heady prince comes to the throne, are well recompensed by the peace of the public and security of the government, in the person of the chief magistrate being thus set out of the reach of danger.

Next, as to cases of ordinary public oppression, where the vitals of the constitution are not attacked, the law hath also assigned a remedy. For, as the king cannot misuse his power, without the advice of evil counsellors, and the assistance of wicked ministers, these men may be examined and punished. The constitution has therefore provided, by means of indictments and parliamentary impeachments, that no man shall dare to assist the crown in contradiction to the laws of the land. But it is at the same time a maxim in those laws, that the king himself can do no wrong: since it would be a great weakness and absurdity in any system of positive law to define any possible wrong, without any possible redress.

For, as to such public oppressions as tend to dissolve the constitution and subvert the fundamentals of government, they are cases which the law will not, out of decency, suppose; being incapable of distrusting those whom it has invested with any part of the supreme power; since such distrust would render the exercise of that power precarious and impracticable. For, wherever the law expresses its distrust of abuse of power, it always vests a superior coercive authority in some other hand to correct it; the very notion of which destroys the idea of sovereignty. If therefore, for example, the two houses of parliament, or either of them, had avowedly a right to animadvert on the king, or each other, or if the king had a right to animadvert on either of the houses, that branch of the legislature, so subject to animadversion, would instantly cease to be part of the supreme power; the balance of the constitution would be overturned, and that branch or branches, in which this jurisdiction resided, would be completely sovereign. The supposition of law therefore is, that neither the king nor either house of parliament, collectively taken, is capable of doing any wrong: since in such cases the law feels itself incapable of furnishing any adequate remedy. For which reason all oppression which may happen to spring from any branch of the sovereign power, must necessarily be out of the reach of any stated rule, or express legal provision; but if ever they unfortunately happen, the prudence of the times must provide new remedies upon new emergencies.

II. Besides the attribute of sovereignty, the law also ascribes to the king, in his political capacity, absolute perfection. The king

can do no wrong: which ancient and fundamental maxim is not to be understood, as if every thing transacted by the government was of course just and lawful, but means only two things. First, that whatever is exceptionable in the conduct of public affairs, is not to be imputed to the king, nor is he answerable for it personally to his people; for this doctrine would totally destroy that constitutional independence of the crown, which is necessary for the balance of power in our free and active, and therefore compounded, constitution. And, secondly, it means that the prerogative of the crown extends not to any injury: it is created for the benefit of the people, and therefore cannot be exerted to their prejudice.

The king, moreover, is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong: he can never mean to do an improper thing: in him is no folly or weakness. And therefore, if the crown should be induced to grant any franchise or privilege to a subject contrary to reason, or in any wise prejudicial to the commonwealth, or a private person, the law will not suppose the king to have meant either an unwise or an injurious action, but declares that the king was deceived in his grant; and thereupon such grant is rendered void, merely upon the foundation of fraud and deception, either by or upon those agents whom the crown has thought proper to employ. For the law will not cast an imputation on that magistrate whom it intrusts with the executive power, as if he was capable of intentionally disregarding his trust; but attributes to mere imposition (to which the most perfect of sublunary beings must still continue liable) those little inadvertencies, which, if charged on the will of the prince, might lessen him in the eyes of his subjects. .

In further pursuance of this principle, the law also determines that in the king can be no negligence, or laches, and therefore no delay will bar his right. Nullum tempus occurrit regi has been the standing maxim upon all occasions; for the law intends that the king is always busied for the public good, and therefore has no leisure to assert his right within the times limited to subjects. In the king also can be no stain or corruption of blood; for, if the heir to the crown were attainted of treason or felony, and afterwards the crown should descend to him, this would purge the attainder ipso facto. And therefore when Henry VII., who, as earl of Richmond, stood attainted, came to the crown, it was not thought necessary to pass an act of parliament to reverse this attainder; because, as lord Bacon, in his history of that prince, informs us, it

was agreed that the assumption of the crown had at once purged all attainders. Neither can the king in judgment of law, as king, ever be a minor or under age; and therefore his royal grants and assents to acts of parliament are good, though he has not in his natural capacity attained the legal age of twenty-one. By a statute, indeed, 28 Hen. VIII. c. 17, power was given to future kings to rescind and revoke all acts of parliament that should be made while they were under the age of twenty-four; but this was repealed by the statute 1 Edw. VI. c. 11, so far as related to that prince; and both statutes are declared to be determined by 24 Geo. II. c. 24. It hath also been usually thought prudent, when the heirapparent hath been very young, to appoint a protector, guardian, or regent, for a limited time; but the very necessity of such extraordinary provision is sufficient to demonstrate the truth of that maxim of the common law, that in the king is no minority; there-. fore he hath no legal guardian.

III. A third attribute of the king's majesty is his perpetuity. The law ascribes to him in his political capacity an absolute immortality. The king never dies. Henry, Edward, or George may die; but the king survives them all. For immediately upon the decease of the reigning prince in his natural capacity, his kingship or imperial dignity, by act of law, without any interregnum or interval, is vested at once in his heir, who is, eo instanti, king to all intents and purposes. And so tender is the law of supposing even a possibility of his death that his natural dissolution is generally called his demise; demissio regis, vel coronae: an expression which signifies merely a transfer of property; for, as is observed in Plowden, when we say the demise of the crown, we mean only that, in consequence of the disunion of the king's natural body from his body politic, the kingdom is transferred or demised to his successor; and so the royal dignity remains perpetual. Thus, too, when Edward the Fourth, in the tenth year of his reign, was driven from his throne for a few months by the house of Lancaster, this temporary transfer of his dignity was denominated his demise; and all process was held to be discontinued as upon a natural death of the king.

To understand the principles of public law in our system, one must know the doctrines of the common law with reference to the king and his relation to the commonwealth and to the law. The State, with us, occupies the position held by the king at common law.

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The common law holds that the king:

(1) Is above all men but rules under God and the law.

(2) Is the fountain of justice.

(3) Is the fountain of honor.

(4) Is parens patriae.

(5) Is the paramount lord of the soil.

(6) Is representative of the commonwealth in its corporate capacity.

1. The king was above all men, but ruled sub deo et lege, under God and the law. That is, when he exercised the powers accorded him by law, he was beyond all legal human control; only his sense of right and justice or the fear of revolt could restrain him. Should he transcend the legal limits of his power, he could not be dealt with by the courts in the ordinary manner. His person was beyond reach of any process, and no judgments of courts could run against him. The courts were his courts, and had no power to sit in judgment upon him. But while the courts could not judge the king, they could judge the legal validity of his acts. When he acted outside of the powers accorded him by law and beyond the scope of his royal authority, his acts had no legal validity, and whenever they came in question in the course of orderly litigation between individuals, the courts would pass upon their legal validity, and, if they were invalid, would refuse to give effect to them. This is a part of the doctrine of the supremacy of the law, which is fundamental in our common-law system.

This doctrine is a part of the common law in America. The people of the United States and the peoples of the several States, in respect of the subjects committed to or reserved by them respectively, have succeeded to the position of the English Crown. When they, or their legislative or executive representatives, act as such within the limits appointed by the constitutions, they are not legally accountable anywhere or to anyone. Nor may the State, the People, or the Legislature, as such, be tried by the courts or brought before them. But if and whenever people or legislature transgress and act beyond or outside of the legally appointed limits, their acts are simply void, and the courts will refuse them any effect whatever, should such acts be brought before them in the course of orderly litigation between individuals. For example, a petition or command of all the electors of the State not to enforce a law would be legally of no force. The court would be bound to enforce it until it was repealed or superseded in the regular way.

But while the validity of the king's acts could be passed on by the courts, it could be done only in controversies between individuals in which such acts were involved incidentally. The courts had no jurisdiction or legal control over the king. In strict theory, they merely represented him. Hence it was a maxim of the common law that the king could do no wrong; that is, he could do no legal wrong, could commit no actionable injury. If his act injured the

subject, the latter must obtain relief, not redress, not of right, but of grace, not by action but by petition.

BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES, III, 254.

That the king can do no wrong, is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution; meaning only as has formerly been observed, that, in the first place, whatever may be amiss in the conduct of public affairs is not chargeable personally on the king; nor is he, but his ministers, accountable for it to the people; and, secondly, that the prerogative of the crown extends not to do any injury; for, being created for the benefit of the people, it cannot be exerted to their prejudice. Whenever therefore it happens that, by misinformation, or inadvertance, the crown hath been induced to invade the private rights of any of its subjects, though no action will lie against the sovereign, (for who shall command the king?) yet the law hath furnished the subject with a decent and respectful mode of removing that invasion, by informing the king of the true state of the matter in dispute: and, as it presumes to know of any injury, and to redress it are inseparable in the royal breast, it then issues as of course, in the king's own name, his orders to his judges to do justice to the party aggrieved.

The distance between the sovereign and his subjects is such, that it rarely can happen that any personal injury can immediately and directly proceed from the prince to any private man; and, as it can so seldom happen, the law in decency supposes that it never will or can happen at all; without infringing the dignity and destroying the sovereignty of the royal person, by setting up some superior power with authority to call him to account. The inconveniency. therefore of a mischief that is barely possible is (as Mr. Locke has observed) well recompensed by the peace of the public and security of the government, in the person of the chief magistrate being set out of the reach of coercion. But injuries to the rights of property can scarcely be committed by the crown without the intervention of its officers; for, whom the law in matters of right entertains no respect or delicacy, but furnishes various methods of detecting the errors or misconduct of those agents, by whom the king has been deceived and induced to do a temporary injustice.

The common-law methods of obtaining possession or restitution from the crown, of either real or personal property, are, I. By petition de droit, or petition of right: which is said to owe its original