[Footnote A:  Such are the descriptions of the British sovereign, to be found in Cowell’s curious book, entitled “The Interpreter.”  The reader may further trace the modern genius of Blackstone, with an awful reverence, dignifying the venerable nonsense—­and the commentator on Blackstone sometimes labouring to explain the explanations of his master; so obscure, so abstract, and so delicate is the phantom which our ancient lawyers conjured up, and which the moderns cannot lay.]

James I. while he held for his first principle that a sovereign is only accountable to God for the sins of his government, an harmless and even a noble principle in a religious prince, at various times acknowledged that “a king is ordained for procuring the prosperity of his people.”  In his speech, 1603, he says,

“If you be rich I cannot be poor; if you be happy I cannot but be fortunate.  My worldly felicity consists in your prosperity.  And that I am a servant is most true, as I am a head and governour of all the people in my dominions.  If we take the people as one body, then as the head is ordained for the body and not the body for the head, so must a righteous king know himself to be ordained for his people, and not his people for him.”

The truth is always concealed by those writers who are cloaking their antipathy against monarchy, in their declamations against the writings of James I. Authors, who are so often influenced by the opinions of their age, have the melancholy privilege of perpetuating them, and of being cited as authorities for those very opinions, however erroneous.

At this time the true principles of popular liberty, hidden in the constitution, were yet obscure and contested; involved in contradiction, in assertion and recantation;[A] and they have been established as much by the blood as by the ink of our patriots.  Some noble spirits in the Commons were then struggling to fix the vacillating principles of our government; but often their private passions were infused into their public feelings; James, who was apt to imagine that these individuals were instigated by a personal enmity in aiming at his mysterious prerogative, and at the same time found their rivals with equal weight opposing the novel opinions, retreated still farther into the depths and arcana of the constitution.  Modern writers have viewed the political fancies of this monarch through optical instruments not invented in his days.

[Footnote A:  Cowell, equally learned and honest, involved himself in contradictory positions, and was alike prosecuted by the King and the Commons, on opposite principles.  The overbearing Coke seems to have aimed at his life, which the lenity of James saved.  His work is a testimony of the unsettled principles of liberty at that time; Cowell was compelled to appeal to one part of his book to save himself from the other.]