The opinion of Chief Baron Fleming was scarcely less sweeping. “The King’s power is double,” he said, “ordinary and absolute.... That of the ordinary is for the profit of particular subjects, for the execution of civil justice ... in the ordinary courts, and nominated ... with us the common law; and these laws cannot be changed without Parliament.... The absolute power of the king is not that which is converted or executed to private use, ... but is only that which is applied to the general benefit of the people.... This power is not guided by the rules which direct only at the common law, and is most properly named policy and government.... The matter in question is material matter of state, and ought to be ruled by the rules of policy, and if it be so, the king hath done well to execute his extraordinary power. All customs, be they old or new, are no other but the effects and issues of trades and commerce with foreign nations; but all commerce and affairs with foreigners ... are made by the absolute power of the king; and he who hath power of causes hath power also of effects.”[305] [The position of Parliament] Parliament took its stand on the subject of the impositions even before the decision was published. In the Petition of Grievances sent up by the commons at the end of the session of 1606, a list which contained so many complaints that James remarked that “they had sent an oyes through the nation to find them,” the plea was made that no such duty could be demanded legally without the consent of Parliament. The decision was announced to them when they reassembled in November 1606, but they took no action and for a time the matter rested. [The Book of Rates published under decision in the Bate Case, 1608] But it was James himself who, in his characteristic tactless obstinacy, forced the issue. On the 29th July, 1608, taking advantage of the Bate decision, he published under the authority of the Great Seal his Book of Rates, which laid heavy duties upon almost all articles of merchandise, “to be forever hereafter paid to the king and his successors on pain of his displeasure.”[306] The statement of James’s own views on the subject could not be more clearly put than he himself expressed them in the commission for the levy of the impositions addressed to the Earl of Salisbury, Treasurer of England. “This special power and prerogative,” he asserted, “(amongst many others) hath both by men of understanding in all ages and by the laws of all nations been yielded and acknowledged to be proper and inherent in the persons of princes, that they may according to their several occasions raise to themselves such fit and competent means by levying of customs and impositions upon merchandise transported out of their kingdom or brought into their dominions ... as to their wisdoms and discretions may seem convenient.”[307] [Remonstrance from the Commons, 1609-10]