of those portions of the
elementary principles of society that are connected with the rights
of the sovereign. These he divided into the rights of the king's
prerogative, the rights of the king's person, and the rights of the
king's conscience. Here he again generalized a little, and in a very
happy manner; so well, indeed, as to leave all his hearers in doubt
as to what he would next be at; when, by a fierce logical swoop, he
descended suddenly on the last of the king's rights, as the one that was
most connected with the subject.

He triumphantly showed that the branch of the royal immunities that was
chiefly affected by the offence of the prisoner at the bar, was very
clearly connected with the rights of the king's conscience. "The
attributes of royalty," observed the sagacious advocate, "are not to be
estimated in the same manner as the attributes of the subject. In
the sacred person of the king are centred many, if not most, of
the interesting privileges of monikinism. That royal personage, in
apolitical sense, can do no wrong: official infallibility is the
consequence. Such a being has no occasion for the ordinary faculties of
the monikin condition. Of what use, for instance, is a judgment, or a
conscience, to a functionary who can do no wrong? The law, in order to
relieve one on whose shoulders was imposed the burden of the state, had
consequently placed the latter especially in the keeping of another.
His majesty's first-cousin is the keeper of his conscience, as is known
throughout the realm of Leaphigh. A memory is the faculty of the least
account to a personage who has no conscience; and, while it is not
contended that the sovereign is relieved from the possession of his
memory by any positive statute law, or direct constitutional provision,
it follows, by unavoidable implication, and by all legitimate
construction, that, having no occasion to possess such a faculty, it is
the legal presumption he is altogether without it.

"That simplicity, lucidity and distinctness, my lords," continued Mr.
Attorney-General, "which are necessary to every well-ordered mind, would
be impaired, in the case of his majesty, were his intellectual faculties
unnecessarily crowded in this useless manner, and the state would be the
sufferer. My lords, the king reigns, but he does not govern. This is a
fundamental principle of the constitution; nay, it is more--it is the
palladium of our liberties! My lords, it is an easy matter to r