n he arrives at
years of discretion does not exempt him from the honour he is
bound by the law of God and nature to pay to his parents.[19] The
son is under a perpetual obligation to honour his father by all
outward expressions, and from this obligation no state can
absolve him. 'The honour due to parents' (says Locke) 'a monarch
on his throne owes his mother, and yet this lessens not his
authority, nor subjects him to her government.'[20] The
monarchical theory ascribes to the King of England two bodies or
capacities, a natural body, and a politic or mystical body, and
'from this mystical union of the ideal with the real king, the
enquirer after constitutional information is led through childish
reasoning and unintelligible jargon, to practical consequences
founded on expediency.'[21] These practical consequences are the
complete subordination of the natural to the politic capacity of
the sovereign, and that moral revolution which supersedes the
duty of the son to the father by the superior duty of the subject
to the sovereign. Nothing less transcendental seems sufficient to
cancel the force of this natural obligation, and while father and
son are both in the condition of subjects, the filial and
parental relations need not be outwardly reversed.

[19] Locke, vol. iv. p. 347.

[20] Ibid. vol. iv. p. 376.

[21] Allen on the Royal Prerogative, p. 29.

If the Queen, therefore, should be advised to grant to her Royal
Consort letters patent of precedence immediately next to her own
person, and at the same time make him a Privy Councillor, there
would be no practical difficulty with regard to his place at the
Council Board, notwithstanding the legal exception; there custom
has in a great measure superseded law. The occasions are very
rare when any of the Royal Dukes are present; and upon all
others, the Prince would sit upon the right hand of Her Majesty,
and precedence would be conceded to him as a matter of course.
The Council Board is no longer what it was in the days of Henry
VIII., at which time the King sat there regularly in person. The
greater part of the Privy Councillors were in constant attendance
upon him.[22] They resided in the Court, and accompanied him
wherever he went; much (though far from all) of the most
important business of the State was transacted there, and the
order of sitting, when the members had to deliver their opinions
seriatim, beginning with the lowest, was not unimportan