State Trials, Political and Social. Volume 1 (of 2)
History
State Trials, Political and Social. Volume 1 (of 2)
Trials -- Great Britain
These things may not be denied, Sir; I speak it rather, and I
pray God it may work upon your heart, that you may be sensible
of your Miscarriages. For whether you have been, as by your
office you ought to be, a Protector of England, or the Destroyer
of England, let all England judge, or all the world, that hath
look'd upon it. Sir, though you have it by inheritance in the
way that is spoken of, yet it must not be denied that your
office was an office of trust, and indeed an office of the
highest trust lodged in any single person; For as you were the
Grand Administrator of Justice, and others were, as your
delegates, to see it done throughout your realms; if your
greatest office were to do Justice, and preserve your People
from wrong, and instead of doing that, you will be the great
Wrong-doer yourself; if instead of being a Conservator of the
Peace, you will be the grand Disturber of the Peace; surely this
is contrary to your office, contrary to your trust. Now, Sir,
if it be an office of inheritance, as you speak of, your Title
by Descent, let all men know that great offices are seizable and
forfeitable, as if you had it but for a year, and for your life.
Therefore, Sir, it will concern you to take into your serious
consideration your great Miscarriages in this kind. Truly, Sir,
I shall not particularize the many Miscarriages of your reign
whatsoever, they are famously known: It had been happy for the
kingdom, and happy for you too, if it had not been so much
known, and so much felt, as the Story of your Miscarriages must
needs be, and hath been already.
Sir, That which we are now upon, by the command of the highest
Court, hath been and is to try and judge you for these great
offences of your's. Sir, the Charge hath called you Tyrant, a
Traitor, a Murderer, and a Public Enemy to the Commonwealth of
England. Sir, it had been well if that any of all these terms
might rightly and justly have been spared, if any one of them at
all.
KING--Ha!
LORD PRESIDENT--Truly, Sir, We have been told '_Rex est dum bene
regit, Tyrannus qui populum opprimit_': And if so be that be the
definition of a Tyrant, then see how you come short of it in
your actions, whether the highest Tyrant, by that way of
arbitrary government, and that you have sought for to introduce,
and that you have sought to put, you were putting upon the
people? Whether that was not as high an Act of Tyranny as any of
your predecessors were guilty of, nay, many degrees beyond it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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