immortal in his
kingly capacity, with a number of authorities and powers; in the
exertion whereof consists the executive part of government. This is
wisely placed in a single hand by the British constitution, for the
sake of unanimity, strength and dispatch. Were it placed in many
hands, it would be subject to many wills: many wills, if disunited and
drawing different ways, create weakness in a government: and to unite
those several wills, and reduce them to one, is a work of more time
and delay than the exigencies of state will afford. The king of
England is therefore not only the chief, but properly the sole,
magistrate of the nation; all others acting by commission from, and in
due subordination to him: in like manner as, upon the great revolution
in the Roman state, all the powers of the antient magistracy of the
commonwealth were concentred in the new emperor; so that, as
Gravina[b] expresses it, "_in ejus unius persona veteris reipublicae
vis atque majestas per cumulatas magistratuum potestates
exprimebatur_."

[Footnote b: _Orig._ 1. Sec. 105.]

AFTER what has been premised in this chapter, I shall not (I trust) be
considered as an advocate for arbitrary power, when I lay it down as a
principle, that in the exertion of lawful prerogative, the king is and
ought to be absolute; that is, so far absolute, that there is no legal
authority that can either delay or resist him. He may reject what
bills, may make what treaties, may coin what money, may create what
peers, may pardon what offences he pleases: unless where the
constitution hath expressly, or by evident consequence, laid down some
exception or boundary; declaring, that thus far the prerogative shall
go and no farther. For otherwise the power of the crown would indeed
be but a name and a shadow, insufficient for the ends of government,
if, where it's jurisdiction is clearly established and allowed, any
man or body of men were permitted to disobey it, in the ordinary
course of law: I say, in the _ordinary_ course of law; for I do not
now speak of those _extraordinary_ recourses to first principles,
which are necessary when the contracts of society are in danger of
dissolution, and the law proves too weak a defence against the
violence of fraud or oppression. And yet the want of attending to this
obvious distinction has occasioned these doctrines, of absolute power
in the prince and of national resistance by the people, to be much
misunderstood and perverted