d by the servility of the courts of judicature,
even to overpower this statute, which the legislature had evidently
intended to secure against violation. In the reign of Henry VII., the
case was brought to a trial before all the judges in the exchequer
chamber; and it was decreed, that, notwithstanding the strict clause
above mentioned, the king might dispense with the statute: he could
first, it was alleged, dispense with the prohibitory clause, and then
with the statute itself. This opinion of the judges, though seemingly
absurd, had ever since passed for undoubted law; the practice of
continuing the sheriffs had prevailed: and most of the property in
England had been fixed by decisions which juries, returned by
such sheriffs, had given in the courts of judicature. Many other
dispensations of a like nature may be produced; not only such as took
place by intervals, but such as were uniformly continued. Thus the
law was dispensed with, which prohibited any man from going a judge of
assize into his own county; that which rendered all Welshmen incapable
of bearing offices in Wales; and that which required every one who
received a pardon for felony, to find sureties for his good behavior.
In the second of James I., a new consultation of all the judges had
been held upon a like question: this prerogative of the crown was again
unanimously affirmed,[*] and it became an established principle in
English jurisprudence, that, though the king could not allow of what was
morally unlawful, he could permit what was only prohibited by positive
statute. Even the jealous house of commons who extorted the petition of
right from Charles I., made no scruple, by the mouth of Glanville, their
manager, to allow of the dispensing power in its full extent;[**] and
in the famous trial of ship money, Holborne, the popular lawyer, had
freely, and in the most explicit terms, made the same concession.[***]
Sir Edward Coke, the great oracle of English law, had not only concurred
with all other lawyers in favor of this prerogative, but seems even to
believe it so inherent in the crown, that an act of parliament itself
could not abolish it.[****] And he particularly observes, that no law
can impose such a disability of enjoying offices as the king may not
dispense with; because the king, from the law of nature, has a right to
the service of all his subjects.

* Sir Edward Coke's Reports, seventh report.

** State Trials, vol. ii. first edit