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ftrates, who are particularly entrusted with the administration of justice.

"This conduct of the parliament provides an admirable remedy for the accidental diforders of the state. For though by the wife diftribution of the powers of government great ufurpations are become in a manner impracticable, nevertheless it is impoffible, but that in confequence of the continual, though filent efforts of the executive power to extend itself, abuses will at lengh slide in. But here the powers wifely kept in reserve by the parliament, afford the means of remedying them. At the end of each reign the civil lift, and confequently that kind of independence, which it procured, are at an end. The fucceffor finds a throne, a fceptre, and a crown; but he finds neither power, nor even dignity; and before a real poffeffion of all

these things is given him, the parliament have it in their power to take a thorough review of the ftate, as well as correct the several abuses, that may have crept in during the preceding reign; and thus the conftitution may be brought back to its first principles."

Some of the rights, liberties, and privileges of the lords and commons, which in fact greatly moderate and control the

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tive, power, and influence of the crown, will be more properly noticed, when I come to treat of those two branches of the legislature separately.

Although the constitution has placed the facred person of the fovereign in so secure and exalted a station, as not to be in any manner liable to any vindictive, penal, or even mortifying and humiliating process, upon the political principle of his inability to do

crimes of minif- wrong; yet it has not left the community without its remedy in every cafe, in which it might be injured. Such crimes or offences, either of minifters or others, as amount to high treafon, I fhall confider hereafter. * "But as to offences of a lower kind, fuch as the evil advice of minifters influencing the king, not indeed to exceed the limits of his power, but to abuse the difcretion, with which his people have intrusted him, the proceeding by impeachment of the commons for high crimes and misdemeanors is a complete remedy, and according to the degree and height of the offences the judgment may be proportioned in parliament." Nay the conftitution is so respectfully tender of the perfon, character, and reputation of the fove

* Confiderations on the Law of Forfeiture, p. 117.

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reign, that it makes his minifters refponsible for every circumstance, that can operate to the prejudice or injury of any of them.

«Measures of the greater severity may indeed in fome circumftances be neceffary; but the minifter, who advises should take the execution and odium of them entirely upon himself. He not only betrays his master, but violates the spirit of the English constitution, when he expofes the chief magiftrate to the perfonal hatred or contempt of his fubjects. And the reputation of public measures depends upon the minifter, who is refponfible, not upon the king, whofe private opinions are not fuppofed to have any weight against the advice of his council, whofe perfonal authority should therefore never be interpofed in public affairs. This, I believe,

is true constitutional doctrine."

It ever is a point of peculiar delicacy and tenderness, to speak of extreme cafes, which, though without all human probability, are still within the actual poffibility of human Occurrences. "It is," fays Mr. Yorke, +"fcarce confiftent with that modefty, which the profeffors of the law obferve in putting

* Junius, Letter xxxv. 3d April, 1770.

+ Confiderations on the Law of Forfeiture, p. 115.

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Cafes tending to a diffolution

cafes relative to ftatutes of this kind, to propose any other than those, which have exifted in fact, or fall clearly within the letter of them." In order to give my readers the more complete fatisfaction upon this fubject, I fhall again recur to the respectable authority of this learned and conftitutional author.

* "Now if any one think, in cafe the. of government. king fhould unhappily and obftinately interest his person, in supporting the actions of his minifters against the clear and established laws of the land, that the principles of a conftitution fo limited and controuled in all the parts of it seem to warrant the providing of a judicial remedy against him, as against another magistrate or minifter of ftate, the anfwer to this chimæra is plain; that every conftitution of government has its peculiar cafes tending to diffolution, beyond the power of any stated remedy, even though it be the mixt form of government, which both avoids thofe, to which other forms are fubject, and is lefs frequently in danger from fuch convulfions, as are proper to itself. The English government therefore notwithstanding its du

* Confiderations on the Law of Forfeiture, p. 118, & feq.

rable

rable nature, and fingular advantages, partaking in fo large a degree of monarchy, the cafe here propofed would be a cafe tending to diffolution, not to be fubjected to the ordinary provifions of law. The reigns of Charles I. and James II. are evidence of this; and it arifes from the nature of the thing; because the king of England (unlike the kings of Sparta or Arragon, with their Ephori and El Giufticia, officers appointed to infpect and judge their actions) is not only a magiftrate or general, but compofes an effential part of the fupreme power; fo that, on the one hand, fhould a future king attempt to fubject the crown and people to a foreign yoke, or to fet up a general dispensing power by proclamation, to controul the operation of all the laws, thefe would be cafes manifeftly tending to diffolution. Or fhould he fummon the lords to affift him in making laws, without the representative body of the commons, and the lords instead of mediating, should fupport him in the arbitrary defign of excluding the commons from a fhare in the legiflature, it would be a cafe tending to diffolution; and though the law will not suppose the poffibility of the wrong, fince it cannot mark out or affift the remedy, yet every member of that representative body might exclaim in

the

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