xo        POLITICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY, 1603-29
.many vital questions about which the law was not clear, for
precedents might be cited on both sides. An example of extreme
importance was now afforded of the prejudice a subject might
suffer by the legal interpretation of a disputed right of taxation.
The case was that of John Bate, a merchant, who refused to
pay a customs duty on currants. The previous history of this
duty is somewhat complicated. Elizabeth had first granted a
monopoly for the importation of currants from Venice, which
then largely controlled the Levant trade. Later, when the
Levant Company was formed, it had permitted non-members
to import currants on payment of $s. 6d. per hundred weight >
but the company did not prosper, and, after various schemes
had been tried, its charter was surrendered, at the beginning of
James's reign, and the trade thrown open, though an imposition
was levied upon importation, Even so, the king had to remit
arrears of duties amounting to £13,000 to the merchants. How*
ever, when Bate had a cartload of currants driven from the water-
side before examination by the customs official and declared to
the council that he had so acted because he believed the imposi-
tion to be illegal, the government decided to bring the whole
question formally before the court of exchequer. The decision
of Chief Baron Fleming is worthy of the closest analysis, inas-
much as it presents a theory of the royal prerogative widely held
and long continuing. The impositions, he said* were duties
newly levied by the king, without parliamentary authority, in
order to augment his revenues. A king's power is both ordinary
and absolute, and differs according to the ends it serves* The
ordinary power concerns individuals, the execution of civil jus-
tice, and the determining afmeumi is exercised in the ordinary
courts of law according to common law; and is subject to parlia-
ment. The absolute power exists for the general hendit of the
whole people, is governed by rules of policy, and varies accord"
ing to what the wisdom of the king thinks is for the common
good. Since all customs duties, be they old or new, are simply
*the^ effects and issues^5 of foreign trade, and since all foreign
affairs, including commerce, are controlled by the absolute
power of the king, impositions arc rightly levied by thin extra-
ordinary prerogative. So far as foreign commodities arc con*
cerned, no act of parliament or petition was ever made against
an impost upon alien goods but the tax had been paid.^1
^x A Complete Collection tf State Trials, ed. T, B. and T. J. Howe)! (33 vo!»._f