The
inconveniency of some particular mischiefs that may happen sometimes
when a heady prince comes to the throne are well recompensed by the
peace of the public and security of the government in the person of
the chief magistrate, thus set out of the reach of danger; it being
safer for the body that some few private men should be sometimes in
danger to suffer than that the head of the republic should be easily
and upon slight occasions exposed.
206. Secondly. But this privilege, belonging only to the king's
person, hinders not but they may be questioned, opposed, and resisted,
who use unjust force, though they pretend a commission from him
which the law authorises not; as is plain in the case of him that
has the king's writ to arrest a man which is a full commission from
the king, and yet he that has it cannot break open a man's house to do
it, nor execute this command of the king upon certain days nor in
certain places, though this commission have no such exception in it;
but they are the limitations of the law, which, if any one transgress,
the king's commission excuses him not. For the king's authority
being given him only by the law, he cannot empower any one to act
against the law, or justify him by his commission in so doing.
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