public notice given of anything of which the king thinks proper to advertise his subjects.

Proclamations are a branch of the king's prerogative *; and have then a binding force, when (as Sir Edward Coke observes) they are grounded upon and rogative, enforce the laws of the realm. For though the making of laws is entirely the work of a distinct part, the legislative branch of the sovereign power, yet the manner, time, and circumstances of putting those laws in execution, must frequently be left to the discretion of the executive magistrate. And therefore his constitutions or edicts, concerning those points which we call Proclamations, Proclamations, are binding upon the subject, where they do not either contradict the old laws, or tend to establish new ones; but only enforce the execution of such laws as are already in being, in such manner as the king shall judge necessary. Thus the established law is, that the king may prohibit any of his subjects from leaving the realm: a proclamation therefore forbidding this in general for three weeks, by laying an embargo upon all shipping in time of war, will be equally binding as an act of parliament, because founded upon a prior law. But a proclamation to lay an embargo in time of peace upon all vessels laden with wheat, (though in the time of a public scarcity), being contrary to law, and particularly to statute 22 Car. II. c. 13, the advisers of such a proclamation, and all persons acting under it, found it necessary to be indemnified by a special act of parliament, 7 Geo. III. c. 7. A proclamation for disfranchising Papists is also binding, being only in execution of what the legislature has first ordained: but a proclamation for allowing arms to Papists, or for disfranchising any Protestant subjects, will not bind; because the first would be to assume a dispensing power, the latter a legislative one; to the vesting of either of which in any single person the laws of England are absolutely strangers. Indeed, by the stat. 31 Hen. VIII. c. 8, it was enacted, that the king's proclamations should have the force of acts of parliament: a statute, which was calculated to introduce the most despotic tyranny; and which must have proved fatal to the liberties of this kingdom, had it not been luckily repealed in the minority of his successor, about five years after. By a late act of parliament the king is empowered to raise regiments of Roman Catholics to serve in the present war.