once begun to make himself notorious for the violence of his opposition
to his father's ministers, carrying the openness of his hostility so far
as, during the Westminster election to drive about the streets with a
carriage and all his servants profusely decorated with Fox's colors;
and, still more discreditably, by most unmeasured profligacy of all
kinds. The consequence was that he soon became deeply involved in debt,
so deeply that, in 1787, a member of Fox's party gave notice of his
intention to move that the Parliament should pay his debts and increase
his income. Pitt, without specifying his reasons, avowed that he should
feel it his duty to oppose any grant of such a character; but another
member of Parliament, Mr. Rolle, one of the members for Devonshire,
being trammelled by no such feeling of responsibility, expressed a
similar resolution in language which contained an allusion perfectly
understood on both sides of the House. He said that "the question thus
proposed to be brought forward went immediately to affect our
constitution in Church and State." And every one knew that he was
referring to a report which had recently become general, that the Prince
was married to a Roman Catholic lady of the name of Fitzherbert. No
direct notice was taken of this allusion at the moment, Fox himself, who
had the chief share of the Prince's confidence, being accidentally
absent; but a day or two afterward he referred to Rolle's speech with
great indignation, declaring that it referred to a "low, malicious
calumny" which had no foundation whatever, and "was only fit to impose
on the lowest order of persons." Being pressed as to the precise force
of his assertion, and being asked whether it meant more than that under
the existing laws, such as the Royal Marriage Act, there had been no
marriage, because there could have been no _legal_ marriage, he declared
that he meant no such evasion, but that no marriage ceremony, legal or
illegal, had ever taken place; and farther, that in saying this he was
speaking on the direct authority of the Prince himself. No more
degrading act stains the annals of British royalty. For the fact was
true--the very next evening Fox learned the deceit which the Prince had
practised on him from a gentleman who had been one of the witnesses to
the marriage, which had been solemnized by a Protestant clergyman
fifteen months before.[114] And his indignation was such that for some
time afterward he abstained from all interference in the Prince's
affairs; while the language held by the Prince's other confidant, Mr.
Sheridan, was so evasive as to betray a consciousness that whatever had
occurred would not bear the light of day; so that there were very few to
whom the truth or falsehood of the report was a subject of interest who
felt any uncertainty on the subject.
It may, probably, be regarded as fortunate for the peace of the kingdom
that the Prince, who eventually became King George IV., left behind him
no issue from his marriage with the Princess, the failure of heirs of
his body thus removing any temptation to raise the question whether he
had not himself forfeited all right to succeed to the throne by his
previous marriage to a Roman Catholic. A clause of the Bill of Rights
provides that any member of the royal family who should marry a Roman
Catholic (with the exception of the issue of princesses who may be the
wives of foreign princes) shall by that marriage be rendered incapable
of inheriting the crown of England. And though the Royal Marriage Act
(which, as we have seen, had been recently passed) had enacted that no
marriage of any member of the royal family contracted without the
consent of the reigning sovereign should be valid, it by no means
follows that an invalidity so created would exempt the contractor of a
marriage with a Roman Catholic, which as an honorable man he must be
supposed to have intended to make valid, from the penalties enacted by
the Bill of Rights. It is a point on which the most eminent lawyers of
the present day are by no means agreed. The spirit of the clause in that
bill undoubtedly was, that no apparent or presumptive heirs to the crown
should form a matrimonial connection with any one who should own
allegiance to a foreign power, and that spirit was manifestly
disregarded if a prince married a Roman Catholic lady, even though a
subsequent law had enacted a conditional invalidity of such a marriage.
We may find an analogy to such a case in instances where a man has
abducted a minor, and induced her to contract a marriage with himself.
The lady may not have been reluctant; but the marriage has been
annulled, and the husband has been criminally prosecuted, the nullity of
the marriage not availing to save him from conviction and punishment. A
bigamous marriage is invalid, but the bigamist is punished. And, apart
from any purely legal consideration, it may be thought that public
policy forbids such a construction of law as would make the illegality
or invalidity of an act (and all illegal acts must be more or less
invalid) such a protection to the wrong-doer as would screen him from
punishment.
Whatever may be the judgment formed on the legal aspect and merits of
the case, the conduct of the Prince could not fail to give the great
body of the people, justly jealous at all times of their national
adherence to truthfulness and honesty, a most unfavorable impression of
his character. As has been already mentioned, Fox was so indignant at
having been made the instrument to assure the Parliament and the nation
of a falsehood, that he for a time broke off all communication with
him.[115] Yet a singular caprice of fortune, or, it would be more proper
to say, a melancholy visitation of Providence, before the end of the
following year led Fox to carry his championship of the same Prince who
had so abused his confidence to the length of pronouncing the most
extravagant eulogies on his principles, and on his right to the
confidence and respect of the nation at large. In the autumn of 1788 the
King fell into a state of bad health, which in no long time affected his
mind, and, by the middle of November, had so deranged his faculties as
to render him incapable of attending to his royal duties, or, in fact,
transacting any business whatever. Parliament was not sitting, but its
re-assembling had been fixed for the 4th of December, and before that
day arrived the King's illness had assumed so alarming a character, and
it appeared so unsafe to calculate on his immediate recovery, that the
minister summoned a Privy Council, the summons being addressed to the
members of the Opposition as well as to his own followers, to receive
the opinions of the physicians in attendance on his Majesty, as a
necessary foundation for the measures which he conceived it to be his
duty to propose to Parliament. Those opinions were, that it was almost
certain that the disease would not be permanent, though no one could
undertake to fix its duration with the least appearance of probability.
And, as the royal authority could not be left in abeyance, as it were,
for an uncertain period, it was indispensable to appoint a Regent to
conduct the affairs of the kingdom till the King should, happily, be
once more in a condition to resume his functions.
In considering the line of conduct adopted in this emergency by Pitt and
his great rival Fox, Pitt has one manifest advantage on his side, that
it is impossible to attribute the course which he took to any personal
motive, or any desire for the retention of official power; while it is
equally impossible to doubt that Fox was in no slight degree,[116] and
that Lord Loughborough, the prince's chief adviser on points of law, was
wholly influenced by the hope of supplanting the ministry. Pitt had
never the least doubt that on the establishment of the Regency he should
be dismissed, and was prepared to return to the Bar. But his knowledge
of the preference which the Prince entertained for his rival did not
lead him to hesitate for a single moment as to the propriety of placing
him in a situation to exercise that preference. On the reassembling of
Parliament, he at once took what he conceived to be the proper
parliamentary course of proceeding; at his suggestion committees in both
Houses were appointed to take a formal examination of the royal
physicians; and, when those committees had reported that the King was
for the present incapable of discharging his royal functions, though
likely at some future period to be able to resume them, he moved the
House of Commons to appoint another committee, to search for "precedents
of such proceedings as might have been taken in the case of the personal
exercise of the royal authority being prevented or interrupted by
infancy, sickness, or infirmity, with a view to provide for the same."
Such a search for precedents was no novelty, and may be thought to have
been especially proper in such a case as this, since history recorded
the appointment of several regencies, one under circumstances strikingly
resembling those now existing, when, in 1454, Henry VI. had fallen into
a state of imbecility, and the Parliament appointed the Duke of York
Protector[117] of the kingdom.
But Fox instantly opposed it with extreme vehemence, declaring that the
appointment of such a committee would be a pure waste of time. It was
notorious, he affirmed, that no precedent existed which could have any
bearing on the present case, since there was in existence a person such
as had never been found on any previous occasion, an heir-apparent of
full age and capacity to exercise the royal authority; and he declared
it to be his deliberate opinion that the Prince of Wales had "as clear
and express a right to assume the reins of government, and to exercise
all the powers of sovereignty, during the illness and incapacity of the
sovereign, as if that sovereign were actually deceased." Such an
assertion of indefeasible right was so totally at variance with the Whig
doctrines which Pitt, equally with Fox, regarded as the true principles
of the constitution, that Pitt at once perceived the advantage which it
gave him, by enabling him to stand forward as the supporter of the
supreme authority of Parliament, which Fox had by implication denied. He
instantly replied that to assert an inherent indefeasible right in the
Prince of Wales, or any one else, independently of the decision of the
two Houses, fell little short of treason to the constitution; but, at
the same time, to prevent any one pretending to misconceive his
intentions, he allowed it to be seen with sufficient plainness that,
when once the right of Parliament to appoint the Regent had been
established, he should agree in the propriety of conferring that office
on the Prince of Wales. The committee was appointed; but, even before it
could report the result of its investigations, the doctrine advanced by
Fox had been the subject of discussion in the House of Lords, where Lord
Camden, who had presided over the meeting of the Privy Council a few
days before, on moving for the appointment of a similar committee of
peers, had taken occasion to declare that, if Fox had made such an
assertion as rumor imputed to him, it was one which had no foundation in
"the common law of the kingdom." He had never read nor heard of such a
doctrine. Its assertors might raise expectations not easily laid, and
might involve the country in confusion. And he contended, as Pitt had
done in the Commons, that its assertion was a strong argument in favor
of the appointment of a committee, that it might be at once seen whether
it were warranted by any precedent whatever. The reports of the two
committees bore out Fox's statement, that no precedent entirely
applicable to the case before them had ever occurred. But by this time
Fox had learned that the argument which he had founded on it was in the
highest degree unpalatable both to Parliament and to the nation; and for
a moment he sought to modify it by an explanation that, though he had
claimed for the Prince "the naked right, he had not by that expression
intended to maintain that that right could be reduced into possession
without the consent of Parliament;" an explanation not very reconcilable
to common sense, since, if a right were inherent and indefeasible,
Parliament could not, without absolute tyranny, refuse to sanction its
exercise; and, in fact, his coadjutor, Sheridan, on the very same
evening, re-asserted his original doctrine in, if possible, still more
explicit terms, warning the minister "of the danger of provoking the
Prince to assert his right," while a still greater man (Burke) declared
that "the minister had taken up an attitude on the question tantamount
to that of setting himself up as a competitor to the Prince." Such
inconsiderate violence gave a great advantage to Pitt, one of whose most
useful characteristics as a debater was a readiness and presence of mind
that nothing could discompose. He repelled such menaces and imputations
with an equally lofty scorn, and, after a few necessary preliminaries,
brought forward a series of resolutions, one of which declared the fact
of the sovereign's illness, and consequent incapacity; a second affirmed
it to be the right and duty of the two Houses of Parliament to provide
the means for supplying the defect in the royal authority; and a third
imposed on the Houses the task of deciding on the mode in which the
royal assent necessary to give their resolutions the authority of law
should be signified. It was impossible to object to the first; but the
second was stubbornly contested by the Opposition, the chiefs of the
Coalition Ministry once more fighting side by side; though Lord North
contented himself with arguing that the affirmation of the right and
duty of Parliament was a needless raising of a disputable point, and
moving, therefore, that the committee should report progress, as the
recognized mode of shelving it. Fox, however, carried away by the heat
of debate, returned to the assertion of the doctrine of absolute right,
overlooking his subsequent modification of it, and again gave Pitt the
advantage, by condescending to impugn his motives for proposing the
resolution, as being inspired, not by a zeal for the constitution, but
by a consciousness that he did not deserve the confidence of the Prince,
and, therefore, anticipated his instant dismissal by the Regent. The
re-affirmation of the Prince's inherent right was, indeed, necessary to
Fox as the foundation for the objections which he took to other parts of
Pitt's scheme. For the minister, while admitting to its full extent the
irresistible claim which the Prince of Wales possessed to the preference
of Parliament for the Regency, proposed at the same time to impose
certain limitations on his exercise of the authority, so long as there
was a reasonable hope of his royal father's recovery. He was not to have
the power to create peerages, nor to alienate the property of the crown,
nor to grant offices in reversion; and, as the Queen was to have the
care of his Majesty's person, she also was to have the appointment of
all the offices in the royal household. Fox, on the other hand, objected
with extreme earnestness to the impropriety of imposing any limitations
whatever on the power of the Regent; and then the question whether the
Prince was to derive his right to the Regency from the authority of
Parliament, or from his natural position and inalienable preceding right
as his father's heir, became one of practical importance. If the
Parliament had the right to confer authority, it had clearly the right
to limit the authority it conferred. If the Prince had an indefeasible
right to the Regency, independently of the will of Parliament, then
Parliament could have no pretence to limit or restrain the exercise of
an authority which in no degree flowed from itself. Fox, indeed, took
another objection to the imposing of limitations to the authority to be
intrusted to the Regent, contending that this would be to create a power
unknown to the constitution--a person in the situation of King without
regal power. But, not to mention precedents drawn from the reigns of
Edward III., Richard II., and Henry VI., in the twenty-fourth year of
the very last reign, George II., on the death of his son, the father of
the present King, had enjoined the Parliament to provide for the
government, in the case of his own death, while the heir was still a
minor, recommending to them the appointment of the Princess Dowager of
Wales as Regent, "with such powers and limitations as might appear
expedient." And, in conformity with his desire, the Parliament had
appointed the Princess Regent, with a Council of Regency to assist her;
and had enacted that "several portions of the regal power" should be
withheld from the Regent, if she could not obtain the consent of the
Council thus appointed.[118]
This part of the case was so plain, that when, after the different
resolutions proposed by Pitt had been adopted in both Houses, Fox
insisted that, instead of proceeding by a bill to create a Regency, and
to appoint the Prince of Wales Regent, the only course which could be
adopted with propriety would be to present an address to the Prince, to
entreat him to assume the government, he failed to induce the House to
agree with him; and finally, as if he were determined to find a
battle-field in every clause, he made a vigorous resistance to the
expedient by which Pitt proposed that the formal royal assent which was
necessary to make the bill law should be given. Fox, on one occasion,
had gone the length of denying that the two Houses had any right to be
regarded as a Parliament while the King, an essential part of
Parliament, was incapacitated. But such an objection could have had no
force, even in the mind of him who raised it, since the proceedings of
the two Convention Parliaments of 1660 and 1689 labored under a similar
defect; and yet their acts had been recognized as valid, and ratified by
subsequent Parliaments. And now, in reference to the expedient proposed
by the minister, that the two Houses should empower and authorize the
Lord Chancellor to affix the Great Seal to the bill, Burke, with great,
but for him not unusual, violence, denounced both the proposal and the
Chancellor, declaring that such a step would be the setting up of a
phantom of sovereignty, a puppet, an idol, an idiot, to which he
disclaimed all allegiance. A more perilous amendment was one proposed to
another clause by Mr. Rolle, enacting that if the Regent should marry a
Roman Catholic his authority should cease. Since the Bill of Rights, as
we have seen, forbade a sovereign to marry a Roman Catholic without
incurring the forfeiture of his crown, it was evidently reasonable that
the same restriction should be imposed on every Regent; but it was hard
at the moment altogether to dissociate such a clause from the
discussions of the preceding year; and Mr. Rolle endeavored to give the
clause a more pointed meaning by an amendment to enact that the
forfeiture should be incurred by the mere celebration of any marriage
ceremony, whether the marriage thus performed were legal and valid or
not. His amendment, however, was unanimously rejected. The bill was
passed without alteration by the House of Commons; the Prince, while
protesting in an elaborate and most able letter, drawn up for him by
Burke, against the restrictions imposed by the bill, nevertheless
consented to sacrifice his own judgment to the general good of the
kingdom, and to accept the authority, limited as it was. And by the
middle of February the bill was sent up to the House of Lords. There
Lord Camden had charge of it, and his position as a former Chancellor
gave irresistible weight to his opinion that the mode proposed to give
the final sanction to the bill was strictly in accordance with the
spirit and practice of the constitution. The point with which he dealt
was the previous one, how Parliament, which was to pass the bill, was to
be opened, for, "circumstanced as it was, Parliament could not at
present take a single step." The law, as he put it, declared that the
King must be present, either in person or by a representative. When he
could not attend personally, the legal and constitutional process was to
issue letters-patent under the Great Seal. In the present dilemma,
therefore, he recommended that the two Houses should direct
letters-patent to be issued under the Great Seal, authorizing
commissioners to open Parliament in the name of his Majesty. He "must
use the liberty to say that those who treated this proposal with
ridicule were ignorant of the laws of their country. A fiction it might
be termed, but it was a fiction admirably calculated to preserve the
constitution, and, by adopting its forms, to preserve its substance."
The authority of the Great Seal he explained to be such that, "even if
the Lord Chancellor, by caprice, put it to any commission, it could not
afterward be questioned;" and he adduced a precedent of a very similar
character to the course now proposed, which occurred "at the
commencement of the reign of Henry VI., when, the sovereign being an
infant of nine months old, the Great Seal was placed in his hand, and it
was supposed to be given to him by the Master of the Rolls, whereupon
many commissions were sealed by it, and the government was carried on
under its authority." That precedent, he reminded the peers, had been
followed as recently as the year 1754, when, during an illness of George
II., Lord Chancellor Hardwicke affixed the Great Seal to a commission
for opening a session of Parliament. And, finally, he concluded by
moving, "That it is expedient and necessary that letters-patent for
opening the Parliament should pass under the Great Seal."[119] The
motion was carried, and Parliament was opened in accordance with it;
and, if it had been necessary, the same expedient would have sufficed to
give the requisite assent to the Regency Bill, a necessity which was
escaped by the fortunate recovery of the royal patient, which was
announced by his medical advisers a day or two before that fixed for the
third reading of the bill in the House of Lords.
Though the question was thus left undetermined for the moment, it was
revived twenty-two years afterward, when the same sovereign was attacked
by a recurrence of the same disease, and the existing ministry, then
presided over by Mr. Perceval, brought forward a Regency Bill almost
identical with that which on this occasion had been framed by Mr. Pitt;
and the Opposition, led by Lord Grey and Sir Samuel Romilly, raised as
nearly as possible the same objections to it which were now urged by Fox
and his adherents. The ministerial measure was, however, again supported
by considerable majorities; so that the course proposed by Mr. Pitt on
this occasion may be said to have received the sanction of two
Parliaments assembled and sitting under widely different circumstances;
and may, therefore, be taken as having established the rule which will
be adopted if such an emergency should, unfortunately, arise hereafter.
And indeed, though the propriety of Pitt's proposals has, as was
natural, been discussed by every historical and political writer who has
dealt with the history of that time, there has been a general
concurrence of opinion in favor of that statesman's measure. Lord John
Russell, while giving a document, entitled "Materials for a Pamphlet,"
in which he recognizes the handwriting of Lord Loughborough, and which
"contains the grounds of the opinion advanced by him, and adopted by Mr.
Fox, that, from the moment the two Houses of Parliament declared the
King unable to exercise his royal authority, a right to exercise that
authority attached to the Prince of Wales," does not suppress his own
opinion of the "erroneousness of this or any other doctrine that
attributes to any individual or any constituted authority existing in
the state a strict or legal right to claim or to dispose of the royal
authority while the King is alive, but incapable of exercising it."[120]
The only writer, as far as I am aware, who advocates the opposite view
is Lord Campbell, who, after quoting the speech of Lord Camden, from
which extracts have been made, comments on it, and on the whole
transaction, in the following terms: "From the course then adopted and
carried through, I presume it is now to be considered part of our
constitution that if ever, during the natural life of the sovereign, he
is unable by mental disease personally to exercise the royal functions,
the deficiency is to be supplied by the two Houses of Parliament, who,
in their _discretion_, will probably elect the heir-apparent Regent,
under such restrictions as they may please to propose, but who may
prefer the head of the ruling faction, and at once vest in him all the
prerogatives of the crown. On the two occasions referred to in the reign
of George III., the next heir being at enmity with the King and his
ministers, this was considered the loyal and courtly doctrine; and, from
its apparent advancement of the rights of Parliament, there was no
difficulty in casting odium on those who opposed it. But I must avow
that my deliberate opinion coincides with that of Burke, Fox, and
Erskine, who pronounced it to be unsupported by any precedent, and to be
in accordance with the principles of the Polish, not the English,
monarchy. The two Houses of Parliament would be the proper tribunal to
pronounce that the sovereign is unable to act; but then, as if he were
naturally as well as civilly dead, the next heir ought of right to
assume the government as Regent, ever ready to lay it down on the
sovereign's restoration to reason, in the same way as our Lady Victoria
would have returned to a private station if, after her accession, there
had appeared posthumous issue of William IV. by his queen. It is easy to
point out possible abuses by the next heir as Regent, to the prejudice
of the living sovereign; but there may be greater abuses of the power of
election imputed to the two Houses, whereby a change of dynasty might be
effected. I conceive, therefore, that the Irish Parliament[121] in 1789
acted more constitutionally in acknowledging the _right_ of the next
heir, in scouting the fiction of a commission or royal assent from the
insane sovereign, and in addressing the Prince of Wales to take on
himself the government as Regent."
Though the sneers at the possibility of Parliament preferring "the head
of the ruling faction" to the heir-apparent be hardly consistent with
the impartial candor which is one of the most imperative duties of an
historical critic, and though the allusion to the principles of the
Polish monarchy be not very intelligible, yet no one will refuse to
attach due weight to the deliberate opinion of one who won for himself
so high a professional reputation as Lord Campbell. But, with all
respect to his legal rank, we may venture to doubt whether he has not
laid down as law, speaking as a literary man and an historian, a
doctrine which he would not have entertained as a judge. For, if we
consider the common law of the kingdom, it is certain that, in the case
of subjects, if a man becomes deranged, his next heir does not at once
enter on his property "as if he were naturally as well as civilly dead."
And if, as in such cases is notoriously the practice, the Court of
Chancery appoints a guardian of the lunatic's property, analogy would
seem to require that the Houses of Parliament, as the only body which
can possibly claim authority in such a matter, should exercise a similar
power in providing for the proper management of the government to that
which the law court would exercise in providing for the proper
management of an estate; and that, therefore, the principles of
constitutional[122] statesmanship, which is deeply interested in
upholding the predominant authority of Parliament, must justify the
assertion of the ministers that the two Houses had the entire and sole
right to make regulations for the government of the kingdom during the
incapacity of the sovereign; and that the next heir, even when a son of
full age, can have no more right to succeed to his father's royal
authority in his lifetime than, if that father were a subject, he would
have to succeed to his estate.
The opposite doctrine would seem to impugn the legality of the whole
series of transactions which placed William and Mary on the throne. The
admission of an indefeasible right of the heir-apparent would have borne
a perilous resemblance to a recognition of that divine right, every
pretension to which the Revolution of 1688 had extinguished. If, again,
as Fox and his followers at one time endeavored to argue, the Houses in
1789 had no right to the name or power of a Parliament, because the King
had no part in their meetings, the convention that sat a century before
(as, indeed, was admitted) was certainly far less entitled to that name
or power, for it had not only never been called into existence by a
King, but was assembled in direct defiance of the King. Similarly, it is
admitted that the body which invited Charles II. to return and resume
his authority was equally destitute of the validity which could only be
given by a royal summons. Yet both these bodies had performed actions of
greater importance than that which was looked for from this Parliament.
The one had abolished the existing and usurping government, and restored
to his kingdom a King who had been long an exile. The other had, as it
were, passed sentence on the existing sovereign, on grounds which
confessedly will not bear a strict examination, and had conferred the
crown on a prince who had no hereditary claim to the title. The
justification of both acts was necessity. _Salus regni suprema Lex_. And
the necessity was clearly more urgent in the present case than in either
of the preceding instances. For, unless the Parliament interfered to
create an authority, there was absolutely none in existence which was
capable of acting. It should also be remembered that this Parliament of
1789, though not opened for the session by the King, had been originally
elected in obedience to his order, and had been prorogued by his
proclamation to the day of meeting;[123] and, though the opening of a
session by a speech from the throne is the usual form for the
commencement of its proceedings, it may be doubted whether it be so
indispensable a part of them that none of their acts are valid without
it.
The breaking out of the French Revolution, and the degree in which, in
spite of all its atrocities and horrors, the revolutionary spirit for a
time infected a large party in England, prevented Pitt from reviving the
plan of Reform which he had framed with such care and genius for
organization, and in which, though defeated in Parliament, both before
and after he became minister, he had hitherto continued to cherish the
hope of eventually succeeding. But when clubs and societies, where the
most revolutionary and seditious doctrines were openly broached, were
springing up in London and other large towns, and unscrupulous
demagogues by speeches and pamphlets were busily disseminating theories
which tended to the subversion of all legitimate authority, he not
unnaturally thought it no longer seasonable to invite a discussion of
schemes which would be supported in many quarters only, to quote his own
words, "as a stepping-stone to ulterior objects, which they dared not
avow till their power of carrying them into effect should be by this
first acquisition secured." But the alarm which the spread of
revolutionary ideas excited in his mind was displayed, not only
passively in this abstention from the advocacy of measures the
expediency of which must at all times in some degree depend on the tone
of their introduction, but also in active measures of repression, some
of which were not, indeed, unwarranted by precedent, but others of which
can hardly be denied to have been serious inroads on the constitution,
infringements of the freedom of opinion and discussion to which all
Englishmen are entitled, and one of which was, to say the least, a very
perilous extension of a law already sufficiently severe, the statute of
treason. If the French had been content with the overthrow of their own
government and institutions, much as we should have lamented the
indiscriminate rashness and abhorred the atrocities with which their
design was carried out, we should still have adhered to the
unquestionable maxim, that no nation is justified in interfering in the
internal affairs of another. But the Jacobin and Girondin demagogues,
who had now the undisputed sway in Paris, did not limit their views to
their own country, but openly declared themselves the enemies of all
established governments in every country; and the Convention passed a
formal resolution in which they proffered "fraternity and assistance" to
every people which might be inclined to rise against their governments.
Their resolutions were officially communicated to the sympathizing
societies in England, and emissaries were secretly encouraged to cross
the Channel in the hope of gaining converts. Nor were their exertions
barren. Two men were convicted in Scotland of a plot to seize Edinburgh
Castle, to massacre the garrison, to imprison the judges, and to rise in
arms to compel the government to a change of policy. In London the King
was fired at on his way to open Parliament, and on his return his
carriage was attacked by a furious mob, and was only protected from
serious injury by a troop of the Life Guards. Such outrages proved the
existence of a new danger, against which no previous government had ever
been called on to provide, and such as, in the opinion of the cabinet,
could only be met by novel measures of precaution.
The first was directed against the foreign propagators of revolution.
The resolutions of the Convention had been promulgated in November,
1792; and at the meeting of Parliament in December, Lord Grenville, as
Foreign Secretary of State, introduced in the House of Lords an alien
bill, to enable the government to deal in a summary manner with any
foreign visitors whose conduct or character might seem to call for its
interference. It provided that all foreigners who had arrived in the
kingdom since the preceding January should give in a statement of their
names and residences; that any one who should arrive in future should
furnish an account of his name, his station in life, and his object in
visiting England; that the King, by proclamation, order in Council, or
sign-manual, might direct all foreigners to reside in such districts as
might be thought suitable; that no one might quit the residence in which
he first settled without a passport; and that the Secretary of State
might order any suspected foreigner to quit the kingdom instantly.
The act was to be in operation for twelve months, and Lord Grenville, in
introducing it, though he admitted it to be a measure of "rather a novel
nature," explained at the same time that it was so far from being new in
the powers which it gave, that Magna Charta distinctly recognized "the
power and right of the crown to prevent foreigners from entering or
residing within the realm." All that was really new was the defining of
the manner in which that power should be exercised, since it had been so
rarely needed that doubts might exist as to the proper mode of putting
it in action. The bill, which was adopted in both Houses by large
majorities, is remarkable, among other circumstances, from the fact that
its discussion furnished the first instance of a public display of the
difference between the two sections of the Opposition, subsequently
described by Burke in one of his most celebrated pamphlets as the Old
and New Whigs; those whom he called the Old Whigs (the Duke of Portland,
Sir Gilbert Elliott, Mr. Windham, not to mention Burke himself)
earnestly supporting it, while Lord Lansdowne, Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan,
and Mr. Grey resisted it with equal zeal. Lord Lansdowne took the ground
that it was a suspension of the _Habeas Corpus_ Act; while Fox and Grey
denounced it, in more general terms, as a measure "utterly
irreconcilable with the principles of the constitution," Mr. Grey
apparently referring chiefly to the power given by the bill to the
Secretary of State to send any foreigners from the country, which he
described as "making the bill a measure of oppression, giving power for
the exercise of which no man was responsible." Sir Gilbert Elliott's
answer was singularly ingenious. He did not deny that the bill conferred
additional power on the crown, though not more than was justified by
existing circumstances; but he maintained that the right of giving
extraordinary powers to the crown on occasions was so far from being
inconsistent with the principles of the constitution, that to grant
extraordinary powers in extraordinary emergencies was a part of it
essential to the character of a free government. If such powers were at
all times possessed by the crown, its authority would be too great for a
free government to co-exist with it; but if such could not be at times
conferred on the crown, its authority would be too small for its own
safety or that of the people.
The arguments of the ministers were, no doubt, greatly recommended, both
to the Parliament and the people in general, by the notoriety of the
fact that foreign agents were in many of our large towns busily, and not
unsuccessfully, engaged in propagating what were known as Jacobin
doctrines. But, even without that aid, it was clear that every
government must, for the common good of all, be at times of
extraordinary emergency invested with the power of suspending laws made
for ordinary circumstances. And what would be an intolerable evil, if
the supreme magistrate took upon himself to exercise it, ceases to be
one when the right to exercise it is conferred by the nation itself in
Parliament. If the bill did, as was argued, suspend the _Habeas Corpus_
Act, that statute had been enacted by Parliament, and therefore for
Parliament, in a case of necessity, to suspend its operation was clearly
within the spirit of the constitution.
The bills affecting our own fellow-subjects were still more warmly
contested. One was known as the Traitorous Correspondence Bill, which,
according to Lord Campbell, was suggested by Lord Loughborough, who had
lately become Lord Chancellor. The old law of high-treason, enacted in
the reign of Edward III., had been in effect greatly mitigated by later
statutes, which had made acts to which that character was imputed more
difficult of proof, by a stricter definition of what was admissible
evidence, and other safeguards; and the practice of the courts had by
degrees practically reduced the list of treasons enumerated in the old
law, indictments for many of the offences contained in it forbearing to
assert that the persons accused had incurred the penalty of
high-treason. But this new bill greatly enlarged the catalogue. It made
it high-treason to hold any correspondence with the French, or to enter
into any agreement to supply them with commodities of any kind, even
such as were not munitions of war, but articles of ordinary merchandise,
or to invest any money in the French Funds; and it enacted farther that
any person who, by "any writing, preaching, or malicious and advised
speaking," should encourage such designs as the old statute of Edward
made treasonable, should be liable to the penalties of high-treason.
Another bill was designed to check the growing custom of holding public
meetings, by providing that no meeting, the object of which was to
consider any petition to the King or Parliament, or to deliberate on any
alleged grievance, should be held without those who convened it, and who
must be householders, giving previous notice of it by public
advertisement; and empowering any two justices of the peace, at their
own discretion, to declare any such meeting an unlawful assembly, and to
disperse it by force, if, from the subjects discussed, the language
held, or any special circumstances, they should regard it as dangerous.
Fox, and those who still adhered to him, resisted almost every clause of
these different bills. They maintained that one of the most fundamental
maxims of law "in every country calling itself free was, that property
was in the highest degree entitled to the protection of the law; and, if
so, that the right of disposing of it or investing it in any manner must
be considered under the same protection;" that any interference "with
ordinary commercial transactions was equally repugnant to the spirit of
the constitution;" and, taking a practical view of the question, they
warned the minister that such rigorous enactments imposing such extreme
penalties would defeat their own end; for "it was a general and true
maxim, that excess of punishment for a crime brings impunity along with
it; and that no jury would ever find a verdict which would doom a
fellow-creature to death for selling a yard of cloth and sending it to
France." They protested, too, against inflicting on words, whether
written or spoken, penalties which had hitherto been confined to overt
acts. And the clauses conferring power on magistrates to prevent or
disperse public meetings encountered still more vehement opposition; Fox
insisting, with great eloquence, that "public meetings for the
discussion of public subjects were not only lawful, but agreeable to the
very essence of the constitution; that, indeed, to them, under that
constitution, most of the liberties which Englishmen now enjoyed were
particularly owing." The people, he maintained, had a right to discuss
their grievances. "They had an inalienable right to complain by
petition, and to remonstrate to either House of Parliament, or to the
King; and to make two magistrates, who might be strong partisans,
irresponsible judges whether anything said or done at a meeting had a
tendency to encourage sedition, was to say that a free constitution was
no longer suitable to us." Pitt justified these measures, partly on the
ground of the special and unprecedented danger of the times, as proved
by the late attempt on the King's life, and partly by the open avowal of
republican doctrines made at the meetings of different societies;
partly, also, on the temporary character of the measures, since in each
bill a period was fixed after which its operation should expire. And he
argued, farther, that, as many of the actions specified in these bills
as seditious or treasonable were by many lawyers considered capable of
being reached by statutes already existing, though not universally
understood, it was "humane, not cruel, to remove doubts, and to prevent
men from being ensnared by the ambiguity of old laws."
And in May, 1794, he brought in another bill, founded on the report of a
secret committee which, in compliance with a royal message, the House of
Commons had appointed to investigate the proceedings and objects of
certain societies which were known to exist in different parts of the
kingdom. In obedience to a Secretary of State's warrant, founded on
sworn informations, their books and papers had been seized, and, having
been sealed up, were now laid before the House, with the report of the
committee that they proved that several of the societies which they
named had, ever since the end of the year 1791, been uniformly pursuing
a settled design for the subversion of the constitution; one society, in
particular, having approved a plan for assembling a Convention, in
imitation of the French Assembly sitting under that title, in order to
overturn the established government, and to wrest from the Parliament
the power which the constitution placed in its hands.
To prevent the dissemination of such principles, and to defeat such
schemes, Pitt now asked leave to bring in a bill to empower his
Majesty--acting, of course, through the Secretary of State--to secure
and detain such persons as he should suspect of conspiring against the
King's person and government. He admitted that the power which he thus
proposed to confer amounted to a suspension of the _Habeas Corpus_ Act
in every part of the United Kingdom; nor did he deny that it was an
unusually strong measure, but he contended that it was one justified by
absolute necessity, by the manifest danger of such a conspiracy as the
committee had affirmed to exist to the tranquillity of the nation and
the safety of the government.
Fox, it may almost be said as a matter of course, opposed the
introduction of any such measure; but his opposition was hardly marked
by his usual force of argument. He was hampered by the impossibility of
denying either the existence of the societies which the committee and
the minister had mentioned, or the dangerous character of some of their
designs; but he objected to the measures of repression which were
proposed, partly on the absence of all attempts at concealment on the
part of the promoters of these societies, partly on the contemptible
character of the Convention which it was designed to summon, and the
impossibility that such an assembly should have the slightest influence.
He even made their avowed hostility to the constitution a plea for a
panegyric on that constitution, and on the loyal attachment to it
evinced by the vast majority of the people; and from that he proceeded
to found a fresh argument against the proposed measure, contending that
it made a fatal inroad on that very constitution which was so highly
valued by the whole nation. He described it as a measure "of infinitely
greater mischief than that which it proposed to remedy, since it would
give the executive authority absolute power over the personal liberty of
every individual in the kingdom." He did not deny that a similar measure
had been enacted under William III., again in 1715, and again in 1745;
but he contended that "the present peril bore no resemblance to the
dangers of those times. This measure went to overturn the very
corner-stone of the constitution, and if it passed, there was an end of
the constitution of England." The bill was passed in both Houses by very
large majorities.[124] It was originally enacted for six months only,
but was from time to time renewed till the end of the century.
If we take a general survey of all these measures together, as parts of
one great defensive scheme for the preservation of the public
tranquillity and the general safety of the empire, it may, probably, be
thought that, though undoubtedly suspensions of the constitution, they
are not open to the charge of being unconstitutional, since they were
enacted, not only for the welfare of the people, but with their consent
and concurrence, legitimately signified by their representatives in
Parliament. It is scarcely consistent with sound reason to contend that
the _habeas corpus_, which had been enacted by Parliament, could not be
suspended by the authority which had enacted it; that the constitution,
which exists for the benefit of the people, could not be suspended by
the people; or to deny, if it was in appearance transgressed by these
enactments, that it was yet transgressed by strictly constitutional
acts, by the decision of the Parliament, to whose power the constitution
prescribes no limits.
But it is not sufficient that in this point of view these measures may
have been defensible. In judging of their statesmanship, it is almost
equally to be considered whether they were expedient and politic,
whether the emergency or necessity were such as to justify such rigorous
methods of repression. It was fairly open to doubt whether some of them,
and especially the Traitorous Correspondence and the Seditious Meetings
Bills, did not treat as treasonable acts which did not go beyond
sedition, and whether so to treat them were not to invest them with an
importance which did not belong to them. And on this part of the
question the general judgment has, we think, been unfavorable to the
government; and it has been commonly allowed that the Chancellor, whose
advice on legal subjects the Prime-minister naturally took for his
guide, gave him impolitic counsel. In fact, it is well known that these
two acts, to a great extent, failed in their object through their
excessive severity, several juries having refused to convict persons who
were prosecuted for treason, who would certainly not have escaped had
they only been indicted for sedition; and it is deserving of remark that
these two bills were not regarded with favor by the King himself, if the
anecdote--which seems to rest on undeniable authority--be true, that he
expressed satisfaction at the acquittal of some prisoners, on the ground
that almost any evil would be more tolerable than that of putting men to
death "for constructive treason." It must therefore, probably, be
affirmed that these two acts, the Treason Act and the Seditious Meetings
Act, went beyond the necessity of the case; that they were not only
violations of the constitution--which, when the measures are temporary,
as these were, are not always indefensible--but that they were
superfluous, unjust, and impolitic; superfluous, when they proposed to
deal with acts already visitable with punishment by the ancient laws of
the kingdom; unjust, when they created new classes of offences; and
impolitic, as exciting that kind of disapproval of the acts of
government which in many minds has a tendency to excite a spirit of
discontent with and resistance to legitimate authority. And, indeed, it
must be inferred that such was the light in which these measures were
regarded by a statesman who in his general policy was proud to
acknowledge himself Mr. Pitt's pupil, as he was also the most skilful
and successful of his more immediate successors. Twenty-five years
afterward the distress caused by the reaction inevitably consequent on
the termination of twenty years of war produced a political excitement
scarcely inferior to that with which Pitt had now to deal, and seditious
societies and meetings scarcely less formidable; but, as we shall see,
Lord Liverpool, taking warning, perhaps, from the mistake into which Mr.
Pitt was led on this occasion, though compelled to bring forward new and
stern measures of repression, and even to suspend the _Habeas Corpus_
Act for a time, kept strictly within the lines of constitutional
precedent, and was careful to avoid confounding sedition with treason.
Notes:
[Footnote 73: He had been Lord-chamberlain in Lord Rockingham's
administration of 1765. He was now Lord-lieutenant of Ireland.]
[Footnote 74: In Lord Chatham's or the Duke of Grafton's ministry of
1766, and in the later administration of Lord Rockingham.]
[Footnote 75: It may be convenient to take this opportunity of pointing
out that, in this administration, Lord Shelburne altered the old, most
unreasonable, and inconvenient arrangement by which the departments of
the two Secretaries of State were distinguished by the latitude, and
called Northern and Southern. By a new division, one took charge of the
home affairs, the other of the foreign affairs. And in 1794 a third
Secretary was added for War, who, by a very singular arrangement, which
continued till very recently, had charge also of the colonies. But, in
the year 1855, the Colonial-office was intrusted to a separate minister;
and in 1858 a fifth Secretary of State, that for India, was added, on
the transfer of the government of that country from the East India
Company to the Crown. When there were only two Secretaries of State, the
rule was that one should sit in each House. At present it is not
_necessary_ that more than one should be a peer, though it is more usual
for two to be members of the Upper House. And it is usual also for the
Under-secretaries to be members of the House to which the
Chief-secretaries do not belong, though this rule is not invariably
observed.]
[Footnote 76: "Parliamentary History," xxiii., 163.]
[Footnote 77: The divisions were: 224 to 208, and 207 to 190.]
[Footnote 78: Lord Stanhope, quoting from an unpublished "Life of Lord
Barrington," compiled by the Bishop of Durham (meaning, I suppose,
Bishop Shute Barrington).--_History of England_, v., 174.]
[Footnote 79: Even with the first flush of triumph, the night after the
second defeat of Lord Shelburne in the House of Commons, Fox's great
friend, Mr. Fitzpatrick, writes to his brother, Lord Ossory: "To the
administration it is _cila mors_, but not _victoria loeta_ to us. The
apparent juncture with Lord North is universally cried out
against."--Lord J. Russell's _Memorials and Correspondence of C.J. Fox_,
ii., 18.]
[Footnote 80: Lord J. Russell's "Memorials and Correspondence of C.J.
Fox," ii., 90.]
[Footnote 81: _Ibid_., p. 118.]
[Footnote 82: In one division (161 to 137) they had only a majority of
twenty-four.]
[Footnote 83: In a letter to Lord Northington (Lord-lieutenant of
Ireland), dated July 17, Fox himself mentions that not one of his
colleagues, except the Duke of Portland and Lord Keppel (First Lord of
the Admiralty), approved of it.--_Memoirs of Fox_, ii., 116.]
[Footnote 84: November 22 he writes to the Duke of Rutland: "The bill
... is, I really think, the boldest and most unconstitutional measure
ever attempted, transferring at one stroke, in spite of all charters and
compacts, the immense patronage and influence of the East to Charles
Fox, in or out of office."--Stanhope's _Life of Pitt_, i., 140.]
[Footnote 85: The whole paper is given by the Duke of Buckingham,
"Courts and Cabinets of George III," i., 288, and quoted by Lord Russell
in his "Memorials and Correspondence of C. J. Fox," ii., 251. It is
endorsed, "Delivered by Lord Thurlow, December 1, 1783. Nugent Temple."]
[Footnote 86: "Life of Pitt," i., 148. Lord Stanhope does not pledge
himself to these being "the exact words of this commission, but as to
its purport and meaning there is no doubt." They are, however, the exact
words quoted by Fox in his speech in support of Mr. Baker's resolutions
on the 17th.--_Parliamentary History_, xxiv., 207.]
[Footnote 87: "Parliamentary History," xxiv., 151-154.]
[Footnote 88: 95 to 76. "Strange to say, one of the cabinet ministers,
Lord Stormont, president of the council, formed part of the final
majority against the bill."--_Life of Pitt_, ii., 154.]
[Footnote 89: "Life of Pitt," i., 155.]
[Footnote 90: "Lives of the Chancellors," c. clix. Lord Thurlow.]
[Footnote 91: "The Grenville Papers," iii., 374. It may, however, be
remarked, as tending to throw some doubt on Mr. Grenville's statement,
that Lord Campbell asserts that "Lord Mansfield, without entering into
systematic opposition, had been much alienated from the court during
Lord Rockingham's first administration."--_Lives of the Chief-justices_,
ii., 468.]
[Footnote 92: Vol. ii., pp. 229-232.]
[Footnote 93: It will be seen hereafter that this doctrine was admitted
in the fullest degree by Sir Robert Peel in the winter of 1884, when he
admitted that his acceptance of office made him alone responsible for
the dismissal of Lord Melbourne, though, in fact, he was taken entirely
by surprise by the King's act, being in Italy at the time.]
[Footnote 94: Lord John Russell, in his "Memorials of Fox" (ii., 253),
affirms that "Lord Temple's act was probably known to Pitt;" but Lord
Macaulay, in his "Essay on Pitt" (p. 326), fully acquits Pitt of such
knowledge, saying that "he could declare, with perfect truth, that, if
unconstitutional machinations had been employed, he was no party to
them."]
[Footnote 95: On Lord Effingham's motion, in condemnation of some of the
proceedings of the Commons, which was carried February 4, 1784, by 100
to 53.]
[Footnote 96: "Parliamentary History," xxiv., 383-385--debate of January
20, 1784.]
[Footnote 97: _Ibid_, p. 283--January 12.]
[Footnote 98: _Ibid_., pp. 251-257.]
[Footnote 99: "Parliamentary History," xxiv., 478--February 2.]
[Footnote 100: _Ibid_., p. 663.]
[Footnote 101: "Parliamentary History," xxiv., 687, 695, 699.]
[Footnote 102: The numbers were 201 to 189. The week before, on Mr.
Powys's motion for a united and efficient administration, the majority
had been 20--197 to 177. On a motion made by Mr. Coke, February 3, the
majority had been 24--211 to 187. At the beginning of the struggle the
majorities had been far larger--232 to 143 on Fox's motion for a
committee on the state of the nation, January 12.]
[Footnote 103: 191 to 190.]
[Footnote 104: From December 19, when Pitt accepted office, to March 24,
when the Parliament was dissolved.]
[Footnote 105: "Memorials and Correspondence of C.J. Fox," by Earl
Russell, ii., 229, 248.]
[Footnote 106: _Ibid_., p. 280.]
[Footnote 107: That of April, 1831, after the defeat of the Government
on General Gascoyne's amendment]
[Footnote 108: Lord Macaulay, "Miscellaneous Essays," ii., 330.]
[Footnote 109: Lord Macaulay, essay on William Pitt.]
[Footnote 110: Alison ("History of Europe," xiii., 971) states the
English force in the Netherlands in 1794 at 85,000 men. Lord Stanhope
calls the English at Minden 10,000 or 12,000.]
[Footnote 111: An eminent living writer (Mr. Leeky, "History of
England," ii., 474) quotes with apparent approval another comparison
between the father and son, made by Grattan, in the following words:
"The father was not, perhaps, so good a debater as his son, but was a
much better orator, a greater scholar, and a far greater man." The first
two phrases in this eulogy may, perhaps, balance one another; though,
when Mr. Lecky admits that "Lord Chatham's taste was far from pure, and
that there was much in his speeches that was florid and meretricious,
and not a little that would have appeared absurd bombast but for the
amazing power of his delivery," he makes a serious deduction from his
claim to the best style of eloquence which no one ever made from the
speeches of his son. But Grattan's assertion that the man who, as his
sister said of him, knew but two books, the "Æneid" and the "Faerie
Queene," was superior in scholarship to one who, with the exception of
his rival, Fox, had probably no equal for knowledge of the great authors
of antiquity in either House of Parliament, is little short of a
palpable absurdity. We may, however, suspect that Grattan's estimate of
the two men was in some degree colored by his personal feelings. With
Lord Chatham he had never been in antagonism. On one great subject, the
dispute with America, he had been his follower and ally, advocating in
the Irish House of Commons the same course which Chatham upheld in the
English House of Peers. But to Pitt he had been almost constantly
opposed. By Pitt he and his party, whether in the English, or, so long
as it lasted, in the Irish Parliament, had been repeatedly defeated. The
Union, of which he had been the indefatigable opponent, and to which he
was never entirely reconciled, had been carried in his despite; and it
was hardly unnatural that the recollection of his long and unsuccessful
warfare should in some degree bias his judgment, and prompt him to an
undeserved disparagement of the minister by whose wisdom and firmness he
had been so often overborne.]
[Footnote 112: Massey's "History of England," iii., 447; _confer_ also
Green's "History of the English People," vol. iv.]
[Footnote 113: Hallam ("Middle Ages," ii., 386, 481), extolling the
condition of "the free socage tenants, or English yeomanry, as the class
whose independence has stamped with peculiar features both our
constitution and our national character," gives two derivations for the
name; one "the Saxon _soe_, which signifies a franchise, especially one
of jurisdiction;" and the other, that adopted by Bracton, and which he
himself prefers, "the French word _soc_, a ploughshare."]
[Footnote 114: Lord Colchester's "Diary," i., 68, mentions that the
officiating clergyman was Mr. Burt, of Twickenham, who received £500 for
his services. Lord John Russell ("Memorials and Correspondence of Fox,"
ii., 284-389) agrees in stating that the marriage was performed in the
manner prescribed by the Common Prayer-book. Mr. Jesse, in his "Life of
George III.," ii., 506, gathering, as the present writer can say from
personal knowledge, his information from some papers left behind him by
the late J.W. Croker, says: "The ceremony was performed by a Protestant
clergyman, though in part, apparently, according to the rites of the
Roman Catholic Church." Lord John Russell avoids discussing the question
whether the marriage involved the forfeiture of the inheritance of the
crown, an avoidance which many will interpret as a proof that in his
opinion it did. Mr. Massey's language ("History of England," iii., 327)
clearly intimates that he holds the same opinion.]
[Footnote 115: Russell's "Life of Fox," ii., 187.]
[Footnote 116: Fox's private correspondence is full of anticipations
that the Regent's first act will be to dismiss Pitt, and to make him
minister. In a letter of December 15 he even fixes a fortnight as the
time by which he expects to be installed; while Lord Loughborough, who
was eager to possess himself of the Great Seal--an expectation in which,
though well-founded, he would, as it proved, have found himself
disappointed--was led by his hopes to give the Prince counsel of so
extraordinary a nature that it is said that the ministers, to whose
knowledge it had come, were prepared, if any attempt had been made to
act upon it, or even openly to avow it, to send the learned lord to the
Tower. ("Diary of Lord Colchester," i., 28.) In an elaborate paper which
he drew up and read to the Prince at Windsor, he assured his Royal
Highness, speaking as a lawyer, that "the administration of government
devolved to him of right. He was bound by every duty to assume it, and
his character would be lessened in the public estimation, if he took it
on any other ground but right, or on any sort of compromise. The
authority of Parliament, as the great council of the nation, would be
interposed, not to confer but to declare the right. The mode of
proceeding should be that in a short time his Royal Highness should
signify his intention to act by directing a meeting of the Privy
Council, when he should declare his intention to take upon himself the
care of the state, and should at the same time signify his desire to
have the advice of Parliament, and order it by proclamation to meet
early for the despatch of business.... It is of vast importance in the
outset that he should appear to act entirely of himself, and, in the
conferences he must necessarily have, not to consult, but to listen and
direct." The entire paper is given by Lord Campbell ("Lives of the
Chancellors," c. clxx.).]
[Footnote 117: Hume's account of this transaction is, that the Duke
"desired that it might be recorded in Parliament that this authority was
conferred on him from their own free motion, without any application on
his part; ... and he required that all the powers of his office should
be specified and defined by Parliament."]
[Footnote 118: "Parliamentary History," xxvii., 803--speech of Mr.
Hardinge, one of the Welsh judges, and M.P. for Old Sarum.]
[Footnote 119: I take this report, or abstract, of Lord Camden's speech
from the "Lives of the Chancellors," c. cxlvii.]
[Footnote 120: "Memorials of Fox," ii., 292.]
[Footnote 121: The proceedings of the Irish Parliament on this occasion
will be mentioned in the next chapter.]
[Footnote 122: Mr. Hallam (iii., 144, ed. 1832) gives a definition of
the term "unconstitutional" which seems rather singular: "By
unconstitutional, as distinguished from 'illegal,' I mean a novelty of
much importance, tending to endanger the established laws." May not the
term rather be regarded as referring to a distinct class of acts--to
those at variance with the recognized _spirit_ of the constitution or
principles of government, with the preservation of the liberties of the
people, as expressed or implied in the various charters, etc., but not
forbidden by the express terms of any statute?]
[Footnote 123: The entry in the "Parliamentary History," November 20,
1788, is: "Both Houses met pursuant to the last prorogation. Later
meetings were in consequence of successive adjournments."]
[Footnote 124: In the Commons by 183 to 33; in the Lords by 119 to 11.]