Page:United States Reports, Volume 2.djvu/466

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460
Cases ruled and adjudged in the

1793.

than you can do, elect you to be our King, upon the conditions stipulated: But between you and us there is one of greater authority than you.”[1]

In England, according to Sir William Blackstone, no suit can be brought against the King, even in civil matters. So, in that Kingdom, is the law, at this time, received. But it was not always so. Under the Saxon Government, a very different doctrine was held to be orthodox. Under that Government, as we are informed by the Mirror of Justice, a book said, by Sir Edward Coke, to have been written, in part, at least, before the conquest; under that Government it was ordained, that the King’s Court should be open to all Plaintiffs, by which, without delay, they should have remedial writs, as well against the King or against the Queen, as against any other of the people.[2] The law continued to be the same for some centuries after the conquest. Until the time of Edward I. the King might have been sued, as a common person. The form of the processs was even imperative. “Præcipe Henrico Regi Angliæ” &c. “Command Henry King of England” &c.[3] Bracton, who wrote in the time of Henry III. uses these very remarkable expressions concerning the King “in justitia recipienda, minimo de regno suo comparetur”—“in receiving justice, he should be placed on a level with the meanest person in the Kingdom[4].” True it is, that now in England the King must be sued in his Courts by Petition; but even now, the difference is only in the form, not in the thing. The judgments or decrees of those Courts will substantially be the same upon a precatory as upon a mandatory process. In the Courts of Justice, says the very able author of the considerations on the laws of forfeiture, the King enjoys many privileges; yet not to deter the subject from contending with him freely[5]. The Judge of the High Court of Admiralty in England made, in a very late cause, the following manly and independent declaration. “In any case, where the Crown is a party, it is to be observed, that the Crown can no more withhold evidence of documents in its possession, than a private person. If the Court thinks proper to order the production of any public instrument; that order must be obeyed. It wants no Insignia of an authority derived from the Crown[6].”

“Judges ought to know, that the poorest peasant is a man as well as the King himself: all men ought to obtain justice; since in the estimation of justice, all men are equal; whether the Prince complain of a peasant, or a peasant complain of the Prince."[7] These are the words of a King, of the late Frederic of Prussia. In his Courts of Justice, that great man stood
upon
  1. Hol. 71. Book 31.
  2. 4 C. A. N. 487.
  3. Brac. 107. Com. 104.
  4. Com. 104.
  5. G. F. 124
  6. Col. Jur. 68.
  7. War. 343