[51] This is the very doctrine lately revived, in a little different shape, by some of our American divines—that whatsoever the legislative power in its conscience thinks it may require, we ought to yield.—Ed.
[52] Some of our American federal judges are in the habit of declaiming much in the same style against abolitionists—who, indeed, may be considered as occupying a position in our present affairs in many respects parallel to that of the English Puritans in the times of Charles I.—Ed.
[53] Having once refused to hear counsel against ship money, he now undertook to square the account by refusing to hear counsel for it.—Ed.
[54] See life of Hyde, ante, p. 97.
[55] This supposed inability of the king to do wrong has in America among a certain class been transferred to the federal government, which represents the royal authority of the English.—Ed.
[56] 2 Bl. Com. 69. Compulsory knighthood was abolished by the Long Parliament, 16 Car. I. c. 20.
[57] Their decisions are still of as much authority on legal questions as those of courts sitting under a commission from the crown; and they were published with the sanction of the chancellor and all the judges in the reigns of Charles II. and James II.
[58] It is doubtless a like mixture of motives that prompts just now the conduct of some of our American lawyers.—Ed.
[59] Charles II., in his Declaration from Breda, had promised that he should “proceed only against the immediate murderers of his royal father.”
[60] In answer to the address of the two Houses of the Convention Parliament to spare the lives of Vane and Lambert, the lord chancellor reported, “His majesty grants the desire of the said petition;”—the ancient form of passing acts of Parliament. The ultra Cavalier House of Commons which followed desired Vane’s death, but could not alter the law or abrogate the royal promise.