The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-10-02 00:00:00

a speech (let not our readers be alarmed at the awful an-
nouncement; for we will neither copy nor analyse the
prodigious thing) of two and a half hours' duration. The
speech was, on the whole, as cold as the dinner ; and, un-
doubtedly, left a fair balance between those who had par-
ticipated of both, and those who escaped the learned ser-
geant's eloquence. There was a repetition of all that
was said last year. about the impropriety of dismissing
the Whig ministers; with
,a new reading by the learned
sergeant of that maxim of the British law, that " the
King can do no wrong." Blackstone had given an ex-
position of the rule which. was satisfactory to our fatherS.
Et was as follows :

" Besides the attribute of sovereignty, the law also ascribes
to the King. in his political capacity, absolute perfection. The
King can do no wrong. Which ancient and fundamental
maxim is not to be understood, as if every thing transacted by
the government was of course just and lawful, but means only
two things. .First, that whatever is exceptionable in the con-
duct of public affairs is not to be imputed to the King, nor is he
answerable for it personally to his people; for this doctrine
would totally destroy that constitutional independence of the
crown, which is necessary for the balance of power to cur free
and active, and therefore compounded, constitution."

Mr. Sergeant Wilde improves upon this. He asserts
the real meaning of the maxim to be, that " the King,
great and powerful as he is, armed and protected by pre-
rogatives of all sorts though he be, has yet no preroga-
tive, nothing attachable to his kingly state, which will
warrant his doing any wrong." Now, this is vastly fine
balderdash ; but, with submission, nothing but balder-
dash. When was it ever heard that any one was
.armed
with an express power of doing wrong ? Who, indeed,
would regard the offer of such warrant as anything short
of the grossest insult ? Why, even if a drunken client
inserted in his warrants to an attorney a license to cheat
him, the client, out of his estate, there are few attorneys
who woaa not prefer erasing the license and acting upon
it by the aid of ingenuity not expressly authorised. The
meaning of the maxim, like the meaning of all law
maxims, is practical, not theoretical. It is not that "the
King can do no wrong" in any abstract sense of the pro-
position, but simply that the King cannot be questioned
for doing wrong in anv court of law or Parliament; fur
it is of such things that laws treat. What would be the
use of the maxim, according to Mr. Wilde's reading ? All
the disputes,that have divided mankind from the creation
have had reference to this single point—what is right and
what is wrong? Whops to judge in the case of a ICing ?
Are we to have another high court of justice in West-
minster-hall, and another Sergeant Wilde to manufac-
ture a " great seal" for its commission to hang loyal
men like poor Burley of the Isle of Wight, as a first ex-
ample in the revolution, and to make himself recompense
for his trouble from sequestrated estates?—Standard.