Coleridge and opium-eating, and other writings / [Thomas De Quincey].

  • Thomas De Quincey
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Coleridge and opium-eating, and other writings / [Thomas De Quincey]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    come to issue with each other in the reign of his son. Our constitution was not a birth of a single instant, as they would represent it, hut a gradual growth and de- velopment through a long tract of time. In particular, the doctrine of the king’s vicarious responsibility in the person of his ministers, which first gave a sane and salu- tary meaning to the doctrine of the king’s personal irre- sponsibility [“ The king can do no. wrong”], arose unde- niably between 1640 and 1648. This doctrine is the main pillar of our constitution, and perhaps the finest discovery that was ever made in the theory of government. Hitherto the doctrine that the King can do no wrong had been used not to protect the indispensable sanctity of the king’s constitutional character, but to protect the wrong. Used in this way it was a maxim of Oriental despotism, and fit only for a nation where law had no empire. Many of the illustrious patriots of the Great Parliament saw this ; and felt the necessity of abolishing a maxim so fatal to the just liberties of the people. But some of them fell into the opposite error of supposing that this abolition could be effected only by the direct negation of it; their maxim accordingly was—“ The king can do wrong,” i.e., is responsible in his own person. In this great error even the illustrious wife of Colonel Hutchinson participated ;* * This is remarked by her editor and descendant, Julius Hutch- inson, who adds some words to this effect:—“ That if the patriots of that day were the inventors of the maxim [the king can do no wrong\ we are much indebted to them.” The patriots certainly did not invent the maxim, for they found it already current: but they gave it its new and constitutional sense. I refer to the book, however, as I do to almost all books in these notes, from memory; writing most of them in situations where I have no access to books. By the way, Charles I., who used the maxim in the most odious sense, furnished the most colourable excuse for his own execution.