And yet, my lord, I shall very readily acknowledge, with my Lord
Commissioner, the importance of the service. For, unless appearances be
strangely deceitful indeed, there is but too great reason to conclude,
from the recent parts of our history, either that there never was a
rightful claim in the people to civil liberty, or that they, as well
as their princes, had lost all sense of it. I doubt, the most your
lordship can make appear, is, that as our kings, from the coming of
the Tudor line, had usurped on the ancient privileges of the subject;
so the subject, at length, in our days, has, in its turn, usurped on
the undisputed and long-acknowledged prerogative of the sovereign.
In short, I doubt there is no forming a connected system on these
subjects; but that in our country, as well as in others, liberty and
prerogative have prevailed and taken the ascendant at different times,
according as either was checked or favoured by contingent circumstances.