advisedly deem the requisite power of action be denied them.

In the ordinary administration of the government, the Sovereign
personally is, so to speak, behind the scenes; performing, indeed, many
personal acts by the Sign-manual, or otherwise, but, in each and all of
them, covered by the counter-signature or advice of Ministers, who stand
between the august Personage and the people. There is, accordingly, no
more power, under the form of our Constitution, to assail the Monarch in
his personal capacity, or to assail through him, the line of succession
to the Crown, than there is at chess to put the king in check. In truth,
a good deal, though by no means the whole, of the philosophy of the
British Constitution is represented in this central point of the
wonderful game, against which the only reproach--the reproach of Lord
Bacon--is that it is hardly a relaxation, but rather a serious tax upon
the brain.

The Sovereign in England is the symbol of the nation's unity, and the
apex of the social structure; the maker (with advice) of the laws; the
supreme governor of the Church; the fountain of justice; the sole source
of honor; the person to whom all military, all naval, all civil service
is rendered. The Sovereign owns very large properties; receives and
holds, in law, the entire revenue of the State; appoints and dismisses
Ministers; makes treaties; pardons crime, or abates its punishment;
wages war, or concludes peace; summons and dissolves the Parliament;
exercises these vast powers for the most part without any specified
restraint of law; and yet enjoys, in regard to these and every other
function, an absolute immunity from consequences. There is no provision
in the law of the United Empire, or in the machinery of the
Constitution, for calling the Sovereign to account; and only in one
solitary and improbable, but perfectly defined, case--that of his
submitting to the jurisdiction of the Pope--is he deprived by Statute of
the Throne. Setting aside that peculiar exception, the offspring of a
necessity still freshly felt when it was made, the Constitution might
seem to be founded on the belief of a real infallibility in its head.
Less, at any rate, cannot be said than this. Regal right has, since the
Revolution of 1688, been expressly founded upon contract; and the breach
of that contract destroys the title to the allegiance of the subject.
But no provision, other than the general rule of hereditary succession,
is made