Most of the
contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of election
of magistrates; or on the balance among the several orders of the state. The
question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was
otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens, and most eloquent tongues,
have been exercised; the greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In order to
give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point, it was
not only necessary for those who in argument defended the excellence of the
English Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting money as a dry
point of fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowledged in ancient
parchments and blind usages to reside in a certain body called a House of
Commons. They went much farther; they attempted to prove, and they succeeded,
that in theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House of
Commons as an immediate representative of the people, whether the old records
had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a
fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect
themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own
money, or no shadow of liberty can subsist.
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