m parliament, by the law which the late king had passed
immediately before the commencement of the civil disorders. Great
violence, both against the king and the house of peers, had been
employed in passing this law; and on that account alone the partisans
of the church were provided with a plausible pretence for repealing it.
Charles expressed much satisfaction when he gave his assent to the act
for that purpose. It is certain that the authority of the crown, as well
as that of the church, was interested in restoring the prelates to their
former dignity. But those who deemed every acquisition of the prince
a detriment to the people, were apt to complain of this instance of
complaisance in the parliament.

After an adjournment of some months, the parliament was again assembled,
and proceeded in the same spirit as before. They discovered no design
of restoring, in its full extent, the ancient prerogative of the crown:
they were only anxious to repair all those breaches which had been made,
not by the love of liberty, but by the fury of faction and civil war.
The power of the sword had in all ages been allowed to be vested in the
crown; and though no law conferred this prerogative every parliament,
till the last of the preceding reign, had willingly submitted to an
authority more ancient, and therefore more sacred, than that of any
positive statute. It was now thought proper solemnly to relinquish the
violent pretensions of that parliament, and to acknowledge that neither
one house nor both houses, independent of the king, were possessed of
any military authority. The preamble to this statute went so far as to
renounce all right even of defensive arms against the king; and much
observation has been made with regard to a concession esteemed so
singular. Were these terms taken in their full literal sense, they imply
a total renunciation of limitations to monarchy, and of all privileges
in the subject, independent of the will of the sovereign. For as no
rights can subsist without some remedy, still less rights exposed to
so much invasion from tyranny, or even from ambition; if subjects must
never resist, it follows that every prince, without any effort, policy,
or violence, is at once rendered absolute and uncontrollable; the
sovereign needs only issue an edict abolishing every authority but his
own; and all liberty from that moment is in effect annihilated. But this
meaning it were absurd to impute to the present parliament,