"When the house of lords and commons are in being, it is a proper way of applying to the king; there is all the openness in the world for those that are members of parliament, to make what addresses they please to the government, for the rectifying, altering, regulating, and making of what law they please; but if every private man shall come and interpose his advice, I think there can never be an end of advising the government. "_We are not to measure things from any truth they have in themselves, but from that aspect they have upon the government; for there may be every tittle of a libel true, and yet it may be a libel still_; so that I put no great stress upon that objection, that the matter of it is not false; and for sedition, it is that which every libel carries in itself: and as every trespass implies _vi and armis_, so every libel against the government carries in it sedition, and all the other epithets that are in the information. This is my opinion as to law in general. I will not debate the prerogatives of the king, nor the privileges of the subject; but as this fact is, I think these venerable bishops did meddle with that which did not belong to them; they took upon them, in a petitionary, to contradict the actual exercise of the government, which I think no particular persons, or singular body, may do."[37] [Footnote 37: 12 St. Tr. 427, 428, 429.] Listen, Gentlemen of the Jury, to the words of Attorney-General Powis:-- "And I cannot omit here to take notice, that _there is not any one thing that the law is more jealous of_, or does more carefully provide for the prevention and punishment of, _than all accusations and arraignments of the government. No man is allowed to accuse even the most inferior magistrate of any misbehavior in his office_, unless it be in a legal course, _though the fact is true_. No man may say of a justice of the peace, to his face, that he is unjust in his office. _No man may tell a judge, either by word or petition, you have given an unjust, or an ill judgment_, and I will not obey it; _it is against the rules and laws of the kingdom, or the like_. No man may say of the great men of the nation, much less of the great officers of the kingdom, that they do act unreasonably or unjustly, or the like; least of all may any man say any such thing of the king; for these matters tend to possess the people, that the government is ill administered; and the consequence of that is, to set them upon desiring a reformation; and what that tends to, and will end in, we have all had a sad and too dear bought experience."[38] [Footnote 38: 12 St. Tr. 281.] Hearken to the law of Solicitor-General Williams:--