"It is true that the luxury or ambition of Kings or their
indulgent bounty to their favorites led them to assemble
Parliament and to ask additional supplies from their subjects.
It is also true that these requests furnished the occasion
to the Commons to stipulate for redress of grievances. But
the grievances so redressed had no relation to the laws of
the Realm. These laws were made or altered by the free assent
of the three estates in whom the law-making power vested by
the Constitution. The grievances of which the Commons sought
redress, whether from Tudor, Plantagenet or Stuart, were the
improper use of prerogatives, the granting of oppressive monopolies,
the waging of costly foreign wars, the misconduct of favorites
and the like. The improvident expenditure of the royal patrimony,
the granting the crown land or pensions to unworthy persons,
is a frequent ground of complaint.
"But there is a broader and simpler distinction between the
two cases. The mistake, the gross, palpable mistake, which
these gentlemen fall into in making this comparison, lies
at the threshold.
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