ut one difficult to reconcile with English legal principles,
since no act is legally _malum_ unless forbidden by law. This was
pointed out by Chief Justice Vaughan in the celebrated judgment in the
case of _Thomas_ v. _Sorrell_, when he rejected the distinction between
_mala in se_ and _mala prohibita_ as confusing, and attempted to define
the dispensing power of the crown by limiting it to cases of individual
breaches of penal statutes where no third party loses a right of action,
and where the breach is not continuous, at the same time denying the
power of the crown to dispense with any general penal law. This
judgment, as Sir William Anson points out, only showed the extreme
difficulty of limiting the power ascribed to the crown, a standing
grievance from the time that parliament had risen to be a constituent
part of the state. So long as the legal principle by which the law was
"the king's law" survived there was in fact no theoretical basis for
such limitation, and the matter resolved itself into one of the great
constitutional questions between crown and parliament which issued in
the Revolution of 1688. The supreme crisis came owing to the use made by
James II. of the dispensing power. His action in dispensing with the
Test Act, in order to enable Roman Catholics to hold office under the
crown, was supported by the courts in the test case of _Godden_ v.
_Hales_, but it made the Revolution inevitable. By the Bill of Rights
the exercise of the dispensing power was forbidden, except as might be
permitted by statute. At the same time the legality of its exercise in
the past was admitted by the clause maintaining the validity of
dispensations granted in a certain form before the 23rd of October 1689.

See Anson, _Law and Custom of the Constitution_, part i. "Parliament,"
3rd ed. pp. 311-319; F. W. Maitland, _Const. Hist. of England_
(Cambridge, 1908), pp. 302, &c.; Stubbs, _Const. Hist._ ss. 290, 291.
(W. A. P.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] In this quotation the word _dispensatio_ still has its meaning of
"economy": "we are bound by the necessary economy of things."
Possibly its use by the pope in this connexion may have led to the
technical meaning of the word _dispensatio_ in the medieval canon
law.

DISPERSION (from Lat. _dispergere_, to scatter), the act or process of
separation and distribution. Apart from the technical use of the term,
especially in optics (see below), the expressio