tual enjoyment. It has therefore established certain other auxiliary subordinate rights of the subject, which serve principally as outworks or barriers, to protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights, of personal security, personal liberty, and private property.

1. The constitution, powers, and privileges of parliament, of which I shall treat at large in the ensuing chapter.

2. The limitation of the king's prerogative, by bounds, so certain and notorious, that it is impossible he should either mistake or legally exceed them without the consent of the people.

3. A third subordinate right of every Englishman is, that of applying to the courts of justice for redress of injuries. Since the law is in England the supreme arbiter of every man's life, liberty, and property, courts of justice must at all times be open to the subject, and the law be duly administered therein.

4. If there should happen àny uncommon injury, or infringements of the rights before-mentioned, which the ordinary course of law is too defective to reach, there still remains another subordinate right, appertaining to every individual. The right of petitioning the king, or either house of parliament, for the redress of grievances. Care only must be taken, lest, under the pretence of petitioning, the subject be guilty of any riot or tumult; as happened in the opening of the memorable parliament in 1640: and, to prevent this, it is provided by the statute 13 Car. 2. st. 1. c. 5. that no petition to

the king, or either house of parliament, for any alteration in the church or state, shall be signed by above twenty persons, unless the matter thereof be approved by three justices of the peace, or the major part of the grand jury, in the country; and in London by the lord mayor, aldermen, and common council: nor shall any petition be presented by more than ten persons at a time. But, under these regulations, it is declared by the statute 1 W. & M. st. 2. c. 2. that the subject hath a right to petition; and that all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal.

5. The fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject is, that of having arms for a man's defence, suitable to his condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law. Which is also declared by the same statute 1 W. & M. st. 2. c. 2. and it is indeed a public allowance under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.

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In these several articles consist the rights, or, as they are frequently termed, the liberties of Englishmen liberties, more generally talked of, than thoroughly understood; and yet highly necessary to be perfectly known and considered by every man of rank or property, lest his ignorance of the points whereon they are founded should hurry him into faction and licentiousness on the one hand, or a pusillanimous indifference on the other. The English is the only nation in the world, where political or civil liberty is the direct end of its consti

tution. Recommending therefore to the student in our laws a farther and more accurate search into this extensive and important title, I shall close my remarks upon it with the expiring wish of the famous father Paul to his country, "esto perpetua!"

CHAPTER II.

OF THE PARLIAMENT.

We are next to treat of the rights and duties of persons, as they are members of society, and stand in various relations to each other. These relations are either public or private: and we will first consider those that are public.

The most universal public relation, by which men are connected together, is that of government: namely, as governors and governed, or, in other words, as magistrates and people. Of magistrates some also are supreme, in whom the sovereign power of the state resides; others are subordinate, deriving all their authority from the supreme magistrate, accountable to him for their conduct, and acting in an inferior secondary sphere.

With us therefore in England this supreme power is divided into two branches: the one legislative, to wit, the parliament, consisting of king, lords, and commons; the other executive, consisting of the king alone.

The original or first institution of parliaments is one of those matters which lie so far hidden in the

dark ages of antiquity, that the tracing of it out is a thing equally difficult and uncertain.

I. The parliament is regularly to be summoned by the king's writ or letter, issued out of chancery by advice of the privy council, at least forty days before it begins to sit. It is a branch of the royal prerogative, that no parliament can be convened by its own authority, or by the authority of any, except the king alone.

II. The constituent parts of a parliament, are the next objects of our inquiry. And these are, the king's majesty, sitting there in his royal political capacity, and the three estates of the realm; the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, (who sit, together with the king, in one house) and the commons, who sit by themselves in another. And the king and these three estates, together, form the great corporation or body politic of the kingdom, of which the king is said to be caput, principium, et finis. For upon their coming together the king meets them, either in person or by representation; without which there can be no beginning of a parliament; and he also has alone the power of dissolving them.

The next in order are the spiritual lords. These consist of two archbishops, and twenty-four bishops; and at the dissolution of monasteries by Henry VIII. consisted likewise of twenty-six mitred abbots, and two priors a very considerable body, and in those times equal in number to the temporal nobility. All these hold, or are supposed to hold, certain ancient baronies under the king: for William the

conqueror thought proper to change the spiritual tenure of frank almoign or free alms, under which the bishops held their lands during the Saxon government, into the feodal or Norman tenure by barony; which subjected their estates to all civil charges and assessments from which they were before exempt; and, in right of succession to those baronies, which were unalienable from their respective dignities, the bishops and abbots were allowed their seats in the house of lords.

The lords temporal consist of all the peers of the realm (the bishops not being in strictness held to be such,) but merely lords of parliament by whatever title of nobility distinguished; dukes, marquisses, earls, viscounts, or barons; of which dignities we shall speak more hereafter. Some of these sit by descent, as do all ancient peers; some by creation, as do all new made ones; others, since the union with Scotland, by election, which is the case of the sixteen peers who represent the body of the Scots nobility. Their number is indefinite, and may be increased at will by the power of the

crown.

The commons consist of all such men of property in the kingdom, as have not seats in the house of lords; every one of whom has a voice in parliament, either personally, or by his representatives. The number of English representatives is 513, and of Scots 45, Irish 100; in all 658. And every member, though chosen by one particular district, when elected and returned, serves for the whole realm. For the end of his coming thither is not