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THE FIRST DEFENCE 31
patrician,—even though, taught by its own sufferings, it
thenceforth utterly refuses a King and a House of Lords.
How absurd of you to rail at our "Supreme Council" and
even at a supposed "President of the Council"! For that Coun-
5 cil—figment of your dreams—is not supreme, but appointed
by authority of Parliament, for a definite time only, of about
forty of its members, anysoever of whom may by vote of the
rest be president. It has always been, moreover, a well-established
practice for Parliament, which is our Senate, to fix a
10 comparatively small number of its members, choose and appoint
them, and delegate to them authority to meet anywhere,
and to hold, as it were, a kind of smaller Senate. To these,
often, weightiest matters were turned over and entrusted, to
be despatched the more quickly and quietly: the manage-
15 ment or administration of the navy, the army, the treasury,—
in fine, any and all business of peace or war. This body, call it
"council" or anything else, may be new in name, but is ancient
in substance; without it no commonwealth can be managed
properly.
20 Moreover—about the king's execution and about our revolution,—stop
your howling, stop that celebrated act of vomiting
up the venom of your bitterness, till I fight you hand to
hand, and despite your struggles show, chapter by chapter,
"in accordance with what law, under what system of right,
25 in virtue of what judgment" (as you put it) these things were
done. If you yet insist upon your "What right ? What law ?"
—under that law, I say, which God himself and nature hath
appointed, that all things for the safety of the commonwealth