Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/266

250 are next to conider thoe branches of the royal prerogative, which invet this our overeign lord, thus all-perfect and immortal in his kingly capacity, with a number of authorities and powers; in the exertion whereof conits the executive part of government. This is wiely placed in a ingle hand by the Britih contitution, for the ake of unanimity, trength and dipatch. Were it placed in many hands, it would be ubject to many wills: many wills, if diunited and drawing different ways, create weaknes in a government: and to unite thoe everal wills, and reduce them to one, is a work of more time and delay than the exigencies of tate will afford. The king of England is therefore not only the chief, but properly the ole, magitrate of the nation; all others acting by commiion from, and in due ubordination to him: in like manner as, upon the great revolution in the Roman tate, all the powers of the antient magitracy of the commonwealth were concentred in the new emperor; o that, as Gravina exprees it, "."

what has been premied in this chapter, I hall not (I trut) be conidered as an advocate for arbitrary power, when I lay it down as a principle, that in the exertion of lawful prerogative, the king is and ought to be abolute; that is, o far abolute, that there is no legal authority that can either delay or reit him. He may reject what bills, may make what treaties, may coin what money, may create what peers, may pardon what offences he pleaes: unles where the contitution hath exprely, or by evident conequence, laid down ome exception or boundary; declaring, that thus far the prerogative hall go and no farther. For otherwie the power of the crown would indeed be but a name and a hadow, inufficient for the ends of government, if, where it’s juridiction is clearly etablihed and allowed, any man or body of men were permitted to diobey it, in the ordinary coure of law: I ay, in the ordinary coure of law; for I do not