Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/44

 Parker’s followers and successors stated in more extreme terms than Parker himself the practical consequences flowing from this doctrine of parliamentary absolutism. In one point they added to Parker’s argument: they made fuller use of the theory first advanced in Parliament’s own declarations, that the judgment of the Lords and Commons in Parliament bound all persons within the jurisdiction of the court of Parliament. Such a judgment, pamphleteers argued, was law, perhaps until the Houses recalled it, certainly until the end of the Parliament; and, thanks to the bill against the dissolution of the Parliament, that limit was under the Parliament’s own control. They were prompt to disclaim any responsibility on the part of Parliament to judge according to any particular known laws. The author of The Second Part of Vox Populi declared that in the case of extreme necessity that confronted the Parliament, it could apply the law of necessity. It was, he wrote, the height of absurdity to talk