security he is compelled to provide bulwarks and fortresses, and to maintain, for the collection of his customs and duties, collectors and customers; and for that charge it is reason, that he should have this benefit. He is also to defend the merchants from pirates at sea in their passage. Also, by the power of the king they are to be relieved, if they are oppressed by foreign princes, for they shall have his treaty, and embassage; and if he be not remedied thereby, then _lex talionis_ shall be executed, goods for goods, and tax for tax; and if this will not redress the matter, then war is to be attempted for the cause of merchants. In all the king's courts, and of other princes, the judges in them are paid by the king, and maintained by him to do justice to the subjects, and therefore he hath the profits of the said courts. It is reasonable that the king should have as much power over foreigners and their goods, as over his own subjects; and if the king cannot impose upon foreign commodities a custom, as well as foreigners may upon their own commodities, and upon the commodities of this land when they come to them, then foreign states shall be enriched and the king impoverished, and he shall not have equal profit with them; and yet it will not be denied, but his power herein is equal with other states. MR. YELVERTON'S ARGUMENT. =Source.=--_State Trials._ Vol. ii., p. 482. For the first, it will be admitted for a rule and ground of state, that in every commonwealth and government there be some rights of sovereignty, _jura majestatis_, which regularly and of common right do belong to the sovereign power of that state; unless custom, or the provisional ordinance of that state, do otherwise dispose of them: which sovereign power is _potestas suprema_ a power that can control all other powers, and cannot be controlled but of itself. It will not be denied, that the power of imposing hath so great a trust in it, by reason of the mischiefs may grow to the common-wealth by the abuses of it, that it hath ever been ranked among those rights of sovereign power. Then is there no further question to be made, but to examine where the sovereign power is in this kingdom; for there is the right of imposition. The sovereign power is agreed to be in the king: but in the king is a twofold power; the one is parliament, as he is assisted with the consent of the whole state; the other out of parliament, as he is sole, and singular, guided merely by his own will. And if of these two powers in the king one is greater than the other, and can direct and control the other; that is _suprema potestas_, the sovereign power, and the other is _subordinata_. It will then be easily proved, that the power of the king in parliament is greater than his power out of parliament; and doth rule and control it; for if the king make a grant by his letters patents out of parliament, it bindeth him and his successors: he cannot revoke