Page:The Maid's Tragedy Altered - Waller (1690).djvu/97

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to the House of Lords.
89

levied on Your Lordships and the Commons. Certainly there is no Priviledge which more pro­perly belongs to a Parliament, than to open the Purse of the Subject: and yet these Judges, who are neither capable of sitting among us in the House of Commons, nor with your Lordships, other­wise than as your Assistants, have not only as­sum'd to themselves this Priviledge of Parlia­ment, but presum'd at once to make a present to the Crown, of all that either your Lordships, or the Commons of England do, or shall here­after possess.

And because this Man has had the boldness to put the Power of Parliament in ballance with the opinion of the Judges; I shall entreat your Lord­ships to observe by way of comparison, the so­lemn and safe proceeding of the one, with the precipitate dispatch of the other. In Parliament (as your Lordships know well) no new Law can pass, or old be abrogated, till it has been thrice read with your Lordships, thrice in the Commons House, and then it receives the Royal Assent; so that 'tis like Gold seven times purified: Whereas these Judges by this one Resolution of theirs, would perswade his Majesty, that by naming Ne­cessity, he might at once dissolve (at least suspend) the great Charter two and thirty times confirm'd by his Royal Progenitors, the Petition of Right, and all other Laws provided for the maintenanceof

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