As for Arbitrary Power of taking men into custody, for matters that had no relation to Privileges of Parliament, he says they have erred with their Fathers. If he confess that they have erred, let it be with all their Generation, still they have erred:  and an error of the first digestion, is seldom mended in the second.  But I find him modest in this point; and knowing too well they are not a Court of Judicature, he does not defend them from Arbitrary Proceedings, but only excuses, and palliates the matter, by saying, that it concern’d the Rights of the People, in suppressing their Petitions to the Fountain of Justice.  So, when it makes for him, he can allow the King to be the Fountain of Justice, but at other times he is only a Cistern of the People. But he knows sufficiently, however he dissembles it, that there were some taken into custody, to whom that crime was not objected.  Yet since in a manner he yields up the Cause, I will not press him too far, where he is so manifestly weak.  Tho I must tell him by the way, that he is as justly to be proceeded against for calling the Kings Proclamation illegal, which concerned the matter of Petitioning, as some of those, who had pronounced against them by the House of Commons, that terrible sentence, of Take him, Topham.

The strange illegal Votes declaring several eminent persons to be Enemies to the King and Kingdom, are not so strange, he says, but very justifiable.  I hope he does not mean, that illegal Votes are now not strange in the House of Commons:  But observe the reason which he gives:  for the House of Commons had before address’d for their removal from about the King.  It was his business to have prov’d, that an Address of the House of Commons, without Process, order of Law, hearing any Defence, or offering any proof against them is sufficient ground to remove any person from the King:  But instead of this he only proves, that former Addresses have been made, Which no body can deny.  When he has throughly settled this important point, that Addresses have certainly been made, instead of an Argument to back it, he only thinks, that one may affirm by Law, That the King ought to have no person about him, who has the misfortune of such a Vote.  But this is too ridiculous to require an Answer.  They who will have a thing done, and give no reason for it, assume to themselves a manifest Arbitrary Power.  Now this Power cannot be in the Representatives, if it be not in the People:  or if it be in them, the People is absolute.  But since he wholly thinks it, let him injoy the privilege of every Free Born Subject, to have the Bell clinck to him what he imagines.

Well; all this while he has been in pain about laying his Egg:  at the last we shall have him cackle.

If the House of Commons declare they have just Reasons to fear, that such a person puts the King upon Arbitrary Councils, or betrays His and the Nations Interest, in such a Case, Order and Process of Law is not necessary to remove him; but the Opinion and Advice of the Nation is enough; because bare removing neither fines him, nor deprives him of Life, Liberty, or Offices, wherein State Affairs are not concern’d.