IN criminal proceedings, or prosecutions for offences, it would still be a higher absurdity, if the king personally sate in judgment; because in regard to these he appears in another capacity, that of _prosecutor_. All offences are either against the king's peace, or his crown and dignity; and are so laid in every indictment. For, though in their consequences they generally seem (except in the case of treason and a very few others) to be rather offences against the kingdom than the king; yet, as the public, which is an invisible body, has delegated all it's power and rights, with regard to the execution of the laws, to one visible magistrate, all affronts to that power, and breaches of those rights, are immediately offences against him, to whom they are so delegated by the public. He is therefore the proper person to prosecute for all public offences and breaches of the peace, being the person injured in the eye of the law. And this notion was carried so far in the old Gothic constitution, (wherein the king was bound by his coronation oath to conserve the peace) that in case of any forcible injury offered to the person of a fellow subject, the offender was accused of a kind of perjury, in having violated the king's coronation oath; _dicebatur fregisse juramentum regis juratum_[c]. And hence also arises another branch of the prerogative, that of _pardoning_ offences; for it is reasonable that he only who is injured should have the power of forgiving. And therefore, in parliamentary impeachments, the king has no prerogative of pardoning: because there the commons of Great Britain are in their own names the prosecutors, and not the crown; the offence being for the most part avowedly taken to be done against the public. Of prosecutions and pardons I shall treat more at large hereafter; and only mention them here, in this cursory manner, to shew the constitutional grounds of this power of the crown, and how regularly connected all the links are in this vast chain of prerogative. [Footnote c: Stiernh. _de jure Goth._ _l._ 3. _c._ 3. A notion somewhat similar to this may be found in the mirrour. c. 1. Sec. 5.]