Drive a coach and six through an Act of Parliament.
Macaulay (“History of England,” chap. xii.) gives a saying “often in the mouth of Stephen Rice [afterward Chief Baron of the Exchequer], ‘I will drive a coach and six through the Act of Settlement.’”
Dr. William Drennan (1754–1820) says this expression was first used in a party song called “Erin, to her own Tune,” written in 1795. The song appears to have been anonymous.
It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.—John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.)
There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.—Demosthenes: Philippic 2, sect. 24.
William Watson: Decacordon of Ten Quodlibeticall Questions (1602). Prynne: Fresh Discovery of Prodigious New Wandering-Blazing Stars (second edition, London, 1646). Ward: Simple Cobbler of Aggawam in America (1647).
Fiat Justitia et ruat Mundus.—Egerton Papers (1552, p. 25). Camden Society (1840). Aiken: Court and Times of James I., vol. ii. p. 500 (1625).
January 31, 1642, the Duke of Richmond in a speech before the House of Lords used these words: Regnet Justitia et ruat Cœlum. (Old Parliamentary History, vol. x. p. 28.
