out of the kingdom; we are now authorized 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. II. BESIDES the attribute of sovereignty, the law [246] 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 do any injury; it is created for the benefit of the people, and therefore cannot be exerted to their prejudice" (2). u Plowd, 487. (2) Or perhaps it means that, although the king is subject to the passions and infirmities of other men, the constitution has prescribed no mode by which he can be made personally amenable for any wrong that he may actually commit. The law will therefore presume no wrong, where it has provided no remedy. The inviolability of the king is essentially necessary to the free exercise of those high prerogatives, which are vested in him, not for his own private splendor and gratification, as the vulgar and ignorant are too apt to imagine, but for the security and preservation of the real happiness and liberty of his subjects. 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. [247] YET still, notwithstanding this personal perfection, which the law attributes to the sovereign, the constitution has allowed a latitude of supposing the contrary, in respect to both houses of parliament; each of which, in its turn, hath exerted the right of remonstrating and complaining to the king even of those acts of royalty, which are most properly and personally his own; such as messages signed by himself and speeches delivered from the throne. And yet, such is the reverence which is paid to the royal person, that though the two houses have an undoubted right to consider these acts of state in any light whatever, and accordingly treat them in their addresses as personally proceeding from the prince, yet among themselves (to preserve the more perfect decency, and for the greater freedom of debate) they usually suppose them to flow from the advice of the administration. But the privilege of canvassing thus freely the personal acts of the sovereign (either directly, or even through the medium of his reputed advisers) belongs to no individual, but is confined to those august assemblies; and there too the objections must be proposed with the utmost respect and deference. One member was sent to the tower w, for suggesting that his majesty's answer to the address of the commons contained "high words to fright the members out of their duty ;" and another, for saying that a part of the king's speech "seemed rather "to be calculated for the meridian of Germany than Great Brit❝ain, and that the king was a stranger to our language and "constitution." IN farther 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 (3): for the law intends that the king is always busied for the public good, and therefore has not leisure to assert his right within the times limited to subjectsy. In the king also can be no stain or corruption of blood: for if the heir to the crown [248] 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 w Com. Journ. 18 Nov. 1685. x Ibid. 4 Dec. 1717. y Finch. L. 82. Co. Litt. 90. (3) In civil actions relating to landed property, by the 9 Geo. III. c. 16. the king like a subject is limited to sixty years. See 3 Vol. 307. This maxim applies also to criminal prosecutions, which are brought in the name of the king, and therefore by the common law there is no limitation in treasons, felonies, or misdemesnors. By the 7 W. III. c. 7. an indictment for treason, except for an attempt to assassinate the king, must be found within three years after the commission of the treasonable act. 4 Vol. 351. But where the legislature has fixed no limit, nullum tempus occurrit regi holds true: thus a man may be convicted of murder at any distance of time within his life after the commission of the crime. This maxim obtains still in full force in Ireland. 1 Ld. Mountm. 365. informs us, it was agreed that the assumption of the crown had at once purged all attainders. Neither can the king in judg ment 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 heir apparent has 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; and therefore he hath no legal guardian b. a Co. Litt. 43. 2 Inst. proem. 3. b 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 Edward Coke says, 4 Inst. 58.) the surest way is to have him made by authority of the great council in parliament. The earl of Pembroke, by his own authority assumed in very troublesome times the regency of Hen. III, who was then only nine years old; but was declared of full age by the pope at seventeen, confirmed the great charter at eighteen, and took upon him the administration of the government at twenty. A guardian and council of regency were named for Edward III, by the parlia ment, which deposed his father; the young king being then fifteen, and not assuming the government till three years after. When Richard II. succeeded at the age of eleven; the duke of Lancaster took upon him the management of the kingdom, till the parliament met, which appointed a nominal council to assist him. Henry V. on his death-bed named a regent and a guardian for his infant son Henry VI, then nine months old; but the parliament altered his disposi tion, and appointed a protector and council, with a special limited authority. Both these princes remained in a state of pupilage till the age of twenty-three. Edward V, at the age of thirteen, was recommended by his father to the care of the duke of Gloucester; who was declared protector by the privy council. The statutes 25 Hen. VIII. c. 12. and 28 Hen. VIII. c. 7. provided, that the successor, if a male and under eighteen, or if a female and under sixteen, should be till such age in the government of his or her natural mother, (if approved by the king,) and such other counsellors as his majesty should by will or otherwise appoint: and he accordingly appointed his sixteen executors to have the government of his son Edward VI, and the kingdom, which executors elected the earl of Hertford protector. The statute 24 Geo. II. c. 24. in case the crown should descend to any of the children of Frederic late prince of Wales under the age of eighteen appointed 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; demisso 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 kingd. We are next to consider those branches of the royal [250] prerogative, which invest thus our sovereign lord, thus all-perfect and immortal in his kingly capacity, with a number of authorities and powers; in the exertion whereof consists the executive part of government. This is wisely placed in a single hand by the British constitution, for the sake of unanimity, strength, and despatch. Were it placed in many hands, it would be subject to many wills: many wills, if disunited and drawing different ways, create weakness in a government; and to unite those several wills, and reduce them to one, is a work the princess dowager; and that of 5 Geo. III. c. 27. in case of a like descent to any of his present majesty's children, empowers the king to name either the queen, the princess dowager, or any descendant of king George IL residing in this kingdom; to be guardian and regent, till the successor attains such |