an's will. No right, no interest may withstand
him. Through the power of state and justice he has dared ever to strike
at his own ends." "My Lords," he ended, after a vivid parallel between
Buckingham and Sejanus, "you see the man! What have been his actions,
what he is like, you know! I leave him to your judgement. This only is
conceived by us, the knights, citizens, and burgesses of the Commons
House of Parliament, that by him came all our evils, in him we find the
causes, and on him must be the remedies! Pereat qui perdere cuncta
festinat! Opprimatur ne omnes opprimat!"

[Sidenote: Dissolution of the Parliament.]

In calling for Buckingham's removal the Houses were but exercising a
right or a duty which was inherent in their very character of
counsellors of the Crown. There had never been a time from the earliest
days of the English Parliament when it had not called for the dismissal
of evil advisers. What had in older time been done by risings of the
baronage had been done since the Houses gathered at Westminster by their
protests as representatives of the realm. They were far from having
dreamed as yet of the right which Parliament exercises to-day of naming
the royal ministers, nor had they any wish to meddle with the common
administration of government. It was only in exceptional instances of
evil counsel, when some favourite like Buckingham broke the union of the
nation and the king, that they demanded a change. To Charles however
their demand seemed a claim to usurp his sovereignty. His reply was as
fierce and sudden as the attack of Eliot. He hurried to the House of
Peers to avow as his own the deeds with which Buckingham was charged;
while Eliot and Digges were called from their seats and committed
prisoners to the Tower. The Commons however refused to proceed with
public business till their members were restored; and after a ten-days'
struggle Eliot was released. But his release was only a prelude to the
close of the Parliament. "Not one moment," the king replied to the
prayer of his Council for delay; and a final remonstrance in which the
Commons begged him to dismiss Buckingham from his service for ever was
met on the sixteenth of June by their instant dissolution. The
remonstrance was burnt by royal order; Eliot was deprived of his
Vice-Admiralty; and on the old pretext alleged by James for evading the
law, the pretext that what it forbade was the demand of forced loans and
not of voluntary gifts to the