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]

[Footnote 72: 2 Hallam, 18.]

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