I9OI 2 TRANSACTIONS. 65 



The Impeccancv of the King. 



A STUDY 0\^ SOVriREIGM FY. 



By Charles Morse, D.C.L. 



\_Read March 2/st^ 7^02. 



Lord Keeper Finch, one of the ablest of the many great 

 Englishmen of the seventeenth century, said that " the sparks 

 of all the sciences in the world are raked Uj) in the ashes of 

 the law." In view of such a declaration, no apology is need- 

 ed for addressing an audience of laymen upon a subject wholly 

 within the domain of Constitutional Law 



But at the outset I am led to remark that one gets a very 

 sad impression of the science of law in turning over the 

 pages of general literature. Not only in the works of the 

 professed satirists, from Horace to Dickens, do we find it im- 

 pugned ; but we meet with its studied disparagement in the 

 most sedate plane of the literary sphere, in the poetical 

 masterpieces of Shikespeare and Tennyson, in the philos )phi- 

 cal essays of John Stuart Mill and Frederic Harrison (r). Do 

 the flippant pleasantries of the ' Man in the Street ' at the 

 expense of the majesty of the law ever lack an appreciative 

 ear ; or does custom ever stale for us the old, old story of 

 covetous lawyer and credulous client ? 



Let us pause for a moment to recall one or two jeux 

 d'' esprit of the sort designated, and see if they have lost their 



il) See Order and Progi'ess, passim. I do not forget that Mr. Harrison is a 

 barrister. 



