his own flock, ... but took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the
man that was come to him.

"And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to
Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall
surely die: ...

"And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the Lord God of
Israel ... Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house;
because thou has despised me ... Behold, I will raise up evil against
thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine
eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor." Here, as the heading to the
Twelfth Chapter of Second Book of Samuel says, "Nathan's parable of the
ewe lamb causeth David to be his own judge," but the significant part of
the story is that Nathan, with all his influence, could not force David
to surrender his prey. David begged very hard to have his sentence
remitted, but, for all that, "David sent and fetched [Bathsheba] to his
house, and she became his wife, and bare him a son." Indeed, she bore
him Solomon. As against David or David's important supporters men like
Uriah had no civil rights that could be enforced.

Even after the judicial function is nominally severed from the executive
function, so that the sovereign himself does not, like David and
Solomon, personally administer justice, the same result is reached
through agents, as long as the judge holds his office at the will of the
chief of a political party.

To go no farther afield, every page of English history blazons this
record. Long after the law had taken an almost modern shape, Alice
Perrers, the mistress of Edward III, sat on the bench at Westminster and