4. In 1634 Charles I. issued a writ levying ship-money, so called, on some seaport towns, without act of Parliament. London and some towns remonstrated, but were forced to submit, all the courts being against them. Chief Justice Finch, "a servile tool of the despotic court," generalized this unlawful tax, extending it to inland towns as well as seaboard, to all the kingdom. All landholders were to be assessed in proportion to their property, and the tax, if not voluntarily paid, collected by force. The tax was unpopular, and clearly against the fundamental law of the kingdom. But if the government could not get the law on its side it could control its interpreters, for "every law hath its exposition." So the Judges of Assize were ordered in their circuits to tell the people to comply with the order and pay the money! The King got all extrajudicial opinion of the twelve Judges delivered irregularly, out of court, in which they unanimously declared that in time of danger the King might levy such tax as he saw fit, and compel men to pay it. He was the sole judge of the danger, and of the amount of the tax.[69]
John Hampden was taxed twenty shillings—he refused to pay, though he knew well the fate of Richard Chambers a few years before. The case came to trial in 1637, in the Court of Exchequer before Lord Chancellor Coventry, a base creature, mentioned before. It was "the great case of Ship-money." The ablest lawyers in England showed that the tax was contrary to Magna Charta, to the fundamental laws of the realm, to the Petition of Right and to the practice of the kingdom. Hampden was defeated. Ten out of the twelve Judges sided with the King. Croke as the eleventh had made up his mind to do the same, but his noble wife implored him not to sacrifice his conscience for fear of danger, and the Woman, as it so often happens, saved the man.[70] Attorney-General Banks thus set forth the opinion of the Government, and the consequent "decision" of the Judges. He rested the right of levying Ship-money on the "intrinsic, absolute authority of the King." There was no Higher Law in Old England in 1634! Banks said, "this power [of arbitrary and irresponsible taxation] is innate in the person of an absolute King, and in the persons of the Kings of England. All-magistracy it is of nature; and obedience and subjection [to] it is of nature. This power is not anyways derived from the people, but reserved unto the King when positive laws first began. For the King of England, he is an absolute monarch; nothing can be given to an absolute prince but what is inherent in his person. He can do no wrong. He is the sole judge and we ought not to question him, whom the law trusts we ought not to distrust." "The Acts of Parliament contain no express words to take away so high a prerogative; and the King's prerogative, even in lesser matters, is always saved, where express words do not restrain it."[71]
It required six months of judicial labor to bring forth this result, which was of "infinite disservice to the crown." Thereupon Mr. Hallam says:—
"Those who had trusted to the faith of the judges were undeceived by the honest repentance of some, and looked with indignation on so prostituted a crew. That respect for courts of justice which the happy structure of our Judicial administration has in general kept inviolate, was exchanged for distrust, contempt, and a desire of vengeance. They heard the speeches of some of the Judges with more displeasure than even their final decision. Ship-money was held lawful by Finch and several other Judges, not on the authority of precedents which must in their nature have some bounds, but on principles subversive of every property or privilege in the subject. Those paramount rights of monarchy, to which they appealed to-day in justification of Ship-money, might to-morrow serve to supersede other laws, and maintain more exertions of despotic power. It was manifest by the whole strain of the court lawyers that no limitations on the King's authority could exist but by the King's sufferance. This alarming tenet, long bruited among the churchmen and courtiers, now resounded in the halls of justice."[72]
Thus by the purchased vote of a corrupt Judiciary all the laws of Parliament, all the customs of the Anglo-Saxon tribe, Magna Charta itself with its noble attendant charters, were at once swept away, and all the property of the kingdom put into the hands of the enemy of the People. These four decisions would make the King of England as absolute as the Sultan of Turkey, or the Russian Czar. If the opinion of the Judges in the case of Impositions and Ship-money were accepted in law,—then all the Property of the People was the King's; if the courts were correct in their judgments giving the King the power by his mere will to imprison any subject, during pleasure, and also to do the same even with members of Parliament and punish them for debates in the House of Commons, then all liberty was at an end, and the King's Prerogative extended over all acts of Parliament, all property, all persons.
5. One step more must be taken to make the logic of despotism perfect, and complete the chain. That work was delegated to clergymen purchased for the purpose—Rev. Dr. Robert Sibthorpe and Rev. Dr. Roger Mainwaring. The first in a sermon "of rendering all their dues," preached and printed in 1627, says, "the Prince who is the Head, and makes his Court and Council, it is his duty to direct and make laws. 'He doth whatsoever pleaseth him;' 'where the word of the King is there is power, and who may say unto him, What doest thou?'" And again, "If Princes command any thing which subjects may not perform, because it is against the Laws of God, or of Nature, or impossible; yet Subjects are bound to undergo the punishment, without either resisting, or railing, or reviling, and are to yield a Passive Obedience where they cannot exhibit an Active one, ... but in all others he is bound to active obedience."[73]
Mainwaring went further, and in two famous sermons—preached, one on the 4th of July, 1628, the other on the 29th of the same month—declared that "the King is not bound to observe the Laws of the Realm concerning the Subject's Rights and Liberties, but that his Royal will and Command, in imposing Loans, and Taxes, without consent of Parliament, doth oblige the subject's conscience upon pain of eternal damnation. That those who refused to pay this Loan offended against the Law of God and the King's Supreme Authority, and became guilty of Impiety, Disloyalty, and Rebellion. And that the authority of Parliament is not necessary for the raising of Aid and Subsidies; and that the slow proceedings of such great Assemblies were not fitted for the Supply of the State's urgent necessities, but would rather produce sundry impediments to the just designs of Princes." "That Kings partake of omnipotence with God."[74]
The nation was enraged. Mainwaring was brought before Parliament, punished with fine and imprisonment and temporary suspension from office and perpetual disability for ecclesiastical preferment. But the King who ordered the publication of the sermons, and who doubtless had induced him to preach them, immediately made him Rector of Stamford Parish, soon appointed him Dean of Worcester, and finally in 1645 made him Bishop of St. David's. A few years ago such clerical apostasy would seem astonishing to an American. But now, Gentlemen of the Jury, so rapid has been the downfall of public virtue, that men filling the pulpits once graced and dignified by noblest puritanic piety, now publicly declare there is no law of God above the fugitive slave bill. Nay, a distinguished American minister boldly proclaimed his readiness to send his own Mother (or "Brother") into eternal bondage! Thus modern history explains the old; and the cheap bait of a republican bribe can seduce American dissenters, as the wealthy lure of royal gifts once drew British churchmen into the same pit of infamy. Alas, hypocrisy is of no sect or nation.
Gentlemen, the Government of England once decreed "that every clergyman, four times in the year, should instruct his parishioners in the Divine right of Kings, and the damnable sin of resistance."[75] No Higher Law! America has ministers who need no act of Parliament to teach them to do the same; they run before they are sent.
6. After the head of one Stuart was shorn off and his son had returned, no wiser nor better than his father, the old progress of despotism began anew. I pass over what would but repeat the former history, and take two new examples to warn the nation with, differing from the old only in form.