On the contrary, it had long been regarded in England as settled law that the subject was entitled to an effective legal remedy for any invasion of his legal rights by the king or the government. He had a right to sue the king for the restitution of property or money or for the recovery of damages for breach of contract, and to sue officers of the crown for any tortious acts. The practice established for centuries had been to present to the king a petition praying leave to sue him, and the custom had been for the king as of course to endorse on the petition his fiat that right be done. Thereafter the action proceeded as any other action between subject and subject. This right was conceded to aliens as well as to subjects. Although the leave to sue was nominally or theoretically granted as a matter of grace and not upon compulsion, it was in fact the constitutional duty of the king to grant it, and it was seldom denied. Under the common law, the subject was entitled as a matter of right--as one of the immemorial liberties of Englishmen--to inform his king of the nature of any grievance, and thereupon, in the language of Blackstone, "as the law presumes that to know of any injury and to redress it are inseparable in the royal breast, it then issues, as of course, in the king's own name, his orders to his judges to do justice to the party aggrieved." The nature of the proceeding under a petition of right has been passed upon by the Supreme Court of the United States in several cases, and its decisions clearly show that the remedy is not to be regarded as a mere matter of grace, but as a right to sue and obtain redress in the class of cases to which it applies. Thus, Chief Justice Marshall, delivering the opinion of the court in Marbury _vs._ Madison at the February term, 1803, said: "In Great Britain the king himself is sued in the respectful form of a petition, and he never fails to comply with the judgment of his court."[29] In United States _vs._ O'Keefe the court at the December term, 1870, examined the nature of the remedy in construing the act of Congress of July 27, 1868, now section 1068 of the United States Revised Statutes. Mr. Justice Davis, speaking for the court, said: "This valuable privilege, secured to the subject in the time of Edward the First, is now crystallized in the common law of England. As the prayer of the petition is grantable _ex debito justitiae_, it is called a petition of right, and is a judicial proceeding, to be tried like suits between subject and subject.... It is of no consequence that, theoretically speaking, the permission of the crown is necessary to the filing of the petition, because it is the duty of the king to grant it, and the right of the subject to demand it. And we find that it is never refused, except in very extraordinary cases, and this proves nothing against the existence of the right.... If the mode of proceeding to enforce it be formal and ceremonious,