_P._ All this I know, and am not satisfied. I am one of the common people, and one of that almost infinite number of men, for whose welfare Kings and other sovereigns were by God ordained: for God made Kings for the people, and not people for Kings. How shall I be defended from the domineering of proud and insolent strangers that speak another language, that scorn us, that seek to make us slaves, or how shall I avoid the destruction that may arise from the cruelty of factions in a civil war, unless the King, to whom alone, you say, belongeth the right of levying and disposing of the militia by which only it can be prevented, have ready money, upon all occasions, to arm and pay as many soldiers, as for the present defence, or the peace of the people, shall be necessary? Shall not I, and you, and every man be undone? Tell me not of a Parliament, when there is no Parliament sitting, or perhaps none in being, which may often happen. And when there is a Parliament, if the speaking and leading men should have a design to put down monarchy, as they had in the Parliament which began to sit the third of November, 1640, shall the King, who is to answer to God Almighty for the safety of the people, and to that end is intrusted with the power to levy and dispose of the soldiery, be disabled to perform his office, by virtue of these acts of Parliament which you have cited? If this be reason, it is reason also that the people be abandoned, or left at liberty to kill one another, even to the last man; if it be not reason, then you have granted it is not law. _L._ It is true, if you mean _recta ratio_; but _recta ratio_, which I grant to be law, as Sir Edward Coke says, (1 _Inst._ sect. 138), is an artificial perfection of reason, gotten by long study, observation, and experience, and not every man’s natural reason; for _nemo nascitur artifex_. This legal reason is _summa ratio_; and therefore, if all the reason that is dispersed into so many several heads, were united into one, yet could he not make such a law as the law of England is, because by many successions of ages it hath been fined and refined by an infinite number of grave and learned men. And this is it, he calls the common law.