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WE now come to that so much asser∣ted and inseparable Flower of the Crown (as the king and Royalists would have it believed,) viz. his Negative voyce in Parliament; a claim so absurd and con∣trary to Law and Reason, that wise men may laugh at it, and fools discern the distru∣ctive consequence thereof; for at one blast or breath of the kings, it utterly frustrates the very Essence and Being of all Parliaments,
and obstructs all their Consultations; and whatsoever they shall never so well advise and agree upon as a necessary Law, shall be made of no effect with this one single word of the kings (Negatur) which is point blank against his Corronation Oath, where he swears or ought to swear to Govern both by the old Laws, & per istas bonas leges quas vulgus eligerit, (though it pleased the Arch∣bishop to emasculate that most essential part of the Oath, so to leave the king at liberty) and by such good Laws as the Parliament shall chuse, so that the Legislative power hath always resided in that Soveraign Court to make and unmake Laws according to the vicissitude of times and change of mens manners, and not at the kings choyce, who hath only the distributive power, when Laws are made to see them duly executed; and the Law of the Land also limits that power; for the king, (as before 'tis noted) cannot exe∣cute the Laws at his own pleasure, but in and by his Courts of Justice. But strange it is, what a ridiculous construction Royalists have made of the verb eligerit, to be meant in the preterpersect Tense and not of the future, to make any new Laws (though never so ne∣cessary) but that the people must stand to their old Laws (though some of them
never so fit to be abrogated) unless the king please to give way to the establishing of new, or repealing of the old, which is a most irrationall and destructive assertion: Nei∣ther may we omit to shew what Royalists farther aver, that such is the necessity and force of the Kings assent, that be the Law never so useful and beneficial for the people to be established, yet without the Kings (fiat) it can never have the force and stamp of a Law; which is the same as when the King chosen Generalissimo, and trusted with the conduct of the Kingdoms Armies, will turn the mouth of the Canon from the Enemy on his own Souldiers, and deny them to provide for their own safeties: such ab∣surdities have the late and present Licenciates of this time ran into, as if men had been be∣witch't to betray their own freedoms; It is not denyed, but that the Kings assent to a Law (thought fit by the Parliament to be Enacted) is very necessary; yet it follows not that it must be of necessity; for if the King out of a perverse humour will not (after some time of consideration) assent to such a Law, which if not ratified by his (fiat) tends to the inevitable destruction of the Common-wealth, shall the publick safety be neglected for the humoring of one mans
obstinate will? and in such a case ought not the States Assembled in Parliament provide against a common mischief, Enact and Or∣dain for the publick indemnity as former Presidents in such cases may direct them, and when no other remedy can be had? The Lords in the time of king Richard the Se∣cond, would not be so answered, when they sent him word that if he would not come to the Parliament (according to his promise) and joyn his helping hand to theirs in re∣dress of the publick grievances, they would chuse such a King that should.