Note 526 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
Mr. Hakewill's speech, though long, will repay the diligent reader's trouble, as being a very luminous and masterly statement of this great argument. State Trials, ii. 407. The extreme inferiority of Bacon, who sustained the cause of prerogative, must be apparent to every one. Id. 345. Sir John Davis makes somewhat a better defence; his argument is, that the king may lay an embargo on trade, so as to prevent it entirely, and consequently may annex conditions to it. Id. 399. But to this it was answered, that the king can only lay a temporary embargo, for the sake of some public good, not prohibit foreign trade altogether.
As to the king's prerogative of restraining foreign trade, see extracts from Hale's MS. Treatise de Jure Coronæ, in Hargrave's Preface to Collection of Law Tracts, p. xxx. etc. It seems to have been chiefly as to exportation of corn.