It thereby appears that the king is a sole corporation; it is also made plain that he is a political corporation. The kingdom of Great Britain is in the same sense a corporation. Section four of the analysis concerns the prerogatives of the king, "and those prerogatives are of two kinds: direct and substantive prerogatives, incidental and relative prerogatives."

The direct and substantive prerogatives may be distributed under three branches, viz.: Jura majestatis, vel summi imperii, i. e., the right of dominion; potestas jurisdictionis, vel mixti imperii, i. e., the power of jurisdiction; census regalis, or the royal revenues.

Blackstone says: "The most universal public relation by which men are connected together is that of government, namely, as governors and governed, or, in other words, as magistrate and people. Of magistrates, some are supreme, in whom the sovereign power of the state resides. In England this supreme power is divided into two branches; the one legislative, to wit, the parliament, consisting of kings, lords and commons; the other executive, consisting of the king alone." He then asserts: "In the British parliament is vested the legislative power and, of course, the supreme and absolute authority" (11).

11 Blk. Com. 147. "The power and jurisdiction of parliament," says Blackstone, quoting from Sir Edward Coke, "is so transcendent and absolute that it cannot be confined either for causes or persons. It hath sovereign and uncontrolled authority in making, affirming, enlarging, abrogating, repealing, reviving and expounding of laws." 1 Blk. Com. 160. The quotation from Coke, as pointed out by Judge Wilson, is not only not literal, but omits important qualifications. Coke added that parliament was sovereign for making laws and proceeding by bill, meaning that parliament was the supreme legislative authority. 1 Wilson's Works, 164. "Parliament," says Matthew Hale, "is the

The nature of legislative power in the United States will be examined in another connection, but it may be here observed that this expression by Blackstone will not do for the United States (12).

§ 94. Classes of magistrates. Blackstone divides magistracy into supreme and subordinate, following in this, Hale's analysis. "All subordinate magistracy is derived from the supreme, either immediately or mediately, either by express grant from him or by something that implies or supposes it in its original, viz.: custom or prescription" (13).

Blackstone says of magistrates: "Some, also, are supreme, in whom the sovereign power of the state resides; others are subordinates, deriving all their authority from the supreme magistrate and accountable to him for their conduct, and acting in an inferior, secondary sphere" (14). This comports logically with the facts as they ex

highest and greatest of courts." As Judge Cooley justly observes, "Parliament was not merely a law-making parliament, but could execute the law" (1 Cooley's Blk. 4th ed. 161, note); and, as pointed out by Blackstone and Coke, it was the supreme authority in expounding laws. Such attributes are judicial in their nature. Even in the United States there have been instances where the exercise of judicial power is held to have been retained by the legislature, and especially so much of equity as the legislature sees fit not to delegate. Instances to which allusion is made are perhaps peculiar to the Pennsylvania constitution as expounded by the supreme court of the United States; the other case arising in the action of the legislature of Connecticut, as shown in the case to which allusion has heretofore been made. Such cases illustrate the imperfect separation of the departments of government. See Livingston v. Moore, 7 Pet. 469; Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386.

12 Taylor v. Porter, 4 Hill, 140; 40 Am. Dec. 274; Regents v. Williams, 9 Gill & J. 365; 31 Am. Dec. 72.

18 Hale's Anal., sec. 10.

141 Com. ch. 2.

isted at that time in England. One set of magistrates derived power from another.

§ 95. Magistrates in the United States. There is a radical difference between the nature of public officers and Blackstone's description of magistrates and people under the English constitution. Under our law, all officers derive their power from the people (15). It follows that the reason not existing for the distinction between supreme and subordinate magistrates, made by Hale and Blackstone, it is unnecessary to make such a division in this analysis.

National and state officers. Our magistrates, who are all included within the appellation "officers" (16), are however, naturally divisible into two great classes, on account of the sphere in which they perform their official

15 See Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch, 137. As to the nature and several kinds of offices, see McCormick v. Pratt, 8 Utah, 298, 17 L. R. A. 243, and a valuable note in the last report.

16 "It is impossible to conceive how, under our form of government, a person can own or have a title to a governmental office. Offices are created for administration of public affairs. When a person is inducted into office, he thereby becomes empowered to exercise its powers and perform its duties, not for his but for the public benefit. It would be a misnomer and a perversion of terms to say that an incumbent owned an office or had any title to it. The doctrine on this subject is thus stated in the case of Connor v. The Mayor of New York, 1 Seld. 285: 'Public offices in this state are not incorporeal hereditaments, nor have they the character or quality of grants. They are agencies. With few exceptions they are voluntarily taken and may at any time be resigned. They are created for the benefit of the public and not granted for the benefit of the incumbent. Their terms are fixed with a view to utility and convenience, and not for the purpose of granting emoluments during that period to the office-holder.

* The prospective salary or other emoluments of a public office are not property of the officer, nor the property of the state. They are not property at all. They are like daily wages unearned and which may never be earned. The incumbent may die or resign, and his

duty, viz.: as they are federal officers or state officers. It would not, however, be proper to say that one class of officers were superior or supreme, and the others subordinates, because they are each and all merely official agents created by the will of the people, and, in the main, independent of each other, and within the sphere assigned them they are independent of all other officers (17).

A distinctive feature of the American system of government, is the idea of delegating the administration of certain subjects to one branch of magistracy and the administration of certain other subjects to another branch, but each, while dependent upon the same source for power, is constituted by that power, within the respective sphere of each, independent of the other. In this the people are truly the sovereigns, and it is vain to denominate certain aggregations of people as sovereign and independent states, who have irrevocably renounced a portion of the sovereignty (18).

The great and radical vice of the old confederacy was the principle of legislation for states or governments in their corporate or collective capacities, and as contradis

place be filled, and the wages be earned by another. The right to the compensation grows out of the rendition of services and not out of any contract between the government and the officer that the services shall be rendered by him.'" Donahue v. County of Will et al., 100 Ill. 94, 103.

17 Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, 11 Pet. 139; Tennessee v. Davis, 100 U. S. 263; United States v. Cruikshank et al., 92 U. S. 547; Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 346.

18 Ogden v. Saunders, 12 Wheat. 350; United States v. Booth, 21 How. 516; Dodge v. Woolsey, 18 How. 331-347.

tinguished from the individuals of whom they consisted (19).

The radical change which was made by the adoption of the new constitution was that in the main all laws of the confederation were addressed to the states in their political capacity, not to the individual citizens as is now the case in the United States; the citizen of any state being addressed by the laws of both jurisdictions. This line of demarkation is not territorial, but with reference to certain objects of jurisdiction. The idea cannot be better stated than it is in the Federalist (20).

If we compare the British government with our own, keeping in view the above distinctions, we may plainly see that for the former government Blackstone's division of magistrates into supreme and subordinate accords with the principles of the English constitution, that people consolidated into one nation with the supreme legislative authority vested in parliament, the supreme executive authority in the person of the king; the others are subordinate magistrates deriving all their authority from the supreme magistrates, accountable to them for their conduct, acting in an inferior secondary sphere as subordinate magistrates, being classed sheriffs, coroners, justices of the peace, constables, surveyors of highways and overseers of the poor. It follows that in our government the state officers cannot be said to be in any manner inferior or subordinate to those of the general government, while the state magistrates, bearing the same names and

19 Federalist, No. 15.

20 No. 39. See also Ogden v. Saunders, 12 Wheat. 350; Downs v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244.