responsibility of the minister is limited in a few constitutions, as in the charter of Louis XVIII., which provides that they cannot be accused except for treason or peculation. This provision (article 56) is changed in the charter of 1830, into liability to be impeached in general without specification of any particular crime, and with reason, for many a man would commit neither treason nor peculation, who would endeavor with all his might to overthrow the constitution from which he derived his authority. Political offences of the gravest kind may be of an intangible nature, such as connivance with a king in stretching his prerogative, or neglect to maintain the constitution, or endeavors within the law to influence elections. The power ought then to be lodged in a body which judges of political misdemeanors, of deciding whether a minister has been untrue to his duties, whether he has duly respected the constitution. If he has committed treasonable acts, or embezzled public funds, let him be punished like other traitors or peculators; but if he is chargeable with political misdeeds which are not punishable by ordinary criminal law, let him be tried for them, and, if guilty, be incapacitated for all state employment in the future. And for such offences it would seem that ordinary courts of justice are not the most fit tribunals. Since their habits of judging require them to look after definite acts, a better court would be one of the chambers, where two exist, or one constituted for the case like courts martial.

Where there is more than a nominal responsibility of a minister, practice must conform itself to that under the English constitution since ministers on party principles began to exist. The minister must suit the majority in the popular constitution, or what is the same thing, the chambers by a new election be made to coincide with the ministers, and thus the king's will be reduced to such a minimum as is compatible with efficient government. This point, the constitutional governments have not reached; and until they reach it, the executive will be continually tempted to take sides against the people, to have a party of his own, to

choose men for his ministers who will disregard the spirit of the constitution as far as they dare. When this point is reached, ministers will not need to be impeached; for collisions between the executive and the law, or the legislature, will hardly occur.

It is almost taken for granted by some writers on political forms that a sovereign monarch must be incapable of being called to account for private or public crimes. As for his private relations it is conceded that there ought to be some court where he may find or give justice. In England, demands on the king may be brought on petition before the court of chancery (Blackst., i., 243), although "no suit or action can be brought against [him], even in civil matters, because no court can have jurisdiction over him. For all jurisdiction implies superiority of power. Authority to try would be vain and idle, without an authority to redress, and a sentence of a court would be contemptible, unless that court had power to command the execution of it; but who, says Finch, shall command the king?" (ibid., 242). In the Austrian code it is said that "those legal proceedings which concern the supreme head of the state, but relate to his private property or to modes of acquiring property which depend on municipal law, are to come before the judges and be decided according to the laws." (Comp. Dahlmann, Politik., i.,

130.) This is clearly just. If the king or chief executive is the fountain of justice or is in any way its support, why should he have an exemption from just law, except so far as to give him personal freedom for the sake of attending to his important duties? The reasoning of Blackstone falls to the ground when once the true theory is received that a sovereign individual is such only as being the representative in chief of a sovereign state. Why should the highest representative of a just state be exempt from the control of just law?

As for the exemption of a king or other sovereign from the control of criminal laws, implied in the notion of a modern constitutional monarch, the propriety of carrying it

through so as to cover all crimes may be reasonably doubted. The doctrine of many advocates of monarchy would seem to amount to this, that the very notion of royal power and of sovereignty is inconsistent with that of being responsible. Thus Dahlmann says that "to rule and to be responsible, when conceived of as co-existent, are contradictions (u. s., 104); and Stahl thus expresses himself: "The king is sovereign; that is the notion; and a king who is not sovereign is an absurdity." (Staatslehre, § 72.) He at the same time admits that a king may be limited by a constitution. What notion is contained in the word king, is a comparatively unimportant inquiry. We have attempted to show in another place that the real sovereignty is that of the state and not of the chief officer of the state. There is no middle ground between this and absolutism. And this opinion is not theoretical only; it has been acted upon, as in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, where the witans deposed their sovereigns, and in some of the feudal principalities of the middle ages, where the states exercised as well as claimed the right of deposition. The estates of Brabant, of Lüneburg, of Bavaria, of Schleswig-Holstein, the so-called "ewige union" of the Saxe-Lauenburg estates of 1515 recognized this right, as belonging to them in relation to their rulers. In 1514, the estates of Bavaria remind the lord of the land of the punishment (i. e., deposition) which their old charters threaten, and declare their intention to side with the more compliant of two brothers. The estates of Schleswig-Holstein chose their ruler as late as 1588, and in the formula of election declared that, if their privileges were not observed so that they could feel assurance in respect to them, "honorable estates (landschaft) would be free from their oath and duty, and the election that had been made would be of no force." (Dahlmann, u. s., § 140, n. 1.) So the English theory, accepted at the revolution of 1688, was that there was a contract between the king and the English people, the infraction of which by the king might cause the throne to be vacant. In mild language a right of resistance in extreme cases was declared to

exist, against the sovereign.* Now this right thus acknowledged is not made a dead letter by a complete representative system nor by ministerial government; for it it very credible that the head of the state, although acting through a constitutional ministry in ordinary affairs, may yet engage alone or with some one who is not a minister in nefarious political transactions. Here there is no minister to stand between the sovereign and wrong-doing, and so no one is responsible if he himself is not.

Furthermore this responsibility of the constitutional king in three cases-where he aids and abets political crimes of a ministry, where he engages in such crimes without their pri vity, and perhaps also where he commits gross private crimes -is a security against revolutions, and irregular justice. If a ruler is so absolutely inviolable, or so outside of law that no power within the state can reach him, he will be tempted by this very impunity to misuse the trust put into his hand; and on the other hand private vengeance, or general abhorrence felt for him, will take the course of assassination or insurrection. The knowledge of what befell two comparatively good kings, Charles I. and Louis XIV., from revolutionary courts, has kept, without doubt, and will keep back worse. sovereigns from crime. And the possibility of deliverance in a peaceful way from a bad ruler would, if he were amenable to justice, prevent outbreak and sustain the royal form of supreme authority.

In regard to private crimes, such as subject other men to the retribution of the law, the question of a sovereign's extent of responsibility becomes somewhat more difficult. But when we weigh the bad influence of a prince who seduces the wives of other men, or takes off his enemies by hired

* As a curiosity what Plutarch says of Cyme (Quaest. Græc., 2) may be mentioned, that "there was a public officer there named a phylactes, whose usual business was to keep the jail, but who came into the council during their nocturnal meeting, led forth the kings by the hand, and held them in custody until the council by a secret ballot decided whether they were acting wrongfully or no."

assassins, upon court and country, to give him impunity appears so corrupting, so destructive to loyalty and therefore to the stability of the government, that it seems as if some high court of justice, to be called in certain emergencies, might well be united with constitutional government. When the queen of George IV. was tried, did not the English nation feel a sympathy with an unworthy woman for the reason that the instigator of the trial was himself guiltier ?

On the whole, then, the principle of a king's unlimited irresponsibility ought itself to be limited, in order that the quiet and morality of the country, and the safety and freedom from temptation of the sovereign, may be in a degree secured.

There can be no sure or permanent liberty under constitutional monarchies, if the armies are under the complete con trol of the executive, so that a refusal of an assembly or a parliament to vote supplies to a military establishment may not modify the arrangements of the administration. Just here lie the great obstacles in the way of regulated liberty. Mutual jealousy demands such vast forces that the countries of continental Europe stagger under the burden of taxes and debt, and live in constant dread of war. The armies become one of the chief interests; the spirit of the armies is a spirit of unreasoning obedience except at the height of revolutionary fevers; their attachment to and pride in great captains, who themselves know no law but that of personal devotion to the throne, will make it easy at some crisis to overthrow a constitution. Thus these new limited monarchies stand between two uncertainties, that of going back towards absolutism by the help of coups d'état provoked by violently progressive parties, and that of violent movement in the attainment of the highest ends of the state. Add to this that police and bureaucratic systems, repressive of personal freedom, and implying the remains of tyrannical dread on the part of the administration, keep down in modern constitutional monarchies the feeling of personal independence, without which no institutions can take deep root in the hearts of a people.