Observe what monstrous consequences would result from a contrary position.  A foreign enemy has entered, or a strong domestic one has arisen in the nation.  In such events the circumstances may be, and often have been, such that a Parliament cannot sit.  This was precisely the case in that rebellion in Ireland.  It will be admitted also, that their power may be so great as to make it very prudent to treat with them, in order to save effusion of blood, perhaps to save the nation.  Now could such a treaty be at all made, if your enemies, or rebels, were fully persuaded, that, in these times of confusion, there was no authority in the state which could hold out to them an inviolable pledge for their future security, but that there lurked in the Constitution a dormant, but irresistible power, who would not think itself bound by the ordinary subsisting and contracting authority, but might rescind its acts and obligations at pleasure?  This would be a doctrine made to perpetuate and exasperate war; and on that principle it directly impugns the law of nations, which is built upon this principle, that war should be softened as much as possible, and that it should cease as soon as possible, between contending parties and communities.  The king has a power to pardon individuals.  If the king holds out his faith to a robber, to come in on a promise of pardon, of life and estate, and, in all respects, of a full indemnity, shall the Parliament say that he must nevertheless be executed, that his estate must be forfeited, or that he shall be abridged of any of the privileges which he before held as a subject?  Nobody will affirm it.  In such a case, the breach of faith would not only be on the part of the king who assented to such an act, but on the part of the Parliament who made it.  As the king represents the whole contracting capacity of the nation, so far as his prerogative (unlimited, as I said before, by any precedent law) can extend, he acts as the national procurator on all such occasions.  What is true of a robber is true of a rebel; and what is true of one robber or rebel is as true, and it is a much more important truth, of one hundred thousand.

To urge this part of the argument further is, indeed, I fear, not necessary, for two reasons:  first, that it seems tolerably evident in itself; and next, that there is but too much ground to apprehend that the actual ratification of Parliament would, in the then temper of parties, have proved but a very slight and trivial security.  Of this there is a very strong example in the history of those very articles:  for, though the Parliament omitted in the reign of King William to ratify the first and most general of them, they did actually confirm the second and more limited, that which related to the security of the inhabitants of those five counties which were in arms when the treaty was made.

CHAPTER IV.