Justice & Law Quote by Robert Walpole

Walpole is doing something very 18th-century and very modern: wrapping raw power politics in the language of constitutional principle. The sentence is a barricade built out of “prerogatives,” “servants,” and “the crown” - terms that sound abstract until you notice what’s really at stake. Parliament wants the king to ditch an official; Walpole insists that unless there’s a named crime, the request isn’t accountability, it’s a raid on executive authority.

The intent is defensive, but not merely loyalist. Walpole is protecting a governing arrangement that depends on patronage and discretion: the monarch’s right to choose (and keep) his people. By framing the move as “without so much as alleging any particular crime,” he recasts political opposition as procedural recklessness. It’s a neat inversion: the accusers become the lawbreakers, not because their target is innocent, but because their method threatens the architecture of rule.

The subtext is a warning about precedent. If you can remove a “servant” by pressure and insinuation rather than charges, you’ve created a new lever for Parliament to control the court - a shift of power disguised as moral housekeeping. Walpole’s phrase “one of the greatest encroachments” is calibrated alarmism: not hysteria, but a signal to elites who understand that institutions don’t usually collapse in a coup; they get revised by “just this once” exceptions.

Context matters: Britain is negotiating the post-Glorious Revolution balance between crown and Parliament. Walpole, master of managing that balance, is arguing that even in a constitutional monarchy, the crown must retain some private machinery of choice - or it stops being a crown at all.