Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/268

252 count. For prerogative coniting (as Mr Locke has well defined it) in the dicretionary power of acting for the public good, where the poitive laws are ilent, if that dicretionary power be abued to the public detriment, uch prerogative is exerted in an uncontitutional manner. Thus the king may make a treaty with a foreign tate, which hall irrevocably bind the nation; and yet, when uch treaties have been judged pernicious, impeachments have purued thoe miniters, by whoe agency or advice they were concluded.

prerogatives of the crown (in the ene under which we are now conidering them) repect either this nation’s intercoure with foreign nations, or it’s own dometic government and civil polity.

regard to foreign concerns, the king is the delegate or repreentative of his people. It is impoible that the individuals of a tate, in their collective capacity, can tranact the affairs of that tate with another community equally numerous as themelves. Unanimity mut be wanting to their meaures, and trength to the execution of their counels. In the king therefore, as in a center, all the rays of his people are united, and form by that union a conitency, plendor, and power, that make him feared and repected by foreign potentates; who would cruple to enter into any engagement, that mut afterwards be revied and ratified by a popular aembly. What is done by the royal authority, with regard to foreign powers, is the act of the whole nation: what is done without the king’s concurrence is the act only of private men. And o far is this point carried by our law, that it hath been held, that hould all the ubjects of England make war with a king in league with the king of England, without the royal aent, uch war is no breach of the league. And, by the tatute 2 Hen. V. c. 6. any ubject committing acts of hotility upon any nation in league with the king, was declared to be guilty of high treaon: and, though that act was repealed by the tatute