right of remonstrating
and complaining to the king even of those acts of royalty, which are
most properly and personally his own; such as messages signed by
himself, and speeches delivered from the throne. And yet, such is the
reverence which is paid to the royal person, that though the two
houses have an undoubted right to consider these acts of state in any
light whatever, and accordingly treat them in their addresses as
personally proceeding from the prince, yet, among themselves, (to
preserve the more perfect decency, and for the greater freedom of
debate) they usually suppose them to flow from the advice of the
administration. But the privilege of canvassing thus freely the
personal acts of the sovereign (either directly, or even through the
medium of his reputed advisers) belongs to no individual, but is
confined to those august assemblies: and there too the objections must
be proposed with the utmost respect and deference. One member was sent
to the tower[s], for suggesting that his majesty's answer to the
address of the commons contained "high words, to fright the members
out of their duty;" and another[t], for saying that a part of the
king's speech "seemed rather to be calculated for the meridian of
Germany than Great Britain."

[Footnote s: Com. Journ. 18 Nov. 1685.]

[Footnote t: Com. Journ. 4 Dec. 1717.]

IN farther pursuance of this principle, the law also determines that
in the king can be no negligence, or _laches_, and therefore no delay
will bar his right. _Nullum tempus occurrit regi_ is the standing
maxim upon all occasions: for the law intends that the king is always
busied for the public good, and therefore has not leisure to assert
his right within the times limited to subjects[u]. In the king also
can be no stain or corruption of blood: for if the heir to the crown
were attainted of treason or felony, and afterwards the crown should
descend to him, this would purge the attainder _ipso facto_[w]. And
therefore when Henry VII, who as earl of Richmond stood attainted,
came to the crown, it was not thought necessary to pass an act of
parliament to reverse this attainder; because, as lord Bacon in his
history of that prince informs us, it was agreed that the assumption
of the crown had at once purged all attainders. Neither can the king
in judgment of law, as king, ever be a minor or under age; and
therefore his royal grants and assents to acts of parliament are good,
though he has not in his nat