tion is, for the minister to tender his resignation, and advise the crown to entrust some other statesman with the formation of a new ministry; but where the administration is dismissed by the crown, it is on the advice, express or implied, of the great council of the nation, or the presumption that such a measure will meet the approbation of that august assembly. The constitution, therefore, guards against any inconvenience which might arise from the rule of law, that the king can do no wrong, by establishing the responsibility of the advisers of the crown. With regard to such public oppressions as tend to dissolve the constitution and subvert the fundamentals of government (which indeed the law will not suppose, and therefore cannot provide for), we must confine ourselves to the cautious doctrines of Blackstone, who thus expresses his opinion:-" It is found by experience, that whenever the unconstitutional oppressions, even of the sovereign power, advance with gigantic strides, and threaten desolation to a state, mankind will not be reasoned out of the feelings of humanity, nor will sacrifice their liberty by a scrupulous adherence to those political maxims which were originally established to preserve it. And therefore, though the positive laws are silent, experience will furnish us with a very remarkable case wherein nature and reason prevailed. When king James II. invaded the fundamental constitution of the realm, the convention declared an abdication, whereby the throne was rendered vacant, which induced a new settlement of the crown. And so far as this precedent leads, and no farther, we may now be allowed to lay down the law of redress against public oppression. If, therefore, any future prince should endeavour to subvert the constitution, by breaking the original contract between king and people, K should violate the fundamental laws, and should withdraw himself out of the kingdom, we are now authorised to declare that this conjunction of circumstances would amount to an abdication, and the throne would be thereby vacant. But it is not for us to say that any one or two of these ingredients would amount to such a situation; for there our precedent would fail us. In these therefore, or other circumstances, which a fertile imagination may furnish, since both law and history are silent, it becomes us to be silent too, leaving to future generations, whenever necessity and the safety of the whole shall require it, the exertion of those inherent (though latent) powers of society which no climate, no time, no constitution, no contract, can ever destroy or diminish."1 It would, indeed, be impossible, without the establishment of a revolutionary authority clothed with a jurisdic tion superior to the constitution, to provide by any law for extraordinary cases of this nature. The constitution must not presume the possibility of a wrong for which it is unable to provide a remedy. But it does not follow that in certain extreme and extraordinary cases the whole community (for whose benefit all government is ordained) must be left without the possibility of relief from desperate evils, because the ordinary law cannot afford that redress to which, by the divine law of nature, they are entitled. In cases where a subject is injured in his private rights of property by the crown, the law has provided a remedy, without infringing the sovereignty of the queen. If any person has, in point of property, a just demand upon the queen, he must petition her in her court of Chancery, where her chancellor will administer right as a Blackst. Com. b. i. c. vii. p. 244. matter of grace, though not upon compulsion.' But the chancellor would be liable to impeachment, if he did not advise the crown to administer justice on the petition, or remonstrance of right, of the subject; and both he and his colleagues would be compelled, on a petition to parliament by the party aggrieved, to justify themselves before that assembly for any such apparent denial of justice. Besides the attribute of sovereign pre-eminence, the law invests the queen with that of dominion. Thus, the whole property of the state, including all that is not appropriated to private individuals and bodies corporate, civil or ecclesiastical, is vested by the constitution in the queen. Her majesty is also entitled to all that portion of the property of her subjects which is set apart by the law for public use, as the revenues of the state. Thus the revenues of the state are collected in her name, and administered by her officers, according to law. A third attribute of the queen in her political capacity is absolute perfection. Thus, as we have already seen, the queen can do no wrong; the meaning of which is,-1st, 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: and, 2dly, that whatever is exceptionable in the conduct of public affairs is not to be imputed to the sovereign, who cannot be made personally responsible for it to the nation.2 But of the responsibility of the advisers of the crown enough has been said already. In pursuance of this principle of the absolute perfection of the queen, the law also determines, that in the queen there can be no negligence, or lâches, and therefore, 255. Blackst. Com. b. i. c. vii. p. 242; and b. iii. c. xvii. Finch, L. 2 Blackst. Com. b. i. c. vii. p. 245. Plowden, 487. by the common law, no delay to assert her rights will bar them. Nullum tempus occurrit regi, has been the standing maxim upon all occasions; for the law intends that the sovereign is always busied for the public good, and therefore has not leisure to assert the rights of the crown within the times limited to the subject. But this doctrine has been considerably modified in practice by several modern statutes, which limit the time within which the rights of the crown to property may be asserted against the subject. In the king there 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.3 And therefore when Henry VII., who, as earl of Richmond, stood attainted, became king, 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 28 Hen. VIII. c. xvii., power was given to 1 It must be observed, that this regards only the common law; for by statute it is otherwise. Thus, by stat. 9 Geo. III. c. xvi., extended to Ireland by stat. 48 Geo. III. c. xlvii., sixty years' possession is a bar against the crown. And see stat. 2 and 3 W. IV. c. lxxi. (prescription act), and st. 2 and 3 Wm. IV. ch. c. (modus act). 2 Blackst. Com. b. i. c. vii. p. 247. Finch, L. 82. Co. Litt. 90. See the same principle in Domat, Droit Public, liv. i. tit. vi. sec. i. § 20. L. 4. C. de Præscr. 30 vel 40. an. L. ult. C. de Fund. Patrim. 3 Finch, L. 82. 4 Blackst. Com. ibid. Co. Litt. 43. 2 Inst. proëm. 3. future kings to rescind and revoke all acts of parliament which should be made while they were under the age of twenty-four; but this was repealed by the stat. 1 Ed. VI. c. xi., so far as related to that prince; and both statutes are declared to be determined by 24 Geo. II. c. xxiv. It hath, however, been usually thought prudent, when the heir apparent is 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, and therefore he hath no legal guardian.1 The methods of appointing this guardian or regent have been so various, and the duration of his power so uncertain, that from hence alone it may be collected that his office is unknown to the common law; and therefore, as Sir E. Coke says,2 the surest way is to have him made by authority of the great council in parliament. While the kings of England retained their continental dominions, they were frequently absent from this country; and upon such occasions the administration seems to have devolved officially on the justiciary, as chief servant of the crown. But Henry III. began the practice of appointing lieutenants, or guardians of the realm (custodes regni, as they were more commonly termed) by way of temporary substitutes. They were usually appointed by the king alone; and their office carried with it the right of exercising all the prerogatives of the crown. The king's return, of course, terminated their authority; and indeed, it was thought necessary to provide by a statute,3 in the reign of Hen. V., that a parliament called by the guardian of the realm during the king's absence should not be dissolved by that event. It is remarkable that these lieute24 Inst. 58. 1 Blackst. Com. ibid. |