the Rolls of Parliament under
Edward IV. contain no complaints of grievances. But it is not quite
manifest that the council did exercise in that reign as much
jurisdiction as it had once done. Lord Hale tells us that "this
jurisdiction was gradually brought into great disuse, though there
remain some straggling footsteps of their proceedings till near 3 Hen.
VII." (Hist. of Lords' Jurisdiction, p. 38.) And the famous statute in
that year, which erected a new court, sometimes improperly called the
Court of Star Chamber, seems to have been prompted by a desire to
restore, in a new and more legal form, a jurisdiction which was become
almost obsolete, and, being in contradiction to acts of parliament,
could not well be rendered effective without one.[474]

We cannot but discover, throughout the learned and luminous Essay on
the Authority of the King's Council, a strong tendency to represent its
exercise as both constitutional and salutary. The former epithet cannot,
I think, be possibly applicable in the face of statute law; for what
else determines our constitution? But it is a problem with some, whether
the powers actually exerted by this anomalous court, admitting them to
have been, at least latterly, in contravention of many statutes, may not
have been rendered necessary by the disorderly condition of society and
the comparative impotence of the common law. This cannot easily be
solved with the defective knowledge that we possess. Sometimes, no
doubt, the "might on one side, and unmight on the other," as the answer
to a petition forcibly expresses it, afforded a justification which,
practically at least, the commons themselves were content to allow. But
were these exceptional instances so frequent as not to leave a much
greater number wherein the legal remedy by suit before the king's
justices of assise might have been perfectly effectual? For we are not
concerned with the old county-courts, which were perhaps tumultuary and
partial enough, but with the regular administration, civil and criminal,
before the king's justices of oyer and terminer and of gaol delivery.
Had not they, generally speaking, in the reign of Edward III. and his
successors, such means of enforcing the execution of law as left no
sufficient pretext for recurring to an arbitrary tribunal? Liberty, we
should remember, may require the sacrifice of some degree of security
against private wrong, which a despotic government, with an unlimited
power of res