the King's own expression to Clarendon) the "putting out of the way" of Vane. Shaftesbury stipulated for a pardon when he took office; and the first act of his successor Lord Nottingham was to seal his pardon in the nature of a plenary indulgence. Marvell, after mentioning that the Duke of Monmouth with several young noblemen had encountered the watch at midnight, and had killed a beadle, who begged for his life on his knees, adds, "They have all got their pardons for Monmouth's sake, but it is an act of great scandal." It had been well for the memory of Charles II., if "for Monmouth's sake" he had pardoned Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, Lord Howard's evidence against whom equally or more strongly implicated Monmouth, who was, nevertheless, pardoned. This at least the King might have conceded, if not emulous of the filicidal Brutus, but adopting the sentiments of his own Laureat, in an amended edition of the Absalom and Achitophel:

But, oh! that yet he would repent and live,
How easy 'tis for parents to forgive.

With how few tears a pardon might be won

From nature pleading for a darling son!

So fragile was deemed any reliance, in regard to pardons, on the maxim that the King can do no wrong, and the consequent responsibility of Ministers for acts which can have any legal validity in his name, that, by the Habeas Corpus Act, the prerogative of pardoning for the offence of sending persons to prisons beyond seas is taken away. So, by the Coventry Act, five persons by name, and all others concerned in slitting the nose of Sir John Coventry, are prohibited from obtaining any royal pardon; or, as Marvell expresses it,

Which if any bold Commoner dare to oppose,

I'll order my bravoes to cut off his nose,

Tho' for't I a branch of prerogative lose.

A practice of juggling with the royal seals seems to have been peculiar to the reign of Charles II. When the King had

granted a pardon to the Earl of Danby, the House of Commons. appointed a Committee to inquire of Lord Chancellor Nottingham concerning the circumstances of its passing. Whereupon, the Lord Chancellor, after premising that he neither advised nor drew it, informed the Committee, as they reported, “that the pardon was passed with the utmost privacy, at the desire of the Earl, who gave his reason for it, that he did not intend to make use of it, but to stand upon his innocence, except false witnesses should be produced against him; and then he would make use of it at the last extremity. That he advised the Earl to let the pardon pass in the regular course; but, after consulting with the King, his Majesty declared he was resolved to let it pass with all privacy; and, suddenly afterwards, the King commanded the Lord Chancellor to bring the seal from Whitehall, and, being brought, it was laid on the table; thereupon his Majesty commanded the seal to be taken out of the bag, which the Lord Chancellor was obliged to submit unto, it not being in his power to hinder it. The King then wrote his name on the top of the parchment, and gave directions to have it sealed, whereupon the person who usually carried the purse affixed the seal to it." The Chancellor added, "That at the very time of affixing the seal to the parchment, he did not look upon himself to have the custody of the seal." It is related that the farce was maintained after the pardon was sealed, by the King returning the Great Seal to the Chancellor with a compliment, that "he could not replace it in better hands."

Pepys writes, in 1668, that "there is a pardon passed to the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Shrewsbury for the late duel and murder, which was thought a worse fault than any ill use my late Lord Chancellor ever put the Great Seal to, and will be so thought by the Parliament, for them to be pardoned without bringing them to trial. My Lord Privy Seal would not have it pass his hand, but made it go by immediate warrant; or, at least, they knew that he would not pass it, and so did direct it to go

by immediate warrant that it might not come to him." The royal pardon was announced in the Gazette of February 24, 1668, accompanied, it may be noticed, with a declaration that

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on no pretence whatever should any pardon in future be granted for killing in any duel;" albeit it is well known, that the Duke of Buckingham was afterwards pardoned for killing Lord Shrewsbury in the famous duel in which the Countess of Shrewsbury (Pope's Wanton Shrewsbury) held the Duke's horse in the disguise of a page. Of the latter pardon Pepys writes in 1696, "Kings do not use to grant pardons before convictions, unless it be to noblemen, as to the Duke of Buckingham for killing Lord Shrewsbury."

One more instance may be cited tending to shew the weakness, in the reign of Charles II., of the maxim that the "King can do no wrong." The king dissolved his last, or the Oxford, Parliament, after an eight days' session, apparently without previous consultation with his ministers; coming very suddenly to the House of Lords in a sedan, with his crown between his feet, and his robes in another sedan with the curtains closed. Having laid the parliament prostrate, the king proceeded to crow over it, by publishing, in his own name, his "Declaration to all his loving subjects, touching the causes and reasons that moved him to dissolve the last two Parliaments." This Declaration was prepared by Chief Justice North, and was read in all churches. It served, in conjunction with the king's opening address to the Oxford Parliament, to furnish matter for the speech put into David's mouth which constitutes the splendid peroration of the first part of Dryden's poem of Absalom and Achitophel.

Sir William Jones and the Whig lawyers were not tardy in producing an Answer to the king's Declaration, which is animadverted upon by them as being a violation of the maxim that the "King can do no wrong." It may be said of this dispute. Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni; for, as the historian Ralph writes, "the gazettes from the middle of May (the date of the king's Declaration) to the January following, are little more

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than a collection of testimonies, in the name of loyal addresses, that the people were weary of all those rights and privileges that make subjection safe and honourable." Nevertheless Sir William Jones's Answer, from which the following extract is given, may have brought forth fruits precious to liberty, though in late season.

“Our laws have taken care to make the king always dear to his people, and to preserve his person sacred in their esteem, by wisely preventing him from appearing as author of anything which may be exceptionable to them. It is therefore that he doth not execute any considerable act of royal power, till it be first debated and resolved in council; because, then it is the counsellors must answer for the advice they give, and are punishable for such orders as are irregular and illegal. Nor can his magistrates justify any unlawful action under the colour of the king's commands, since all his commands that are contrary to law are void; which is the true reason of that well-known maxim, that 'the King can do no wrong.' A maxim just in itself, and alike safe for the Prince, and for the Subject; there being nothing more absurd than that a Favourite should excuse his enormous actions by a pretended command, which, we may reasonably suppose, he first procured to be laid on himself. But we know not whom to charge with advising this last Dissolution; it was a work of darkness; and if we are not misinformed, the Privy Council was as much surprised at it as the nation. Nor will a future parliament be able to charge anybody as the author and adviser of the late printed paper, which bears the title of His Majesty's Declaration,' though every good subject ought to be careful how he calls it so: for his Majesty never speaks to his people as a king, but either personally in his parliament, or, at other times, under his seal, for which the chancellor or other officers are responsible, if what passes them be not warranted by law1."

1 See, further, concerning the maxim that "the King can do no wrong," a tract by Harley, entitled A Vindication of the Rights of the Commons of England, 11th

(2) Dispensing and Suspending Powers.

The question as to the Dispensing and Suspending Powers is no less than that of the correctness of the position which was affirmed by Chief Justice Herbert, judicially, in the reign of James II., that the laws are the king's own laws; implying that every one, not excepting a king, may do what he wills with his own. A similar position was maintained in the reign of Charles II. by Attorney-General Finch (afterwards Lord Nottingham), that the King may dispense with laws "in order to the preservation of the kingdom," which, Lord Campbell says, is an equivalent expression to "all laws which the king or his ministers may think disagreeable to themselves."

The Declaration of Rights contains the following enunciations, viz.: "That the pretended power of suspending laws, and the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of

volume of Somers's Tracts, Sir W. Scott's ed. p. 281.-A conversation between Cromwell and Ludlow, on the Protector's power of committal, Ludlow's Memoirs.— A letter on the subject by Gardiner to the Protector Somerset, in Petyt's Jus Parliamentarium, commencing "Now whether the King may command against an Act of Parliament, and what danger they fall in that break a law with the King's consent, I dare say no man alive at this day hath had more experience with the judges and lawyers than I." Speaker Onslow's Observations on Lord Somers's Answer to his Impeachment for signing Blank Warrants, Burnet, Vol. IV. Lord Mahon, it may be thought with reason, censures Beckford's speech to King George III. upon delivering an address of the City of London, (which may be seen engraved in gilt letters on the pedestal of Beckford's statue in Guildhall, in which he is represented as admonishing the King) as unconstitutional, being calculated to draw the King into personal altercation, in violation of the maxim that "the King can do no wrong.” Wilkes's famous No. 45 of the North Briton, in which he assails the King's speech, but only as the production of Ministers, may not appear to justify the violent measures adopted against the author, printer, and publisher, by the Government of the day. After stating that the Ministers had framed for the King's speech a particular statement, Wilkes adds, "The infamous fallacy of this whole sentence is apparent to all mankind, and was the most abandoned instance of ministerial effrontery ever attempted to be imposed on mankind.” . . . .“Every friend of his country must lament that a Prince of so many great and amiable qualities, whom England truly reveres, can be brought to give the sanction of his sacred name to the most odious measures, and to the most unjustifiable public declarations from a throne ever renowned for truth, honour, and unsullied virtue." A very sorry attempt was made to have No. 45 burned by the common hangman.