expenditure from the disbursements of the public, &c. But of these expedients, the separation of the King's expenditure from that of the nation, however simple and obvious it may now appear, does not seem to have then occurred either to the Prince or the people.

Now this appears to me one of those plausible silly remarks that even sensible men may sometimes fall on. At a second thought, however, a man of reflection would see, that this simple and obvious" expedient involves one or other of two consequences.

66

Either the two Houses of Parliament were to appoint, appropriate, and control the nation's expenditure; or they were not. If the latter, the separation would be nominal only—a mere powerless Act of Parliament ! If they were, it would itself be and constitute such a limitation as the boldest Patriot at that time would not have thought of. With no greater patronage than the Crown then possessed, it would have reduced the King to a mere Stadtholder.

Ibid. p. 468.

Strafford was aware that his life was in the hands of his enemies; that no chance of escape remained; but he was not prepared to expect so sudden a dereliction by his sovereign, &c. &c., and when assured of the fatal truth, he raised his eyes to heaven, and, laying his hand on his heart, exclaimed, 'Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, for in them there is no salvation.'

Canting scoundrel-a hypocrite in his very last act! Nothing indeed can justify the measures of the House of Commons, nothing palliate the baseness of the House of Lords; unless it be the unvaried example of all their predecessors, and the faithful imitation of the same submission to the stronger party by all their successors spiritual and temporal. It was not this remorseless apostate that suffered undeservingly; he deserved a thousand deaths; but England, but Law, and the everlasting principles and grounds of Law in the sense of public justice, that received a deadly wound and every Bill of Pains and Penalties since then has been a fresh hydrahead sprouting from this wound. Thus is the cycle of retributive Providence completed. What the Gracchi begin, a Blue-beard and a Heliogabalus finish.

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