Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	civil_a	law_n	matter_n	2,103	5	5.8530	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41165	The design of enslaving England discovered in the incroachments upon the powers and privileges of Parliament by K. Charles II being a new corrected impression of that excellent piece intituled, A just and modest vindication of the proceedings of the two last Parliaments of King Charles the Second.	Jones, William, Sir, 1631-1682.; Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714.	1689 (1689)	Wing F734; ESTC R5506	42,396	53

that the King cannot supply his most pressing Necessities either by Loans or by the Benevolence of his Subjects which by the express words of the Statute are damned and annulled for ever But the House of Commons were so cautious of giving any just occasion of Cavil that they restrain'd their Votes much more than they needed to have done For they extended them only to three Branches of the Revenue all which were by several Acts of Parliament given to his present Majesty And surely every one will agree that when the King receives a Gift from his People he takes it under such Conditions and ought to imploy it in such a manner and for such purposes as they direct We must therefore consult the several Acts by which those Branches were setled if we would judge rightly whether the Commons had not particular Reasons for what they did The Statute 12 Car. 2. c. 4. says That the Commons reposing Trust in his Majesty for guarding the Seas against all Persons intending the Disturbance of Trade and the invading of the Realm to that intent do give him the Tonnage and Poundage c. This is as direct an Appropriation as Words can make and therefore as it is manifest wrong to the Subject to divert any part of this Branch to other uses so for the King to anticipate it is plainly to disable himself to perform the Trust reposed in Him. And the late long Parliament thought this matter so clear that about two years before their Dissolution they passed a Vote with Relation to the Customs in almost the same Words The Parliament which gave the Excise were so far from thinking that the King had power to charge or dispose of it as his own that by a special Clause in the Act whereby they give it they were careful to impower him to dispose of it or any part of it by way of Farm and to Enact that such Contracts shall be effectual in Law so as they be not for a longer time than three years The Act whereby the Hearth-money was given declares that it was done to the end that the publick Revenue might be proportioned to the publick Charge and 't is impossible that should ever be whilst it is liable to be pre-ingaged and anticipated And the Parliament were so careful to preserve this Tax always clear and uncharg'd that they made it penal for any one so much as to accept of any Pension or Grant for years or any other Estate or any Summ of Money out of the Revenue arising by vertue of that Act from the King his Heirs or Successors Surely if the Penners of this Declaration had not been altogether ignorant of our own Laws and of the Policy of all other Countries and Ages they would never have printed those Votes in hopes thereby to have exposed the Commons to the World. They would not have had the face to say that thereby the King was exposed to Danger deprived of a possibility of supporting the Government and reduc'd to a more helpless Condition than the meanest of His Subjects This we are sure of that the inviolable observing of these Statutes will be so far from reducing His Majesty to a more helpless Condition than the meanest of his Subjects that it will still leave him in a better condition than the richest and greatest of his Ancestors none of which were ever Masters of such a Revenue The H. of Commons are in the next place accused of a very high Crime the assuming to themselves a power of suspending Acts of Parliament because they declared that it was their opinion That the Prosecution of Protestant Dissenters upon the Penal Laws is at this time grievous to the Subject a weakning of the Protestant Interest an Incouragement to Popery and dangerous to the Peace of the Kingdom The Ministers remembred that not many years ago the whole Nation was justly alarm'd upon the assuming an Arbitrary Power of suspending Penal Laws and therefore they thought it would be very popular to accuse the Commons of such an attempt But how they could possible misinterpret a Vote at that rate how they could say the Commons pretended to a Power of repealing Laws when they only declare their Opinion of the inconveniency of them will never be understood till the Authors of this are pleased to shew their Causes and Reasons for it in a second Declaration Every impartial man will own that the Commons had reason for this Opinion of theirs They had with great anxiety observed that the present design of the Papists was not against any one sort of Protestants but universal and for extirpating the Reform'd Religion They saw what advantages these Enemies made of our Divisions and how cunningly they diverted us from prosecuting them by fomenting our jealousies of one another They saw the strength and nearness of the King of France and judged of his Inclinations by his usage of his own Protestant Subjects They consider'd the number and the bloody Principles of the Irish and what Conspiracies were form'd there and even ripe for Execution and that Scotland was already delivered into the hands of a Prince the known head of the Papists in these Kingdoms and the occasion of all their Plots and Insolencies as more than one Parliament had declared They could not but take notice into what hands the most considerable Trusts both Civil and Military were put and that notwithstanding all Addresses and all Proclamations for a strict Execution of the Penal Laws against Papists yet their Faction so far prevailed that they were eluded and only the dissenting Protestants smarted under the edge of them In the midst of such Circumstances was there not cause to think an Union of all Protestants necessary and could they have any just ground to believe that the Dissenters whilst they lay under the Pressures of severe Laws should with such Alacrity and Courage as was requisite undertake the defence of a Country where they were so ill treated A long and sad Experience had shew'd how vain the Endeavours of former Parliaments had been to force us to be all of one Opinion and therefore the House of Commons resolv'd to take a sure way to make us of one Affection They knew that some busie men would be striking whilst there were Weapons at hand and therefore to make us live at peace they meant to take away all occasions of provoking or being provoked In order to a general Repeal of these Laws they first came to a Vote declaring the necessity of it to which there was not one Negative in the House A Vote of this nature does for the most part precede the bringing in of a Bill for the Repeal of any General Law. And it had been a great presumption in a particular Member to have asked leave to have brought in a Bill for repealing so many Laws together till the House had first declar'd that in their opinion they were grievous and inconvenient No English man

Parliament then we hope that shame will stop their mouths who have made such a noise against the Commons with this Record First It is evident from the Roll it self with other Records that the Lords did judg those Commoners contrary to the Law of the Land that is at the instance of the King and the Prosecution of their Enemies without the due course of the Law or calling them to make their Defence and for ought appears without legal Testimony Secondly It is evident that they were driven upon this illegal Proceeding by the Power and Authority of the King and some Prosecutors who earnestly pressed the Lords thereunto upon pretence of speedily avenging the Blood of the former King and his Uncle So that the Judgment was given at the Kings Suit in a way not warranted by the Law and Custom of Parliament or any other Law of the Kingdom Surely when the Lords blood was suffered to cool they had reason to desire something might be left upon Record to preserve them for the future from being put upon such shameful Work tho such a case as the Murder of a King should again happen as it seems they did not fear to be pressed in any other so to violate the Laws But Thirdly There is not a word in the Record that imports a restriction of that lawful Jurisdiction which our Constitution placeth in the Lords to try Commoners when their Cases should come before them lawfully at the Suit of the Commons by Impeachment There is no mark of an Intention to change any part of the Ancient Government but to provide against the Violation of it and that the Law might stand as before notwithstanding the unlawful Judgment they had lately given So that the question is still the same Whether by the Law of the Land that is the Law and Custom of Parliament or any other Law the Lords ought to try Commoners Impeached by the Commons in Parliament as if that Record had never been And we cannot think that any man of Sence will from that Record make an argument in this point since it could be no better than to infer that because the Lords are no more to be pressed by the King or at his Suit to give Judgment against Commoners contrary to the Law of the Land when they are not Impeached in Parliament therefore they must give no Judgment against them at the Suit of the Commons in Parliament when they are by them Impeached according to the Laws and Customs of Parliament But if such as delight in these Cavils had searched into all the Records relating unto that of the 4 Ed. 3. they might have found in the 19th of the same King a Writ issued out to suspend the Execution of the Judgment against Matrevers because it had been illegally passed And the chief reason therein given is that he had not been Impeached and suffered to make his Defence But it was never suggested nor imagined that the Lords that judged him had no Jurisdiction over him because he was a Commoner or ought not to have exercised it if he had been Impeached nor was it pretended that by Magna Charta he ought to have been tried only by his Peers the Laws of the Land therein mentioned and the Laws and Customs of Parliaments being better known and more reverenced in these days than to give way to such a mistake They might also have found by another Record of the 26th of the same King that by undoubted Act of Parliament Matrevers was pardon'd and the Judgment is therein agreed by the Lords and Commons to have been illegal and unjustly passed by the violent Prosecution of his Enemies but it is not alledged that it was coram non judice as if the Lords might not have judged him if the proceedings before them had been legal But as the sense and proceedings of all Parliaments have ever been best known by their practice the Objectors might have found by all the Records since the 4 Ed. 3. that Commoners as well as Lords might be and have been Impeached before Lords and judged by them to Capital or other Punishments as appears undeniably to every man that hath read our Histories or Records And verily the concurrent sense and practice of Parliaments for so many Ages will be admitted to be a better interpretation of their own Acts than the sense that these men have lately put upon them to increase our Disorders But to silence the most malicious in this point let the famous Act of the 25 of Ed. 3. be considered which hath ever since limited all inferior Courts in their Jurisdiction unto the Trial of such Treasons only as are therein particularly specified and reserved all other Treasons to the Trial and Judgment of Parliament So that if any such be committed by Commoners they must be so Tried or not at all And if the last should be allowed it will follow that the same fact which in a Peer is Treason and punishable with Death in a Commoner is no Crime and subject to no punishment Nor doth Magna Charta confine all Trials to common Juries for it ordains that they should be tried by the Judgment of Peers or by the Law of the Land. And will any man say the Law of Parliament is not the Law of the Land Nor are these words in Magna Charta superfluous or insignificant for then there would be no Trial before the Constable or Marshal where there is no Jury at all there could be no Trial of a Peer of the Realm upon an Appeal of Murther who according to the Law ought in such cases to be try'd by a common Jury and not by his Peers And since the Records of Parliaments are full of Impeachment of Commons and no instance can be given of the rejection of any such Impeachment it is the Commons who have reason to cite Magna Charta upon this occasion which provides expresly against the denial of Justice And indeed it looks like a denial of Justice when a Court that hath undoubted cognizance of a Cause regularly brought before them shall refuse to hear it but most especially when as in this case the Prosecutors could not be so in any other Court so as a final stop was put to their Suit though the Lords could not judicially know whether any body else would prosecute elsewhere This Proceeding of the Lords looks the more odly because they rejected the Cause before they knew as Judges what it was and referred it to the ordinary course of Law without staying to hear whether it were a matter whereof an inferior Court could take cognizance There are Treasons which can only be adjudged in Parliament and if we may collect the sense of the House of Commons from their Debates they thought there was a mixture of those kind of Treasons in Fitz-Harris's Case And therefore there was little reason for that severe suggestion that the Impeachment was only designed to delay a Trial since a

we shall be obliged to engage in his present War with the Portuguese though he by his violent seizing of the Island of St. Gabriel which had long been in their peaceable possession without once demanding it of them has most justly provoked the Portuguese to invade Spain Nor are we bound only to assist him in case of an Invasion but in case of any Disturbance whatsoever which must be intended of intestine Troubles and it is so directly explained in the secret Article which all Europe says was signed at the same time So that if the present King of Spain should imitate his Great Grandfather Philip the Second and oppress any of his Subjects as cruelly as he did those of the Low Countries and so force them to a necessary Self-Defence we have renounced the policy of our Ancestors who thought it their Interest as well as their Duty to succor the distressed and must not only aid him with 8000 Men for three Months to make those People Slaves but if the matter cannot be composed in that time make War upon them with our whole Force both by Land and Sea. But that which concerns us yet nearer in this League is that this Obligation of assistance was mutual so that if a Disturbance should happen hereafter in England upon any attempt to change our Religion or our Government though it was in the time of his Majesties Successors the Most Catholick King is obliged by this League which we are still to believe was entred into for the security of the Protestant Religion and the good of the Nation to give Aid to so Pious a Design and to make War upon the People with all his Forces both by Land and Sea. And therefore it was no wonder that the Ministers were not forward in shewing this League to the Parliament who would soon have observed all these Inconveniences and have seen how little such a League could contribute to the preserving the General Peace or to the Securing of Flanders since the French King may within one months time possess himself of it and we by the League are not obliged to send our Succors till Three Months after the Invasion So that they would upon the whole matter have been inclined to suspect that the main End of this League was only to serve for a handsom pretence to raise an Army in England and if the people here should grow discontented at it and any little Disorders should ensue the Spaniard is thereby obliged to send over Forces to suppress them The next thing recommended to them was the farther Examination of the Plot and every one who has observed what has passed for more than two years together cannot doubt that this was sincerely desired by such as are most in Credit with his Majesty and then surely the Parliament deserved not to be censured upon this Account since the Examination of so many new Witnesses the Tryal of the Lord Stafford the great Preparations for the Tryals of the rest of the Lords and their diligent Enquiry into the Horrid Irish Treasons shew that the Parliament wanted no Diligence to pursue his Majesties good Intentions in that Affair And when His Majesty desired from the Parliament their Advice and Assistance concerning the Preservation of Tangier the Commons did not neglect to give it its due Consideration They truly represented to Him how that important place came to be brought into such Exigencies after so vast a Treasure expended to make it useful and that nothing better could be expected of a Town for the most part put under Popish Governors and always fill'd with a Popish Garison These were Evils in his Majesty's own Power to redress and they advised him to it nor did they rest there but promise to assist him in defence of it as soon as ever they could be reasonably secured that any Supply which they gave for that purpose should not be used to augment the Strength of our Popish Adversaries and to encrease our Dangers at Home They had more than once seen Mony employed directly contrary to the end for which it was given by Parliament and they had too great cause of Fear it might be so again and they knew that such a Misimployment would have been fatal at that Time. But above all they considered the imminent Danger which threatned them with certain Ruin at Home and therefore justly thought that to leave the Consideration of England to provide for Tangier would be to act like a Man that should send his Servants to mend a Gap in his Hedg when he saw his House on Fire and his Family like to be consumed in it We are next told that His Majesty offered to concur in any Remedies that could be proposed for the Security of the Protestant Religion and we must own that he did indeed make such an Offer but he was pleased to go no farther For those Remedies which the Commons tendered were rejected and those which they were preparing were prevented by a Dissolution We have seen the great Things which the King did on his part let us now reflect on those Instances which are singled out as so many unsuitable Returns of the Commons They are complained of for presenting Addresses in the nature of Remonstrances rather than Answers Under what unhappy Circumstances do we find our selves when our Representatives can never behave themselves with that Caution but they will be mis-interpreted at Court If the Commons had return'd Answer to his Majesty's Messages without shewing upon what Grounds they proceeded they had then been accused as Men acting peremptorily and without reason if they modestly express the Reasons of their Resolutions they are then said to Remonstrate But what the Ministers would have this word Remonstrance signify what Crime it is they mean thereby to charge the Commons with is unknown to an English Reader Perhaps they who are better Criticks and more French men know some pernicious thing which it imports If they mean by a Remonstrance a declaring the Causes and Reasons of what they do it will not surely be imputed as a Fault in them since 't is a way of proceeding which His Majesties Ministers have justified by their own Example having in His Majesties Name vouchsafed to declare the Causes and Reasons of his Actions to his People But the Commons made Arbitrary Orders for taking Persons into Custody for matters that had no Relation to Priviledges of Parliament The Contrivers of this Declaration who are so particular in other things would have done well to have given some instances of these Orders If they intend by these General Words to reflect on the Orders made to take those degenerate Wretches into Custody who published under their Hands their Abhorrence of Parliaments and of those who in an humble and lawful manner Petitioned for their Sitting in a time of such extream necessity Surely they are not in good earnest they cannot believe themselves when they say that these Matters had no Relation to