PROCLAMATION. By the constitution of England, the crown possesses the exclusive prerogative of issuing proclamations ; for although this authority is exercised by the lord mayor in the city of London, and by the heads of some other corporations in other cities, for certain limited purposes, it is always founded upon custom or charter, and consequently only exists in such cases by delegation from the crown.
The nature and objects of royal proclamations are various. In some instances they are merely an authoritative promulgation of matters of state, or of acts of the executive government which it is necessary that all persons should know, and upon notice of which, as presumed to be conveyed by a public proclamation, certain duties and obligations attach to subjects. Proclamations of the accession of a new king or a demise of the crown, and proclamations for reprisals upon a declaration of war with a foreign state, and for rendering coin current within the realm, are examples of this kind. Another class of proclamations con sists of those which declare the intention of the crown to exercise some prerogative or enforce the execution of some law which may have been for a time dormant or suspended, but which a change of circumstances renders it necessary to call into operation. Thus the crown might, by a proclamation in time of war, lay an embargo upon shipping, and order the ports to be shut, by virtue of its ancient end undoubted prerogative of prohibiting any of its subjects from leaving the realm. Another, and by far the most usual, class of proclamations issued by the crown consists of formal declarations of existing laws and penalties, and of the intentions of government to enforce them, designed, as some of the early books term it, guoad terrorent populi, and merely as admonitory notices for the prevention of offences. A familiar
instance of this kind of declaration is the proclamation against vice and immorality, appointed to be read at the opening of all courts of quarter. sessions.
At present the royal prerogative does not authorise the creation of an offence by proclamation which is not a crime by the law of the land. In early periods of our history after the Norman conquest, the power of the crown in this respect appears to have been much more extensive, and instances of proclamations may be found in Rymer's Fcedera,' and elsewhere, evincing an assumption of almost despotic authority by the crown. In the reign of Henry VIII. the king was enabled, with the advice of hia council, to set forth proclamations under such penalties and pains as to him might seem necessary ; but this was by Act of Parliament, and the statute was repealed about five years afterwards. A strenuous attempt was made in the reign of James I. to strengthen the crown by increasing the prerogative of making proclamations, which, though encouraged and promoted by the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and Bacon, were resisted by Coke, and occasioned great alarm and dissatisfaction among the people. The encroachments which had been made aud attempted in this respect are enumerated and complained of in the Petition of Grievances' by the Commons, in 16I0 (Howell's 'State Trials,' vol. ii.); and in the same year it was expressly resolved by the judges (of whom Sir Edward Coke was one) that the king could not by his proclamation create an offence which was not an offence before; "for if so, he might alter the law of the land by his proclamation." (Coke's ' Reports,' part 12.)