94 TRANSACTlONvS. I9OI-2 



Alas, the evil done by those old attorneys does indeed 

 live after them ! 



"The ideal King of the lawyers, says Allen (i), " is a 

 King above the law ; the real King of the Constitntion is a 

 King subject to the law." 



Walter Bagehot, in his unique work on the Constitution, 

 says : (2) 



. If any one will run over the pages of Coniyn's Digest, or any other such book, 

 title 'Prerogative,' he will find the Queen has a hundred powers which waver between 

 reality and desuetude, and which would cause a protracted and very interesting legal 

 argument if she tried to exercise them. Some good lawyer ought to write a careful 

 book to say which of these powers are really Udable, and which are obsolele There is 

 no authentic explicit information as to what the Queen can do, any more tiian of what 

 she does. 



To quote for the last time from Professor Freeman (3) 



The whole conception of the Sovereign as one, personally at least, above the law, 



as one personally irresponsible and incapable of doing wrong is purely a 



lawyer's conception, and rests iipon no ground whatever in the records of our early 

 history. 



Now I fancy that by reason of what I have just said and 

 quoted the suspicion of a smile at the expense of the integ- 

 rity and good judgment of the Bar will beset the countenances 

 of those who have not the honour of belonging to that pro- 

 fession. Be it so. It is to the credit of the profession that 

 they can stand well-founded criticism of this sort without any 

 sense of shock or dismay. Unlike the ideal King of their 

 seventeenth century doctrine, it is possible for them to make 

 mistakes. But, on the other hand, those mistakes are few, 

 and they are not ashamed to correct them upon conviction of 

 error. The master-masons of the splendid structure of Eng- 

 lish Jurisprudence are not going to be disinis.sed as unworthy 

 servants of their country because, in a moment of weakness, 

 they builded one of the more ornamental parts of the edifice 

 a little worse than they knew. 



I have not been careful to explain that my observations on 

 the royal prerogative are just as applicable to the body-politic 



(1) Inquiry into Prerog., c&c p. 34. 



(2) The Eng. Const, pp. 58, o9. 



(3) Growth of Eng. Cons. cap. iii. 



