19'01-2 TRANSACTIONS. 83 



•common riglit has come to be a right of the Crown, or a right 

 held of the Crown by a vassal.'" 



From this usurpation of the ultimate sovereignty of the 

 State by the Conqueror and his immediate successors arose the 

 doctrine of the legal sinlessness of the King and his im- 

 munity from the obligations of law, which Blackstone has so 

 -erroneously declared to be " an ancient and fundamental 

 maxim." After examining with much care the sources of 

 history which have been revealed since the time when Black- 

 stone wrote, I am persuaded that the doctrine, contrary 

 as it is to the most archaic theory of English Constitutional 

 law, had its origin in procedure rather than in substantive 

 law; in fact manifesting itself first. in the anomaly which the 

 old pleaders professed to see in the King commanding him- 

 self, by process issued in his own name, to appear and submit 

 to judgment pronounced by himself in one of his own Courts. 

 That, however, was an idea not evolved until over two hund- 

 red years after the Conquest, as will be shown hereafter ', but 

 when it did appear it was eagerly seized upon by ecclesiastical 

 advocates of the celestial authority of Kingship, conjointly 

 with certain sycophantic jurists of the times of Tudor and 

 Stuart absolutism, and by them palmed off as being of the 

 very pith and marrow of the British Constitution. 



Had the immunity of the King from actions at law been 

 always recognized in history, the advocates of the doctrine of 

 his inherent supremacy over the law would have had mucli 

 more countenance. But unfortunately for them the record is 

 the other way. The very phraseology of the Coronation oath 

 which King Edward VII. is expected shortly to take, amid 

 surroundings of unprecedented pomp and circumstance, 

 bespeaks potential naughtiness on his part, for it requires him 

 to swear to govern not Jiis people, mark you, but "the people 

 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the 

 Dominions thereunto belonging, according to the statutes in 

 Parliament agreed on^ and the respective laws and customs of 

 the same." But I have something much more conclusive of 



