by the advocates for slavery on the one
hand, and the demagogues of faction on the other. The former,
observing the absolute sovereignty and transcendent dominion of the
crown laid down (as it certainly is) most strongly and emphatically
in our lawbooks, as well as our homilies, have denied that any case
can be excepted from so general and positive a rule; forgetting how
impossible it is, in any practical system of laws, to point out
beforehand those eccentrical remedies, which the sudden emergence of
national distress may dictate, and which that alone can justify. On
the other hand, over-zealous republicans, feeling the absurdity of
unlimited passive obedience, have fancifully (or sometimes factiously)
gone over to the other extreme: and, because resistance is justifiable
to the person of the prince when the being of the state is endangered,
and the public voice proclaims such resistance necessary, they have
therefore allowed to every individual the right of determining this
expedience, and of employing private force to resist even private
oppression. A doctrine productive of anarchy, and (in consequence)
equally fatal to civil liberty as tyranny itself. For civil liberty,
rightly understood, consists in protecting the rights of individuals
by the united force of society: society cannot be maintained, and of
course can exert no protection, without obedience to some sovereign
power: and obedience is an empty name, if every individual has a right
to decide how far he himself shall obey.

IN the exertion therefore of those prerogatives, which the law has
given him, the king is irresistible and absolute, according to the
forms of the constitution. And yet, if the consequence of that
exertion be manifestly to the grievance or dishonour of the kingdom,
the parliament will call his advisers to a just and severe account.
For prerogative consisting (as Mr Locke[c] has well defined it) in the
discretionary power of acting for the public good, where the positive
laws are silent, if that discretionary power be abused to the public
detriment, such prerogative is exerted in an unconstitutional manner.
Thus the king may make a treaty with a foreign state, which shall
irrevocably bind the nation; and yet, when such treaties have been
judged pernicious, impeachments have pursued those ministers, by whose
agency or advice they were concluded.

[Footnote c: on Gov. 2. Sec. 166.]

THE prerogatives of the crown (in the sense under which