of equal force with laws; yet he thought it a duty incumbent upon him, and a power inseparably annexed to the Crown, to restrain and prevent such mischiefs and inconveniences as he saw growing on the State, against which no certain law was extant, and which might tend to the great detriment of the Subject, if there should be no remedy provided till the meeting of a Parliament."

In the reign of James I. Lord Coke argued that the King could not create any offence by Proclamation which was not an offence before, and that there never was seen any indictment which concluded with a contra regiam proclamationem; but his opinions were controverted in the King's presence by the Lord Chancellor, who asserted that the King might prohibit the making starch of wheat under the penalties of fine and imprisonment, for the reasons that every precedent must have a commencement, and that if Proclamations of this nature were not permitted, it would be a degradation of the Crown to a Dogedom of Venice.

In the reign of Charles I. Clarendon relates that, under the government of that king, the Privy Counsellors issued Proclamations from the Council Chamber, and afterwards punished for their infraction in the Star Chamber; the same persons committing, judging, and sentencing, only in different rooms.

Of the reign of Charles II., in regard to the use of Proclamations, Mr Hallam writes that "those encroachments on the legislative supremacy of Parliament, and on the personal rights of the subject, by means of Proclamations, which had rendered former princes of both the Tudor and Stuart families almost arbitrary masters of their people, had fallen with the odious tribunal by which they were enforced. Few instances appear of illegal Proclamations in the reign of Charles II. In this essential matter, therefore, of Proclamations the administration of Charles II. is very advantageously compared with that of his father." Without staying to compare the administrations of a father and

son, the former of whom proclaimed with a Star Chamber, the latter without one, it may be observed that Mr Hallam's list of arbitrary Proclamations issued by Charles II., viz. those relating to the relics of Cromwell's army, the rebuilding of London after the fire, and the shutting of coffee-houses, is very incomplete. There might be added Proclamations for pressing soldiers, and for martial law; against papists residing in London, or going five miles from their homes; against printers, after the expiration of the licensing Act; against persons presuming to speak undutifully of his Majesty's measures, and even against those who heard such discourses, unless they gave information in due time of offenders. Andrew Marvell writes to the Mayor of Hull, in the year 1672, "There was the other day a severe Proclamation against all those who shall vent false news, or discourse ill concerning affairs of state: so that, in writing to you I run a risk of making a breach in the commandment.”

Petitioners for the holding of a Parliament on the day to which it had been prorogued, are truly represented by Dryden to have been very displeasing to Charles II.,

From plots and treasons Heaven preserve my years,
But save me most from my Petitioners!

Accordingly, the King in Council issued an order to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, "not to suffer such persons as should sign petitions for the sitting of Parliament, or go about to procure hands to them, to go unpunished; but that they should proceed against the offenders, or cause them to be brought before the Council Board to be punished, according to a resolution of all the Judges of England, Secundo Jacobi." Two days afterwards the King issued a Proclamation of which the AttorneyGeneral Sir C. Levynz was afraid to draw more than the formal commencement and conclusion, the large blank being filled up by Lord Keeper Guilford, and which strictly charged and commanded "all and every of his loving subjects of what rank or

degree soever, that they presume not to agitate or promote any subscriptions for the sitting of Parliament, nor in any ways join in any petition of that manner to be preferred to his Majesty, upon peril of the utmost rigor of the law that may be inflicted for the same."

Sir Matthew Hale laid down the law of Proclamations (as is observed by Mr Hargrave the first publisher of his opinions on the subject) in regard to the Ports, doubtingly and cautiously, treating it as a matter of difficulty and delicacy. In one place indeed, he writes positively, that "where the King may by law prohibit, a Proclamation doth increase the offence;" but he hints that many Proclamations in regard to the ports contained penalties that were chiefly meant in terrorem as an "engine" to gain money by licences: he leaves the legality of certain Proclamations in a mist, concluding "How far these Proclamations might be warrantable by law in these particular cases I shall not positively determine." A statute was passed in the year 1766, after warm debates in both Houses, which determined that a Proclamation imposing an embargo on the exportation of wheat in time of scarcity, and concerning which Lord Camden made an unconstitutional speech that it was at the worst a forty days' tyranny, "could not be justified by law." This solemn legislative declaration may serve to dispel most of Hale's doubts on the legality of Proclamations to be found in his treatises De Portibus Maris, and De Jure Coronce, but which were, probably, no doubts in the reign of Charles II. with those authorised expositors of the Common Law, Chief Justices Scroggs and Jeffreys.

Proclamations appear to have been common in the reign of Charles II. upon matters of domestic economy or police; as, for instance, against new buildings, and against importing or vending of "any painted earthenware except that of China, upon pain of being grievously fined and suffering the utmost punishment which might be lawfully inflicted upon contemners of his

Majesty's royal authority." Pepys mentions in his Diary, that he narrowly escaped being put to great inconvenience, as he felt, by one of these petty Proclamations. He writes, "Notwithstanding this was the first day of the King's Proclamation against hackney-coaches coming into the streets to stand to be hired, yet I got one to carry me home." Much disappointment was experienced in consequence of a royal Proclamation prohibiting a public dinner that was to have been held at Haberdashers' Hall, in honor of the discovery of the Popish Plot. It recites that "the appointing of public fasts and thanksgivings is matter of State, and belongs only to his Majesty by his Prerogative." There are frequent allusions to this lost dinner in the fugitive pieces of the Tory poets. As thus:

Alas! poor Whig, where wilt thou sneaking go?
Thy wine is spilt, thy pies and cakes are dough!
Down go the coppers, tables, shelves and all;
And so farewell to Haberdashers' Hall!

It may be concluded that the ancient practice of Proclamations as a vehicle for indirect legislation was not intermitted during the reign of Charles II. Upon which a question arises, are they to be considered instances of "actual oppression" against the law" as it stood?" With regard to which it is observed, as Lord Campbell remarks, that, in the reign of Charles II. "the boundary between things that may be done by royal authority, and things requiring a legislative Act, was then very undefined in England, as it still is in those continental States in which a constitutional monarchy has been attempted." It may be thought that the crown lawyers in the reign of Charles II. would have been too cautelous to have drawn an indictment contra regiam proclamationem; but that, practically, Proclamations in that reign had a quasi-legislative operation. They were high-built in ancient precedents; they afforded a pretext and a screen to judges, magistrates, and inferior ministers of justice;

the mass of the community were incompetent to determine how far a Proclamation was legally corroborative, or illegally creative; and, in the face of removable judges, and packed juries, it was not every reign that could produce a Hampden.

(4) High Treason and Sedition.

(a) High Treason.

The reign of Charles II. has been called by Mr Fox the era of good laws; it may, with justice, be termed the era of new treasons. The first statute of the Second Parliament of Charles, in the year 1661, is entitled "An Act for the safety and preservation of his Majesty's person and government against treasonable and seditious practices and attempts." Its operation is limited to the life of the king (whom, the Act prays Almighty God to preserve and bless with a long and prosperous reign); thus placing the nation as if in a state of siege for the indefinite period of a king's lifetime. This statute augmented the number of treasons, and was construed to allow a fearful licence in the proof of them by evidence of "printing, writing, preaching, or malicious and advised speaking."

The first victim of the statute of Charles II. of Treasons, was one James, who, in preaching at a dissenting meeting-house had, it was alleged, been overheard to say that "the king and his nobles had shed the blood of the saints at Charing Cross, and that the king was a bloodsucker," and other expressions of the like tenor. Sergeant Glynne, on the part of the Crown, stated that it was "enough to prove the words substantially, though not adequate thereto in every tittle and iota." The Attorney-General said that the words were treason under the new Act, according to the principle of which Mens rea facit reum. It may be noticed that the hangman visited James in his cell on the day before his execution, and demanded £20 in order to let him die the easier; on James protesting that he had