le he pursued these studies, many things new and strange presented
themselves to his gaze. There were, he discovered, powers of the Crown
still extant, though lapsing through gradual desuetude, of which he had
never dreamt, and as to the existence of which no one had made it his
duty to inform him. Some of them had been in regular practice less than
forty years ago; they were becoming obsolete merely because the advisers
of the Crown wished it. Just as the House of the Laity was now falling
more and more under the control of a Cabinet whose powers waxed as the
other's waned, so the King himself was in the hands of those whose
interests were to conceal from him the powers he possessed.

He came on a page where the right of royal initiative in Council had
been thoughtfully underlined by the Professor; and he discovered with
astonishment that a whole series of constitutional questions lay
altogether outside the competence of ministers to deal with until they
had been first formally submitted to the King himself. Under this
heading he found that no financial proposal touching on Crown lands, or
on grants to the royal family, could become a matter of ministerial
discussion without his consent first given; no proposal to alter the
royal line of succession or the oath taken by the King at his
coronation; no change of definition in the articles or creed of the
Established Church; no alienation of Church lands; no fresh institution
of any rank, title, order, or degree, nor the abolition thereof; no
alteration in the laws governing the right of the voteless to petition
the King against the acts of his ministers; no subsidy or treaty of war,
and no surrender, barter, or exchange to a foreign power of any part
whatsoever of the King's dominions; no appointment to a foreign embassy;
no elevation of a commoner to rank or title; no issue of royal patents;
no free pardons for criminals, and no change in the composition of
either of the two Houses of Parliament. All these things must be
formally submitted to the will of the Crown before being entered as
items of the ministerial policy.

"My word!" cried the King, perceiving for the first time how
unconstitutionally that word had been set at naught. He could hardly
believe his senses. Here under his nose, all these weeks lese majeste
had been rampantly disporting itself; and he knew nothing of it!
Possibly the Prime Minister knew nothing of it either; had not the
Professor said that man