He commences as follows:
"A Parliament is the highest Court of Equity in a Land; and it is
to be chosen every year.... This Court is to oversee all other
Courts, Officers, persons, and actions, and to have a full power,
being the Representative of the whole Land, to remove all
grievances, and to ease the people that are oppressed."
A PARLIAMENT IS THE FATHER OF THE COMMONWEALTH.
"A Parliament hath its rise from the lowest Office in a
Commonwealth, viz., from the Father in a Family. For as a Father's
tender care is to remove all grievances from the oppressed
children, not respecting one before another; so a Parliament are to
remove all burdens from the people of the Land, and are not to
respect persons who are great before those who are weak; but their
eye and care must be principally to relieve the oppressed ones, who
groan under the Tyrant's Laws and Powers: the strong, or such as
have the Tyrant's Power to support them, need no help.
"But though a Parliament be the Father of a Land, yet by the
Covetousness and Cheats of Kingly Government the heart of this
Father hath been alienated from the children of the Land, or else
so overawed by the frowns of a Kingly Tyrant, that they could not
or durst not act for the weaker children's ease. For hath not
Parliament sat and rose again, and made Laws to strengthen the
Tyrant in his Throne, and to strengthen the rich and the strong by
those Laws, and left Oppression upon the backs of the oppressed
still?"
HIS HOPES FOR THE FUTURE.
Pages:
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288