omething derived
from their concessions. Though the lord-lieutenant and the justices of
the peace were nominated by the crown, their authority came in fact as
an almost spontaneous consequence of their birthright or their acquired
position in the country. They shone by their own light and were really
the ultimate sources of authority. Seats in parliament, preferments in
the church, commissions in the army belonged to them like their estates;
and they seemed to be qualified by nature, rather than by appointment,
to act in judicial and administrative capacities. The system of
'self-government' embodies this view. The functions of government were
assigned to men already powerful by their social position. The absence
of the centralised hierarchy of officials gave to Englishmen the sense
of personal liberty which compelled the admiration of Voltaire and his
countrymen in the eighteenth century. In England were no _lettres de
cachet_, and no Bastille. A man could say what he thought and act
without fear of arbitrary rule. There was no such system as that which,
in France, puts the agents of the central power above the ordinary law
of the land. This implies what has been called the 'rule of the law' in
England. 'With us every official from the prime minister down to a
constable or a collector of taxes' (as Professor Dicey explains the
principle) 'is under the same responsibility for every act done without
legal justification as any other citizen.'[26] The early centralisation
of the English monarchy had made the law supreme, and instead of
generating a new structure had combined and regulated the existing
social forces. The sovereign power was thus farmed to the aristocracy
instead of forming an organ of its own. Instead of resigning power they
were forced to exercise it on condition of thorough responsibility to
the central judiciary. Their privileges were not destroyed but were
combined with the discharge of corresponding duties. Whatever their
shortcomings, they were preserved from the decay which is the inevitable
consequence of a divorce of duties from privileges.

Another aspect of the case is equally clear. If the privilege is
associated with a duty, the duty may also be regarded as a privilege.
The doctrine seems to mark a natural stage in the evolution of the
conception of duty to the state. The power which is left to a member of
the ruling class is also part of his dignity. Thus we have an
amalgamation between the co