I9OI-2 TRANSACTIONS. 93 



Diviae Right and State religion. Much ef^ier and much more English was it to make 

 the King a trust eo for his people than to fall him officer, official, functionary or even 

 flr-t magistrate. . . . Much has happened within and behind that thought of the 

 King's trusteeship; even a civil death of personal government, an euthanasia of mon- 

 archy. And now, in the year 1900, the banished Commonwealth, purged of regicidal 

 guilt, comes back to us from Australia, and is itilawed,by Act of Parliament. 



And here is the voice of the very latest witness I can 

 summon to my support : 



After long wanderings through many fields of speculation, as well as many a 

 hard-fought fight, all civilized nations have come back the point from which the 

 I vomans started twenty centuries ago. All hold, as did the Pomans that sovereign 

 power comes in the last resort from the people, and that whoever exercises it in a 

 State, exercises it by delegation from the people. 1) 



With these quotations I feel that I may very safely rest 

 the case for T/ie Sovereign People of Great Britain v. His 

 Majesty the King. 



I trust I am not presumptuous when I venture to think 

 that the authorities I have marshalled support to a very 

 satisfactory degree the thesis advanced in this paper, 

 which may be recapitulated as follows, namely : That the 

 maxim that ' the King can do no wrong' is a constitutional 

 dogma entirely out of harmony with the genius of free insti- 

 tutions within the British Empire ; that the history of 

 England shows that in all political crises the maxim has been 

 '• more honour'd in the brepch than the observance'; and, 

 lastly, that it is a 'fond thing, vainly invented ' by the medi- 

 eval attorneys, presumably to further the interests of their 

 clients with the King. Yet, notwithstanding the evidence I 

 have given you that the King is not superior to the law, that 

 he is not incapable of doing legal wrong, and that he may be 

 deposed from his office by the will of the people, the 7th 

 edition of Broom's Legal Maxims., published in the year 1900 

 (2) calmly tells us that " the principal attributes of the 

 Crown are sovereignty, or pre-eminence, perfection and per- 

 petuity ; and these attributes are attached to the w^earer of 

 the Crown by the Constitution, and may be said to form 

 his constitutional character and royal dignity." 



(1) Bryce : Sttidies in the History of Jurisprudence ii, p. 110. 



(2) Cap. ii, p. 33. 



