The necessary concurrence of the two houses of parliament in legislation, though it could not be more unequivocally established than the former, had in earlier times been more free from all attempt or pretext of encroachment. We know not of any laws that were ever enacted by our kings without the assent and advice of their great council; though it is justly doubted, whether the representatives of the ordinary freeholders, or of the boroughs, had seats and suffrages in that assembly during seven or eight reigns after the conquest. They were then, however, ingrafted upon it with plenary legislative authority; and if the sanction of a statute were required for this fundamental axiom, we might refer to one in the 15th of Edward II. (1322), which declares that "the matters to be established for the estate of the king and of his heirs, and for the estate of the realm and of the people, should be treated, accorded, and established in parliament, by the king, and by the assent of the prelates, earls, and barons, and the commonalty of the realm, according as had been before accustomed."[5] It may not be impertinent to remark in this place, that the opinion of such as have fancied the royal prerogative under the houses of Plantagenet and Tudor to have had no effectual or unquestioned limitations is decisively refuted by the notorious fact, that no alteration in the general laws of the realm was ever made, or attempted to be made, without the consent of parliament. It is not surprising that the council, in great exigency of money, should sometimes employ force to extort it from the merchants, or that servile lawyers should be found to vindicate these encroachments of power. Impositions, like other arbitrary measures, were particular and temporary, prompted by rapacity, and endured through compulsion. But if the kings of England had been supposed to enjoy an absolute authority, we should find some proofs of it in their exercise of the supreme function of sovereignty, the enactment of new laws. Yet there is not a single instance from the first dawn of our constitutional history, where a proclamation, or order of council, has dictated any change, however trifling, in the code of private rights, or in the penalties of criminal offences. Was it ever pretended that the king could empower his subjects to devise their freeholds, or to levy fines of their entailed lands? Has even the slightest regulation as to judicial procedure, or any permanent prohibition, even in fiscal law, been ever enforced without statute? There was, indeed, a period, later than that of Henry VII., when a control over the subject's free right of doing all things not unlawful was usurped by means of proclamations. These, however, were always temporary, and did not affect to alter the established law. But though it would be difficult to assert that none of this kind had ever been issued in rude and irregular times, I have not observed any under the