_L._ By the laws, I mean laws living and armed. For you must suppose, that a nation that is subdued by war to an absolute submission to a conqueror, may, by the same arm that compelled it to submission, be compelled to obey his laws. Also, if a nation choose a man, or an assembly of men, to govern them by laws, it must furnish him also with armed men and money, and all things necessary to his office; or else his laws will be of no force, and the nation remains, as before it was, in confusion. It is not therefore the word of the law, but the power of a man that has the strength of a nation, that make the laws effectual. It was not Solon that made Athenian laws, though he devised them, but the supreme court of the people; nor, the lawyers of Rome that made the imperial law in Justinian’s time, but Justinian himself. _P._ We agree then in this, that in England it is the King that makes the laws, whosoever pens them; and in this, that the King cannot make his laws effectual, nor defend his people against their enemies, without a power to levy soldiers; and consequently, that he may lawfully, as oft as he shall really think it necessary to raise an army, (which in some occasions be very great) I say, raise it, and money to maintain it. I doubt not but you will allow this to be according to the law, at least of reason. _L._ For my part I allow it. But you have heard how, in and before the late troubles the people were of another mind. Shall the King, said they, take from us what he pleases, upon pretence of a necessity whereof he makes himself the judge? What worse condition can we be in from an enemy? What can they take from us more than what they list? _P._ The people reason ill. They do not know in what condition we were, in the time of the Conqueror, when it was a shame to be an Englishman; who, if he grumbled at the base offices he was put to by his Norman masters, received no other answer than this, _thou art but an Englishman_. Nor can the people, nor any man that humours their disobedience, produce any example of a King that ever raised any excessive sums, either by himself or by the consent of his Parliament, but when they had great need thereof; nor can show any reason that might move any of them so to do. The greatest complaint by them made against the unthriftiness of their Kings, was for the enriching now and then a favourite, which to the wealth of the kingdom was inconsiderable, and the complaint but envy. But in this point of raising soldiers, what is, I pray you, the statute law?