Sec. 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; they are far from examining prerogative, whilst it is in
any tolerable degree employed for the use it was meant, that is,
for 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.
Sec. 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 supplied 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 thus declared limitations of prerogative were by the
people found necessary in 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.
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