161. This power, whilst employed for the benefit of the community
and suitably to the trust and ends of the government, is undoubted
prerogative, and never is questioned. For the people are very seldom
or never scrupulous or nice in the point or questioning of prerogative
whilst it is in any tolerable degree employed for the use it was
meant- that is, the good of the people, and not manifestly against it.
But if there comes to be a question between the executive power and
the people about a thing claimed as a prerogative, the tendency of the
exercise of such prerogative, to the good or hurt of the people,
will easily decide that question.
162. It is easy to conceive that in the infancy of governments, when
commonwealths differed little from families in number of people,
they differed from them too but little in number of laws; and the
governors being as the fathers of them, watching over them for their
good, the government was almost all prerogative. A few established
laws served the turn, and the discretion and care of the ruler suppled
the rest. But when mistake or flattery prevailed with weak princes, to
make use of this power for private ends of their own and not for the
public good, the people were fain, by express laws, to get prerogative
determined in those points wherein they found disadvantage from it,
and declared limitations of prerogative in those cases which they
and their ancestors had left in the utmost latitude to the wisdom of
those princes who made no other but a right use of it- that is, for
the good of their people.
Pages:
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158