Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/490

454 454 HARVARD LAW REVIEW caulay is tempted to think that Clive and Warren Hastings did not hesitate, on occasion, to perform sovereign functions, he yet must legally remember that the company was not technically a sovereign body.^^ There is thus a definite environment which sur- rounds each seeming exception to the general rule. If there is limitation, it is that act of grace which continental theorists have taught us to deduce from the inherent wisdom of the sovereign power.^^ But the exceptions are relatively few in number, and, for the most part, they cautiously reside within the narrow field of contract. The broad result is, to say the least, suggestive. Until 1907, and then only as a result of statute, no government department could be sued for violation of the very patent of which the Crown itself is grantor.^" The acts of the Lord-Lieutenant of L-eland, even when they involve the seemingly purposeless breaking of heads at a public meeting, are acts of state, and so outside the purview of the courts.^^ The servants of the Crown owe no duty to the public except as statute may have otherwise provided ; ^^ so that even where a royal warrant regulates the pensions and pay of the army, the Secretary of State for War cannot be compelled to obey it.^^ He is the agent of the Crown; and only the Crown can pass upon the degree to which he has fulfilled the terms of his agency. Yet, in sober fact, that is to make his acts material for the decision of his colleagues, and, in an age of collective cab- inet responsibihty, thus to make him judge in his own cause. Sir Claude Macdonald may, as Commissioner for the Nigerian Protectorate, engage Mr. Dunn as consul for a period of three years; but if he chooses to dismiss Mr. Dunn within the specified limit, even the question of justification is beyond the competence of the courts.^ Nor will the law inquire whether adequate ex- amination has been made before the refusal of a petition of right; the Home Secretary's discretion is here so absolute that the judge will even hint to him that the oath of ofl&cial secrecy is jeopard- 2* Moodaly v. Moreton, 2 Dick. 652 (1785). 29 Cf. my Authority in the Modern State, Chap. I. » Sullivan v. Earl Spencer, Ir. Rep. 6 C. L. 173 (1872). » Ibid. " Dunn V. Macdonald, [1897] i Q. B. 555.
 * " Feather v. Regina, 6 B. & S. 257 (1865).
 * Gidley v. Palmerston, 3 B. & B. 275 (1822).