Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/222

202 the due punishment, correction, and reformation of such offences and disobediences.

For these reasons the extraordinary privilege was conferred upon the Crown of being able, with the consent of the privy council, to issue proclamations which should have the authority of Acts of Parliament; and pains and penalties might be inflicted to enforce submission, provided the specific punishment to follow disobedience was described and defined in each proclamation. A slight limitation was imposed upon this dangerous prerogative. The Crown was not permitted to repeal or suspend existing statutes, or set aside the common law or other laudable custom. It might not punish with death, or with unlimited fines or imprisonments. Secondary penalties might be inflicted, on legitimate conviction in the Star Chamber; but they must have been previously defined, both in extent and character. These restrictions interfered with the more arbitrary forms of tyranny; yet the ordinary constitution had received a serious infringement, in order that it might not be infringed further by a compelled usurpation. A measure something larger than the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act—the most extreme violation of the liberty of the subject to which, in the happier condition of England, we can now be driven, a measure infinitely lighter than the 'declaration of a state of siege,' so familiar to the most modern experience of the rest of Europe, was not considered too heavy a sacrifice of