have liberty
to continue their deliberations: could it be suspected that any man, any
prince much less such a one, whose word was as yet sacred and inviolate,
would, for so small a motive forfeit his honor, and, with it, all future
trust and confidence, by breaking a promise so public and so solemn?
that even if the parliament should be deceived in reposing this
confidence in him, they neither lost any thing, nor incurred any danger;
since it was evidently necessary, for the security of public peace, to
supply him with money, in order to suppress the Scottish rebellion: that
he had so far suited his first demands to their prejudices, that he only
asked a supply for a few months, and was willing, after so short a trust
from them, to fall again into dependence, and to trust them for his
further support and subsistence: that if he now seemed to desire
something further, he also made them, in return, a considerable offer,
and was willing, for the future, to depend on them for a revenue which
was quite necessary for public honor and security: that the nature of
the English constitution supposed a mutual confidence between king and
parliament: and if they should refuse it on their part, especially with
circumstances of such outrage and indignity, what could be expected but
a total dissolution of government, and violent factions, followed by the
most dangerous convulsions and intestine disorders?

In opposition to these arguments, it was urged by the malecontent party,
that the court had discovered, on their part, but few symptoms of that
mutual confidence to which they now so kindly invited the commons: that
eleven years' intermission of parliaments--the longest that was to be
found in the English annals--was a sufficient indication of the jealousy
entertained against the people; or rather of designs formed for the
suppression of all their liberties and privileges: that the ministers
might well plead necessity, nor could any thing, indeed, be a stronger
proof of some invincible necessity, than their embracing a measure for
which they had conceived so violent an aversion, as the assembling of
an English parliament: that this necessity, however, was purely
ministerial, not national; and if the same grievances, ecclesiastical
and civil, under which this nation itself labored, had pushed the Scots
to extremities, was it requisite that the English should forge their own
chains, by imposing chains on their unhappy neighbors? that th