8

DUTIES OF THE SOVEREIGN.

By the oath administered at the coronation, the sovereign solemnly promises to govern according to the statutes, the laws, and customs of the realm; to cause law and justice, in mercy, to be executed in all her judgments; to maintain the laws of God, the profession of the gospel, the Protestant reformed religion, and the church as by law established. This solemn engagement is considered a fundamental and express contract between the sovereign and the people.

ROYAL PREROGATIVES.

By the royal prerogatives are meant certain privileges enjoyed by the queen regent, in virtue of the regal office.

The queen is the supreme magistrate of the nation, all other magistrates acting by commission from, and in due subordination to, her: she has the exclusive right of sending ambassadors, of creating peers, of making war and peace; she may reject any parliamentary bill she pleases; and pardon any offences, except where the law has specially interfered. The royal pardon cannot be pleaded in an impeachment, but it may be subsequently given; nor can the crown remit fines to which informers have claim.

If any one has a demand on the queen in point of property, he may petition the court of Chancery, where the lord chancellor will administer right as a matter of grace, and not of compulsion. But in any petition of right or claim against the crown, the procedure is now prescribed by 23 & 24 V. c. 34, and assimilated to that between private persons.

In civil actions relating to landed property, the sovereign, like a subject, is limited to sixty years; and, after fifty-five years' possession, a grant from the crown may be presumed, unless a statute Parker v. Baldwin, 11 E. R. 488. has prohibited such a grant. The 39 & 40 G. 3, c. 88, vests in the sovereign the same rights in the acquisition and testamentary disposition of real and personal property as in subjects. Similar rights of private property by the act extend to a queen consort.

If the queen be

It is a maxim, the sovereign can do no wrong. induced to make any improper grant to a subject, or be guilty of any act of public oppression, it is presumed she has acted under the influence of weak or wicked ministers, who may be punished by indictment or parliamentary impeachment.

The sovereign is not bound by any statute, unless expressly named therein; yet if a public act be made which does not interfere with the rights of the crown, it is said to be as binding upon the queen as upon the subject; and though she be not specially named in any act, her Majesty may, if she please, take the benefit of it.

The queen cannot be a joint tenant, and it is provided that her debt shall be preferred before any of her subjects. Up to 1855, the crown, except in certain fiscal cases, neither recovered nor paid costs; but this practice is abolished by 18 & 19 V. c. 90 ; and the crown in all suits, if successful, may recover costs, as between subject and subject, and the defendant, if successful, is entitled to costs against the crown.

The queen is the head of the army and nary, and has the control of all forts and garrisons within the realm. She has the power of establishing ports and havens. She may prohibit the importation of arms and ammunition, and confine her subjects within the realm, or recall them from abroad, on pain of fine and imprisonment.

She is the head of the established church, and has power to convene, prorogue, and dissolve the houses of convocation. In virtue of this prerogative arises the right to nominate to vacant bishoprics and other ecclesiastical preferments. She is the dernier ressort in all spiritual matters, an appeal lying to the judicial committee of the privy council from the sentence of every ecclesiastical judge.

The queen has the right of granting passports to subjects of different nations. In the regulation of domestic trade she has the prerogative of establishing markets and fairs, with tolls, of regulating weights and measures, of giving authenticity to the coin, and making it current as the universal medium of exchange.

The queen is the representative of the public, and criminal proceedings for offences are in her name. She has the power of erecting courts of judicature, but cannot administer justice personally, since she has delegated that power to her judges.

Lastly, the queen is the fountain of office, honour, and privilege. All degrees of title are by her immediate grant. She has the right of granting precedence to any of her subjects, except to the nobility, whose precedence is fixed by statute; of converting aliens into denizens, and of erecting corporations.

By 1 V. c. 72, in case of her Majesty's death, the archbishop of Canterbury, lord chancellor, lord high treasurer, lord president of the council; lord privy seal, lord high admiral, and the chief justice of the Queen's Bench, are appointed lords justices to exercise the regal powers until the arrival in the kingdom of the next successor to the crown, provided such successor is absent at the time of the queen's decease. Lords justices are not empowered to create peers nor dissolve parliament.

REVENUES OF THE CROWN.

The queen's, or more correctly the public, revenue is either hereditary or parliamentary. The hereditary revenue is that which has subsisted in the crown, time immemorial, or else has

been granted by parliament in exchange for such crown revenues as were found inconvenient to the public. The parliamentary or general revenue is the various taxes levied by the authority of parliament.

Of the hereditary revenues the principal are-1. The lay revenues of vacant sees, the first-fruits and tenths of spiritual preferments, and all tithes arising in extra-parochial places. 2. The demesne lands of the crown, consisting of estates, woods, forests, manors, honours, and lordships. 3. Fines, forfeitures, and fees accruing in courts of justice. 4. A tenth part of royal fish, which are whale and sturgeon, when either thrown on shore or caught near the coast. 5. Mines of gold and silver. 6. Treasure trove, which is the treasure found hid in the earth, of which no owner appears but it seems, from Armory v. Delamere, this does not extend to treasure, as gold, diamonds, money, or other valuables, found in the sea, or upon the earth; which belong to the finder, if no owner appears. 7. Waifs, which are goods stolen and thrown away by the thief in his flight; but the courts may, by 7 & 8 G. 4, c. 29, order restitution of waifs, or other stolen goods, to the owner. 8. Estrays, or animals found wandering, the owner of which is unknown. 9. Lands and goods forfeited for offences; and escheats of land, which happen on defect of heirs to succeed to the inheritance; but by 3 & 4 W. 4, c. 106, lands forfeited by attainder do not prevent inheritance. 10. Droits of the crown and admiralty; being the proceeds of wrecks and goods of pirates. 11. The revenues of the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, pending the infancy of the Prince of Wales. Lastly, the profits accruing from the custody of the property and persons of idiots and lunatics.

Most of these branches of the hereditary revenues have fallen into desuetude, or have been granted to private individuals, or placed at the disposal of the legislature; so that, except the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, they add little or nothing to the royal income. In lieu of the hereditary revenues of the crown, a fixed annual sum, under the denomination of the civil list, is granted by parliament at the commencement of a new reign for the support of the sovereign and the royal household. This sum is payable out of the parliamentary revenue, or that great mass of public income arising from the various taxes imposed by parliament, and a great portion of which is applied to the payment of the interest of the public debt, the maintenance of the army and navy, and the administration of justice, and other matters connected with the national government.

THE QUEEN AND ROYAL FAMILY.

The queen is either queen regent, queen consort, or queen dowager. The queen regent is she who holds the crown in her own right, as Queen Elizabeth, Queen Anne, or Queen Victoria: such a one, in

her public capacity, in all respects fills the office of king, having the same rights, prerogatives, duties, and dignities; and all that has been or may hereafter be said of the functions of the regal office may be considered as applicable and pertaining to her present Majesty as sovereign of the realm.

The queen consort, or wife of the king, is a public person, enjoying peculiar privileges. She can purchase land and make leases without the concurrence of her lord; she can also take a grant from her husband, which no other wife can; she may also sue and be sued alone, without joining her husband. In short, she is in all legal proceedings considered a single, not a married woman; and the common law has established this to prevent the king being troubled with his wife's private affairs.

To violate the queen's person is high treason, as well in the riolator as the queen herself, if consenting.

A queen dowager is the widow of the preceding king, and as such enjoys most of the privileges to which she was entitled as queen consort. But it is not high treason to conspire her death, or to violate her chastity, because the succession to the crown is not thereby endangered.

The husband of a queen regent, as Prince George of Denmark was to Queen Anne, or the late Prince Albert to Queen Victoria, is her subject, and may be guilty of high treason against her; but, in the instance of conjugal infidelity, he is not subject to the same penal restrictions. For which the reason seems to be, that, if a queen consort is unfaithful to the royal bed, this may debase or bastardize the heirs to the crown; but no such danger can issue from the infidelity of the husband to a queen regent.

The Prince of Wales, or heir apparent to the crown, and his consort, and also the princess royal, or eldest daughter of the queen, are peculiarly regarded by the laws. To conspire the death of the former, or violate the chastity of the latter, is high treason. By the rest of the royal family is understood the younger sons and daughters and other relatives of the sovereign, who may possibly inherit the crown, though not immediately in the line of succession. These have precedence before all peers and officers of state, ecclesiastical or temporal. The education of the presumptive heir to the crown is under the control of the sovereign; and no prince of the blood can marry without the sovereign's consent, unless he be twenty-five years old; nor even then, without twelve months' notice being given to the privy council; or if, in the course of these twelve months, parliament expresses its disapprobation of the marriage. A marriage otherwise entered into will be void: the minister and all persons present incurring the penalties of pramunire.

CHAPTER IV.

House of Lords.

THE House of Lords forms the second or hereditary branch of the constitution; exclusive of the royal princes, they are either spiritual or temporal; the former consist of the two archbishops and the twenty-four bishops of the English church, and one archbishop and three bishops of the Irish church; the latter have been elected, since the union, by rotation of session, to represent the clergy of Ireland. The spiritual lords are not considered peers, but merely lords of parliament, who hold, or are supposed to hold, certain ancient baronies under the king.

The lords temporal consist of all peers of the realm, being of full age and not mentally incapacitated the number of these may be increased at the pleasure of the crown. Sixteen temporal peers are chosen by, and sit as representatives of, the peers of Scotland twenty-eight represent the nobility of Ireland. Scotch peers are elected only for one parliament; the Irish peers for life; the rest of the peerage hold by descent or creation.

That the queen may be informed of the decease of a representative peer, in order to the election of another, the 14 & 15 V. c. 87, provides that a certificate from two peers of Scotland shall Le held to be formal notice of the death of any representative peer, sufficient for the issue of a proclamation for the election of his successor. Owing to increased facilities for communication, the time for the issue of the proclamation, prior to the election, is reduced from twenty-five to ten days. By s. 3, Scotch peers may take the oath, and subscribe the declaration in order to vote by proxy in the superior courts of law in Ireland, same as in England. Titles of peerages, in right of which no vote has been given for fifty years, not to be called at election, if the House of Lords shall so direct.

The total number of members of the House of Lords, in 1866, was 454, and comprised the subjoined classes, inclusive of six peers who sit by two titles: