Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/37

 consent for a time, by the tactful formula, “Le roi s’avisera.” May 26, Parliament asked in another declaration why, if Parliament were judge between king and people on the question of what was law, it should not be judge likewise of the kingdom’s need for a legal remedy for an abuse? In other words, if Parliament by passing a statute implied its belief that the people stood in need of the statute, the king had no right to express a contrary opinion by withholding his consent.

Manifestly Parliament in the early months of 1642 was using its position of supreme interpreter to extract justification for its aggressions on the king’s power out of the laws of the land and the law of salus populi. The indirection by which it thus claimed powers that were virtually sovereign characterized the forms under which it prepared to vindicate its claims by force. True, in its resolutions of May 20 it stated with directness the actual situation—that the king seduced by evil counsel was about to make war on his Parliament; that in so doing he was guilty of an act that was a breach of his trust and tended to the dissolution of the government. But with the actual approach of hostilities the Houses had recourse to the time-honored quibbles of raising armies for the king’s defense, and for the rescue of his person. July 12 they voted: “That an Army shall be forthwith