He was brought up sharply when he began to kick against the Presbyterian pricks of Scotland; and the expenses of the Bishops' War put an end to the hand-to-mouth existence of his unparliamentary government in England. The Long parliament went to the root of the matter by demanding triennial sessions and the choice of ministers who had the confidence of parliament. It emphasized its insistence upon ministerial responsibility to parliament by executing Strafford and afterwards Laud. Charles, who laboured under the impression common to reactionaries that they are defending the rights of the people, contended that, in claiming an unfettered right to choose his own advisers, he was championing one of the most obvious liberties of the subject. Parliament, however, had realized that in politics principles consist of details as a pound consists of pence; and that if it wanted sound legislative principles, it must take care of the details of administration. Charles had ruled eleven years without parliament; but so had Wolsey, and Elizabeth had apologized when she called it together oftener than about once in five years. If the state had had more financial ballast, and the church had been less high and top-heavy, Charles might seemingly have weathered the storm and let parliament subside into impotence, as the Bourbons let the States-General of France, without any overt breach of the constitution. After all, the original design of the crown had been to get money out of parliament, and the main object of parliament had once been to make the king live of his own. A king content with parsimony might lawfully dispense with parliament; and the eleven years had shown the precarious basis of parliamentary institutions, given a thrifty king and an unambitious country. Events were demonstrating the truth of Hobbes's maxim that sovereignty is indivisible; peace could not be kept between a sovereign legislature and a sovereign executive; parliament must control the crown, or some day the eleven years would recur and become perpetual. In France, unparliamentary government was prolonged by the victory of the crown for a century and three-quarters. In England, Charles's was the last experiment, because parliament defeated the claim of the crown to rule by means of irresponsible ministers.