en carried
with less vehemence. But my Author goes further on the other hand; _He
affirms, that many wise and good men thought they had gone too far, in
assuring, nay, in mentioning of money before our safety was fully
provided for_. So you see he is still for laying his hand upon the
penny. In the mean time I have him in a Praemunire for arraigning the
House of Commons; for he has tacitely confessed, that the wise and good
men were the fewer; because the House carryed it for mentioning money in
their Address. But it seems they went too far, in speaking of a Supply,
before they had consulted this Gentleman, how far the safety of the
Nation would admit it. I find plainly by his temper, that if matters had
come to an accommodation, and a bargain had been a bargain, the Knights
of the Shire must have been the Protestant Knights no longer.

_As for Arbitrary Power of taking men into custody, for matters that had
no relation to Privileges of Parliament, he says they have erred with
their Fathers._ If he confess that they have erred, let it be with all
their Generation, still they have erred: and an error of the first
digestion, is seldom mended in the second. But I find him modest in this
point; and knowing too well they are not a Court of Judicature, he does
not defend them from Arbitrary Proceedings, but only excuses, and
palliates the matter, by saying, that it concern'd the Rights of the
People, in suppressing their Petitions to the Fountain of Justice. So,
when it makes for him, he can allow the King to be the _Fountain of
Justice_, but at other times he is only a _Cistern of the People._ But
he knows sufficiently, however he dissembles it, that there were some
taken into custody, to whom that crime was not objected. Yet since in a
manner he yields up the Cause, I will not press him too far, where he is
so manifestly weak. Tho I must tell him by the way, that he is as justly
to be proceeded against for calling the Kings Proclamation illegal,
which concerned the matter of Petitioning, as some of those, who had
pronounced against them by the House of Commons, that terrible sentence,
of _Take him,_ Topham.

_The strange illegal Votes declaring several eminent persons to be
Enemies to the King and Kingdom, are not so strange, he says, but very
justifiable_. I hope he does not mean, that illegal Votes are now not
strange in the House of Commons: But observe the reason which he gives:
for the House of Commons had before addr