nt times, will never,
agreeably either to prudence or duty, allow the state to perish, while
there remains a remedy which, how irregular soever, it is still in his
power to apply. And if, moved by a regard to public good, he employs any
exercise of power condemned by recent and express statute, how greedily,
in such dangerous times, will factious leaders seize this pretence of
throwing on his government the imputation of tyranny and despotism! Were
the alternative quite necessary, it were surely much better for human
society to be deprived of liberty than to be destitute of government.

Impartial reasoners will confess that this subject is not, on both
sides, without its difficulties. Where a general and rigid law is
enacted against arbitrary imprisonment, it would appear that government
cannot, in times of sedition and faction, be conducted but by temporary
suspensions of the law; and such an expedient was never thought of
during the age of Charles.[**period inserted] The meetings of parliament
were too precarious, and their determinations might be too dilatory, to
serve in cases of urgent necessity. Nor was it then conceived, that the
king did not possess of himself sufficient power for the security
and protection of his people, or that the authority of these popular
assemblies was ever to become so absolute, that the prince must always
conform himself to it, and could never have any occasion to guard
against their practices, as well as against those of his other subjects.

Though the house of lords was not insensible to the reasons urged in
favor of the pretensions of the commons, they deemed the arguments
pleaded in favor of the crown still more cogent and convincing. That
assembly seems, during this whole period, to have acted, in the main, a
reasonable and a moderate part; and if their bias inclined a little
too much, as is natural, to the side of monarchy, they were far from
entertaining any design of sacrificing to arbitrary will the liberties
and privileges of the nation. Ashley, the king's serjeant, having
asserted, in pleading before the peers, that the king must sometimes
govern by acts of state as well as by law, this position gave such
offence, that he was immediately committed to prison, and was not
released but upon his recantation and submission.[*] Being, however,
afraid lest the commons should go too far in their projected petition,
the peers proposed a plan of one more moderate, which they recommende