ABDICATION

ABDICATION, properly speaking, is the act whereby a person renounces and gives up any right, office, or dignity, particularly the supreme power. By a nice distinction, abdication is supposed to differ from resignation, and to imply an unconditional surrender; whereas by resignation is meant relinquishment, as a free and voluntary act, usually in favour of another: but this distinction is rather conventional than real, and of so little practical utility, that many abdications have been called voluntary, while in fact they were the result of necessity, or of court intrigue. The flight of a sovereign from his dominions has usually been styled an abdication, which, although the act be virtually such, is a meaning not strictly proper, as nullifying its true sense of renunciation.

Since the Revolution of 1688, the throne of England can only lawfully be abdicated with consent of the two houses of Parliament; but by precedent it is established, that by actions subversive of the constitution, the sovereign virtually renounces the authority which he claims by that very constitution. The flight of James II. was declared by Parliament to be an abdication; and the power that could unmake a king, might easily invest a word with a new signification; for in a full assembly of the lords and commons, met in convention upon the supposed vacancy of the throne, both houses, in spite of James's protest, came to this resolution, "that King James the Second having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of the kingdom, by breaking the original contract between king and people; and, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons having violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of this kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby vacant." See Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. i. p. 211; vol. iv. p. 78.

The Roman magistrates were said "to abdicate," when, from informality in the auspices, utpote vitiosi, or for any other reason, they quitted their office before the usual term had expired. Abdication was also used for the act whereby

a father discarded or disclaimed his son, and expelled him from the family. See Rubino, Römische Staatsverfassung, p. 88.

Among the most memorable abdications of antiquity may be especially mentioned, that of Sylla the dictator, n. c. 79; and that of the Emperor Diocletian, the fierce persecutor of the Christians, A.D. 305. The following are the most important abdications of later times in chronological order:—