e ancient
practice of parliament was to give grievances the precedency of supply;
and this order, so carefully observed by their ancestors, was founded
on a jealousy inherent in the constitution, and was never interpreted as
any peculiar diffidence of the present sovereign: that a practice which
had been upheld during times the most favorable to liberty, could not,
in common prudence, be departed from, where such undeniable reasons
for suspicion had been afforded: that it was ridiculous to plead the
advanced season, and the urgent occasion for supply; when it plainly
appeared that, in order to afford a pretence for this topic, and to
seduce the commons, great political contrivance had been employed: that
the writs for elections were issued early in the winter; and if the
meeting of parliament had not purposely been delayed till so near the
commencement of military operations, there had been leisure sufficient
to have redressed all national grievances, and to have proceeded
afterwards to an examination of the king's occasion for supply: that
the intention of so gross an artifice was to engage the commons, under
pretence of necessity, to violate the regular order of parliament; and
a precedent of that kind being once established, no inquiry into public
measures would afterwards be permitted: that scarcely any argument more
unfavorable could be pleaded for supply, than an offer to abolish ship
money; a taxation the most illegal and the most dangerous that had ever,
in any reign, been imposed upon the nation: and that, by bargaining for
the remission of that duty, the commons would in a manner ratify the
authority by which it had been levied; at least give encouragement for
advancing new pretensions of a like nature, in hopes of resigning them
on like advantageous conditions.

These reasons, joined to so many occasions of ill humor, seemed to sway
with the greater number: but, to make the matter worse, Sir Harry Vane,
the secretary, told the commons, without any authority from the
king, that nothing less than twelve subsidies would be accepted as a
compensation for the abolition of ship money. This assertion, proceeding
from the indiscretion, if we are not rather to call it the treachery of
Vane, displeased the house, by showing a stiffness and rigidity in the
king, which, in a claim so ill grounded, was deemed inexcusable.[*] We
are informed likewise, that some men, who were thought to understand the
state of the nation, a