Page 43 - Hampdens Monument Unveiled

monarchy. Under the English Constitution they stand together.
Let public liberty be assailed, and the defences of the free
monarchy are in peril : let public liberty be surrendered, and
the citadel of the free monarchy is betrayed and lost. Thus
then, we justify the words of our inscription. From the
earliest times, from the Saxon times of England, the sovereign
power stood limited by law; by the common law of England, older
by far than any existing statute, the limitations were fixed.
By common law, no man should forfeit his liberty, or be amerced
in fine or impost, save by the course of public justice, and by
judgement of his fellows. By common law, all aids and supplies
to the Crown were to be granted by the people, to whom this
power was reserved, to be administered by representation. By
common law, this power was vested in the great council of the
realm; and by advice of that great codicil, and under its
control, the King of England could alone lawfully raise the
supplies for his own state or the public service. This was
afterwards declared by many statutes, not enacted by them, for
it was the Constitution of England before. And, though often
invaded and often overpowered by the craft or violence of our
early kings, it was never lost sight of, never surrendered,
always asserted, though often in dispute. Misled by the
precepts, and example of his weak and bad father, and blind to
the rising spirit of the times, and to what should ever be the
highest glory as it is the real strength of a British
Sovereign, to govern as the Sovereign of a free people, Charles
the First, against whose memory I could say nothing more harsh
than that he was the unhappy victim of the arbitrary doctrines
in which he had been bred up, endeavouring rashly and
obstinately to systematise those doctrines of absolute monarchy
which James I. had propounded, but had ventured to carry into
practice only by feeble and occasional encroachments upon
popular right. Parliaments were considered by Charles the First
but as a vexatious restraint and encumbrance.

Ship Money

He lavished, as his father had done, the public treasure on
unworthy and dangerous favourites; he had recourse to
unconstitutional means for raising money to supply his
Treasury. Parliament not acceding to his first request, he
dismissed it in wrath. In the four first years of his reign he
dissolved three Parliaments. He governed for twelve years
without a Parliament. Here, then, were the principles of free
monarchy bought into peril, and during these twelve years he
sent forth his warrants for the levy of the famous "ship
money," "a word," says Lord Clarendon, "of lasting sound in the
memory of this country." Here then, again, the principles of
free monarchy in England, as fixed by common law, and declared
by Magna Charta and many other statutes, were bought into
peril. Then, when all was doubt and dismay, those few spirits
which were not tamed to surrender ready to rise in mutiny