crafty judge answered, "_Every law_, after it is made, _hath its
exposition, which is to be left to the courts of justice to
determine_; and although the Petition be granted _there is no fear of
[such a] conclusion as is intimated in the question_!" That is, the
court will interpret the plain law so as to oppress the subject and
please the king! As the judges had promised to annul the law, the
king signed it.[66] Charles dissolved Parliament and threw into jail
its most noble and powerful members--one of whom, Eliot, never left
the prison till death set him free.[67] The same chief justice gave an
extrajudicial opinion justifying the illegal seizure of the
members,--"that a parliament man committing an offence against the
King in Parliament not in a parliamentary course, may be punished
after the Parliament is ended;" "that by false slanders to bring the
Lords of the Council and the Judges, not in a parliamentary way, into
the hatred of the people and the government into contempt, was
punishable out of Parliament, in the Star-Chamber, as an offence
committed in Parliament beyond the office, and beside the duty of a
parliament man."[68] Thus the judges struck down freedom of speech in
Parliament.

[Footnote 66: 1 Campbell, Justices, 311; 2 Parl. Hist. 245, 350, 373,
408, _et al._; 3 St. Tr. 59.]

[Footnote 67: See above, p. 29.]

[Footnote 68: 1 Campbell's Justices, 315.]

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 wa