5. That the sovereign authority in every government, of what kind soever, ought to be certain in its perpetual successions, revolutions, or descents; and without possibility (by the judgment of human prudence) of a death or failure of its being, because the whole form of the government is dissolved if that should happen, and the people in the utmost imminent danger of an absolute tyranny or a war among themselves, or rapine and confusion And therefore where the government is popular, the assemblies in whom reside the supreme authority, ought never to die or dissolve, though the persons be annually changing: neither ought they to trust the sovereign care of the strength and safety of the people out of their own hands, by allowing a vacation to themselves, lest those that should be trusted be in love with such great authority, and aspire to be their masters, or else fear an account, and seek the dissolution of the commonwealth to avoid it. 6. That it ought to be declared as a fundamental order in the constitution of this commonwealth, that the Parliament being the supreme legislative power, is intended only for the exercise of all those acts of authority that are proper and peculiar to the legislative power; and to provide for a magistracy, to whom should appertain the whole executive power of the laws: and no case either civil or criminal to be judged in Parliament, saving that the last appeals in all cases, where appeals shall be thought fit to be admitted, be only to the popular assembly; and also that to them be referred the judgment of all magistrates in cases of maladministrations in their offices. And in prosecution of these principles, your petitioners humbly propose for the settlement of this commonwealth, that it be ordained, 1. That the Parliament, or the supreme authority of England, be chosen by the free people, to represent them with as much equality as may be. 2. That a Parliament of England shall consist of two assemblies, the lesser of about three hundred, in whom shall reside the entire power of consulting, debating, and propounding laws: the other, to consist of a far greater number, in whom shall rest the sole power of resolving all laws so propounded. 3. That the free people of England, in their respective divisions at certain days and places appointed, shall forever annually choose one third part to each assembly, to enter into their authority, at certain days appointed the same days, the authority of a third of each of the said assemblies to cease, only in the laying the first foundation in this commonwealth's constitution: the whole number of both the assemblies to be chosen by the people respectively, viz., one third of each assembly to be chosen for one year, one third for two years, and one third for three years. 4. That such as shall be chosen, having served their appointed time in either of the said assemblies of Parliament, shall not be capable to serve in the same assembly during some convenient interval or vacation. 5. That the legislative power do wholly refer the execution of the laws to the magistracy, according to the sixth principle herein mentioned. 6. That in respect to religion and Christian liberty, it be ordained that the Christian religion by the appointment of all succeeding Parliaments, be taught, and promulgated to the nation, and public preachers thereof maintained: and that all that shall profess the said religion, though of different persuasions in parts of the doctrine, or discipline thereof, be equally protected in the peaceable profession, and public exercise of the same; and be equally capable of all elections, magistracies, preferments in the commonwealth, according to the order of the Provided always, that the public exercise of no religion contrary to Christianity be tolerated; nor the public exercise of any religion, though professedly Christian, grounded upon, or incorporated into the interest of any foreign State or prince.. same. Wednesday, July the 6th, 1659. The House being informed, that divers gentlemen were at the door with a petition, they were called in, and one of the petitioners in behalf of himself and the rest said, We humbly present you a petition, to which we might have had many thousand hands, but the matter rather deserves your serious consideration than any public attestation; and therefore we do humbly present it to this honorable House. Which, after the petitioners were withdrawn, was read, and was entitled, The humble petition of divers well-affected persons. Resolved, that the petitioners have the thanks of the House. The petitioners were again called in, and Mr. Speaker gave them this answer: Gentlemen, the House has read over your petition, and find it without any private end, and only for the public interest; and I am commanded to let you know, that it lies much upon them to make such a settlement as may be most for the good of posterity: and they are about that work, and intend to go forward with it with as much expedition as may be. And for your parts, they have commanded me to give you thanks; and in their names I do give you the thanks of this House accordingly. THO. ST. NICHOLAS, Clerk of the Parliament. 1 Charles II. returned to London, May 29, 1660.- ED. DEBT upon the statute 25 Car. 2, cap. 2, for the penalty of £500, wherein the plaintiff declares, that whereas it was provided by the statute, &c. (setting forth the statute), notwithstanding which, the defendant having a commission to serve the king as a colonel of foot, and not having received the sacrament, nor taken the oaths and test, &c., within the times prescribed by the Act; that after the times expired, wherein he ought to have received the sacrament, and taken the oaths and tests, as aforesaid, he did execute the said office, and continued to act by color of the said commission, of which he was indicted and convicted at the assizes in Kent, whereby the action accrues to the plaintiff, for the penalty of £500. The defendant pleads, that before the times expired, &c., he had a dispensation under the broad seal to act, non obstante that statute; to which the plaintiff demurs. Northy, pro quer', Solicitor-General, for the defendant. At another day the Chief Justice [HERBERT] declared, that by the opinion of eleven of the judges, the case of 2 Hen. 7, of sheriffs holding above one year by dispensation, &c., is good law. And as to the case in question, we have resolved the points following (Street only dissenting). 1. That the king is a sovereign (or absolute) prince. 2. That the laws of the land are the king's laws. 3. That to dispense with penal laws (where the subject hath no particular damage) for necessary and urgent occasions, is an inseparable prerogative of the king. 4. That the king is sole judge of such necessity [and] that no Act of Parliament could take away that power. 5. That this trust residing in him, came not from the people, but was a sovereign right of the king ab antiquo. 6. That the dispensation in this case is a good bar to the plaintiff's action, because it came within three months before any disability incurred. Judicium quod quer' nil capiat per Billam.2 1 This report is made up from both of these volumes. In Comb. 21, the case is styled Godwin v. Hales. -- ED. 2 Shower's report gives Powell, with Street, as doubting. Coxe (Judic. Power, 166) remarks: "The decision in this case is celebrated in English history as intimately connected with the causes of the revolution of 1688. The abolition of the royal power of dispensing with any statute, made in the first year of William and Mary, was caused by the existence of this decision. The case is discussed at length by Macaulay, who criticises both the decision and the motives of the court with great severity. The second paragraph of the Bill of Rights in the Statute of 1 William and Mary, sess. 2, cap. 2, formally declares to be illegal what the decision declared to be legal." By Stat. 1 Wm. & Mary, c. 6 (1688) the coronation oath binds the sovereign "to govern the people of this kingdom. . . according to the statutes in Parliament 95. MEN being, as has been said, by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent, which is done by agreeing with other men, to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living, one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any that are not of it. . . 97. And thus every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation to every one of that society to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded by it; or else this original compact, whereby he with others incorporates into one society, would signify nothing, and be no compact if he be left free and under no other ties than he was in before in the state of nature. — LOCKE, Two Treatises on Government, book ii. c. viii. (Licensed for printing Aug. 23, 1689.)1 143. The legislative power is that which has a right to direct how the force of the commonwealth shall be employed for preserving the community and the members of it. But because those laws which are to be constantly executed, and whose force is always to continue, may be made in a little time; therefore there is no need that the legislative should be always in being, not having always business to do. And because it may be too great temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons who have the power of making laws to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making and execution, to their own private advantage, and thereby come to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community, contrary to the end of society and government. Therefore in well-ordered commonwealths, where the good of the whole is so considered as it ought, the legislative power is put into the hands of divers persons who, duly assembled, have by themselves, or jointly with others, a power to make laws, which when they have done, being separated again, they are themselves subject to the laws they have made; which is a new and near tie upon them to take care that they make them for the public good. 144. But because the laws that are at once, and in a short time made, have a constant and lasting force, and need a perpetual execution, or agreed on, and the laws and customs of the same." By the Bill of Rights, Stat. 1 Wm. & Mary, sess. 2, c. 2 (1689) "the pretended power of suspending of laws or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of Parliament," and also that of "dispensing with laws or the execution of laws, by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised of late," are declared illegal. By the Act of Settlement, Stat. 11 & 12 Wm. III. c. 2, s. 3 (1700), it was provided that “ judges' commissions be made Quamdiu se bene gesserint, and their salaries ascertained and established; but upon the address of both Houses of Parliament it may be lawful to remove them." For an account of the removal of judges in the seventeenth century, see 12 How. St. Tr. 257, note. - ED. 1 "With the Revolution came John Locke as its interpreter." H. MORLEY'S Introduction to the Two Treatises on Government. — ED. an attendance thereunto, therefore it is necessary there should be a power always in being which should see to the execution of the laws that are made, and remain in force. And thus the legislative and executive power come often to be separated. 145. There is another power in every commonwealth which one may call natural, because it is that which answers to the power every man naturally had before he entered into society. For though in a commonwealth the members of it are distinct persons, still, in reference to one another, and, as such, are governed by the laws of the society, yet, in reference to the rest of mankind, they make one body, which is, as every member of it before was, still in the state of nature with the rest of mankind, so that the controversies that happen between any man of the society with those that are out of it are managed by the public, and an injury done to a member of their body engages the whole in the reparation of it. So that under this consideration the whole community is one body in the state of nature in respect of all other States or persons out of its community. 146. This, therefore, contains the power of war and peace, leagues and alliances, and all the transactions with all persons and communities without the commonwealth, and may be called federative if any one pleases. So the thing be understood, I am indifferent as to the name. 149. Though in a constituted commonwealth standing upon its own basis and acting according to its own nature that is, acting for the preservation of the community- there can be but one supreme power, which is the legislative, to which all the rest are and must be subordinate, yet the legislative being only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them. . . . And thus the community may be said in this respect to be always the supreme power, but not as considered under any form of government, because this power of the people can never take place till the government be dissolved. 150. In all cases whilst the government subsists, the legislative is the supreme power. For what can give laws to another must needs be superior to him, and since the legislative is no otherwise legislative of the society but by the right it has to make laws for all the parts, and every member of the society prescribing rules to their actions, and giving power of execution where they are transgressed, the legislative must needs be the supreme, and all other powers in any members or parts of the society derived from and subordinate to it. 151. In some commonwealths where the legislative is not always in being, and the executive is vested in a single person who has also a share in the legislative, there that single person, in a very tolerable sense, may also be called supreme; not that he has in himself all the supreme power, which is that of law-making, but because he has in him the supreme execution from whom all inferior magistrates derive all |