and were
intended to explain the natural extent of royal authority. The preamble
contains, that the king had formerly set forth several proclamations
which froward persons had wilfully contemned, not considering what a
king, by his royal power, may do; that this license might encourage
offenders not only to disobey the laws of Almighty God, but also to
dishonor the king's most royal majesty, "who may full ill bear it;"
that sudden emergencies often occur, which require speedy remedies, and
cannot await the slow assembling and deliberations of parliament; and
that, though the king was empowered by his authority, derived from God,
to consult the public good on these occasions, yet the opposition of
refractory subjects might push him to extremity and violence: for these
reasons the parliament, that they might remove all occasion of doubt,
ascertained by a statute this prerogative of the crown and enabled his
majesty, with the advice of his council, to set forth proclamations
enjoining obedience under whatever pains and penalties he should think
proper; and these proclamations were to have the force of perpetual
laws.[*]

* 31 Henry VIII. c. 8.

What proves either a stupid or a wilful blindness in the parliament,
is, that they pretended, even after this statute, to maintain some
limitations in the government; and they enacted, that no proclamation
should deprive any person of his lawful possessions, liberties,
inheritances, privileges, franchises; nor yet infringe any common law
or laudable custom of the realm. They did not consider, that no penalty
could be inflicted on the disobeying of proclamations, without invading
some liberty or property of the subject; and that the power of enacting
new laws, joined to the dispensing power then exercised by the crown,
amounted to a full legislative authority. It is true, the kings of
England had always been accustomed from their own authority to issue
proclamations, and to exact obedience to them; and this prerogative was,
no doubt, a strong symptom of absolute government: but still there was
a difference between a power which was exercised on a particular
emergence, and which must be justified by the present expedience or
necessity, and an authority conferred by a positive statute, which could
no longer admit of control or limitation.

Could any act be more opposite to the spirit of liberty than this law,
it would have been another of the same parliament. They passed an act