The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-10-19

either as inseparable from it's posses sion, or to meet extraordinary emer- gencies of public danger by proclama- tions which were regarded as having the force of law Certain limitations had been placed upon the exercises of this authority by the great charter of English liberties in its provisions that the rights of property should be protected by limiting to parliament the levying of taxes and personal rights by means of trial by jury. These pre- negatives, for the eleven years in which no parliament was summoned, whether legal or illegal, served to supply the means of carrying on, though imper- fectly, the work of the government. Their bare enumeration will show that their exercise was possible only under a government essentially despotic. All judges were appointed and were removed at the pleasure of the crown. All officers, both of the army and the navy, and all bishops, with thier ex- tensive civil, as well as their ecclesi- astical authority, were in a similar way appointed. The privy council by whose warrant alone any person could be ar rested and held in confinement without remedy at law, was appointed by the king. Imprisonment by his personal mandate, the grant of monopolies, or the exclusive right to trade even in the common necessaries of life, the imposi- tion of duties upon exports and inn ports, compulsory loans, the extorting of taxes under the spicious name of be-
 
 tives claimed and acted upon by the crown. But as factors in the public discontent they failed to excite that ecstacy of hatred that was called out by the acts of the two courts of the Star Chamber and the High Commits sion. Ruinous fines, branded fore heads, bloody backs, slit noses, crop ped ears and the pillory were employed as legitimate punisments for such as became obnoxious by tco free expres- sion of opinions hostile to an arbi- trary state or an intolerant church.
 It was fortunate for the popular cause that. so many years had passed away before the increasing difficulty of carrying on the government with in- adequate means left no alternative eX cept once more for the king to summon a parliament. No such parliament as the long parliament had ever met in England, either in the ability of it's members or in their social position. In mere wealth the aggregate incomes of the Commons was said to have been double that of the House of Lords. At the beginning of the kings reign ha cbinf tho favor p- joyed by an incompetent minister. The lapse of years had enabled the popular leaders to formulate their demands un- der one comprehensive head. They had found out just what the country needed It was that there should be a government wholly responsible, that no mans liberty should be infringed, no mans property taken except by au- thority of law, and that it's violators should meet with condign punishment. This demand was emphasized by the penalties inflicted upon those by whose counsel great wrong had been done Strafford was beheaded. Laud sent to the tower and finally executed the bishops deprived of their seats in the House of Lords and civil Jurisdiction taken from the priesthood the privi- leges of the privy council greatly cur- tailed, the high commission and star chamber courts abolished unjust l judges forced into exile and reparation made out of their estates to those who had suffered cruel mutilations, while parliament itself was not to be dissolv- | ed without it's own consent.
 1 Ta +l,aso da,1,op,l- dicoI +bo,, ob they were, the king was obliged to submit. One thing more was needed to insure to England a government that should prove a constitution al one and this was that the command of the army and navy should be trans ferred from the crown to the parlia- ment This demand was indig- nantly refused by the king, with the assurance that he would not trust even his own family with this royal pre- rogative even for an hour. That once conceded he might wear a crown, be called a king, be served on pended knees. but would only be the shadow and mockery of sovereign. Such | however was the distrust of the sin- cerity of the king and the conviction of the parliament that who ever con- trolled the army would soon conrtol the purse of the nation that they refused to yield and civil war ensued. As seems inevitable in contests in which 1 fundamental changes in society are in volved, there soon developed a peace party made up in part of those who looked with distrust and dislike upon the increasing liberal tendency of the times, and in part of those who dread | ed the growing preponderance of Puri- tanism in the counsels of the parlia- ment.
 Men of influence and character, con- scientiously attached to the church as established by Cranmer and not as perverted by Laud, who at first had been clamorous for redress of ecclesi- astical grievances, began to think that the king had been sufficiently humili- ated and that adequate concessions had been made to the demands of the 1 parliament, gradually transferred their sympathy and their aid to the royal cause. This was the first though a fec ble indication that the question of the church might soon supersede the ques- tion of civil grievances.
 | It often happens. especially in civil wars, that the professed and original occasion for taking up arms proves subordinate to a higher end We need not go out of our own country to find l