Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/50

 sovereign power without appeal was not an easy one.

Other pamphleteers attempted to defend the proceedings of the Long Parliament without claiming for it complete supremacy, or employing fallacies to deny the possibility of an appeal to the people. Philip Hunton, author of A Treatise Of Monarchie, in general agreed with the writers above mentioned both in his doctrine of compact and in representing Parliament as the place in which the compact must be revised and interpreted. He agreed with them further that the two Houses in certain cases of necessity—such as invasion or the subversion of the fundamental laws—might assume the power of government without the consent of the king, provided their actions evidently tended to the preservation of king and kingdom. At this point, however, when he was confronted with the question as to who should judge whether or not the laws were subverted, he saw difficulties that the other authors mentioned above had glided over. “To demand which Estate may challenge this power of finall determination of Fundamentall controversies arising betwixt them is to demand which of them shall be absolute. Whereas I