urts or deposed for misgovernment, into the sole irresponsible
person of indefeasible prerogatives, of attributes almost divine, whom
Bracton and a long series of subsequent lawyers raised up to a height
far beyond the theory of our early constitution.

This is supported with great acuteness and learning; nor is it possible
to deny that the king of England, as the law-books represent him, is
considerably different from what we generally conceive an ancient
German chieftain to have been. Yet I doubt whether Mr. Allen has not
laid too much stress on this, and given to the fictions of law a greater
influence than they possessed in those times to which his inquiry
relates; and whether, also, what he calls the monarchical theory was so
much derived from foreign sources as he apprehends. We have no occasion
to seek, in the systems of civilians or the dogmas of churchmen, what
arose from a deep-seated principle of human nature. A king is a person;
to persons alone we attach the attributes of power and wisdom; on
persons we bestow our affection or our ill-will. An abstraction, a
politic idea of royalty, is convenient for lawyers; it suits the
speculative reasoner, but it never can become so familiar to a people,
especially one too rude to have listened to such reasoners, as the
simple image of the king, the one man whom we are to love and to fear.
The other idea is a sort of monarchical pantheism, of which the
vanishing point is a republic. And to this the prevalent theory, that
kings are to reign but not to govern, cannot but lead. It is a
plausible, and in the main, perhaps, for the times we have reached, a
necessary theory; but it renders monarchy ultimately scarcely possible.
And it was neither the sentiment of the Anglo-Saxons, nor of the Norman
baronage; the feudal relation was essentially and exclusively personal;
and if we had not enough, in a more universal feeling of human nature,
to account for loyalty, we could not mistake its inevitable connexion
with the fealty and homage of the vassal. The influence of Roman notions
was not inconsiderable upon the continent; but they never prevailed very
much here; and though, after the close alliance between the church and
state established by the Reformation, the whole weight of the former was
thrown into the scale of the crown, the mediaeval clergy, as I have
observed in the text, were anything rather than upholders of despotic
power.

It may be very true that, by considering