Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/491

455 RESPONSIBILITY OF THE STATE IN ENGLAND 455 ized when he remarks that he considered and refused the peti- tion.^^ A captain of the Royal Navy may burn the schooner of a private citizen in the mistaken belief that she is engaged in the slave trade, and even if the vessel so destroyed were its owner's sole means of livehhood, he is left without remedy so" far as the Crown is concerned.^® Neither Mr. Beck nor Mr. Edalji had rights against the Crown for long years of mistaken imprison- ment.^^ So, too, it did not assist Miss Bainbridge when a duly accredited agent of the Crown injured her in his progress; what was left her was a worthless remedy against a humble wage earner from whom no recovery was possible.^^ It is the realm of high prerogative that we have entered; and it would be perhaps less arid if it but possessed the further merit of logical arrangement. The truth is that in its strictest rigor the system is unworkable; and from ancient times an effort has been made to mitigate the severities it involves. The origin of the Petition of Right is wrapped in no small obscurity; ^^ but its clear meaning is an ungracious effort to do justice without the ad- mission of a legal claim. Nor is the remedy at all broad in char- acter, for the Crown is avaricious where to show itself generous is to compromise the Exchequer. The Petition of Right is limited to a definite class of cases. Until 1874 it could be used for the re- covery of some chattel or hereditament to which the suppliant laid claim; and it was only in that year that the genius of com- mercial understanding by which Lord Blackburn was distin- guished secured its extension to the general field of contract.^" Even when judgment has been obtained no execution can issue against the Crown. The petitioner remains dependent upon a combination of goodwill and the moral pressure he may hope to secure from public opinion. The matter is worth stating in some little detail. "The pro- ceeding by petition of right," said Cottenham, L. C.,^^ "exists only for the purpose of reconciling the dignity of the Crown and the '5 Irwin V. Gray, 3 F. & F. 635 (1862). 36 Tobin V. Regina, 14 C. B. (n. s.) 505 (1863). " For a French attempt to remedy this defect, see infra. " CtODE, Petition of Right, Chap. I. " Thomas v. Regina, L. R. 10 Q. B. 31 (1874).
 * Bainbridge ;;. Postmaster-General, supra.
 * Monckton v. Attorney-General, 2 Mac. & G. 402 (1850).