Prerogative

“ Is then a prerogative King of so little danger to us that we are all at once to forget these jealousies, which seem to have been twisted with our existence, and to fall into a miraculous fondness for that prerogative which our ancestors have shed their dearest blood to check and limit? ”

“ There cannot be a stronger proof of that genuine freedom, which is the boast of this age and country, than the power of discussing and examining, with decency and respect, the limits of the king’s prerogative. ”

“ A prerogative is an official right or privilege, especially one inherent in the royal or sovereign power; in a wider sense it is an exclusive and peculiar privilege which one possesses by reason of being what he is; as, reason is the prerogative of man; kings and nobles have often claimed prerogatives and privileges opposed to the inherent rights of the people. ”

“ If you had used your prerogative with discretion, you might perhaps, though I confess I do not see how, have escaped the obloquy of the world. Into your domestic scene, where the interest is more lively, and the watch upon you more unremitted, it must have introduced alienation and distrust. As it is, I see you surrounded with dangers of a thousand denominations. Police has its eyes upon you; superstition will regard you as the familiar of demons; avarice will turn upon you a regard of jealousy and insatiable appetite. ”

“ The prerogative must be used as God doth his omnipotence, upon extraordinary occasions; the laws must have place at all other times. As there must be prerogative because there must be extraordinary occasions, so the propriety of the subject is ever to be maintained, if it go in equal pace with the other. ”

“ Many will be ready to say, It is a Slavish and Dangerous Condition to be subject to the Will of any One Man, who is not subject to the Laws. But such Men consider not, 1. That the Prerogative of a King is to be above all Laws, for the good only of them that are under the Laws, and to defend the Peoples Liberties, as His Majesty graciously affirmed in His Speech after His last Answer to the Petition of Right: Howsoever some are afraid of the Name of Prerogative, yet they may assure themselves the Case of Subjects would be desperately miserable without it. ”

“ Do you think, my Lord, that Greatness gives a Sanction to Wickedness? Or that it is the Prerogative of Lords to be unjust and inhumane? You remember the Sentence which yourself pronounc'd upon this innocent Man; you cannot think it hard that it should pass on you who are guilty. ”

“ Still more naturally may we expect to find in the law-books even an obsequious deference to power, from judges who scarcely ventured to consider it as their duty to defend the subject's freedom, and who beheld the gigantic image of prerogative, in the full play of its hundred arms, constantly before their eyes. ”

“ God forbid that so mean a man as I should meddle with the king's prerogative: but I have heard very wise men say, that the king's prerogative is bounded and limited by the good and welfare of his people. ”

“ By the word prerogative we usually understand that special pre-eminence, which the king hath, over and above all other persons, and out of the ordinary course of the common law, in right of his regal dignity. ”

“ The first is law, the last prerogative. ”

“ On the other hand, the Whig, who asserts that the Royal Prerogative ought to be reduced to such powers as are beneficial to the people, and yet stipulates, as an invariable principle, for the transfer of that Prerogative full and unimpaired, whenever it passes into other hands, appears, even more perhaps than the Tory, to throw an obstacle in the way of his own object. ”

“ Great as the prerogative is to-day, it was, in some directions, even more extensive in the past, and men are in the habit of repeating the phrases derived from that past after they have lost their meaning. ”

“ The reality neither of the free-will, nor of any of those laws or ideas, which spring from, or rather constitute reason, can be authenticated by the sort of proof which is demanded, and we must therefore relinquish our prerogative, and take our place with becoming humility among our more unpretending companions. ”

“ For his example is of such force, that even if the people were willing to permit him to release himself from the yoke of the law, he ought to be cautious in availing himself of so dangerous a prerogative, which others might soon claim to usurp in their turn, and often use to his prejudice. ”

“ The error lies in excluding others from the privilege of exercising the same prerogative, whose opinions are entitled to the same respect as ours. By tolerating and discussing each other's views the errors are detected, over which the truth, from its divine character, must ultimately prevail. ”

“ And if he may do acts of grace by prerogative above law, then may he also do acts of justice (so pretended) by the same prerogative; and so may murder innocents, as well as pardon murderers; he may condemn the just, as well as justify the wicked; both which are alike abomination to the Lord, Prov. xvii. 15. This power cannot be owned in any man. 11. To own absolute power, were to recognosce the king as the proper and sole interpreter of the law. ”

“ But God be thanked, our populace is more merciful in their nature, and at present under better direction; and the orators among us have attempted to confound both prerogative and law, in their sovereign's presence, and before the highest court of judicature, without any hazard to their persons. ”

“ But such Men as these would assuredly find their account much better therein, if tenderness of that Prerogative would teach them a more legitimate way of maintaining it, than such a one as is a very great impediment or discouragement, at the least, to others in the doing what God requires of them. ”

“ We know that sovereigns in other countries, where the assertion of absolute regal power is as high as the assertion of absolute power in any politic body can possibly be here, have received many petitions in direct opposition to many of their claims of prerogative,—have listened to them,—condescended to discuss, and to give answers to them. This refusal to admit even the discussion of any part of an undefined prerogative will naturally tend to annihilate any privilege that can be claimed by every inferior dependent community, and every subordinate order in the state. ”

“ He quite forgot that, when they magnified the royal prerogative, the prerogative was exerted on their side, that, when they preached endurance, they had nothing to endure, that, when they declared it unlawful to resist evil, none but Whigs and Dissenters suffered any evil. It had never occurred to him that a man feels the calamities of his enemies with one sort of sensibility, and his own with quite a different sort. ”

“ Secondly, The Legislative has no right to absolute arbitrary power over the lives and fortunes of the people: Nor can mortals assume a prerogative, not only too high for men, but for Angels; ”

“ But it will be said, that ill affected and factious men may spread among the people, and make them believe that the prince or legislative act contrary to their trust, when they only make use of their due prerogative. ”

“ This prerogative, this natural supremacy, of the faculty which surveys, approves, or disapproves the several affections of our mind, and actions of our lives, being that by which men are a law to themselves, their conformity, or disobedience to which law of our nature renders their actions, in the highest and most proper sense, natural or unnatural ”

“ In a perfect legal system, says Beccaria, pardons should be excluded, for the clemency of the prince seems a tacit disapprobation of the laws (Dei Delitti e delle pene, ch. xx.) . [1] In practice the prerogative is extremely valuable, when used with discretion, as a means of adjusting the different degrees of moral guilt in crimes or of rectifying a miscarriage of justice. ”

“ In a modified sense those devises are held to be void even at this day, and to need the aid of a royal prerogative still existing in the court, to relieve the devisees against the rules of the common law. ”

“ But whoever will advert to the use made repeatedly, in England, of the prerogative of the king, and the frequent attacks on the privileges of the people, notwithstanding many legislative acts to secure them, will see the necessity of excluding implications. ”

“ But since a rational creature cannot be supposed, when free, to put himself into subjection to another, for his own harm; (though, where he finds a good and wise ruler, he may not perhaps think it either necessary or useful to set precise bounds to his power in all things) prerogative can be nothing but the people’s permitting their rulers to do several things, of their own free choice, where the law was silent, and sometimes too against the direct letter of the law, for the public good ”

“ To dread no eye, and to suspect no tongue, is the great prerogative of innocence; ”

“ Nor, indeed, could it be expected that those who shewed themselves so indifferent to the sacredness of their calling would do other than encourage violations of their prerogatives by the powers of this world. ”

“ In wielding those prerogatives which the social of our nature authorizes us to employ for their benefit, we are to regard them as they are in truth, not things, not cattle, not articles of merchandize, but men, our fellow-men--reflecting, from however battered and broken a surface, reflecting with us the image of a common Father. ”

“ This temper, which I have been describing, is almost always complicated with ideas of the high prerogatives of human nature, of a sacred unalienable birthright, which no man has conferred upon us, and which neither kings can take, nor senates give away; which we may justly assert whenever and by whomsoever it is attacked ”

“ But I presume their correctness, when applied to man, will be doubted by none; for man is willing enough to claim for himself the full recognition of all the high prerogatives I have shown him to be entitled to. ”

“ It has been difficult accordingly for that type of Americans who arrogated tacitly, but nevertheless plainly, the prerogatives of social importance, to take an active part in the responsibilities of citizenship. ”

“ Every paradox was to him a self-evident truth; every prejudice an undoubted absurdity. The weight of authority, the sanction of ages, the common consent of mankind, were vouchers only for ignorance, error, and imposture. ”

“ Very well, then, how, under such circumstances, could a man help becoming biased? 'One swallow does not make a summer,' as the English proverb says: a hundred suppositions do not constitute one single proof. Reason speaks in that way, I admit, but let a man try to subject prejudice to reason. An examining magistrate, after all, is only a man—hence given to prejudice. ”

“ Why, then, should you be surprised that they endeavor to make themselves arbitrary and sovereign; that they deem as faults, and as criminal, all the virtues which agree not with their marvellous systems? ”

“ Such are the ideas conveyed by the word prejudice; and I fearlessly ask you, is it a crime to impute to his Grace these notions which you yourselves entertain? Is he calumniated—is he libelled, when he is charged with concurring with you, gentlemen of the jury? Will you, by a verdict of conviction, stamp your own political sentiments with the seal of reprobation? If you convict my client, you do this; you decide that it is a libel to charge any man with those doctrines which are so useful to you individually, and of which you boast ”

“ How long will it take an individual or a nation to conquer prejudices, by continuing to practice and excuse them;—substituting general acknowledgements of their guilt, for immediately and thoroughly repudiating them? ”

“ It is for you to say, gentlemen, whether a man shall be found guilty on inference; whether a man shall be deprived of his liberty by prejudice. It is for you to say whether reputation shall be destroyed by malice and by ignorance. ”

“ For as to vanity, or any presumption, on my part, of any thing so weak, so unauthoritative as my representation, having any chance to remove the abuses, not however the less existent for that incapacity of mine to remove them, my knowledge 467of the world would alone defend me from so ridiculously wild a thought. I am but too well aware of the tenaciousness of especially false prejudice in most minds, where it has once gained entrance, and with whom prepossession is ever eleven points of the right. ”

“ Oh, be very sure that no such mistaken judgment based on any local or religious or moral theory of conduct or bias, because of presumed irrefutable evidence, is permitted to prejudice you, so that without meaning to, and with the best and highest-minded intentions, you yourselves see a crime, or the intention to commit a crime, when no such crime or any such intention ever truly or legally existed or lodged in the mind or acts of this defendant. ”

“ I may not be entirely free from such prejudices, but, if I am required to sit in judgment upon an individual against whom I have entertained a prejudice, it has ever been my manner to inform that person of it upon the first opportunity that presented itself. Will you do this Bishops, and frankly acknowledge that you are unqualified to sit in judgment upon any person against whom you are strongly prejudiced? ”

“ We find that we have really been the offender, going about with a moral tape-measure graduated by ourselves, and measuring the opposite party with a serene conceit which has called itself principle or honor, or some high-sounding name, while it was really nothing but prejudice. ”