Page:A History and Defence of Magna Charta.djvu/181

Rh perpetuity. For how can a government fail which has ſuch laſting principles within it, and a ſeveral reſpective remedy lodged in the very bowels of it? The King has a known power of cauſing all his ſubjects to keep the law; that is an effectual remedy againſt lawleſneſs and anarchy; and the parliament has a power, if need be, to hold the King to the obſervation of the laws; and that is a preſervative againſt tyranny.

is the Palladium of our government, which cannot be ſtolen as their’s was from Troy; for the keepers of it are too many to be killed, becauſe every Engliſhman has an intereſt in it: for which reaſon neither can it be bought and ſold, ſo as to make a title; and a man of a moderate underſtanding may eaſily undertake that it ſhall never be preached away from us. And hereby England is rendered the nobleſt commonwealth and kingdom in the world. I name commonwealth firſt, becauſe K. I. in one of his ſpeeches to the parliament, ſays, “I am the great ſervant of the commonwealth.” From hence I infer, that this was a commonwealth before he was the great ſervant of it. Great and little is not the diſpute; for it is for the honour and intereſt of ſo glorious a ſtate, to have a prince as