5. In what Governments the Sovereign may be Judge. The Spirit of the Laws | ||
Footnotes
[11]
Plato does not think it right that kings, who, as he says, are priests, should preside at trials where people are condemned to death, to exile, or to imprisonment.
[12]
See the account of the trial of the Duke de la Valette. It is printed in the "Memoirs of Montresor," tome ii, p. 62.
[13]
It was afterwards revoked. See the same account, ii. p. 236. It was ordinarily a right of the peerage that a peer criminally accused should be judged by the king, as Francis II in the trial of the Prince of Cond, and Charles VII in the case of the Duc d'Alenon. To-day, the presence of the king at the trial of a peer, in order to condemn him would seem an act of tyranny. — Voltaire.
5. In what Governments the Sovereign may be Judge. The Spirit of the Laws | ||