Our present King, I acknowledge has often found it so; though no thanks I suppose to this Gentleman and his Party.  But though he cry down Paper and Parchment at this Rate, they are the best Evidence he can have for his Estate, and his friends the Lawyers will advise him to speak with less contempt of those Commodities.  If Laws avail the Subject nothing, our Ancestors have made many a bad Bargain for us.  Yet I can instance to him one Paper, namely, that of the Habeas Corpus bill; for which the House of Commons would have been content to have given a Million of good English money, and which they had Gratis from his Majesty.  ’Tis true, they boast they got it by a Trick; but if the Clerk of the Parliament had been bidden to forget it, their Trick of telling Noses might have fail’d them.  Therefore let us do right on all sides:  The Nation is oblig’d both to the House of Commons for asking it, and more especially to his Majesty, for granting it so freely.

But what can we think of his next Axiome, that it was never known that Laws signified any thing to a People, who had not the sole guard of their own Prince, Government and Laws?

Here all our Fore-fathers are Arraign’d at once for trusting the Executive power of the Laws in their Princes hands.  And yet you see the Government has made a shift to shuffle on for so many hundred years together, under this miserable oppression; and no man so wise in so many ages to find out, that Magna Charta was to no purpose, while there was a King.  I confess in Countreys, where the Monarck governs absolutely, and the Law is either his Will, or depending on it, this noble maxim might take place; But since we are neither Turks, Russians, nor Frenchmen, to affirm that in our Countrey, in a Monarchy of so temperate and wholsom a Constitution, Laws are of no validity, because they are not in the disposition of the People, plainly infers that no Government but that of a Common-wealth can preserve our Liberties and Priviledges:  for though the Title of a Prince be allow’d to continue, yet if the People must have the sole guard and Government of him and of the Laws, ’tis but facing an whole hand of Trumps, with an insignificant King of another sute.  And which is worst of all, if this be true, there can be no Rebellion, for then the People is the supream power.  And if the Representatives of the Commons shall Jarr with the other two Estates, and with the King, it would be no Rebellion to adhere to them in that War:  to which I know that every Republican who reads this, must of necessity Answer, No more it would not.  Then farewell the Good Act of Parliament, which makes it Treason to Levy Arms against the present King, upon any pretences whatsoever.  For if this be a Right of Nature, and consequently never to be Resign’d, there never has been, nor ever can be any pact betwixt King and People, and Mr. Hobbs would tell us, That we are still in a state of War.