upon the mere will of the monarch. The origin of the king's ceremonial was lost in remote antiquity; but the numerous tenures and dependencies determinable by the nonperformance of services at the solemnity, showed how important it was intended to be in the eyes of the people. The only grounds of right for the king's coronation, the queen equally had for hers; and there were, as he had already stated, separate forms prescribed for those who were officially to attend her ceremony.

The learned counsel then quoted some passages from the Liber Regalis, being merely directions for particular parts of the cere monial to be observed on the queen's coronation. Every solemnity of which the origin was lost in distant antiquity, which was in itself of a most high and public nature, and which occupied a great and important space in the history of the country, he would fearlessly assert, must be deemed and taken as the right of the realm, and not as a mere appanage of the king. He held the coronation of the king himself to be a right of this

nature; and that, not merely in the present times on account of the coronation oath, (which had been devised by the legislature on the coronation of William and Mary,) but also in times long before them: indeed, it had always been considered as a high and august ceremony with which the monarch himself could not dispense; it being the right of the sovereign, not in his individual but in his political capacity, for the benefit of the whole nation, in which capacity alone the nation knew him at his coronation. So much with regard to the coronation of the king. The coronation of the queen ought to be considered in a similar light, from its having been celebrated almost without interruption with the same publicity, and from being in its nature such as he had repeatedly described it. The king and the queen being both of them the mere creations of the law, the solemnities of their coronations were mere creations of the law also, and were known to it in no other light than as the rights of the whole realm of England. He, therefore, who was ready to take one step, and to get rid of the queen's

coronation, as a mere optional ceremony, ought to be ready to take also another step, and to get rid of the king's coronation, on the ground of its being a vain, idle, empty, and expensive pageant. Her claim to a coronation rested upon immemorial usage, and the numerous rights of individuals which were interwoven and connected with it. Indeed, it rested on the same foundation as the king's: it was supported by the same arguments, and the interruptions which it had experienced admitted of the same explanations that he had given to those which had occurred in the case of the king. He had mentioned, in the course of his argument, the rights which belonged to other individuals in consequence of the queen's right to a coronation. If a coronation was not granted to her Majesty, their rights were unavailing to them; and that, in his opinion, formed a very sufficient reason why it should be celebrated. That the coronation

was the acknowledgment of the king by the people, he conceived to be a point which it was unnecessary to prove to their lordships: but he might be permitted to remark to them,

that the coronation of the queen was even considered as an acknowledgment of her right to enjoy that dignity in an entry in a charter roll of the fifth year of King John, now preserved in the Tower. The entry to which he alluded was the grant of certain lands in dower to his Queen Isabella, and it referred by way of recital to her coronation as queen. This excerpt was of no small importance in the consideration of this question; for it proved to their lordships, that in times when the coronation of the king was positively either his election, or the recognition of his election as monarch, the coronation of the queen was conducted, for the very same reasons, with the same solemnities. This was evident from the description of what was done, and from the manner and the avowed object of doing it. John was crowned to show that he was king"coronatus in regem." Isabella was crowned to show that she was queen "in reginam coronata communi consensu archiepiscoporum," &c. &c. The very same persons who elected, or recognised, or only crowned him as their monarch, are, in this passage, recorded to

have elected, or recognised, or only crowned her as their queen. Was it intended to be maintained that no right existed, whenever something moving from the crown was necessary to the exercise of it? He would frankly confess that he knew of no right which a subject could enjoy without the interposition of the crown in some manner or other. All writs issued from the crown, and no right could be maintained without them; yet, would any one dispute the right of the subject to obtain them? Supposing a peer were to die, and the crown were to refuse a writ of summons to his eldest son it was said to be by petition of right alone that he could sue to the crown to be admitted to his father's honours; and yet that petition of right would be considered as a strict undeniable legal right. He could refer also to cases in which the subject could demand, not merely the king's writ, but also the king's proclamation, to which he was entitled, not by a common law right, but by a right given him by an express statute; for instance, in all cases relative to prize-money. Again, supposing that the House of Commons