1819 Aug. 26

Fallacies 2

Ch | | Logical High

| | King can do no wrong

Absurd as it is the first mentioned import is that which at the time the maxim was first broached was attached to it by the venal and servile crew who were the founders of that fictitious system so miscalled by the name of law - the perpetually removable instruments of his despotism - the lawyers /Judges and other Crown-lawyers. (a)

Under the Stuarts, when under a prospect of support from a large portion of the people whose patience had at length been wearied by misrule some eminent lawyers headed by Lord Coke the displaced /a disgraced/ and malecontent Chief Justice, had engaged in opposition lawyercraft and[?] and employed itself in counteracting as above the effect of this maxim by one of an opposite tendency drawn /spun/ out of its own bowels. A ground for it in precedent was found for it in the case of several Court favouriates and other instruments who in different parts of the history and perished on the scaffold.

In doing this, they did all that in the then existing state of the public mind was capable of being done, towards opposing any barrier whatsoever has soever feeble to monarchical despotism /tyranny/.

Note (a)

(a) Note on Droit[?] le Roi. Thinking probably to obtain Court favour at the time of the contest between John Wilkes and the King's Ministers a man of Licoln's Inn of the name of Brichnock[?], a lawyer who then was or had been an Attorney, published a book under the law french title of Droit le Roi - Rights of the King. Without the selection made of them and the varnish put upon them by Blackstone, it consisted of extracts fiathfully made /compiled/ from the books of the old lawyers. As faithful as any icture can be of that which has no existence, it was a picture of /such part of the/ the Common Law as relates

to

to the powers of the Monarch It was such a picture as no Sophy[?] of Persia, no Czar of Muscovy, could have complained of as falling short of his rights, that is of his desires. Apprehencion of being looked upon as being at the bottom of it, the mininsterial party in the House proposed, and the opposition acceded to, the burning of it by the hands of the Common hangman; and burnt it was. Some years after, the compiler in Ireland was hanged for murder.