all your officers and
ministers shall serve you according to the laws and statutes of this
realm, as they tender the honor of your majesty, and the prosperity of
this kingdom. Stat. 17 Car. cap. 14.]

[Footnote 3: NOTE C, p. 52. The reason assigned by Sir Philip Warwick
(p. 2) for this unusual measure of the commons, is, that they intended
to deprive the crown of the prerogative which it had assumed, of varying
the rates of the impositions, and at the same time were resolved to cut
off the new rates fixed by James. These were considerable diminutions
both of revenue and prerogative; and whether they would have there
stopped, considering their present disposition, may be much doubted. The
king, it seems, and the lords were resolved not to trust them; nor
to render a revenue once precarious, which perhaps they might never
afterwards be able to get reestablished on the old footing.]

[Footnote 4: NOTE D, p. 80. Here is a passage of Sir John Davis's
Question concerning Impositions, (p. 131.) "This power of laying on
arbitrarily new impositions being a prerogative in point of government,
as well as in point of profit, it cannot be restrained or bound by act
of parliament; it can not be limited by any certain or fixt rule of law,
no more than the course of a pilot upon the sea, who must turn the helm
or bear higher or lower sail, according to the wind or weather; and
therefore it may be properly said, that the king's prerogative, in this
point, is as strong as Samson; it cannot be bound; for though an act of
parliament be made to restrain it, and the king doth give his
consent unto it, as Samson was bound with his own consent; yet if the
Philistines come, that is, if any just or important occasion do arise,
it cannot hold or restrain the prerogative; it will be as thread, and
broken as easy as the bonds of Samson. The king's prerogatives are the
sunbeams of the crown, and as inseparable from it as the sunbeams from
the sun. The king's crown must be taken from him; Samson's hair must
be cut off, before his courage can be any jot abated. Hence it is that
neither the king's act, nor any act of parliament, can give away his
prerogative."]

[Footnote 5: NOTE E, p. 121. We shall here make use of the liberty
allowed in a note to expatiate a little on the present subject. It
must be confessed, that the king in this declaration touched upon that
circumstance in the English constitution which it is most difficult,
or rather a