printed in the year 1618 (a tract of 172 pages, small quarto, from which I now transcribe), thus sums up his argument and evidences:

Upon the whole matter clear it is, the Parliament itself (that is, the King, the Lords, and Commons) although unanimously consenting, are not boundless: the Judges of the realm by the fundamental law of England have power to determine which Acts of Parliaments are binding and which void," p. 48.—That a unanimous declaration of the Judges of the realm that any given Act of Parliament was against right reason and the fundamental law of the land (that is, the constitution of the realm), would render such Act null and void, was a principle that did not want defenders among the lawyers of elder times. And in a state of society in which the competently informed and influential members of the community (the national Clerisy not included), scarcely perhaps trebled the number of the members of the two Houses, and Parliaments were so often tumultuary congresses of a victorious party rather than representatives of the State, the right and power here asserted might have been wisely vested in the judges of the realm: and with at least equal wisdom, under change of circumstances, has the right been suffered to fall into abeyance. "Therefore let the potency of Parliament be that highest and uttermost, beyond which a court of law looketh not: and within the sphere of the Courts quicquid Rex cum Parlia mento voluit, fatum sit!"

But if the strutting phrase be taken, as from sundry recent speeches respecting the fundamental institutions of the realm it may be reasonably inferred that it has been taken, that is, abso lutely, and in reference, not to our courts of law exclusively, but to the nation, to England with all her venerable heir-looms, and with all her gerins of reversionary wealth,-thus used and understood, the omnipotence of Parliament is an hyperbole that would contain mischief in it, were it only that it tends to provoke a de tailed analysis of the materials of the joint-stock company, to which so terrific an attribute belongs, and the competence of the shareholders in this earthly omnipotence to exercise the same. And on this head the observations and descriptive statements given in the fifth chapter of the old tract, just cited, retain all their force; or if any have fallen off, their place has been abun lantly filled up by new growths. The degree and sort of knowl

edge, talent, probity, and prescience, which it would be only too easy, were it not too invidious, to prove from acts and measures presented by the history of the last half-century, are but scant measure even when exerted within the sphore and circumscription of the constitution, and on the matters properly and pecu. liarly appertaining to the State according to the idea ;-this portion of moral and mental endowment placed by the side of the plusquam-gigantic height and amplitude of power, implied in the unqualified use of the phrase, omnipotence of Parliament, and with its dwarfdora intensified by the contrast, would threaten to distort the countenance of truth itself with the sardonic laugh of irony.*

The non-resistance of successive generations has ever been, and with evident reason, deemed equivalent to a tacit consent, on the part of the nation, and as finally legitimating the act thus nequiesced in, however great the dereliction of principle, and breach of trust, the original enactment may have been. I hope, therefore, that without offence I may venture to designate the Septennial Act as an act of usurpation, tenfold more dangerous to the true liberty of the nation than the pretext for the measure, namely, the apprehended Jacobite leaven from a new election, was at all likely to have proved and I repeat the conviction which I have expressed in reference to the practical suppression of the Convocation, that no great principle was ever invaded or trampled on, that did not sooner or later avenge itself on the country, and even on the governing classes themselves, by the consequence of the precedent. The statesman who has not learned this from history has missed its most valuable result, and might in my opinion as profitably, and far more delightfully, have devoted his hours of study to Sir Walter Scott's Novels.†

* I have not in my possession the morning paper in which I read it, or I should with great pleasure transcribe an admirable passage from the present King of Sweden's Address to the Storthing, or Parliament of Norway, on the necessary limits of Parliamentary power, consistently with the existence of a constitution. But I can with confidence refer the reader to the speech, as worthy of an Alfred. Every thing indeed that I have heard or read of this sovereign, has contributed to the impression on my mind, that he is a good and a wise man, and worthy to be the king of a virtuous people, the purest specimen of the Gothic race.

This would not be the first time that these fascinating volumes had been recommended as a substitute for history—a ground of recommenda

2

But I must draw in my reins. Neither my limits permit, nor I does my present purpose require, that I should do more than exemplify the limitation resulting from that latent or potential power, a due proportion of which to the actual powers I have stated as the second condition of the health and vigor of a body politic, by an instance bearing directly on the measure which in | || the following section I am to aid in appreciating, and which was the occasion of the whole work. The principle itself, which, as not contained within the rule and compass of law, its practical manifestations being indeterminable and inappreciable à priori, and then only to be recorded as having manifested itself, when the predisposing causes and the enduring effects prove the unitie mind and energy of the nation to have been in travail; when they have made audible to the historian that voice of the people which is the voice of God-this principle, I say (or the power, that is the subject of it), which by its very essence existing and working as an idea only, except in the rare and predestined epochs of growth and reparation, might seem to many fitter mat ter for verse than for sober argument,-I will, by way of compromise, and for the amusement of the reader, sum up in the rhyining prose of an old Puritan poet, consigned to contempt by Mr. Pepe, but whose writings, with all their barren flats and dribbling common-place, contain nobler principles, profounder truths, and more that is properly and peculiarly poetic, than are to be found in his own works. The passage in question, however, I found occupying the last page on a flying-sheet of four leaves, entitled England's Misery and Remedy, in a judicious

tion, to which I could not conscientiously accede; though some half-dozen of these Novels, with a perfect recollection of the contents of every page, I read over more often in the course of a year than I can honestly put down to my own credit.

If it were asked whether I consider the works of the one of equal value with those of the other, or hold George Wither to be as great a writer as Alexander Pope,-my answer would be that I am as little likely to do so, as the querist would be to put no greater value on a highly wrought vase of pure silver from the hand of a master, than of an equal weight of copper ore that contained a small per centage of separable gold scattered through it. The reader will be pleased to observe that in the passage here cited, the "State" is used in the largest sense, and as synonymous with the realm, or entire body politic, including Church and State in the na rower and special sense of the latter term

Letter from an Utter-Barrister to his Special Friend, concern. ing Licut-Col. Lilburne's Imprisonment in Newgate; and I beg leave to borrow the introduction, together with the extract. or that part at least, which suited my purpose.

Christian Reader, having a vacant place for some few lines, I have made bold to use some of Major George Wither his Everses out of Vox Pacifica, page 199.

ΓΙ

"Let not your King and Parliament in one,
Much less apart, mistake themselves for that
Which is most worthy to be thought upon:
Nor think they are, essentially, the State.
Let them not fancy, that th' authority
And privileges upon them bestown,
Conferr'd are to set up a majesty,
A power, or a glory, of their own!

But let them know, 'twas for a deeper life,
Which they but represent—

That there's on earth a yet auguster thing,
Veil'd tho' it be, than Parliament and King."

CHAPTER XII.

THE PRECEDING POSITION EXEMPLIFIED.—THE ORIGIN AND MEANING OF THE CORONATION OATII, IN RESPECT OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.-IN WHAT ITS MORAL OBLIGATION CONSISTS.-RECAPITULATION.

AND here again the "Royalist's Defence" furnishes me with the introductory paragraph: and I am always glad to find in the words of an elder writer, what I must otherwise have said in my own person-otium simul et auctoritatem.

"All Englishmen grant, that arbitrary power is destructive of the best purposes for which power is conferred and in the preceding chapter it has been shown, that to give an unlimited authority over the fundamental laws and rights of the nation, even to the King and two Houses of Parliament jointly, though nothing so bad as to have this boundless power in the King alone, or in the Parliament alone, were nevertheless to deprive Englishmen of the security from arbitrary power. which is their birth-right.

Upon perusal of former statutes it appears, that the members of both Houses have been frequently drawn to consent, not only to things prejudicial to the Commonwealth, but (even in matters of greatest weight), to alter and contradict what formerly themselves had agreed to, and that, as it happened to please the fancy of the present Prince, or to suit the passions and interests of a prevailing faction. Witness the statute by which it was enacted that the proclamation of King Henry VIII. should be equivalent to an Act of Parliament; another declaring both Mary and Elizabeth bastards; and a third statute empowering the King to dispose of the Crown of England by will and testament. Add to these the several statutes in the times of King Henry VIII. and Edward VI. Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, setting up and pulling down each other's religion, every one of them condemuing even to death the profession of the one before established."— Royalist's Defence, p. 41.

So far my anonymous author, evidently an old Tory lawyer of the genuine breed, too enlightened to obfuscate and incenseblacken the shrine, through which the kingly idea should be translucent, into an idol to be worshiped in its own right; but who, considering both the reigning Sovereign and the Houses, as limited and representative functionaries, thought he saw reason, in some few cases, to place more confidence in the former than in the latter; while there were points, which he wished as little as possible to trust to either. With this experience, however, as above stated (and it would not be difficult to increase the catalogue), can we wonder that the nation grew sick of Parliamen tary religions;-or that the idea should at last awake and become operative, that what virtually concerned their humanity and involved yet higher relations than those of the citizen to the State, duties more awful, and more precious privileges, while yet it stood in closest connection with all their civil duties and rights, as their indispensable condition and only secure ground-that this was not a matter to be voted up or down, off or on, by fluc tuating majorities;-that it was too precious an inheritance to be left at the discretion of an omnipotency which had so little claim to omniscience? No interest this of a single generation, but an entailed boon too sacred, too momentous, to be shaped and twisted, pared down or plumped up, by any assemblage of Lords, Knights, and Burgesses for the time being;-men perfectly