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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1845 edition. Excerpt: ... days for the inhabitants of the several parts of the town, to repair to the Town Council House, to subscribe such sums as they were respectively willing to contribute, to promote the erection of those necessary and desirable works. As might have been anticipated, the prospect of partaking in the common advantage was not sufficient to elicit large individual sacrifices for such a purpose; and Maitland in continuation says, The expensive work being begun, it was found, that neither the sums subscribed, or money borrowed, were sufficient to accomplish the undertaking, the said Council determined to borrow a sum of money, sufficient to finish the work, which was to be repaid by a new contribution; but if that should not answer, the money to be raised by a tax on the inhabitants. f Howell, in his Familiar Letters, writing from Edinburgh in 1C39 says, there is a fair Parliament House built here lately, and regretting that Charles I. did not open it in person, he continues, they did ill who advised him otherwise. A time had come when revolutions had their first impulse not in the battle field, but in deliberative assemblies, and the Parliament that met in 1639, was no less unprecedented in its constitution and its powers, than the hall in which it assembled was a new edifice. The prelates ceased to have a voice among the three estates. The actual business was no longer left to the Lords of the Articles, but while this body was made more strictly elective, the sitting of the full Parliament as a deliberative assembly with freedom of speech was established. Thus the new hall speedily witnessed a greater number of stormy debates than the whole history of preceding Parliaments could shew....

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