Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/61

 supersede, annihilate and make void the Laws of the Kingdom?” Nalson, I, 320. Waller in his speech on Justice Crawley’s impeachment, July 6, 1641, said: “But this man, adding despaire to our misery, tells us from the Bench, that Ship-money was a Right so inhaerent in the Crowne, that it would not be in the power of an Act of Parlament to take it away so by this declaration of his he endevours to prevent the Iudgement of your Lordships too, and to confine the power of a Parlament, the onely place where this mischiefe might be redrest: And because this man has had the boldnesse to put the power of Parlament in ballance with the opinion of the Iudges ” E. 198 (37), pp. 3–7. Lord Brooke ascribed to both judges and bishops a power of declaring law, but he distinguished it from the higher power in king and Parliament of making law. A Discourse Opening The Nature Of That Episcopacie, Which Is Exercised In England, Nov. 1641, E 177 (22), p. 29.

In the text of Chapter I it was necessary for the sake of brevity to omit any discussion of parliamentary arguments prior to July, 1642, that were based on political theory. However, before that year the parliamentary party had drawn arguments from principles of political science as well as from principles of constitutional law. One such principle was salus populi suprema lex. As early as September of 1640 Calybute Downing had hinted that Parliaments as well as kings might find useful the distinction between the rule of government and the rule of law. He reminded his hearers that as princes claimed not only jura dominationis but also arcana dominationis, so there were arcana, latitudes, allowed for the safety of the body of the state. The Commons ordered the sermon printed, though probably, if one may judge from the place in which Thomason bound it, not till the spring of 1641. A Sermon preached to the Renowned Company of the Artillery, E. 157 (4), pp. 29 ff.

To Strafford’s avowed belief in the king’s power to disregard the letter of the law for the sake of public safety in time of eminent danger, Pym retorted by assuring the Lords that the heinousness of Strafford’s offense would best appear “if it be examined by that Law, to which he himself appealed, that Universal, that Supreme Law, Salus Populi.” “This,” he continued, “is the Element of all Laws, out of which they are derived, the End of all Laws, to which they are designed, and in which they are perfected.” Rushworth, VIII, 661. The author of The Case of Shipmony had agreed that salus populi was the “supreame