180 HISTORY OF THE [book vi. 
support of their own great interests and inherent 
dignity, and as an intermediate body between the 
crown and the people. In civil process their per¬ 
sons are sacred, and in criminal they are tried by 
their own order. Neither can their privileges be 
taken from them but in extraordinary cases, and 
then only by the sentence of the whole house, as 
a court of the highest jurisdiction, or by an act of 
the whole legislature. The sovereign it is true, 
can create as many new peers as he pleases, but 
having once raised a subject to this high dignity, 
his privileges thenceforward as a peer of parlia¬ 
ment, are his own; founded not on royal conces¬ 
sions, but on the ancient fundamental constitution 
of the realm. Thus, the house of lords forms a se¬ 
parate branch of the legislature, distinct from, and 
entirely independent of, the crown on the one hand, 
and the commons on the other. Now in all these 
respects, it is maintained, that a colonial council 
has no conformity or similitude with, and therefore 
could not originally have been intended to form a 
separate estate, and supply in the colonies the place 
of, the house of peers in Great Britain. 
It is contended further, that the power of the 
crown is not of itself sufficiently extensive to 
constitute such a legislative branch, or separate 
estate, in the colonies. The king, it is true, has a 
negative in legislation, but the king has no right to 
propose a law to, or to alter a law proposed by, 
the lords or commons. His power is the power 
of rejecting, and nothing more; which therefore is 
