Were we to be deceived again?
Were we again to give subsidies, and receive nothing but promises?
Were we again to make wholesome statutes, and then leave them to be broken daily and hourly, until the oppressor should have squandered another supply, and should be ready for another perjury?
You ask what they could desire which he had not already granted.

Let me ask of you another question.

What pledge could he give which he had not already violated?
From the first year of his reign, whenever he had need of the purses of his Commons to support the revels of Buckingham or the processions of Laud, he had assured them that, as he was a gentleman and a king, he would sacredly preserve their rights.

He had pawned those solemn pledges, and pawned them again and again; but when had he redeemed them?
'Upon my faith,'-- 'Upon my sacred word,'-- 'Upon the honour of a prince,'-- came so easily from his lips, and dwelt so short a time on his mind that they were as little to be trusted as the 'By the hilts' of an Alsatian dicer.
"Therefore it is that I praise this Parliament for what else I might have condemned.

If what he had granted had been granted graciously and readily, if what he had before promised had been faithfully observed, they could not be defended.