The _influence_ or power of parliament, and especially of the Commons, in the general legislation of the country, was a thing of slow growth, having its origin in a device of the king to get money contrary to law, (as will be seen in the next volume,) and not at all a part of the constitution of the kingdom, nor having its foundation in the consent of the people. The power, _as at present exercised_, was not fully established until 1688, (near five hundred years after Magna Carta,) when the House of Commons (falsely so called) had acquired such influence as the representative, _not of the people, but of the wealth, of the nation_, that they compelled the king to discard the oath fixed by the constitution of the kingdom; (which oath has been already given in a former chapter,(page 101) and was, in substance, to preserve and execute the Common Law, the Law of the Land,--or, in the words of the oath, "_the just laws and customs which the common people had chosen_;") and to swear that he would "govern the people of this kingdom of England, and the dominions thereto belonging, _according to the statutes in parliament agreed on_, and the laws and customs of the same."[115] The passage and enforcement of this statute, and the assumption of this oath by the king, were plain violations of the English constitution, inasmuch as they abolished, so far as such an oath could abolish, the legislative power of the king, and also "those just laws and customs which the common people (through their juries) had chosen," and substituted the will of parliament in their stead. Coke was a great advocate for the legislative power of parliament, as a means of restraining the power of the king. As he denied all power to _juries_ to decide upon the obligation of laws, and as he held that the legislative power was "_so transcendent and absolute as (that) it cannot be confined, either for causes or persons, within any bounds_,"[116] he was perhaps honest in holding that it was safer to trust this terrific power in the hands of parliament, than in the hands of the king. His error consisted in holding that either the king or parliament had any such power, or that they had any power at all to pass laws that should be binding upon a jury. These declarations of Coke, that the charter was confirmed by thirty-two "acts of parliament," have a mischievous bearing in another respect. They tend to weaken the authority of the charter, by conveying the impression that the charter itself might be _abolished_ by "act of parliament." Coke himself admits that it could not be revoked or rescinded by the _king_; for he says, "All pretence of prerogative against Magna Carta is taken away." (_2 Inst._, 36.)