Vol. 12 · pages 191–195

III CHAPTER II THE CROWN (1) The King’s title to the Crown. —Before the Resolution of 1688 when James II fled from the country, it was not certain by what right the King claimed the Crown, whether it was hereditary or elective. But there can be no doubt that thereafter the title to the Crown has become a Parliamentary title, in the sense that Parliament can alter the succession to the Crown. The title to the Crown is at present regulated by the provisions of the Act of Settlement passed in the year 1701. By that Act, the title to the Crown was conferred upon William and Mary and the heirs of their body. The title stipulates two conditions : One, the Successor must be an heir, male or female and two, the Successor must be a Protestant Christian by faith. (2) Rights and duties of the Crown.—The rights of the King are either Statutory or Prerogative. Statutory rights are those which are conferred upon the King by an Act of Parliament. The prerogative rights are the Customary or Common Law Rights of the King which he has been exercising and which have not been taken away by law. It is unnecessary... with those rights and duties of the King which are statutory because they are capable of exact definition and ascertainment by reference to the Statute from which they are derived. The prerogative rights on the other hand are not capable of such ascertainment by reference to any statute because it is of the essence of a prerogative right that is not derived from Statute. Prerogative rights of the King are customary rights and are independent of Statute, and like all customary rights the nature and extent have to be investigated by a Court of Law whenever they are asserted. The King’s prerogatives may be conveniently discussed under the following heads : (A) Personal Prerogatives (1) The King can do no wrong.—All acts are done in the name of the King, but by virtue of this Prerogative, the King is not responsible for any of his acts. The person responsible for his

172 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES royal acts are his Ministers. The King, therefore, cannot be sued or otherwise held responsible for his executive acts. When a subject is aggrieved by a breach of contract, he cannot sue the King, nor can he sue the King in respect of a tort. A special provision is made to soften the rigour of the rule which is known as the Petition of Right procedure. Under it, a subject aggrieved may petition the Crown for redress and that petition will become justiciable only if the AttorneyGeneral, who is the Law-Officer of the Crown, issues his fiat permitting justice to be done in which case alone, the Courts can proceed with the petition as though it was a plaint in a suit. Even then there are certain rules which though they are binding between private parties, would not be binding upon the Crown, for instance it is a rule that the Crown cannot by contract hamper its future executive actions. As a result, the Crown can always dismiss a servant of the Crown at any time, no matter what the period of contract was, because such a contract would hamper the future executive action of the Crown. Consequently a servant of the Crown cannot sue the Crown for damages for wrongful dismissal even by a Petition of Rights. (2) The King never dies. —The King has the attributing immortality. A particular person wearing the Crown may die. But the King survives. Immediately upon the decease of a reigning King, his Kingship, without any interregnum or interval, vests in his heirs. That is the law, and the popular cry—The King is dead ; Long live the King—is in conformity with the Law. The Coronation ceremony is not necessary to invest the King with Kingly power. A King can act as a King although he has not been coronated, provided he is the next heir of the last King. The Coronation ceremony has no other effect than to proclaim to the subjects and to the world at large, who the King is. (3) Lapse of time will not as a rule bar the right of the Crown to sue or to prosecute. —To put it in a different way, the law of limitation does not apply to the Crown, as it does to a private individual. The private individual must sue or prosecute within a stated period fixed by the law of limitation. The Crown is free from the time-bar. The statement of this prerogative right must

173THE CROWN now be qualified so far as the right to sue is concerned. The law of limitation has made the time-bar applicable to the Crown although the period of limitation is sixty years. The Prerogative of the Crown’s right to prosecute remains in tact. (4) When the right of the King and the right of the subject come in conflict, a subject’s right must give way to the King’s. (5) The King is not bound by statutes unless expressly named in it. (II) Political Prerogatives Now these may be divided into two categories into which they naturally fall: those which relate to the internal Government of the country and those which relate to foreign affairs. As to the King’s Political Prerogatives which relate to the internal Government of the country, they may be considered in relation to the three divisions of State activity, e.g., the executive. the judicial and the legislative. According to the English Constitutional law, the executive Government vests in the King. It is his Prerogative to be the supreme head of the executive. As such, he has the authority to appoint Ministers and other officers of the state political as well as permanent. It is his prerogative to dismiss them. He is also the head of the Army, the Navy, the Air-force and the Civil Service. Every one appointed to discharge the service of the State, no matter how he is appointed, is in law the servant of the Crown. Turning to his Judicial Prerogative, the King at one time actually sat in Court to dispense justice but this Prerogative the King has now lost. The King at one time could create any Court and invest it with jurisdiction to try any matter or any cause he chose to prescribe. The establishment of the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission by Charles I is an illustration of how wide was the King’s judicial Prerogative. But this Prerogative also, the King has now lost. The King can now only create by Prerogative, i.e., without the Sanction of Parliament, Court to administer the Common law. Even this remnant of a Prerogative he cannot exercise, because of the

174 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES necessity of financial legislation which such a course would involve, which would make it necessary for him to obtain the sanction of Parliament. Only four bits of his Judicial Prerogatives now remain. (1) He can grant leave to appeal to the Privy Council. (2) He can appoint judges. (3) He can pardon a criminal. (4) He can stifle the prosecution of a criminal, either by declining to offer evidence or by entering a formal Grote Praseu. Coming to the legislative Prerogatives of the King, they extended at one time to vast proportions. The King at one time claimed the power to make laws independently of Parliament, to suspend laws in particular cases and to dispense with them generally. All this has now been altered. The right to suspend and dispense with laws made by Parliament is now completely lost. The right to legislate is also lost, except in so far as it relates to Crown Colonies. The only legislative Prerogatives that remains to the King are the Prerogatives right (1) to summon Parliament, (2) to prorogue Parliament, (3) to dissolve Parliament. There are two other classes of Prerogatives which relate to the internal administration of the Country which must be referred to before considering the other classes of Prerogatives which relate to foreign affairs. They are Ecclesiastical Prerogatives and Revenue Prerogatives. Ecclesiastical Prerogatives.—The King is the supreme head of the Church of England as established by law. As the head of the Church, he appoints on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, Archbishops, Bishops and certain other dignitaries of the Church. In his Prerogative right, the King convokes, prorogues and dissolves two Houses of the convocation and it is in his Prerogative right that the King can grant leave of appeal to the Privy Council from the decisions of the ecclesiastical Courts. Revenue Prerogatives.—The revenues of the British Government fall into two classes, (1) the ordinary revenues and (2) the extraordinary revenues. The ordinary revenues are called the Prerogative revenues and they are derived from the following sources, (1) The custody of a Bishop’s temporalities, i.e., the