Selected quad for the lemma: country_n
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A50102
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The case of allegiance in our present circumstances consider'd in a letter from a minister in the city to a minister in the country.
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Masters, Samuel, 1645 or 6-1693.
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1689
(1689)
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Wing M1067; ESTC R7622
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29,404
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42
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ultimately resolved they allow to an English Parliament no more power than to give some inauthoritative Advice which the King may use or neglect as he thinks fit They think a Coronation Oath whatever it may be with respect to God yet with respect to the People is only a customary Ceremony or insignificant Formality They suppose all legal limitations of the Government to be but the King 's arbitrary and temporary Condescentions which he may retract without doing any Injury to the People and in a word that all our Laws are entirely dependent on His Pleasure for their Being Continuance and Influence but his Will is in all Cases unaccountable and irresistible Such Maxims as these quite alter the Frame of our English Government raise up our King into a Tyrant and depress his Subjects into Slaves and serve only to render the King odious and his People miserable and therefore as no wise Man can forbear wishing that they may not be true so upon enquiry we shall find that they have been advanced either by the Fondness of some who frame Schemes of Government in their own imagination or by the Ignorance of others who are deceiv'd with the sound of the aequivocal Name of King or by the Craft of those who make a Trade of advancing the Prerogative in order to their own Advancement Indeed if the preceding Principle had proved true That Monarchy is a Divine Institution it would be necessary for us to grant that no other Form of Government could be mix'd with it or That be restrained by any Limitations because it cannot be lawful for Man to adulterate or infringe the Ordinance of God But seeing the Jus Divinum doth not appear we have reason to suppose that our English Government is built on the Topical Constitutions of this Countrey and may differ from the Government of other Countreys as much as our Tempers Interests and Circumstances do For if the Supreme Governor of the VVorld hath not thought fit to prescribe One Form of Government to be every-where observed he hath permitted to every Nation a Liberty of framing to themselves such a Constitution as may be most useful and agreeable and as it is inconceivable that all Nations should conspire in the same Platform of Governments so it is most unreasonable to seek in Judea Italy or France for the Measures or Properties of the English Government which was made and is therefore to be found only at Home and should be describ'd rather from its own Laws and Constitutions than any fine Notions we can conceive of what it might or should be And if we contemplate the Government it self we may easily discover what its essential Forms and Properties are for surely a Government that hath been publickly transacted through so many Ages and hath made so great a Figure in the world cannot remain an imperceptible Secret or an unintelligible Mystery and I cannot forbear suspecting those who disguise it with so many Uncertainties and Obscurities that they design to mislead us into a mistake of that which they will not allow us to understand A little skill in our English History will suffice to inform us That the Saxons and English from whom this Nation is chiefly descended did first introduce the Form of our English Government and that it was the same they had been inur'd to in Germany where as Tacitus observes Regibus nec infinita aut libera potestas Kings had not an Absolute or Unlimited Power Tacit. de morib Germ. Sect. 3 5. And from the ancient Records of those early Times we are assur'd That the Consent of the People in a Convention or Parliament did always concur to the making of Laws and also their Consent in a Jury of Peers was always admitted in the Execution of Them VVhence the People of England have been always acknowledged to be Free-men And tho we read that the Saxons were subdued by the Danes yet we find not that their Government was changed but that after a short Interruption the Government and Country returned entirely into the Hands of the Saxons The Duke of Normandy whom we call the Conqueror was such only with respect to Harold who usurp'd the Crown but not with respect to the Kingdom which he claimed as Successor to King Edward to whom he was related by whom he was adopted and from whom he had received a solemn Promise of the next Reversion and accordingly we find that tho be made some external Changes in the Government yet he made no essential Alteration in the Form of it and the same kind of Government hath been transmitted by succeeding Kings to the present Age with some accidental Improvements as our Ancestors grew wiser by Experience or the Necessities and interests of the Nation did require Now inasmuch as our English Government was at first transplanted out of another Countrey and hath been ripened into a Perfection by several degrees through a long tract of Time it would be very fanciful to suppose one solemn time when the Original Compact between the King and People was first made or to ask after a Book in which it is in a certain Form recorded that Compact being nothing else than a tacit Agreement between the King and Subjects to observe such common Usages and Practices as by an immemorial Prescription are become the Common-Law of our Government And to understand these so far as our present Case requires there it no necessity that should read over all the Records in the Tower or all the Volumes of our English History there being several ancient Forms and Customs among us which fall under easie Observation that are sufficient to inform us of the Nature of our English Government For when at a Coronation we see a King presented to the People and their Consent solemnly asked and given what can we reasonably inser from thence but that anciently Kings were advanced to their Thrones by the Consent and Agreement of the People When we hear the King solemnly Promise and Swear to maintain to the People their Rights and Liberties to conserve the Laws and cause them to be observed must we not conclude from thence that there are Rights and Liberties reserved to the People that the Will of the King is limited by the Law of the Realm and that he is bound by His Oath to conserve the Laws as we are by Ours to observe them When we are taught to call the King our Leige-Sovereign and our selves his Leige-Subjects do not those Terms import that he is bound to protect Us in All our Rights as we are bound to obey Him in All his Laws When we read in the Preamble of every Statute That it is enacted not only by the Authority of the King 's most Excellent Majesty but also by the Authority of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and of the Commons assembled in Parliamen is it not very evident from hence that the Parliament hath a share in the Legislative Power which is an eminent Branch
mischief or wickedness that will advance their glory and promote their interests When also we consider that he proceeded in these courses with so obstinate a resolution that when his Peers indeavoured to raclaim him by advice they only thereby lost his favour and all their Preferments and when some of his Bishops petitioned him in the humblest manner they were answered only with fury and imprisonment When lastly we consider how far he had advanc'd in this way that we already began to despair and our Enemies to triumph and if our Glorious Deliverer had not timely intervened we might have been in a few months past all hopes of Recovery We may surely upon these considerations be allowed to conclude That England could not be in more danger or any Prince lie under juster exceptions or a people be more disoblig'd from their Allegiance There are some who say that if the League with France the Imposture of a young Prince the Murder of the Earl of Essex c. were clearly proved they should not be able to contain themselves from renouncing all Allegiance to him But though these may perchance be proved in due time yet if they never are there is certainly enough and too much besides to satisfie any reasonable Man. 2. If James the Second deserted the Kingdom without any necessity but what he induced on himself and if he made no provision for the administration of the Government in his absence but by taking away the publick Seals and cancelling the Writs of Parliament design'd to obstruct all regular proceedings and if also he hath put himself into the hands of the French King the greatest Enemy of our Religion and Country without whom he cannot return to us and with whom he cannot return without apparent ruine to his Kingdom he doth thereby cease de facto to be our King and we become discharged from all further Allegiance to him I suppose few would haesitate in granting such a conclusion if the Late King had by a writing under his hand and Seal solemnly abdicated the Government but I know not what mighty force there is in a form of Words for renouncing the Government that it may not be as effectually performed by a proper and notorious fact or that a King may not as well renounce his Crown by doing it as by saying it and it is the thing it self and not the way of expressing it which is the ground on which the relation between a King and his Subjects is dissolved and therefore if a King doth actually desert his People his Government and their Obedience must thereupon actually cease You would perchance easily allow the argument if the King had withdrawn deliberately and of choice but it is said that he was rather hurried out of his Kingdom by force and fear It will be therefore necessary to relate to you the History of that transaction which according to the truest account that I can meet with is this When the King went hence the first time the Prince and his Armie were at a great distance and a Treatie between them was pretended but he left the City before his Commissioners could return with an Answer to his Demands and it is certain that the Treaty was but a delusive Pretence and that his Departure was resolv'd on some Days before for he himself declar'd to a Person of Credit that the Queen had obtained from him a Solemn Oath upon the Sacrament on the Sunday that if the went away for France on Monday he would not fail to follow her on Tuesday Which he accordingly attempted and we are very well assur'd that tho his Subjects used some Force to hinder his Flight yet they used none to compel him to it When he left this City the second time he receiv'd a Message from the Prince which desir'd him to withdraw some few Miles from London lest the Army coming thither and Whitehall being throng'd with Papists some Disorders might thence arise not consistent with the Publick Peace or the Kings Safety but we are sure that it was altogether of his own Choice that he went first to Rochester and thence out of the Kingdom If you reply that the late King being deserted by his Subjects and exposed naked to the Prince's Power was brought under a necessity of flying I must answer that that Necessity was not absolute but conditional For the Prince to whom he lately allowed the Character of being always Just to his Word had assur'd him in his Declaration that if he would suffer the Grievances of his People to be redress'd in a Free Parliament his Army should peaceably depart And not a few of his Nobles and others did earnestly beseech him to comply with those Terms and solemnly assure him that in such a Compliance they would faithfully adhere to him If therefore the late King would have return'd to the English Government he need not have left the Kingdom but if he chose rather to depose and banish himself than acknowledg and correct the Errors of his Government or let fall those glorious Projects of advancing Popery and an Arbitrary Power in England we have no Reason to think such a wilful Necessity which he imposed upon himself a sufficient Excuse for deserting his Kingdom but rather to conclude that if he would rather leave us than leave off to oppress us we are happily releas'd from our Allegiance and Oppression together Yet if we should impute his Flight rather to the weakness of his Fear than to the obstinacy of his Resolution I do not see how the same Conclusion can be avoided For if he leave off to administer the Government himself and rather hinder than promote its Administration by others the course of the Government is thereby stop'd and either this Nation must disband into Confusion or we are necessitated to seek out and imploy some other Expedient If you think that he might in short time overcome his Fears and return to his People and Government even this Hope is fatally precluded by his making himself a Royal Prisoner to the French King from whom he can expect only to be used and managed as will most contribute to the Designs and Interests of that Haughty Monarch insomuch that we cannot conceive his Return possible without the Consent and Conduct of Him whom he hath made his Patron and without the dreadful attendance of a French Army and the dismal Consequence of utter Ruine to our Church and Nation And surely that Prince who can forsake his People and abandon them out of his Care and make it impossible to return except as an Enemy to vanquish and destroy them may very well be thought to cease de facto to be a King and his Subjects to owe any Allegiance to him 3. It the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons of England assembled in the late Convention have upon mature Deliberation resolved and declared that James the 2d hath abdicated the Government and vacated the Throne we may be satisfactorily