The age did not refine so much as to perceive the danger of these irregularities.

No man was displeased that the sovereign, at the desire of any class of men, should issue an order which appeared only to concern that class; and his predecessors were so near possessing the whole legislative power, that he gave no disgust by assuming it in this seemingly inoffensive manner.

But time and further experience gradually opened men's eyes, and corrected these abuses.

It was found that no laws could be fixed for one order of men without affecting the whole; and that the force and efficacy of laws depended entirely on the terms employed in wording them.

The house of peers, therefore, the most powerful order in the state, with reason, expected that their assent should be expressly granted to all public ordinances:[**] * See note D, at the end of the volume.
** In those instances found in Cotton's Abridgment, where the king appears to answer of himself the petitions of the commons, he probably exerted no more than that power, which was long inherent in the crown, of regulating matters by royal edicts or proclamations.
But no durable or general statute seems ever to have been made by the king from the petition of the commons alone, without the assent of the peers.