law and history is that which
represents the king as merely an hereditary executive magistrate, the
first officer of the state. What advantages might result from such a
form of government this is not the place to discuss. But it certainly
was not the ancient constitution of England. There was nothing in this,
absolutely nothing, of a republican appearance. All seemed to grow out
of the monarchy, and was referred to its advantage and honour. The voice
of supplication, even in the stoutest disposition of the commons, was
always humble; the prerogative was always named in large and pompous
expressions. Still more naturally may we expect to find in the law-books
even an obsequious deference to power, from judges who scarcely ventured
to consider it as their duty to defend the subject's freedom, and who
beheld the gigantic image of prerogative, in the full play of its
hundred arms, constantly before their eyes. Through this monarchical
tone, which certainly pervades all our legal authorities, a writer like
Hume, accustomed to philosophical liberality as to the principles of
government, and to the democratical language which the modern aspect of
the constitution and the liberty of printing have produced, fell hastily
into the error of believing that all limitations of royal power during
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were as much unsettled in law and
in public opinion as they were liable to be violated by force. Though a
contrary position has been sufficiently demonstrated, I conceive, by the
series of parliamentary proceedings which I have already produced, yet
there is a passage in Sir John Fortescue's treatise De Laudibus Legum
Angliae, so explicit and weighty, that no writer on the English
constitution can be excused from inserting it. This eminent person,
having been chief justice of the King's Bench under Henry VI., was
governor to the young prince of Wales during his retreat in France, and
received at his hands the office of chancellor. It must never be
forgotten that, in a treatise purposely composed for the instruction of
one who hoped to reign over England, the limitations of government are
enforced as strenuously by Fortescue, as some succeeding lawyers have
inculcated the doctrines of arbitrary prerogative.

[Sidenote: Sir John Fortescue's doctrine as to the English
constitution.]

"A king of England cannot at his pleasure make any alterations in the
laws of the land, for the nature of his government is n