disputed, and the opposition assented to by the party tacitly, or confirmed by a competent authority, then, of course, there was an end to the legal exercise of such a right. But here the very reverse was the fact. Suppose he were called upon to prove a right of way or a right of common, (the two instances in which the courts of law were most commonly called upon to consider the length of usage,) the principle of law would go with the uniformity, and the absence of exercising the right in one or two particular instances would prove nothing. There were three modes of calling into question the fact of usage. First, as to its uniform enjoyment. Next, where the right claimed by the party had been contested, but nevertheless enjoyed by the person exercising it. And the third case was, where the right asserted had been confiscated, and an adjudication passed upon it: that was of course held to be conclusive against the party, where the right claimed was refused, opposed, and not acquiesced in-then he admitted that no long admission of the right could be pleaded without the fatal interruption of the bar. He entreated their lordships to try the usage of the coronation of the queen-consort by these three principles of investigating such rights founded upon immemorial custom. Of the first, namely, uniform enjoyment, they had abundant proof. As to the second, namely, the occurrence of interruption in the exercise of the right, non-acquiescence in that interruption, a successful and most complete resistance to the attempt to withhold the exercise of the right, they had that, fully sustain

of

ing his proposition, in the case of the wife of Prince Henry; where Henry thought proper in his lifetime to crown his eldest son without also crowning that eldest son's consort. He had therefore with him the uniform enjoyment of the right her majesty claimed; then the successful resistance of an at-. tempt, as in Henry's case, to delay the exercise of the right; and lastly, the total absence of any adjudication or confiscation, or any thing like either in any single instance against him. There was, in fact, no other possible way showing the existence of the right, but in the manner in which he was assuming, proving, and, as he thought, establishing it. How else, before the court of claims, were rights of service at the ceremony of the coronation established? How else did the barons of the Cinque Ports show their right to carry the canopy over the king, and to have a part of that canopy for their service? Suppose any instance in which the barons should, for want of specific proof, in the lapse of ages, fail to show that they had exercised that privilege

would that countervail the validity of their claim, founded on repeated usage? Certainly not. He would venture to say that there were at least half a dozen instances in which the barons could not show they had exercised their asserted right; and would any of these instances, where that proof failed, shake the firm hold of their long and undeniable usage? Upon a reference to the services which were to be performed at the ceremony of the coronation, it was clear, from the separate rights held upon the performance of particular kinds of attendance

attendance upon the queen, that her part of the ceremony was substantive, independent, and principal-that her right was clearly within herself, and not dependent upon the mere will of the king. So essential, indeed, was it that she should be crowned with all the forms of pomp which belonged to such a solemnity, that the same writs of summons were issued, and nearly the same demands of service made upon officers of state, as when the king himself was crowned. The usage clearly governed the right, and more especially in this solemnity of coronation, which was altogether the creature of precedent, and existed only by its authority. The queen's coronation was in itself manifestly a substantive, important, and independent ceremony, illustrative of the right of the one party, and not dependent or contingent upon the mere will of the monarch. The origin of the king's ceremonial was lost in remote antiquity; but the numerous tenures and dependencies determinable by the nonperformance of services at the solemnity, showed how important it was intended to be in the eyes of the people. The only grounds of right for the king's coronation, the queen equally had for hers; and there were, as he had already stated, separate forms prescribed for those who were officially to attend her ceremony. The learned counsel then quoted some passages from the Liber Regalis, being merely directions for particular parts of the ceremonial to be observed on the queen's coronation. Every solemnity of which the origin was lost in distant antiquity, which was in itself of a most high and public nature, and which

occupied a great and important space in the history of the country, he would fearlessly assert, must be deemed and taken as the right of the realm, and not as a mere appanage of the king. He held the coronation of the king himself to be a right of this nature; and that, not merely in the present times on account of the coronation oath, (which had been devised by the legislature on the coronation of William and Mary,) but also in times long before them: indeed it had always been considered as a high and august ceremony with which the monarch himself could not dispense; it being the right of the sovereign, not in his individual but in his political capacity, for the benefit of the whole nation, in which capacity alone the nation knew him at his coronation. So much with regard to the coronation of the king. The coronation of the queen ought to be considered in a similar light, from its having been celebrated almost without interruption with the same publicity, and from being in its nature such as he had repeatedly described it. The king and the queen being both of them the mere creations of the law, the solemnities of their coronations were mere creations of the law also, and were known to it in no other light than as the rights of the whole realm of England. He, therefore, who was ready to take one step and to get rid of the queen's coronation, as a mere optional ceremony, ought to be ready to take also another step and to get rid of the king's coronation on the ground of its being a vain, idle, empty, and expensive pageant; for such it must be to the nation, if it simply depended upon

the

the will and pleasure of the king. The trifling powers which of necessity belonged to the sovereign in his individual capacity formed but a very small chapter when compared with those which belonged to him in his political capacity. Indeed, there were very few, if any such, that he knew of: for the law was anxious to deprive the sovereign of all power as an individual, and the professors of it had even been astute in drawing a distinction between the political and the natural capacity of the king. Any distinction in favour of the king's rights as an individual was most inapplicable to any arguments which regarded the coronation, because that was the very ceremony in which his political capacity stood most prominent, and in which his natural capacity was most deeply merged. What right, it might be asked, had the king to be crowned himself? The answer was obvious. His right was founded upon immemorial usage, and upon uninterrupted enjoyment from the earliest periods of our history down to the present time, with the solitary exception of Edward V. The same argument applied to the case of a queen. Her claim to a coronation rested upon immemorial usage and the numerous rights of indi. viduals which were interwoven and connected with it. Indeed, it rested on the same foundation as the king's, it was supported by the same arguments, and the interruptions which it had experienced admitted of the same explanatious that he had given to those which had occurred in the case of the king. He had mentioned, in the course of his argument, the rights which belonged

to

other individuals in consequence of the queen's right to a coronation. If a coronation was not granted to her majesty, their rights were unavailing to them, and that, in his opinion, formed a very sufficient reason why it should be celebrated. That the coronation was the acknowledgment of the king by the people, he conceived to be a point which it was unnecessary to prove to their lordships; but he might be permitted to remark to them, that the coronation of the queen was even considered as an acknowledgment of her right to enjoy that dignity in an entry in a charter roll of the fifth year of king John, now preserved in the Tower. The entry to which he alluded was the grant of certain lands in dower to his queen Isabella, and it referred by way of recital to her coronation as queen, this excerpt was of no small importance in the consideration of this question; for it proved to their lordships, that in times when the coronation of the king was positively either his elec tion, or the recognition of his election as monarch, the coronation of the queen was conducted, for the very same reasons, with the same solemnities. This was evident from the description of what was done, and from the manner and the avowed object of doing it. John was crowned to show that he was king" coronatus in regem." Isabella was crowned to show that she

was queen-" in reginam coronata communi consensu archiepiscoporum," &c. &c. The very same persons who elected, or recognised, or only crowned him as their monarch, are, in this passage, recorded to have elected, or recognized, or only crowned her

as

as their queen. Was it intended to be maintained that no right existed, whenever something moving from the crown was necessary to the exercise of it? He would frankly confess that he knew of no right which a subject could enjoy without the interposition of the crown in some manner or other. All writs issued from the crown, and no right could be maintained without them; yet, would any one dispute the right of the subject to obtain them? Supposing a peer were to die, and the crown were to refuse a writ of summons to his eldest son it was said to be by petition of right alone that he could sue to the crown to be admitted to his father's reasons; and yet that petition of right would be considered as a strict undeniable legal right. He could refer also to cases in which the subject could demand, not merely the king's writ, but also the king's proclamation, to which he was entitled, not by a common law right, but by a right given him by an express statute; for instance, in all cases relative to prize-money. Again, supposing that the house of commons were to die a natural death after sitting for seven years, and the king were to refuse to issue his proclamation to convoke another within three years of that period, as ordered by the first of William and Mary, sec. 2. cap. 2., would it be asserted that the subject would have no right to call for the proclamation of the king to convoke another parliament, because such proclamation could not issue without an act of the crown? He thought that none of their lordships would advocate such an absurdity. But the sub

ject and the country were in full possession of all these rights; and if the queen's right to a coronation were put upon the same footing, it would be equally clear that she possessed it, and that the necessity of granting it was as obvious as it was imperative. He had heard it said that her majesty could not claim the honours of a coronation by prescription, because she was not a corporation. This, however, he denied. Her majesty certainly could prescribe, for what business had they to call her majesty less a corporation than the king? But still, supposing her not to be a corporation, she had a right to prescribe as a functionary, holding a high dignity and situation. This was evident from baron Comyn's Digest, who, under the title of Prescription, lays it down that such a functionary can claim by prescription. In conclusion, Mr. Brougham said, their lordships would sit in dignified judgment on the opinion given by the great lawyers of the nineteenth century; and, as he firmly believed, finding they had no difficulties to explain, perceiving that they had no obscurities to clear up, they would not be under the necessity of referring to those remote periods of our history, to which he had been obliged to allude, but would look back to the first decision that ever had been given on this question, with that decided confidence which the names of those privy counsellors before whom the case was argued would in after-times command—a judgment, which he ventured confidently to pronounce, would not derogate from the high character they had so long maintained.

Mr. Denman followed on the

same