at the principles in general which prevailed
during that age, were so favorable to monarchy, that they bestowed on it
an authority almost absolute and unlimited, sacred and indefeasible.

The meetings of parliament were so precarious, their sessions so short,
compared to the vacations, that, when men's eyes were turned upwards in
search of sovereign power, the prince alone was apt to strike them
as the only permanent magistrate, invested with the whole majesty and
authority of the state. The great complaisance too of parliaments,
during so long a period, had extremely degraded and obscured those
assemblies; and as all instances of opposition to prerogative must have
been drawn from a remote age, they were unknown to a great many, and had
the less authority even with those who were acquainted with them. These
examples, besides, of liberty had commonly, in ancient times, been
accompanied with such circumstances of violence, convulsion, civil
war, and disorder, that they presented but a disagreeable idea to the
inquisitive part of the people, and afforded small inducement to renew
such dismal scenes. By a great many, therefore, monarchy, simple and
unmixed, was conceived to be the government of England; and those
popular assemblies were supposed to form only the ornament of the
fabric, without being in any degree essential to its being and
existence.[*] [61] The prerogative of the crown was represented by
lawyers as something real and durable; like those eternal essences
of the schools, which no time or force could alter. The sanction of
religion was by divines called in aid; and the Monarch of heaven was
supposed to be interested in supporting the authority of his earthly
vicegerent. And though it is pretended that these doctrines were more
openly inculcated and more strenuously insisted on during the reign of
the Stuarts, they were not then invented; and were only found by the
court to be more necessary at that period, by reason of the opposite
doctrines, which began to be promulgated by the Puritanical party.[**]
[62]

* See note III, at the end of the volume.

** See note KKK, at the end of the volume.

In consequence of these exalted ideas of kingly authority, the
prerogative, besides the articles of jurisdiction founded on precedent,
was by many supposed to possess an inexhaustible fund of latent powers,
which might be exerted on any emergence. In every government, necessity,
when real, supersedes all l