to ensure the meeting of a Parliament, and the continuance of its sitting once in three years, at the least, had been repealed; and in 1679, that repealing law was in force, simply enacting, that, the sitting of Parliament should not be intermitted or discontinued more than three years, without one compulsory clause to give it effect, and therefore occasionally violated. Mr. Rose, having settled in his own mind, that Mr. Fox was attached to republican principles, and a hater of monarchy, fancies he sees a democratic tendency in every observation in the Historical Work. This groundless prejudice leads him into perpetual mistakes, and clouds almost every transient gleam of candour. Happily for Mr. Fox upon this occasion, he and Mr. Justice Blackstone must take their fate together; they both agree that the repeal of the Act, passed by the Long Parliament, was an amendment of our law. Mr. Fox entertained no principles hostile to the form of Government under which he lived; he was a friend to a limited monarchy, and this is a direct proof of it, though Mr. Rose did not make the discovery. The people have their rights and the King his prerogative, and one branch of that prerogative is, the power of assembling the Parliament. Mr. Fox conceived that to deprive the King of that power, in any case, was an improper and dangerous restriction, and that its repeal was necessary to establish what Mr. Justice SECTION SECTION I. Blackstone denominated, the the true balance between liberty and prerogative. To that balance Mr. Fox was a zealous friend, and the reader has seen how Mr. Rose, hitherto, has failed in every effort to impute republican sentiments to him; and he will have to remark a similar failure in every other attempt of the same kind, throughout the Observations. What were the grounds of Mr. Justice Blackstone's opinions, he has stated in the following passage, which the reader will recollect must be taken as the language of Mr. Fox also, who, as Mr. Rose contends, has adopted, in this instance, the opinion of the learned judge. Alluding to the act passed by the Long ParBl. Com. i. p. liament, he says. "But this, if ever put in practice, 151. "would have been liable to all the inconveniences "I have just now stated." (viz. such as would arise if the time of assembling the Parliament was left to itself, and not to the King.) "And the Act itself "was esteemed so highly detrimental and injurious "to the royal prerogative, that it was repealed by "Stat. xvi. Car. II. c. 1." The opinion of Lord Somers, whom Mr. Rose professes to admire, and the Whigs, who were most zealous for the Revolution, did not differ from that of Mr. Fox, and it was not thought right, at that time, to restore this law to the Statute Book. Perhaps the reader may now See Rose, p. 30. entertain a doubt whether Mr. Rose by so highly applauding this statute, derogatory to the King's rights," has not exhibited some proof of his having more of a republican spirit, and being less zealously attached to monarchy, than either Mr. Fox, or Mr. Justice Blackstone. SECTION Mr. Rose more democratic than Mr. Fox. Impeachments. Rose, p. 31. "The establishing of the right of the House of Right of the "Commons, in regard to impeachment, Mr. Rose Commons as to remarks, is not easy to be understood; and that he did not understand it is very clear. "That right" he says, "it is conceived, had never been disputed, erroneously assuming that Mr. Fox was speaking of the general right of the Commons to impeach; but Mr. Fox is alluding to the right of the House to proceed in an impeachment, notwithstanding the culprit should have been pardoned by the Crown after the proceedings were commenced, and had pleaded such pardon in bar. Nobody acquainted with the proceedings against Lord Danby in this very year, can hesitate about the meaning of Mr. Fox's words. The King pardoned Lord Danby, putting the Great Seal to the grant with his own hand. Lord Danby was, however, compelled to appear to the impeachment against him, for fear of a Bill of Attainder, and pleaded his pardon, and the Commons denied its validity, and passed a vote that a pardon is not pleadable in bar of an impeachment. In the result, Danby was saved, but the Commons gained such advantage by the contest that the right they contended for was not likely to be again disputed, and therefore, in one sense of the word, may be said SECTION to have been then established, especially as so soon afterwards it was sanctioned by the Legislature.* This right claimed by the Crown in the case of Lord Danby, does not appear to have been attempted to be exercised in any former instance, and the resistance to this innovation was absolutely necessary, for if this right appertained to the Crown, impeachments of its ministers or favourites might always be rendered nugatory. The Commons renewed the vote, that a pardon is not pleadable in bar to an impeachment in 1689, and a few years afterwards their claim was, as before men12 and 13 W. 3. tioned, established by an Act of Parliament. The Bl. Com, iv. p. right of the King to pardon after conviction was never disputed, and in 1715, he reprieved several times, and at last pardoned three of the six rebels, Lords who had been impeached and attainted. e. 2. §. 3. 399. The expiration of the Act preventing the publica * In the ensuing year, when the Duke of York was sent into Scotland, he wished to have had a pardon for his protection, in case the House of Commons should take any steps against him in his absence ; and it seems that the Earl of Anglesea, then Lord Privy Seal, and many others of the Council, advised the King to comply with the Duke's request, but the ground stated for that advice was not the validity of the pardon; but that if the Duke should be impeached, or a Bill to attaint him brought in, the pardon being disputed would be a good excuse for dissolving the Parliament, which would then appear to be done, not in maintenance of Popery, but the prerogative. The King, however, at this time, was so highly exasperated against his brother, that he would not consent. Minutes of the Earl of Anglesea at the Council, 15th October, 1680. Dal. Mem. ii. 328. 66 not more extraordinary than I. Expiration of Act. Rose p. 32. tion of books without a licence, is the next particular SECTION mentioned by Mr. Fox, as contributing to make the reign of Charles the Second the æra of good laws. the Licensing And is, Mr. Rose says, "the most extraordinary of the whole." But it is his comment upon it, with agreeing with Mr. Fox, that the "Act itself "was unquestionably a great restraint on the freedom "of the press, "but observes, that it was merely temporary, and had been suffered to expire. From its expiration till the end of the reign of Charles the Second, the press was under no legislative restraint, and surely this was also a circumstance conducing to the theoretical perfection of our constitution, unless Mr. Rose should be of opinion that the liberty of free discussion through the medium of the press, is, in itself, a grievance. Possibly this observation is founded upon a misapprehension of the meaning of the word laws, which Mr. Rose would explain to mean statutes only, we may then account for this instance as he calls it, being denominated the most extraordinary of the whole; for how, he might say, can any Statute that is expired and no longer existing, make any of those good ones, which entitled this æra to be so distinguished, But Mr. Fox does not use these words synonimously, he does not speak of an æra of good statutes only, but of good laws generally. The repealing of all the statutes now in force would not 66 |