MR. SOMERS.

And yet, my lord, I shall very readily acknowledge, with my Lord Commissioner, the importance of the service. For, unless appearances be strangely deceitful indeed, there is but too great reason to conclude, from the recent parts of our history, either that there never was a rightful claim in the people to civil liberty, or that they, as well as their princes, had lost all sense of it. I doubt, the most your lordship can make appear, is, that as our kings, from the coming of the Tudor line, had usurped on the ancient privileges of the subject; so the subject, at length, in our days, has, in its turn, usurped on the undisputed and long-acknowledged prerogative of the sovereign. In short, I doubt there is no forming a connected system on these subjects; but that in our country, as well as in others, liberty and prerogative have prevailed and taken the ascendant at different times, according as either was checked or favoured by contingent circumstances.