the assumed office of jurists and of judges. Only to the king, representing the majesty of Bohemia, will any baron ever present the least explanation of his conduct. In the assertion of this legal right I am the only person here who does not act as a conspirator and a traitor.”
“The lords spiritual and temporal,” answered Tobias, “embody the justice of the realm. They are moved by the highest dictates of conscientious equity, and barons of every rank may well submit themselves to their sentence.”
“I observe herein,” replied Zawis, “an insidious effort to substitute the usurped authority of an alien for the fundamental law of this land. To permit, or even to think of any such innovation, constitutes a treason against the autonomy of Bohemia. The assumption of such functions as are attempted here, during the king’s necessary absence at Eger and at Erfurt is another proof that unauthorized intruders have begun a system of perversion of the laws of the land, and of subversion of the king’s authority that threatens the extinction of public right. The substitution of alien instructions for the permanent expression and formulated exercise of the nation’s will is the beginning of that subjection of Bohemia, as it would be of any other land, to the mometary convenience of foreign despots that has its originin the great conspiracy that attempts to dominate all nations through spiritual intervention. Not with me shall be begun this overthrow of the law and constitution of Bohemia. I am the less inclined to recog-
