moved the order of the day for calling over the House on this day.

said, that the very respectable and numerous attendance which the House then exhibited, must be considered as the effect of the order. He would put it therefore to the right hon. gent. whether, all circumstances considered, it would not be advisable to wave inforcing the order at present, though he must admit it might be desirable to keep it suspended over the House, in order to insure a full attendance in every future stage of the important discussions that were to take place.

allowed, that as far as the present individual day was concerned, there was no cause of complaint for non-attendance; but he thought it was important to enforce the call, in order to shew that it was the intention of the House to insure, during the whole of the important discussion which was about to take place, the steady attention of the members.

The motion was then agreed to, and strangers having been excluded, the names of all the members were called over; a proceeding which occupied above two hours.

then moved, That the House be called over on Monday se'nnight; which motion was agreed to; as was also a subsequent motion, That those members who did not then attend should be taken into custody.

, the House resolved itself into a Committee of the whole House, to take into consideration the State of the Nation. Mr. Lushington took the chair.

then rose, and spoke to the following effect: In conse- quence of the notice which I recently gave, I now rise to call the attention of the Committee to the consideration of that disastrous state of the nation into which the unfortunate indisposition of his Majesty—an indisposition so severely felt and so universally lamented by the country—has placed it. I feel, Sir, that in doing this it must be wholly unnecessary for me to make any peculiar efforts to awaken the feelings or excite the interest of the Committee on such an important subject. When we consider the nature of the calamity, to the existence of which our present meeting is to be attributed, it is impossible not to contemplate it with the utmost pain and sympathy. Had such a malady fallen on the humblest individual in the land, one with whom we were wholly unconnected by relation, dependence, or interest, it would unquestionably be our endeavour, first to provide the means of restoring that individual to health, and secondly to secure to him affectionate guardians until that restoration should be effected. Had such a malady fallen on those to whom we were attached by dearer ties, the feelings in every man's breast must, I am sure, render unnecessary any description of the course which we should hasten to pursue. But, Sir, in the instance of our sovereign—a sovereign who has now reigned so long over this country—a sovereign who has been on the throne for above half a century—a blessing to his people—watchful of their interests—and marking in his conduct the most scrupulous regard to the true principles of the constitution—a sovereign, whose private virtues have been the constant and just theme of our praise and admiration—I say, Sir, that when such a sovereign becomes so afflicted, I am fully confident there is not a heart in this House or in the country which does not beat with the warmest sympathy for his distress. These, Sir, are the feelings which arise in my mind on a view of the subject strictly personal to the sovereign; but there are others, deeply connected with the public interest, which are called forth by a more general view of the subject. It is to these considerations to which I now wish to call the attention of the Committee. Among the foremost of these is the fact, that by the present state of his Majesty's health the functions of the executive government are in a great measure suspended, and the public service impeded and embarrassed. This consideration alone will be sufficient to attract the attention of the Committee to the line of conduct which his Majesty's ministers feel it their duty to recommend. Sir, I lament that it should fall to the lot of such an individual as myself, from the situation in which I have the honour to be placed, to address the Committee on this subject,—to be the first to lead this House to the consideration of it. I should feel wholly inadequate to the undertaking, if I did not think that I could point out, from the example of those who have struggled against calamities of a similar nature to that under which we now labour, the mode which we ought to pursue as the best calculated to extricate us from the difficulties of our situation. We are at the present moment, Sir, situated precisely as the country found itself situated at the latter end of the year 1788. The proceedings adopted by the two Houses of Parliament on that occasion—an occasion, I repeat, in which we were circumstanced precisely as we are at the present moment,—will, in my apprehension, be found to be the true line of conduct which the two Houses of Parliament ought now to adopt; and by the adoption of which we shall avail ourselves of the lights, of the judgment, and of the experience of our predecessors. I have said, Sir, that the two cases are the same. Certainly, there is a difference from the loss of those abilities and talents, which, looking with an eagle eye through our legal history, and through the principles of our constitution, recommended that course which was ultimately adopted in 1788. Still, however, there are circumstances which render the situation of the country at present easier of extrication from its embarrassment, than in the year 1788. First, that to which I have already alluded—a most important circumstance—namely, the precedent which has been established, and also, Sir, because on the present occasion no question has yet been introduced by which the right and duty of the two Houses of Parliament, thus called upon to supply the existing deficiency, has ever been glanced at. We know, Sir, how much the discussions of 1788 were embarrassed, and how many difficulties then presented themselves by the assertion of an inherent right elsewhere, a right afterwards so properly disclaimed by the illustrious person on whose behalf it was asserted. There is also another consideration which should induce us to expect that the debates on the present occasion will be conducted more wisely and more successfully than in 1788. Hitherto our discussions have not been marked with that intemperance of party spirit, with that violation of Parliamentary usage which attended—which marked, disturbed, and even disgraced, the proceedings to which I allude. There has not yet appeared any symptom of such a disposition, and we may therefore hope, that in consequence, the decision of the two Houses of Parliament may recommend itself more satisfactorily to the country by the temperance and deliberation by which it has been preceded.

We have paused upon this interesting and important occasion, Sir, as long as the nature of the case would admit. No further delay can with propriety be allowed. It is our immediate duty seriously to look at our situation, and to provide the best remedy for the distresses which arise from it. Those distresses, Sir, I pointed out to the notice of the House, when I gave notice of my present motion. I then declared that I would submit to the House three preliminary Resolutions, similar to those agreed to in 1788; and I added that I would state the general outline of the plan that I would recommend for adoption at the present period. The question, which undoubtedly must precede all others, is the judgment of the House upon the fact. The House must first record on the Journals their opinion of the unfortunate state of his Majesty's health, and of his actual incapacity to execute the regal functions. The second question will be in the form of another Resolution, expressive of those obligations on both Houses of Parliament to supply the deficiency in the royal functions and to provide a remedy for the embarrassments, which arise out of the peculiar situation of the country. The remaining question relates to the form of proceeding by which those obligations are to be discharged. But, Sir, before I enter into a consideration of this third Resolution, on which I conceive, from what I collected the other night, that the principal part of the debate will hinge, I feel it necessary, or rather I feel it expedient, to submit to this committee my view of the measures which I shall hereafter have to propose to the House in the shape of a Bill. As to the question of fact, the Resolution which I shall move is—

"That it is the opinion of this committee, that his Majesty is prevented by his present indisposition from coming to his parliament, and from attending to the public business; and that the personal exercise of the royal authority is there by suspended."

On this question, Sir, I apprehend that no doubt can be entertained. If I could suppose that any doubt existed on the subject, I would refer to the testimony of his Majesty's physicians, as well that taken before the privy council as the evidence reported from our own committee. Those who have attended to those reports, must have found in them sufficient evidence of the melancholy fact. In referring to that evidence at the present time, I shall go no further than to state, that the fact there appears established beyond the power of contradiction. Unquestionably, the report from our own committee affords as good ground for the probable expectation of his Majesty's ultimate recovery, as that which we derived from the examination before the privy council; and certainly the impression on my mind is, that that recovery, although the period of it cannot be exactly defined or anticipated, may with reason be looked for confidently, according to the depositions of all the physicians, at no very distant time. I will not at present enter into a minute examination of the details of the Report which bear me out in this presumption.—The second Resolution, Sir, which in compliance with the precedent that I recommend, it is my intention to submit to the committee, is as follows:—

"That it is the opinion of this committee, that it is the right and duty of the Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, now assembled, and lawfully, fully, and freely representing all the estates of the people of this realm, to provide the means of supplying the defect in the personal exercise of the royal authority, arising from his Majesty's said indisposition, in such manner as the exigency of the case may appear to them to require."

On the second Resolution, Sir, it has certainly been intimated to me, and to the House, that possibly some difference of opinion might exist with respect to the words in which it is couched; but neither I, nor the House, have heard that there is any disposition to controvert the principle which it contains—a principle so clearly established by precedent, so distinctly derived from the history and principles of the constitution, so supported by every thing to which we can refer for conviction, and so wholly unimpeached by any constitutional authority, of which I am aware, that I shall rather leave to those who may oppose it to state the nature of their opposition, and reserve to myself and to those who coincide in opinion with me, the right of making any future observations on their arguments, than attempt to originate the discussion myself. I shall, therefore, assume the principle to be admitted until I find it denied. Having thus, Sir, disposed of the two first Resolutions, I now come to the Resolution descriptive of the form of proceeding, by which the continuance of the executive authority is to be provided. This resolution I will read:—

"That it is the opinion of this Committee that for this purpose, and for maintaining entire the constitutional authority of the King, it is necessary that the said Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, should determine on the means whereby the royal assent may be given in parliament to such Bill as may be passed by the two Houses of Parliament, respecting the exercise of the powers and authorities of the Crown, in the name and on the behalf of the King, during the continuance of his Majesty's present indisposition."

It must be evident to the committee, Sir, that the great and leading feature of the mode of proceeding described in this Resolution is, that it is to be a proceeding by Bill. Such is the proposition which I have humbly to recommend for the adoption of this committee. On the other hand, it has been submitted to us, by the hon. gentlemen opposite, who fairly and candidly intimated to the House, the other night, the view which they took of this part of the subject, that a proceeding by way of Address would be preferable to a proceeding by way of Bill, which latter, those gentlemen professed to consider as unconstitutional. Judging, therefore, from the statement thus made by the gentlemen opposite, I am induced to conceive that the discussion of the present evening may be narrowed into the consideration of these two questions; it being taken for granted that the two Houses of Parliament, and this House in particular, are called on to provide some remedy for the deficiency in the executive power, and the point to be decided being whether it is preferable to do this by Bill, or, as recommended by the hon. gent. opposite, by Address. In order, however, that the details of this business may be better understood, before I proceed to estimate the comparative value of the two modes of proceeding recommended, I shall, in conformity to my notice, and as I have intimated in the introductory part of my speech, open generally my intention with respect to the ulterior propositions that I mean to bring forward. Now, Sir, in the view which I take of the subject, it appears to me that the measure which we ought to adopt should unquestionably be to appoint his royal highness the Prince of Wales regent, to administer the affairs of the country in the name, and on the behalf of his Majesty, during the continuance of his Majesty's indisposition. I mean therefore to propose, that generally all the powers of government shall be placed in the hands of his royal highness. My next proposition will be, Sir, that during the continuance of his Majesty's indisposition, her Majesty the Queen shall be appointed the guardian of his Majesty's person, and that consequently to her Majesty the entire care of his Majesty's person shall be entrusted. It will also be extremely expedient and necessary to introduce into the Bill due provisions and precautions for notifying the King's recovery, whenever that event shall happily take place, and for chalking out the course of proceeding that would effectually enable his Majesty to resume the reins of government and exercise his royal functions with his former dignity and authority—I mean also to propose that the operation of these three provisions, the first giving general authority to his royal highness the Prince of Wales, the second reposing the custody of his Majesty's person in the hands of the Queen, and the third describing the mode in which the royal functions shall be resumed by his Majesty, in the event of his recovery, shall have no limit assigned in point of time, except the duration of his Majesty's disorder. As to the particulars of the general authority, which I mean to propose shall be vested in his royal highness the Prince of Wales, the Bill will contain certain provisions limiting and restricting for a time, to be limited, the use of some of the powers and prerogatives of the crown. Sir, when we consider the nature of the evidence that has been given by the physicians, both to the privy council and to our own committee, and when we add the knowledge which we may obtain from his- tory upon this subject, and our experience of what has been the state and course of his Majesty's ailments of the same description, on former occasions, I think we may reasonably look to no very distant period, as that of his Majesty's probable recovery. All the physicians have uniformly declined stating any precise period as that in which they expect his Majesty's recovery; they uniformly express a sanguine and confident expectation of his Majesty's ultimate recovery, but decline fixing on any period as that at which it may probably take place. However, it must be observed, that they generally refer in their evidence to the history of his Majesty's former complaints, as affording the best means of enabling them to judge of the course and progress of his Majesty's present disorder; and when we take into our consideration, in addition to the evidence of his Majesty's physicians recently examined, the opinions of the most experienced medical practitioner, in this species of complaint, the late Dr. Willis, as expressed in the evidence given by him in the year 1788, we may perhaps conclude that six weeks or two months is the shortest period at which it is reasonable to expect a complete recovery from his Majesty's present malady; that five or six months ought to be the average period of such an expectation; and that twelve or eighteen months is the extreme point of time to which it is likely his Majesty's malady may be protracted.

On this view of the subject, therefore, I conceive, that there is no question but that the House will take into their serious consideration, the probability of his Majesty's recovery, at no very distant period, and that they will, under this impression, think it necessary to provide by the Bill, ample security for his Majesty's immediate and complete return to power in that event. The period which, on the most deliberate view that I can take of the subject, I would recommend to the adoption of the House, is, about a twelvemonth from the time at which the Bill may pass both Houses of Parliament. It is my intention, therefore, to recommend that in the Bill vesting generally the regal power in his royal highness the Prince of Wales, there be introduced restrictions on certain parts of that power for the period I have mentioned; with the addition of this consideration, that whatever be the period to which parliament may limit the restrictions and qualifications that may be thought necessary, due care shall be taken that those restrictions and qualifications shall expire at a period when parliament shall have been sitting for at least six weeks, in order that, if it should then be thought necessary, parliament may reconsider the subject, or if it should not be thought necessary to reconsider the subject, that the restrictions and qualifications may expire under the knowledge and within the view of parliament. The House will, I trust, Sir, agree with me, that for the period which I have mentioned, the power of granting any rank in the peerage, might without much inconvenience, be suspended; also that it will be reasonable to declare that all grants of offices and pensions (except such as are necessary for public service) shall be granted only for the term of the Regency, subject to his Majesty's pleasure on his recovery. I shall propose, that her Majesty the Queen shall have the superintendance and controul of the personal establishment of his Majesty's household for 12 months, in order to enable her Majesty to maintain the splendour of the royal establishment; and that after that interval, all the regulations connected with that subject shall expire, unless parliament, on a general view of the subject, may think proper to restore to her Majesty some portion of them, for the purpose of maintaining the royal dignity.

This, Sir, is the general outline of the ulterior measure, which it is my intention to propose; and having, as I hope, stated it with sufficient clearness to render myself distinctly intelligible, I beg leave now to recall the attention of the Committee to the question immediately before us, and to remark, that whatever may be the difference of feeling or opinion on the propriety of admitting any restrictions on the power of the Regent, whatever may be the views, taken as to the expediency of a longer or shorter duration of such restrictions, the question now before the Committee is not on the propriety or impropriety of admitting any restrictions—not on the limit whether longer or shorter of that restriction; but simply on the expediency of adopting one course of proceeding in the establishment of a Regent in preference to another. In the first place, Sir, I apprehend from the expressions which were used the other night, that one ground of the objection to be made to my proposition is, that it is unconstitutional. It was said by a right hon. gent. (Mr. Ponsonby) that it was a measure "derogatory to the honour of the crown, injurious to the principle of the constitution, and insulting to the illustrious personage whom it chiefly respected." Now, I confess, Sir, I do not apprehend how the gentlemen opposite will be able to maintain these positions, nor do I think that they would be content to take the question upon that issue. With regard to the assertion that the proceeding by Bill is unconstitutional, I do not find that any such assertion was made in 1788, how much soever it was then argued that another measure, constitutional likewise, would be more expedient. But let us examine this objection to the proceeding by Bill as unconstitutional. I know not how we can better determine what is and what is not constitutional than by a reference to the records of our own proceedings, and to what has been our conduct under similar circumstances, on former occasions. The enlightened theorist who delights only in abstractions, and considers his speculative notions as the criterion of the constitution, I leave to his enjoyment, and shall content myself with pointing out what is the course that has been recognized by parliament in a case precisely similar—a case solemnly adjudged after the most anxious attention and mature deliberation, and forming a precedent from which we may argue, not by analogy alone, but by its distinct and decided resemblance in all its parts to the present instance. In short, in the very case before us, after a full review of the history of the country and of the constitution—after the most ample and mature deliberation, parliament adopted the course which I now recommend.

Let us then, Sir, in examining the present question, consider, what our situation is, and what are the duties which we are called upon to perform. It is true that the functions of the royal authority are suspended, but the throne is not vacant. We are called upon not to create a King, but to preserve to an existing monarch his undiminished rights, and until he can resume those rights, to provide the means by which the royal authority may be duly exercised. We shall see the importance of this observation when we consider the nature of the precedent to which I have alluded, and the nature of other precedents which have been cited. The precedent of the Revolution has been produced against the precedent of 1788. I have already observed that the precedent of 1788 is not analogical to the present case, but distinctly applicable to it. There is a material difference in the facts and circumstances of our situation at the present time and at the Revolution. Whatever information we may derive from the precedent of the Revolution, it refers only to analogy, and is not distinctly applicable. In the situation in which we stand, we have two most important duties to discharge. It is of the utmost importance to provide for the security of the country by determining the means of carrying on the royal authority; and it must not in the mean time be overlooked, that it is of the utmost importance to secure to his Majesty the restoration of his rights and privileges, whenever Providence shall grant his restoration to health. At the time we are providing for the one object, we must take care to provide for the other. Not only must we secure to his Majesty, on his restoration to health, the restoration of his rights and privileges, but we must secure the restoration of them under all the advantageous circumstances in which they are at present possessed. In the year 1788, his Majesty was afflicted with the same calamity as that which has now so unhappily befallen him. In the year 1788 parliament had the same duties to discharge as parliament have now to discharge, and they discharged those duties then, in the way in which I propose that they shall now be discharged. The course of proceeding pursued in 1788 was instituted in this House, whence it was taken to the other House, and there adopted. It was concurrently acted upon by both Houses, and it cannot therefore be disputed that the sanction and authority of both Houses of Parliament were given to the measures proposed on that occasion. On a retrospection of the occurrences of the years 1788 and 1789, it will appear that a necessity was manifested for the establishment of a Regency. The two Houses of Parliament consequently assembled, and the great seal was put to a commission for holding a parliament under the direction and by the authority of both Houses. The commission was executed. Parliament was opened by virtue of that commission, and proceeded to supply the deficiency in the executive authority by a Regency Bill, which was carried forward nearly to its termination. During that period other ordinary parliamentary proceedings went on; bills to a considerable number were brought in here, and in the other House. They were proceeded in while the Regency Bill was pending, and, which it is most material to remember, were completed and concluded after the restoration of his Majesty. Thus, Sir, it appears, that the question at issue was decided not only by the two Houses of parliament, but by the whole parliament assembled. On his Majesty's recovery, he, by his commissioners, came down to parliament. Did he revoke or annul their previous proceedings? Did he disclaim their interference? Did he declare that the great seal had been usurped by those who had applied it to the former commission, or that it had been improperly used? Did he accuse the two Houses of abusing their authority? Did he deny the validity of the acts which they had passed? No: directly the contrary. His Majesty, by his commissioners, was present in the same session. He put no end to the session held during his illness, but referred distinctly to the instrument under which their previous sittings had been held. I wish, Sir, to make this part of the subject as satisfactory to the Committee as it appears to me to be demonstrably conclusive. The two Houses of parliament, after the recovery of his Majesty, were assembled by commission; and in the 44th volume of our Journals, page 159, may be found the terms of the commission itself. The commission begins in the following manner:—"His Majesty, not thinking fit to be present here this day, in his royal person, has been pleased to cause a Commission to be is sued under his great seal, authorizing and commanding the commissioners, who are appointed by his former letters patent to hold this parliament, to open and declare certain farther causes for holding the same: which commission you will now hear read."

Here, then, the Committee will not fail to observe that in the passage I have just read, the royal sanction is expressly given in confirmation of the use which had been made of the great seal by the two Houses, in a case of unexampled exigency.—The King authorises the same commissioners who had been appointed under the great seal by direction of the two Houses, during his illness, and who had, under that authority, held that parliament—these same commissioners he appoints, by the same instrument, to continue to hold on the same parliament. But if still more unequivocal proofs were wanting to attest the cordial confirm- ation given by the King, on his recovery, to the use which had been made of his prerogative, I would confidently appeal to the Committee, if the following passage did not furnish them.—It is from the speech delivered by the commissioners after the commission to which I have alluded was read, and is as follows:—

"His Majesty being, by the blessing of Providence, happily recovered from the severe indisposition with which he has been afflicted; and being enabled to attend to the public affairs of his kingdom, has commanded us to convey to you his warmest acknowledgements for the additional proofs which you have given of your affectionate attachment to his person, and of your zealous concern for the honour and interests of his crown, and the security and good government of his dominions.—We have it particularly in charge from his Majesty to assure you, that you cannot effectually meet the most earnest wish of his Majesty's heart, as by persevering in your uniform exertions for the public welfare, and by improving every occasion to promote the prosperity of his faithful people, from whom his Majesty has received such repeated and affecting marks of invariable zeal, loyalty and attachment, and whose happiness he must ever consider as inseparable from his own."

Now, Sir, let the committee but for a moment consider the nature of the precedent of 1788, and the manner in which the parliament acted on that occasion. If there is any thing in the argument that the measure which I am about to propose is unconstitutional, it necessarily follows that the act of opening the parliament of 1788 was illegal, and that the first step which his Majesty should have taken on his recovery upon that occasion, was to call a parliament substantively himself. Instead of this, however, we find, that the commencement and former proceedings of the parliament, which, according to the doctrine of the hon. gentlemen opposite, were illegal and unconstitutional, were recognized as valid in the commissioners speech, in which a distinct reference was made to them. If the former proceedings of that parliament had been unconstitutional, is it to be conceived that his Majesty would have recognized or acted upon them? The gentlemen opposite may perhaps say, "Yes, because his Majesty continued to be advised by the same ministers who had recommended the prior proceed- ings in parliament."—(Loud cries of hear, hear! from the opposition benches.)—I now perceive, Sir, the strong point of the gentlemen opposite. I have touched the key on which all the chords of their feelings most sensibly vibrate. I now find what I could not possibly contemplate before; in what my argument is deemed unsound. It seems that the gentlemen opposite are disposed to contend, that his Majesty continued to be advised by the same servants as had proposed the Regency bill to parliament in 1788, and therefore, that his recognition of the validity of the acts of that parliament afford no ground for the assertion; that those proceedings were constitutional. Let those gentlemen however consider, that at that particular period there was no want of ability, of acuteness, or of disposition in this House, to urge any thing that could be urged against any minister. And let the House be informed, as they may be informed by their journals, that this speech from the throne, so advised by the minister who had recommended the former unconstitutional measures (as they are termed), was as usual echoed by the address from this House, which address I find by the entry on the Journals, was carried nemine contradicente. It may be said, and it is a feeling which I have no doubt that the gentlemen opposite would very readily applaud, that there might have been an inclination on the part of the House at that period to forbear from any measure, that might interrupt the harmony that had just been re-established, and therefore that they might have passed over any objections, however aukward or unpleasant it might be to them. But surely those who wished to support the patriotic character of their political friends of that period—those who affect to inherit the principles of the great leaders of opposition in that day. will not say, that an act of so grave a nature, one to which they applied the strong term unconstitutional, would have been allowed to pass uncensured out of compliment? And if this argument of the gentlemen opposite were to suffice for that session, what would they say to the total silence that had been observed on the subject during the remainder of that session and in all succeeding sessions? I grant that in the joy of congratulating his Majesty on his recovery, the attention of the House might for that day be absolved. But there were following days. If not on the next day, yet at no great distance of time some motion of consequence might have been made. Some record of disavowal might have been entered on the journals. Some allegation of impropriety might have been endeavoured to be established by proof. But no: the whole session was held without any such occurrence. All the acts of parliament during that session, by which private and public property were disposed of to an immense amount, were held legal. Is it possible to suppose, that if every one had not been convinced that this was a legal and efficient, and a constitutional session of parliament, some one of those, who opposed the administration, would not have taken some step by address, by resolutions, or otherwise, to express and record his opinion? This is a transaction, too, which took place upwards of 20 years ago; since which period there have been several successive parliaments and successive administrations. There have been occasions likewise on which the attention of parliament and of the public has been awfully directed to a repetition of the circumstances in which the transactions of 1788 originated; and yet, with all these provocatives to remark, not a single instance has occurred of the slightest attempt at accusation. I trust, therefore, Sir, that the Committee will be of opinion that I take a strong and firm ground in fixing my proceeding on this precedent; a precedent established after a profound investigation of our history and of the principles of our constitution. To argue the original case would be a waste of time. It would obscure rather than enlighten. I rest the merits of my proposed measure upon the precedent, which received the stamp and sanction of every branch of the legislative authority.

If I am right, Sir, in the view which I have hitherto taken of the subject, and I trust I have said enough to satisfy, I shall proceed now to consider whether the mode recommended by the gentlemen opposite (constitutional as well as mine) is more constitutional than mine, or more expedient. First, I contend, that parliament will think in a case of this nature—where we are placed in such a situation, that what we have to do is litle less than to provide a temporary successor to the crown—I contend, Sir, that in such a case parliament must and will be desirous of adopting some certain and defined measure. There is not any thing more generally to be lamented, nor is there any thing which the constitution more sedulously avoids, than the existence of any uncertainty with regard to the succession of royal power. If, therefore, I find that the course which parliament has already adopted on a similar occasion is unexceptionable in other respects, I am bound by every sound constitutional view of the subject to adhere to it; not because, if all were to be done again, something new might not be adopted; but, because, having been once done, it is advisable to abide by the precedent. This I contend to be a true view of the subject, without a comparative examination of the two proposed courses. And what objection is there to the course which I propose, which does not equally exist to the course proposed by the gentlemen opposite? Are there not in fact many objections to their course which do not exist in mine? I have heard it argued on a former occasion that the proceeding by bill would be an assumption of legislative power by the two Houses of parliament, and fell within the meaning of the statute of Charles II. which made is a premunire for any one to assert that the two Houses had such power. But this argument is as hostile to a proceeding by Address as to a proceeding by a Bill, (No, no, from the Opposition benches.) Let those who think this a false statement, consider the subject a little.—I maintain that the effect of proceeding by Address would be to legislate. The gentlemen opposite propose to address his royal highness the Prince of Wales. To become King? No; to become Regent. What is a Regent? Do the gentlemen opposite know? Does the law know? Does the constitution point out what are the duties of a Regent? But were it particularly established what power a Regent should have, and what power he should not have, if the two Houses of parliament were to say to any individual, however near the throne, and however deserving of the throne, "step into the throne," would not that be an act of legislation? If not, what is? Is not taking power from one party and giving it to another an act of legislation? But supposing that the office of Regent were intelligible, and that his rights and duties were strictly defined, what would be his first act after his appointment? I apprehend the calling together of his Majesty's parliament. How would he call them together? Would it not be by authorizing the individual who happened to be in possession of the great seal, to put the great seal to some commission, either authorising the Regent himself, in the name of his Majesty, to open the parliament, or authorizing commissioners appointed by the Regent for that purpose? If it be an act of legislation in us to authorise the individual holding the great seal, to put that seal to a bill, would it not equally be an act of legislation were we by an Address to authorise another individual to command the great seal to be so put? I defy the utmost ingenuity of the hon. gentlemen opposite to shew how any one legislative act could be accomplished by the Regent without the use of the great seal, which nothing but the authority of the two houses of parliament during the suspension of the kingly power, could warrant him in using. It would seem, however, by the arguments of the hon. gentlemen, that when the two houses of parliament direct the individual possessing the great seal, to apply it to a public instrument, it is an act of legislation; but that when they authorize some other person to direct the same thing precisely to be done it is not an act of legislation! It is true that the one case is clearly and distinctly intelligible, and that the other is a little covered over and obscure, but the things are precisely and essentially the same notwithstanding. The authority of the Regent to order the great seal to be affixed to a public instrument, would be transferred through the two Houses of parliament.—It would not be the authority of the Regent, but the authority of the two Houses of parliament. On one way or the other, therefore, it must be an act of legislation, and the only question for the committee to consider, which course upon the whole is more expedient as well as more consistent with constitutional principle and parliamentary practice, to be adopted, in the discharge of these important duties, which the unhappy necessity of the occasion imposes upon parliament.

I shall now, Sir, go on to consider the manner in which the two different measures proposed would be accomplished. In a case of this description, is it nothing to preclude any proposition from being carried into effect by a single vote? On a question which is no less, than to put the royal authority into other hands, ought we not to guard our proceedings with as much deliberation as possible, at least as much as the forms of parliament secure to the least important measure? What the gentlemen opposite propose, is to transfer the whole regal authority by a single vote? Am I to understand that the proposers of the Address are willing to transmit the whole power of the crown, without limit, qualification, or reserve, or that in this mode of legislating by Address, it is intended to specify any limit or qualification in the body of the Address? It appeared to me, Sir, that I received the universal assent of the committee, when I said, that it was necessary to provide means by which his Majesty might be enabled to resume the royal authority on his recovery. Are we to make a Regent without such a provision? Are we to leave him to advisers who may mislead him, for regents may be misled as well as kings? Are we then to leave all those points solely to the wisdom and consideration of the Regent's advisers? Would this be a fair execution of our double trust? More particularly, would it be a fair execution of that part of our trust, by which we are bound to secure to his Majesty, on his restoration to health, the restoration of his undiminished authority? I am persuaded, Sir, that no one will suppose that either in the observations which I have made, or in the observations which I shall make, I mean any thing incompatible with the utmost possible respect for the character of his royal highness the Prince of Wales. But let me remind those who are now willing to intrust immediate power into the hands of his royal highness, in the strict confidence that that power would not be abused, what have been their sentiments on similar subjects., If it were a question which related to his royal highness's character, I would say—let those gentlemen appreciate that character as highly as it deserves to be appreciated; let them exalt it as highly as their imaginations will permit them; the higher they establish, the higher they raise his royal highness's character, the more cautious ought we to be not to establish a precedent of power devolving into the hands of an officer, not from a consideration of the difficulties which would attend a just limitation of that power, but from the merits of the individual on whom it is conferred. In proportion as those merits are distinguished, ought we to be cautious in our proceedings, lest we legislate beneficially, perhaps for the present age, but, for what we know, most injuriously for future ages. Let the committee consider, Sir, how far it might be safe to suffer such a principle to be established as that asserted by the gentlemen opposite. If in a future period of the British history, the monarch should be afflicted with a calamity similar to that which his Majesty is now unhappily enduring, and if the apparent successor to the throne, at the period I am imagining, should be of a character the reverse of that of his royal highness the Prince of Wales, how invidious, how dangerous, would the duty of parliament become? With such a precedent they could not deny that it had been deemed wise, in a similar case, to invest the heir apparent with full and immediate power; they must therefore be driven broadly to state that that which was wise in the reign of George III. would not be wise in the period at which they lived. I challenge any person, therefore, to show that character will justify a departure from the principles of wise legislation, whatever may be the opinion of other persons upon other parts of the subject.—Whether they consider the restraints as too many or too few—whether they consider the limitations as too much or too little determined, I call upon the committee to determine this important constitutional question, whilst they are yet competent to do it, and before they formally sanction the possibility of a negative upon their decisions.

As to the appeal which has been made to the precedent of the Revolution: I must still contend the circumstances are wholly different. At the period of the Revolution the House will recollect that another monarch was placed on the throne. The throne was then vacant; it is not so now. Now, a new office is to be created, to be executed in the King's name: then, only an old one was to be filled up. The cases are far from being parallel, and the reasoning that is derived from the one, is inapplicable to the other. An hon. gent. indeed, the other evening adverted to the Address from the parliament of Ireland, to his royal highness the prince of Wales in 1788, and contended that after the Union the precedents of one parliament were as good as those of another. With respect to the different situations of Ireland and of Great Britain at that period. I will not enter into any discussion, but I beg leave to make a remark on the comparative validity of the precedent brought forward by the hon. gent., and that adduced by myself. I have shewn how the parliament of Great Britain acted upon the result of an examination of the history and constitution of the country, and how the precedent then established has been confirmed by the same and subsequent parliaments. But what has been the conduct pursued in Ireland? There, the lord lieutenant (the marquis of Buckingham) refused to transmit to this country the Address which that Parliament had voted to the Prince of Wales. What was done respecting that refusal? After the recovery of his Majesty, were any measures taken there upon the subject? Did any body hear of an impeachment of the marquis of Buckingham, or of any proceeding having been instituted against him, or relating to his refusal? Was there any such proceeding resorted to, in any succeeding parliament? No! I am aware, I may be told, that there was a vote of censure; but could gentlemen say that any thing was done in consequence of that vote? Quite the contrary was the case with respect to our precedent of 1788. Our whole legislature afterwards acted upon it: all the three branches of the constitution acknowledged and acted upon it. In Ireland, the measure of an Address, was, at the most, only sanctioned by two branches of the legislature, and this could make no small difference with respect to the authority of the two precedents.—Having thus endeavoured to go through the leading points of this measure, having endeavoured also to point out the distinctions between it and the plan proposed by gentlemen over the way, and having shewn the preference which in my opinion is due to the mode of proceeding I have submitted, I hope I have redeemed my pledge given upon a former night to state distinctly, my view of this important subject, grounded on the acknowledged and confirmed precedent of 1788; a pledge, that there was nothing in my proposition unconstitutional in its principles or practice, derogatory to the royal dignity, or insulting to his royal highness the heir apparent to the crown. But, if my opinions were like those of some others, in favour of conferring the unrestricted and unlimited powers of monarchy on the Regent, still I would say, that, even in that case, it ought to be done by Bill and not by Address. As no claim of right has been stated on this occasion, it is quite unnecessary for me to dwell on that subject, which I must presume to be settled. If any such claim were brought into consideration, I must be allowed here to remark, that it would apply equally to both the measures, either that of Bill, or that of Address. To the wisdom of the House then I shall leave the decision upon this great question, conscious and confident, that in the course of proceeding which I shall have the honour to submit, and which I have just detailed to the Committee, I have taken that line, which in my humble judgment is most consistent with a due regard to the honour of the King, and the true interests of the people — most conformable to the dignity of the crown and the principles of the constitution.—The right hon. gent. then proposed the first Resolution, which was read by the chairman, and carried nem. con.

He then rose, and moved the second Resolution, which was read by the chairman; and on his putting the question that it do pass,

rose and said, that before that House could come to a decision upon this question, they ought to have ascertained the opinions of their constituents respecting it. With regard to the Resolution then under consideration, he could not bring himself by any means to concur in any Resolution, which, speaking of the present parliament, called it "the Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, lawfully, fully, and freely, representing all the estates of the people of this realm." To this assertion, it was perfectly impossible for him ever to give his assent. He denied, and was always ready to appeal to facts in support and in proof of his denial of such an assumption. If they were not so, the people of this country ought to be taken at least into some consideration, on this important occasion. The right hon. gent. who had just sat down had alluded to fine-spun schemes, which he supposed to be in the imagination of those who happened to differ from him in opinion. He (sir F. Burdett) had nothing to do with fine-spun schemes: it was not even the principle contained in the second Resolution that he would condemn; but he would ever strenuously deny that it stated correctly a fact, when it asserted that House to be a body of representatives "legally, fully, and freely representing the estates of the realm." [Disapprobation] This, he would deny, and particularly as applied to parliaments of later date, and to this parliament especially, whose conduct had put parliament itself in this predicament, that it had lost its former credit with the nation—this parliament which had done so many acts which had brought it into disrepute, that he could never consent that it should pass a Resolution containing what was so contradictory to truth, to the notorious facts that had been offered to be proved at the bar, of the manner in which seats were obtained in that House, of the corruption that prevailed in it—of the undeniable abuse by peers returning 144 of its members to that House. [Here the cry of disapprobation was renewed very strongly for some time.] The hon. baronet having resumed, said, that he felt it his duty to protest against such proceedings; that in a situation so extraordinary, the voice of the people should be collected; and notwithstanding all that was said by the right hon. gent. he was convinced, that there was no case in which the analogy to the present was so complete as that of the Revolution. The right hon. gent. had merely asserted that there was no analogy between that and the present, but he had proved nothing. What was the case at the Revolution? It was a case of incapacity of the sovereign, not a case of that personally afflicting nature which was unfortunately the malady of his present Majesty, and which every feeling man must deplore. No! it was an incapacity arising from a religious bigotry. That was the species of insanity which led naturally to disorder, and which the constitution of this country could not endure. It was, therefore, an incapacity to exercise constitutionally the regal functions. It was contended at that time by some, that the throne was not vacant. That was answered by others, "Prove to us by some act of the kingly office that the throne is full." It mattered not to the interests of the nation whether bigotry or wickedness, or the severe hand of affliction which pressed on the present King, rendered the sovereign incapable of performing the duties of the kingly office. In either case, our great business, on knowing the fact, was not an examination into the cause, but the adoption of the remedy. But how had the right now asserted devolved on that House? How could this be shewn by the forms or, spirit of the constitution? How would gentlemen prove that the constitution was not destroyed, when that vital organ of a free people, the Commons House, was notoriously corrupt, and when that high power from which all rank proceeded, and without which no legal government could be carried on, was incapacitated? The plan of the right hon. gent. went directly to the subversion of the constitution. This was a Revolution, only with this difference from that of 1688, that in that case, the people of this country were counted for something. Then the city of London, the respectable gentry throughout the country, reckoning all members who had sat in parliament from the last parliament of Charles 2, were called together in a Convention Parliament, to settle the great interests of the state, and remedy the defect in the kingly branch of the constitution. Now, indeed, the proceedings were far from similar—were widely different. Now, a House of Commons, without any appeal to the people, their constituents, usurped power for themselves. A House of Commons—a member of which had been turned out of his seat for not voting as ministers desired;—a House in which a minister had been accused, in connection with a noble lord, of trafficking for seats;—a house that had allowed lord Melville to tell theme, that he would give them no account of his application of the public money;—a House that had endeavoured to cover with oblivion the disastrous and disgraceful expedition to Walcheren! He had read of various appellations given to former parliaments—of the Long Parliament, of the Rump Parliament, of the Unlearned Parliament (Parliamentum indoctum): but if a name were to be sought in order to designate and to express the peculiar character and merits of this Parliament, it would probably be best designated by the appellation of the Walcheren Parliament. (Hear! Hear!) Thirty years ago, Sir George Saville had said, that the House of Commons were as much the representatives of any other place as they were of the people of Great Britain. And what had been done since to wipe off that reproach? The plan which the right honourable gentleman would persuade the House so to agree to, was to make him governor of the country, and to let him put the crown into his pocket! The precedent of 1788 was formed, and was now pursued by that same faction which had for so many years prevailed in the country, with so much disadvantage to its best rights and interests, and without any other view that he could discover, except that of retaining their own places and emoluments. Where, if the House freely and fully represented the people, would they feel the difficulty of appealing to the sense of the people? Of such an idea some would say, "This is Jacobinism!" But his jacobins were lord Coke and Mr. Justice Blackstone. Speaking of the law of Parliament, lord Coke said, in allusion to former transactions, that we heard of the "Lex et Consuetudo Parliamenti," but by what he called a novel device the Houses could confer with each other, when parliament could not confer with its constituents. Did gentlemen seriously think that parliament ought not to take the people a little into consideration? Judge Blackstone said, that the constitution had three distinct branches or powers. He had explained its excellencies by shewing the independence of those branches. "How dangerous," said that learned judge, "it would be, were peers to interfere in the elections of the commons, and exercise the right of taxing the people!" The people were to be protected by the power of the crown against an oligarchy, or a faction of nobles, and they were themselves to be represented by the Commons. Judge Blackstone compared the constitution to a machine moved by three weights; the body not taking the direction of either, but taking the right direction of the plenum of the force, and not liable to be overturned but by destroying the equilibrium between one branch of the legislature and the rest. Mr. Paine, writing about monarchy, had asked, Whether it was a metaphor, a trick, or a cheat? What would the right hon. gent. say in answer to such questions? Would he tell them, it was useful and necessary? Would he say, what were its services? What answer would he make? He shewed by his conduct at least, that it could be done without. Whether he proceeded to replace the whole monarchy in all its powers, or limited it, in whatever hands he placed it, (for the hon. baronet would not say there was any right in any individual, since there was no law on the subject that gave such a right, and the Prince, therefore, might have no more right than any other); yet be would affirm, that they, the House of Commons, had far less pretensions and claims to the executive government of the country, than the heir apparent to the throne.—He did not pretend to maintain the right; but taking the expediency of the case into consideration, he would ask, could any thing be more easy than to supply the vacancy in the same manner in which it would be supplied by law in the event of the King's death? Was it not more expedient and more analogous to the constitution, to place the power there, where by legal, course it would in due time go? Was not that better than to go on in such perilous times, with a weak and divided government? Could any thing be more likely to cramp and paralyse all the energies of the country than an executive in such a state? If it was true that the kingly office had too much power, control it. If the King had more than was necessary to animate exertions, to reward merit, and to repress crimes by punishments, it was as necessary to take it from a King as from a Regent. We ought, at all times, to have an entire executive; but especially now. As to what was said of the character of the King, whose unfortunate malady he deplored as much as any man, when he heard such observations, always coupled with the panegyrics of the worst and most unfortunate of ministers on their own conduct, notwithstanding all his wishes to control and check his feelings, considering the circumstances of the case, he must say that it was a little more than he could endure to hear the praises of such grievous exactions and heavy calamities as the country had never before been made to suffer.

He could not omit to take that opportunity, of saying a few words respecting the examination of his Majesty's physicians: and here, he must observe, that it appeared to him perfectly clear that the King had never been thoroughly well since the year 1788. It appeared that the public had been deceived upon this subject. (Disapprobation.) Ministers had dared to carry on the government in such circumstances while the executive was in the weak state, which now appeared. It was a lamentable, a contemptible thing to employ time in such examinations of the physicians as to their opinions or conjectures when the King would return to what they called a state of competence to the exercise of his royal functions. Ministers proposed in the present state of defect in that vital organ of the constitution, without which the legislation of the country could not be carried on, to bring in and pass a bill; an act of parliament, in the face of another act of parliament of the 29th of Charles II. expressly denying the legality of such a proceeding by the two Houses without the kingly power. They proposed further, to make out a commission, purporting to give the assent of the King to their bill. The whole bore, and must bear to the people, the appear- ance of a fraud and a sham. He would affirm therefore, confidently, that in adopting that course they, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer, were about to make a king: That the minister was making a king to put into his own pocket! If he could persuade the House to remain so long without a king, and then make one for his own purpose, how could he avoid the unpalatable conclusion drawn by some persons unfriendly to the constitution of this land? The House had in a former session, appointed a committee to consider and report upon the number of sinecures. Upon the right hon. gent.'s plan, illustrated by his conduct for the last two months, he might as well refer the highest office in the state to that committee. But far different opinions indeed did he (sir Francis) entertain of the use and dignity of the office of the King! He thought that the King ought to be a great and an efficient magistrate. It would be little less than treason to the constitution and the country to continue to go on passively as we had done for some time, or to refrain from the declaration of his opinion on this most important occasion. What did it signify to the country, then, by what names and distinctions physicians called or defined delirium and insanity, and so forth? Was it, he would ask, fit or safe that when the King was incapacitated by either, such a state of government should go on, vacillating, from time to time; ministers sometimes concealing the facts from the public, and at other times unable to conceal them? If an effectual recipe were wanted for making confusion in the country, he never heard of, nor could he imagine any thing better for that purpose, than the scheme of the minister! One of the physicians, sir H. Halford, it appeared, had thought his Majesty fit for transacting public business between the 25th and 27th of October, and another physician, Dr. Bailey, thought he was not. Should the safety and the happiness of this country rest upon such lamentable uncertainty? He must say, that he thought the provision to be made ought to be a permanent provision. Who could say, under all the circumstances of the case, what consequences might happen? Suppose, for instance, the invasion of Ireland, by a French army. Might not the intelligence of such an event seriously affect his Majesty's health? He had heard that some physician had ascribed the greatest, danger to be apprehended to the King's health as likely to arise from the mentioning to his Majesty certain subjects. But without dwelling longer on topics, upon which it was to him most painful to touch, he must repeat, that he considered it to be a species of treason to the country to suffer the government of it to continue longer in such a state. He objected to all the Resolutions except the first. That was, unfortunately, too clearly true. To the second he had stated an insurmountable objection, because it contained a false assumption respecting the character and composition of that House. To the third, he objected entirely, because he considered it to be contrary to the fundamental principles of the constitution. What view had the right hon. gent. entertained for these six weeks past but that of delay? Was not that in his view still, in the measures he adopted? What was there in what he did then propose which he might not have done before?—The hon. baronet entered his solemn protest against the whole of the proceedings, as miserable shams and pretences—as aiming a mortal stab at the constitution of the country—and making an oligarchical House of Commons, varnished over with forms, to govern the country. He should therefore sincerely vote against the second and third Resolutions.

The second Resolution was then read and passed with the dissent of sir Francis Burdett, but without a division.

then moved the third Resolution, which was accordingly read by the chairman, and on his putting the question,

rose and said, that in all that had fallen from the right hon. gent. relative to the extent of the heavy calamity that had befallen the country—in all the expressions of the affliction which must be felt upon this melancholy occasion, and in all the assurances of affection to the sovereign, from the House and from the people, he most heartily concurred. He also warmly participated with him in the wish and the hope that his Majesty might soon recover his health in so complete a manner as to be enabled to renew the exercise of all his royal functions, now, unhappily for the nation, suspended by a severe malady. But in almost every thing else he differed from the right hon. gent. The right hon. gent. had said, and had congratulated them on the circumstance, that their deliberations in that House on this important subject had been heretofore marked with moderation, gravity and ab- stinence from acrimony and the intrusion of party feelings, which presented to the country a cheering spectacle, and one widely differing from that exhibited in the year 1788. Now, whatever gratification he, as one of the persons of his side of the House implicated in this praise, might feel from the compliment, he must say, that he could see no reason why the right hon. gent. should have travelled out of his way to commend them, at the expence of throwing obloquy on those, the most of whom were now consigned to the grave:—Why he should have gone out of his way to revive, if he could, that intemperance and acrimony which he deprecated.—(Hear, hear.)—He united with the right hon. gent. in his expressions of admiration of the talents possessed by the great men who took the lead in the political affairs of that day; but he must still say he thought the right hon. gent. might have left their frailties, if they had any, to sleep in the graves of the illustrious dead, nor rake up the ashes of a Fox or a Pitt, for the purpose of unnecessary censure.—(Hear.)—The right hon. gent. had told them, that he understood from what had fallen from him (Mr. Ponsonby) on a former night; that an objection would be taken to his third Resolution, as not being conformable to the British constitution; and assuming the principle to have been acquiesced in on the former occasion, had called on the gentlemen on his side, as the successors and inheritors of those who legislated in 1780, to follow their example, and defend by its adoption in this instance, the rights of the King and the liberties of the subject. For his part, he was not the inheritor of any man's principles, but the asserter of his own;—and he defied the right hon. gent., or any other hon. gent., to shew that, during his life, he had ever been guilty of any political inconsistency. In the year 1788, he thought the course adopted by the British parliament unconstitutional, and he thought so still, on the grounds which he would now proceed to state to the committee.

The right hon. gent. had said, that there was no analogy between the difficulties with which this country was embarrased at the period of the Revolution, and at the present time, and that consequently a different course of proceeding was now necessary. But for his own part he rather agreed with the hon. baronet who preceded him, that there was much parity between the cases. What was the case which at present they were called on to provide for?—An absence of the exercise of the kingly power. What was the cause of this absence?—Not the abdication of the monarch, but his incapacity to execute the duties of the regal station. It was to supply the deficiency that the parliament then, as they did now, met to deliberate. The person was absent then—now the mind—and in this consisted the defect which they were bound to supply. But in what way did the right hon. gent. propose to proceed for the purpose of accomplishing so desirable and necessary purpose? The mode proposed by him was to supply the mental incapacity which existed, by a Bill—an act which implied the assent and consent of the three branches of legislature, and of that very branch whose incapacity rendered it necessary, and on which incapacity it rested as the ground for its necessity!—It was an act by the Commons and by the Lords, directing by their authority the royal assent to be given to that public instrument by which the King was declared incapable of the exercise of regal authority! It was, indeed, to make incapacity capable—to make insanity rational, and to call on the monarch, whose powers were suspended, to declare his successor till such time as it might please Providence to restore them! Were they themselves then rational? Were they capable? Could they then be in possession of their sound senses if they yielded to such a proposition? Never let the greatest advocate for protestantism; never let the most captious censurer of the catholic religion, call transubstantiation a fallacy, for it was no greater mockery in the priest to declare that to be true, against the evidence of the senses of the people, than for a grave legislature to affect to procure an assent from one declared to be incapable of giving it! Let the right hon. gent. try his utmost to persuade them into such a measure, but he trusted they would never be guilty of so palpable an absurdity. He (Mr. Perceval) might think it sufficient to tell them he had found a precedent in the year 1789, which being followed, the King, on resuming his authority, would ratify what had been done during the suspension, as be had done in the former case, in which, however, it should always be remembered that the same ministers continued in office. Did he think that was sufficient to establish this precedent as right, fit, legal and constitutional, against the dictates of common sense and reason? The right hon. gent. had undoubtedly informed them in his statement, that on his resumption of the royal functions, his Majesty issued a new commission and gave his assent to the bills which had been previously in progress, in both Houses. But he must observe that whatever might have been urged against the bill before that period, from the time this new commission was issued and assent given to the bills which had passed; from that time the parliamentary proceeding was as complete as it was at the revolution, when the parliament ratified what had been done by the convention. The right hon. gent. had also stated to them, that it was their duty as their right, to provide for the deficiency in the executive, which arose from the incompetency of the monarch to fulfil the regal functions. He was, he would readily admit, of the same opinion, and only wished to inquire and ascertain what it was they were thus called on to do, and what was the proper and constitutional method of executing their purpose. If they considered these points, they must see that it was surely their first duty to provide for this incompetence by supplying the deficiency, with one competent to the discharge of the royal functions, and likely to discharge them with a free mind and disinterested purposed—one mentally competent to fill up all the functions of the station and with the full authority of the legislature—one able to exercise the regal powers in the same manner as the King himself could do, were he not prevented from its exercise by indisposition. The right hon. gent. had, however, gone still further in his assumptions, and asserted that it was the right of the two Houses, to have the command of the great seal; but he must observe of the right hon. gent. that he had confined himself to the assertion, and had neither thought it necessary to quote the law of the land, nor any principle of the constitution, in support of this novel argument. For, he would ask, whose great seal it was that was thus asserted to be at the command of the two Houses? It was the King's great seal, not the great seal of the House of Commons, or of the House of Lords, or of both Houses together. The King made it act, and if the King could not direct the lord Chancellor to use it, it was not competent for any other power to attempt it. If the King could not direct him (the lord Chancellor), could the Houses of Parliament supply the defect, and take upon them to give such direction? They certainly had not either by the law or the constitution, any authority of the kind intrusted to them. But by the plan now proposed, they were called on to begin by usurping an authority they did not possess over the great seal, and to make it act conformably to their own opinions. It was impossible for him to consent to this usurpation; and though the right hon. gent. had declined seeking for other precedents than that one of 1788, which answered his own purpose, and indeed denied that any other analogous to the present case existed; he begged leave to call on the Committee to examine with him a little into those which, in his mind, were parallel and applicable to the situation in which they now stood, and to inquire if the assertion of the right hon. gent. was warranted.

Since the era, when the constitution assumed a more exact and methodical form than it before possessed, and the exercise of the powers of the different branches of which it was composed were more defined and better understood, only two analogous cases had arisen—these were, the Restoration, and the Revolution. In the first, the King was to be restored; in the second, to be created; but in neither was a proceeding similar to that now proposed, recommended or adopted, as it had unfortunately been by the legislature in 1788. On the first of these occasions, they would find entered on their own Journals, as the ground for the proceedings of the convention, which emanated from the Rump Parliament, the Letter and Declaration of king Charles 2, from Breda^*. This was the first entry, and this therefore was the basis, the foundation for all that followed. The letter from the King, which accompanied the declaration, was delivered on the 25th of April, and he arrived in London on the 29th of May. He mentioned those things for the purpose of calling their attention to a very material consideration, but being unwilling to take up their time by reading from the statutes, at length, what was applicable to his argument, he would briefly notice the relevant parts, and refer for the accuracy of his statements to the volume on which he had laid his hand, and in which he had marked out the passages referred to. In this interval between the 25th of April and 29th of May, an application was made from the House of Commons to the House of Lords to put the great seal into activity, and the reasons assigned for this request were, that from its suspension the courts of justice were at a stand, and could not proceed with the execution of their duties, without that measure being resorted to. This application was more than once renewed, but the Lords would not take any step with the Commons in the matter; and in point of fact the great seal never had been put into activity till the Restoration of the King had taken place, and Charles 2 himself made out orders for the use of it. He was aware that it might be urged, that this seal was not that of Charles 2, but that of the Republic—of some of the parties that in that time of anarchy had gained an ascendancy; or of Oliver Cromwell, in some of his assemblies which he called parliaments: but it was that seal by which the Convention Parliament acted and dispensed laws to the country. The Lords, however, did not act as solicited, and the Commons gave up their proposition, as they discovered that the great seal could not be put in a state of activity without the King.

^* See Cobbett's Parliamentary History, vol. 4, p. 15.

The other period to which he had alluded was the Revolution. Of this the right hon. gent. had affirmed that there was no analogy between that period and the present time, as a King was then to be made; while on the contrary, now, a deficiency of the royal functions only was to be supplied. Before, however, he should proceed on this topic, he begged, in the first instance, to notice that the hon. bart. (sir F. Burdett) was not correct in his quotation from history as applying to it.—It was not as he (sir F. Burdett) said, the Convention composed of all those who had been members of parliament in the reign of Charles 2, of 150 citizens from the city of London, a deputation from the aldermen and from other bodies; it was not this Convention which tendered the crown to the Prince of Orange. They only addressed the Prince to call a parliament, consisting of members to be returned from the different counties, cities, and boroughs, which before sent members to the House; and it was the parliament so chosen and assembled by such writs, issued in pursuance of this address, that made the tender of the Crown ascribed by the hon. baronet to the preceding Convention.

He would now, with the leave of the Committee, turn to the examination of the parity between that time and the present. At the Revolution, the national interests, embraced in the deliberations of parliament, were of greater consequence and vitality than any that on this occasion ever could come under their consideration. Their religion was attacked; their liberties were endangered; and the King, assuming rights which, by the constitution, did not belong to him, went so far as to look on parliament as a nuisance, and to attempt to exclude them from all power in the legislature and all controul over his government. The people had then to assert every thing; their religion, their constitution, and all that was dear to them as freemen and as Britons. There were at that time flourishing, men who well understood the constitution both from theory and practice; men who had lived through a turbulent, but also an enlightened period, when political information and discussion were carried to the highest pitch of refinement and perfection. They determined to place the Crown on the heads of the prince and princess of Orange, and it could not be doubted, but in their endeavours to effect this, they would do it in the most constitutional manner, and in a way most likely to promote the security of their own rights. But they never thought of such a plan as that now offered by the right hon. gentleman. They, indeed, proceeded, according to their views of the constitution, in a manner widely different from that which the right hon. gent. recommended. Upon reading the understood compact between the elected sovereign and the country, upon which the Bill of Rights was founded, in the presence of William and Mary in parliament, they immediately proclaimed them King and Queen of Great Britain. They did not think it necessary to have recourse to fraud or fiction, or to make the great seal act without the authority of the power to which it constitutionally appertained. They thought the declaration of the two Houses expressive of the condition on which they recognised their new sovereigns, sufficient to establish the throne of William and Mary, and therewith to provide an adequate security for their own religion and liberties. But the right hon. gent. had drawn a distinction between that case and the present, a distinction, because that proceeding was to make a king, this only to supply a defi- ciency in the kingly power. He could not see the force of this argument; on the contrary, it seemed to him to lean the other way. For to make a King was paramount to the mere remedying of a defect; and therefore, if proceeding by way of Address was thought sufficient in the greater cause, it must of course be considered as sufficient in the lesser emergency.

With regard to the proposition to proceed by way of Bill, he was really astonished that the right hon. gent. could ever have offered it. Unlike common cases, the more he contemplated it the more his astonishment increased—the more he was lost in surprize that ever the British parliament could at any time have adopted, or that having adopted it once, it should ever again be submitted as an example fitting for them to follow, on the recurrence of a similar situation. To this Bill it would be necessary to have the royal assent before it could be efficient or complete; and he would be glad to be informed by the right hon. gent. or any hon. gent. on his side, how this royal assent could be given or known? It could not be acknowledged by the law of the land? for the law said that the royal assent must be given by the King personally in full parliament, or by commissioners appointed by letters patent under the sign manual.—This was the law by statute of the 33d of Henry 8—The law declared that there were but two manners of performing this conclusive part of a legislative act—either by the presence of the monarch, or by letters patent with the sign manual attached. Now, he would ask, was his Majesty capable of either of these modes? They unfortunately knew he could neither meet them in parliament, or even put his signature to a commission. By what pretence then could they assume to do that by fiction and by such an operose and artificial mode of proceeding, which, in point of fact they knew to be impossible; and more especially when, by a more unexceptionable pointed out by the constitution, and acted upon in the best times, it could so easily be avoided?—The law and the constitution furnished even stronger examples than he had yet alluded to in the support of the doctrine for which he now contended, and contended without the fear of refutation. In the same reign of Henry 8, an act was passed repealing and altering many of the acts of Edward 3, relative to treasonable offences. In the succeeding reign, viz. 1st of queen Mary, all those offences made treason by the acts of her father, were taken away, and the acts themselves repealed. And in the very same year that this was done, an act was passed which rendered the counterfeiting the great seal high treason. So it was then, and so it continued to be to this day. From this it appeared that nothing could be more plain than what the law required to make the legislative acts perfect; and it was equally plain that a Bill was not the way to arrive at this perfect act. There was another instance in point furnished by the period of which he had been speaking. About the time of passing the act of Henry the 8th, also towards the end of that reign, an act of attainder had passed against the duke of Norfolk, which, in the beginning of the reign of Mary was reversed, and the reason was this, namely, that the royal assent had never been given to that act of attainder. Hatsell, in his volume of Precedents, had alluded to this case, but made a mistake in what he said respecting the preamble to the Bill. Though he (Mr. Ponsonby) was averse to troubling the committee with extracts from the books, yet as what related to this point was very short, he trusted they would indulge him with the liberty of laying it before them.—(Here the right hon. gent. read from the statute book, part of the proceedings in the Duke of Norfolk's attainder in the reigns of Henry the 8th, and queen Mary his successor.) From these it appeared that the reasons assigned for reversing the attainder, were, the sickness of the King, which prevented his attendance in the council chamber as usual to give his assent to the Bill. With regard to the commission, the words were still more expressly in point, and the attainder was declared to be set aside, because "the said commission was not signed by his highness's own hand, as he was accustomed to do, but stamped on, &c."—The act proceeds to state what the law of the land upon the subject is, in these words "The law of the land is, and always has been, that the royal assent shall be given in the presence of a full parliament, or by a commission appointed by letters patent signed by the King's own hand, according to the 33d of Henry 8th; and if it is not so signed, it is by the common law void, of non-effect, and is declared to be no act of parliament, nor ever to take effect as an act of parliament."—If they were looking for constitutional authority, could they meet with any thing more perfect than this? He asserted, that such a bill as was proposed, could not by law be an act of parliament. To get through with it, the right hon. gent. called on them to have recourse not only to a fiction, but a fraud; an imposition on the country, pretending to give the royal assent in a way in which by law it could not be given! This would be a monstrous and abominable imposition, and the more reprehensible, since they had an opportunity of following the more safe and easy mode chalked out for them in the best days of the constitution, which was fully competent to the attainment of their object, and had already been advantageously pursued in a crisis as important as ever could arise in any country.

The right hon. gent. had inquired of those who supported the mode of proceeding by Address, if by an Address they would not bestow authority equally great with what would be bestowed by a Bill. He had no hesitation in saying certainly, it would give the same powers; it would be an act of that House; and he meant it should have both those effects. He went along with the right hon. gent. in saying, that the two Houses of Parliament had the right, and they only had the right; and in his opinion, it was also their duty, to supply the deficiency in the executive. All that he contended was, that there was an improper and consistent mode of doing this, and that the mode he had now pointed out was this consistent mode. The right hon. gent. however had said, that, by following his way, the House would be enabled to tell his royal highness what were the limitations they wished to impose on him, whereas in his (Mr. Ponsonby's) mode of proceeding, they would have no such opportunity. This he denied utterly. It was just as possible to adjust the limitations afterwards, when the parliament was complete, by the revival of the royal functions, as it could be by the defective and unconstitutional act, recommended by the right hon. gent. For instance, did they wish to secure the custody of his Majesty's person, during his indisposition, to her Majesty, the Queen, in which he concurred with the right hon. gent. as he believed most people would do: was it to be conceived, or did the right hon. gent. imagine that his royal highness would refuse his concurrence to such an arrangement, even after, by the Address of the House he had been invested with the office and authority of Regent? When the House should come to provide for the event of his Majesty's recovery, and the means of enabling him immediately to resume his royal authority, both of which events he heartily hoped to see speedily arrive, did the right hon. gent. think, that his royal highness, the son of his Majesty, would refuse his concurrence to such arrangements? As much right, surely, must lord Somers and the other persons who carried up the Bill of Rights to King William, have had to suspect that he would not agree to it, as the House had now to suspect that the Prince of Wales would, after the House had addressed him to assume the management of affairs during the indisposition of his father, refuse to agree to such limitations as the House should in its wisdom judge reasonable. When the House should have appointed his royal highness Regent, they surely must mean that he should have the power of assembling or dissolving them. Did the right hon. gent. however suspect that he would exercise that power without due discretion? Did the right hon. gent. suspect when the House should send up Bills which were necessary for the public welfare to be passed, that his royal highness would deny them his assent? If he did not suspect any of these things, what danger was there that any subsequent difficulty should arise, though the limitations should not go along with the appointment to the office of Regent? Another act that he (Mr. Ponsonby) should propose, besides the Address to the Prince of Wales, would be, that some proceeding should immediately be taken to give validity to what the House had done since its meeting and while it was not complete. Did the right hon. gent. suppose that the Prince of Wales or any of the royal family, or any other person, (for he did not wish to speak personally but generally to the question) who should be appointed Regent, would refuse to comply with the reasonable wishes of the two Houses of Parliament? He (Mr. Ponsonby) could not believe that the right hon. gent. could entertain such an idea of a person whom he himself proposed to appoint Regent of these kingdoms. He could not conceive so monstrous a proposition. The deficiency in the executive power must be supplied in some manner, and in the present calamity, there was no other source from whence the right to make provision for the discharge of the affairs of the state could be derived, but the two Houses of parliament. The question now was, in what manner this deficiency was to be supplied. The right hon. gent. proposed to follow the course pursued in the year 1789, a course contrary to the constitution, and a fraud on the country. If, in proposing this mode of proceeding, the right hon. gent. thought, that because one House of Commons had acted so wild a part and one so contrary to the constitution, he was bound to follow its example, he must confess that the present was the first occasion on which he recollected to have been told, that because a sensible man twenty years ago, did a wrong act, therefore that wrong act should now be followed by another of the same kind. Yet this he would contend was the sum and substance of the right hon. gent.'s argument, with respect to the precedent of 1788; in as much as he had not offered to shew, that the proceedings of that period were founded on law, the principles of the constitution, or preceding examples in the political history of the country. No; he had on the contrary said he would not argue the case—he contented himself with asserting the merit of the precedent, and, disdaining argument, appealed to authority. But he must remark, to him that authority alone was always absurdity. Yet if the House thought it right, and were convinced by what the right hon. gent. had said, they would of course follow his advice; but he hoped they would act on principle, not on fiction or fraud, and that they would adopt a course adequate to the completion of the object they had in view—a course in unison with the law and the constitution, and belonging to them of right as acting for the public interest during the incapacity of the crown.

He conjured the House therefore to pause before they were persuaded to adopt a measure, the truth of which no man could assert.—Would the right honourable gentleman, or any of his colleagues, say that his Majesty could by law give his assent to an act, when this was to do what they confessed he was incapable of, because it was done 22 years ago? As for the restrictions intimated by the right hon. gentleman, it was not necessary for him to enter at large into their discussion, for if the right hon. gent. was successful in carrying his measure, they would come more properly to be commented upon when introduced into the Bill he would consequently submit for the consideration of the House.—He must now, however, take the liberty to say, that if any considerable restrictions were in contemplation, he should consider them as highly inexpedient and improper. His royal highness the Prince of Wales was of an age at which most of our Sovereigns had been seated on the throne, and if at forty-eight he was incapable of being intrusted with the direction and full powers of the government, he would never, he feared, be fit for the throne.—If he was such a person as to cause the House to suspect him now, they ought not to be content with restrictions, but exclude him at once from the succession to the crown. But when, in addition to the impropriety of such restrictions as affecting the apparent heir to the throne, they took into view the impolicy of them with respect to the public welfare, he was convinced they would agree with him that severe restrictions were altogether inexpedient. For at what time were they to be imposed? Was it of profound peace? Was it of easy management? Was it of no danger? Was it of no burthen, when they would create and be satisfied with a crippled government, at this time when a government too weak was almost certain ruin? The right honourable gentleman had expatiated upon the blessings enjoyed by the country for a reign of more than half a century, and he agreed with him most cordially in ascribing to the sovereign every wish to contribute to the happiness and welfare of his subjects. But could they compare their present situation with what they had formerly enjoyed, and find so much for gratulation and triumph as the right hon. gentleman had done? Were they in prosperity, in case, in tranquillity? Were they free from danger at home or abroad? or could they contemplate on the ministerial bench men of splendid talents, sufficient in this awful emergency to command the confidence, to guide the counsels and direct the energies of the state?—Could they be satisfied that such men were fit to be intrusted with the destinies of the nation in times of so much peril, difficulty, and danger?—He dared to say the right hon. gentleman considered himself as one of those blessings of the reign he had so panegyrized, for which they were bound to be so thankful, and that his Bill to continue the blessing of his government a little longer would be another! For himself he could not say that he felt any gratitude to him or to his colleagues for the great services they had rendered the country. They were not so splendid but they might be dispensed with; and he would boldly say, with all that respect and admiration for the King, expressed by the right hon. gentleman, that he should think the day of his departure from power the best day the country ever saw! He concluded by moving as an amendment, "That all the words after the word 'That' should be left out, for the purpose of inserting that 'An humble Address should be presented to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, requesting that he would be graciously pleased to assume and exercise the sovereign authority of these realms, during the continuance of his Majesty's indisposition, and no longer, under the title of Regent of the united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."—Should this amendment be adopted, he gave notice that he should have another motion to submit to the consideration of the Committee.

rose and said;—The Committee has now submitted to their consideration the two different courses of proceeding, severally recommended on each side of the House, as fittest to be pursued in the present unfortunate situation of the country. Upon one side—upon that of my right hon. friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the whole of the plan proposed has been laid before us. Upon the other side the general principle and introductory stage only, from which however we collect the nature of the intended subsequent proceedings. Thus situated we are now to determine what course it will be best to follow under all the circumstances. The duty, which devolves upon us, is to provide for a great and pressing emergency, by supplying the defect which has unfortunately taken place in the executive power.

In deciding the preference between the two modes recommended for our adoption, the committee is first called upon to exercise its judgment as to the degree of power and authority, which the two Houses of Parliament can justly claim to belong to them under the circumstances of so extraordinary an emergency. That, if not within the power of the two Houses of Parliament to supply the remedy which the exigency requires, it is not of the competence of any other existing authority, is a point agreed on all hands, Not the right, therefore, and the power, but the mode of exercising them is the question in dispute. On the one hand, it is proposed, that the two Houses of Parliament should set out as nearly as possible in the ordinary manner of legislation, passing an act, which, so far as they are concerned, would be an act of parliament in form, and supplying by a legal fiction the place of the third branch of the constitution, for the especial purpose of giving effect and validity to the one necessary act, so passed by them, and no further. On the other hand it is suggested, that the deficiency should be remedied at once by an act, which if it be not an act of legislation, differs from it, not in being something less, but in being something more.

To object to either of these modes its own positive difficulties and embarrassments, is only in other words to say, that we are in a situation of great embarrassment and great difficulty; and there is no course of proceeding under such circumstances, but what is and must be liable to some objection. It is, however, no fault of ours that we are so situated. It is not as in ordinary cases, to be imputed to any man, or to any measures, or to any series of measures, that they have brought us under these circumstances of perplexity. The infliction is from Providence alone. It is one which we all equally feel and all equally deplore; and which while we endure it with humble and patient resignation, and indulge the consolatory hope of its speedy termination, the most anxious wish of every man's mind must be to alleviate its inconveniencies, while it endures, so far as may be possible, and in the manner least productive of inconveniencies of any other kind.

Our situation, however, painful and perplexing as it is, is not wholly unprecedented. Among the precedents which we have to guide us, and which have been referred to in former discussions, I agree with both the right hon. gentlemen, who have preceded me, in not thinking it necessary for the forming an opinion on this important question, to look to those which are drawn from an earlier, and more imperfect state of the constitution, when we have it in our power to appeal to periods of a more recent, and perfect state of the constitution; not because I conceive that those former precedents might not, in the absence of better guides for the conduct of parliament, be resorted to with advantage, but because all the lights, which they afford, have been so recently explored, and brought together by the industry and intelligence of those who preceded us in this House, and who had to act two and twenty years ago in that instance, which bore in its circum- stances the strongest resemblance, as it is in point of time, the nearest to that in which we now unhappily stand.

Of precedents drawn from more modern times, there are three, which have been particularly dwelt upon, two of them bearing upon the case by analogy, the third, that of 1789 (to which I have just alluded) by direct similarity in all its parts. It is obvious, that a direct precedent is likely to afford a more complete and certain guidance, than one, from which one can reason only by inference, unless there be in that direct precedent, some inherent vice and imperfection, which renders it wholly unworthy of imitation. Let us see first what are the circumstances of those which bear upon the question by analogy.

The first of these is that of the Restoration. In the circumstances of this I can find no similitude to the present case. By this an exiled monarch was to be restored to a situation of which he had been unjustly deprived—an acknowledged right long unjustly withholden, was to be proclaimed and re-established. Can it now be said, that any right has been withheld which we are called upon to adjudicate?—that any violation has been offered which we are called upon to repair? Is there now a monarch waiting the derision of parliament to be restored to his rights and reinstated in his sovereignty? If such be the predicament in which we are placed, the Restoration is an authority to which we may properly be referred; but if it be clear, that we have now no right to adjudicate—no violation to repair—if we are not about to create a power, but to supply a temporary defect in the exercise of it, surely the authority of that precedent cannot be considered as binding, whose circumstances are shown to be so totally dissimilar. When the right hon. gent. says, that both Houses of Parliament acted in that instance, as he has described, he in reality says nothing more than that they did what was necessary in the circumstances of that particular case, and nothing beyond it. In that particular we shall do well to follow the principle of the example set us by the parliament, which called Charles the second home; but the details of the transaction appear to me to hold out no other light, which can be of any use to us on the present occasion.

We come next to the precedent of the Revolution. Splendid and cheering to the recollection of Englishmen, as the great event must always be, it will be right and wise in the Committee, before they permit their feelings to hurry them away, to consider what the object was of the parliamentary proceedings at that period? Was it to provide for the care and custody of the person of the monarch? Was it to ensure his return to the government of the country upon his restoration to health? Was it to erect a temporary authority during an accidental defect of the competence of the sovereign? or was it not to provide against the restoration of James, and set up safe-guards and barriers against his return, to defend the crown, which they proposed to transfer, against the hostile approach of its ancient possessor? Was not the throne declared vacant by James's abdication? And was not this declared vacancy the ground of all the subsequent proceedings? Is there any resemblance, therefore, or is there not rather a direct contrariety between the case of the Revolution, and that for which we are now called upon to provide? Has our Sovereign forfeited his throne? Is it our purpose to declare the throne vacant? or is it not the first and fundamental principle of our proceeding, that it is full? Is it any part of our object to retard and embarrass the resumption of the exercise of the royal authority by our Sovereign, or is it not our fervent prayer, that it may be speedily resumed? I do not mean to say, that while considering what is to be done in a crisis of great difficulty, there may not be some advantage in comparing it with what was done in cases so far resembling it, as to have some of the constituent parts the same, but their arrangement and relations to each other different, and even opposite. Undoubtedly some suggestions may be borrowed—some assistance derived from such cases, but the assistance is that of analogy, and an analogy founded not upon direct inference and application, but upon a comparison of points of difference, and of circumstances directly the reverse of each other.

Some gentlemen, indeed, carry their notions of the deference, which is due to a favourite precedent, to an extent so strict as, in my opinion, to be almost ludicrous. They insist upon our imitating not only the main scope and action of the great transaction, of which we are speaking, but its accidental defects; and would have us create to ourselves deficiencies, which, those who brought about the Re- volution had, but which, luckily we have not, to supply, in order that we may copy them in the manner of supplying them. Thus the right hon. gent. (Mr. Ponsonby) has said, that there was no use made of the great seal, in those acts of the revolution, by which King James was declared to have abdicated the throne, and the prince of Orange was called upon to take the government into his hands. Certainly there was not—for how could such an attempt succeed, when there was no king in whose name the great seal could be used; when the executive power was not merely suspended in its functions, but rendered null by the absolute exclusion of the king and the total want of the royal authority? Besides, there was this farther practical difficulty in affixing the great seal to any commission or act, as at that moment the great seal from accidental circumstances was at the bottom of the Thames.

The hon. baronet (sir F. Burdett), carries this principle still farther. He is so attached to the Revolution in all its parts, whether principle or circumstance merely, that he finds a great defect in that particular, of our situation, which to ordinary observers would appear a considerable, though to be sure only an accidental, advantage. At the time of the Revolution there was no parliament sitting. The hon. baronet, therefore, finds that the first Address to the Prince of Orange was voted, not by the parliament, but by an assembly of persons, to which a deputation of aldermen and common-council of the city of London had been discreetly called, to give their assistance and advice. In the warmth of his zeal for the precedent of the Revolution, the hon. baronet seems to think that the accidental circumstance of an existing parliament should be got rid of without delay; that we should immediately abdicate our authority and dissolve ourselves at once, for the sake of assembling another body of representatives, who should have the benefit of advice and assistance from the lord mayor, aldermen, and common-council of the city of London.

It is surely a singular remedy for the unfortunate incapacity of one branch of the constitution, to proceed unnecessarily to incapacitate the branches which happily remain entire. It is surely a strange application of precedents to contend, that because at the time of the Revolution there happened to be no parliament (and that there was none was, by the way, one of the grievances which produced and justified the Revolution), because, in order to procure the semblance of a parliament, it was then necessary to collect the scattered fragments of former Houses of Commons, of a former reign, and to eke out their numbers with a deputation from the aldermen and common-council of London; therefore a parliament actually existing ought to be dissolved, or rather ought to dissolve itself (for I know not what authority there is to dissolve us), merely that there may be one feature more of resemblance between the Revolution and the present time.—It will not be pretended that the representation of the people was more complete in an assembly so heterogeneously composed, as that which first addressed the Prince of Orange, than in the present or any invening House of Commons. It was, as I have said, the remnant of old Houses of Commons, not specially elected for the purpose of the time, not chosen in preference to a regular parliament; but called together hastily for the want of any other mode of collecting any representative body whatever. To this body, so collected, were added a certain number of the aldermen and common-council; but respectable as their authority, and useful as their advice may be, who would ever have dreamt that from such an extraordinary Convocation, arising from an extraordinary necessity, would be deduced the inference in after times, that no House of Commons was competent to its functions without the addition of fifty aldermen and common-councilmen of London.

I prize the blessings derived from the Revolution, and respect the authority of those who conducted it, as highly as the hon. baronet, or any other man: I think the proceedings of that time wise, and just, and necessary; but because they were necessary, therefore just and wise. But I do not think it an indispensible proof of my value and veneration for that illustrious precedent, that I should consider it as a rule for all occasions; that I should think the example of revolutionary times applicable to quiet times; and should consent, in the language of one, who said all things well on these subjects, Mr. Burke, "to make the extreme medicine of the Constitution its daily bread." The present case has difficulty enough, but it has nothing of revolution in it.

But after all, is not the very instance which is held out for our imitation, mistaken and exaggerated? What did this assembly, to whose likeness we are bid to conform ourselves, do? Confer the Crown on the Prince of Orange? Declare King James to have abdicated? In fact, bring about the Revolution?—No, they addressed the Prince to call a Parliament, or Convocation, by letters instead of writs, since the authority for issuing writs no where existed. The Prince of Orange did, in pursuance of this Address, write letters to convoke a representation of the people, according to the usual rights and modes of election; and upon the assembly of that Convocation, it was that the work of the Revolution went forward. How can it be necessary that we should go through their previous stages, being already at the point, to which they were intended to lead? We have now a parliament full, free, and so constituted, as to be fully competent to provide for the exigency that exists. Will the hon. baronet, to adopt his precedents in their full extent, contend, that we must begin by addressing the Prince of Wales to call a parliament by letter instead of by writs? (otherwise he could not till he has the command of the great seal) and what would be gained by interposing such a stage in our proceedings but delay? Is it not rather our duty, parliament being called together, to consider how we can best provide for the emergency, that has unfortunately occurred, and remedy the mutilated state, in which the government is placed by the incompetency of the King to exercise his royal functions?

The right hon. gent. (Mr. Ponsonby) however does not partake in these views of the proceedings of the Revolution. He agrees, that we are a parliament competent to the discharge of the duty which has devolved upon us; and that the only question is how we shall best discharge it? But he thinks the precedent of the Revolution binding so far as it prescribes Address as the mode of our proceeding. In the speech of the right hon. gent. distinguished as it was by eloquence and acuteness, no part was more acute or more eloquent than that in which he displayed the absurdity, as he conceived it to be, of doing on the King's behalf an act implying the King's personal will, for the purpose of declaring and remedying the extinction of that will by the King's personal incapacity. The fault of this argument, in my conception, is, not that it is not applicable to the case, but that it is, in fact, the whole of the case. To state that the King is personally incapable, and that acts nevertheless must be done in his name, and implying his will, is to state nothing more nor less than the fact: such is the difficulty in which we are; such is the absurdity (if that be the fit name for it) which that difficulty necessarily involves. To describe its contradictions is an easy task; to find a solution of it that shall not be liable to the charge of contradiction is perhaps impossible; to find that which has with as little contradiction as any other, less of practical mischief, or danger, is, I apprehend, the task which we are this day assembled to perform. All the right hon. gent.'s eloquent amplification, therefore, though I heard it with pleasure and admiration, is merely a statement of the case, and goes not one step towards its remedy.

When he comes to state his remedy, Address instead of Bill, I do not see how be gets rid of the absurdity which belongs to the constituting a Regent by the great seal—for the great seal in the Regent's hands must still speak in the King's name, and assume to utter his will; but I think he admits other hazards to which the constituting a Regent by the great seal is not equally liable.—I have said that the principle of the Revolution does not bear him out: because the Revolution was not conducted in the King's name, nor pretended, even in legal fiction, to be brought about or sanctioned by his will. But I should go farther, and say that this precedent made directly against his proposal—directly against appointing a Regent in the way in which King William was ultimately appointed King. And for this reason. The question of a Regent was in contemplation at that time. The Tories, those whose advice was not adopted, and whose course was not followed at the Revolution, contended, that King James ought to be considered as still retaining his right to the crown, still the lawful sovereign, but as being incapable of exercising the functions of sovereignty, just as if he had been disabled by mental derangement, and that the Prince of Orange should be appointed Regent to carry on the government in his (King James's) name. Now, if this suggestion had been made the rule of proceeding, if such had been in fact the settlement, at the Revolution, the right hon. gent. would indeed have a precedent directly in point. But, as it is, the precedent appears to me to operate directly against him, and the more so from the cir- cumstance of the very case to which the right hon. gent. wishes to apply it, having been actually under contemplation. As the notion of Regency was suggested and was negatived,^* the inference certainly is not that the course then adopted would have been thought applicable to a Regency; the presumption is strongly the other way.

No argument has been offered to prove, that we should exercise less power by the mode of Address, than the one originally proposed to the House, or be likely to entail less embarrassment upon ourselves or fewer difficulties upon the country. There certainly is one ground, and only one, upon which the mode of proceeding by Address might be considered as more applicable to the case; and that is, supposing a right in the Prince of Wales to the Regency. For such a right I have not heard any one contend, and as I am far, very far indeed, from wishing to revive the differences of former times, I will not argue it. I will say no more than that the circumstance of adopting an Address now, might in the hands of an ingenious reasoner, be made to appear like the implicit acknowledgment of the right formerly contested. I do not mean, I distinctly disclaim the meaning, that the right hon. gent. moves his Address with this view; but I think this may be one effect of its success, and for that among other reasons I object to it.

In a balance of difficulties, then, how can we better make up our decision than by resorting to the most recent, and the most applicable precedent? A precedent I will not say sanctioned by the authority of great names—such as the name of the person who took the lead in this House on that occasion, weighs with me on every occasion on which it can be cited; because I am aware there are others who might naturally be swayed by the authorities which were opposed to Mr. Pitt in these discussions—I will not say sanctioned by great majorities in parliament, because I recollect, that to a majority of two only, we ewe the blessings derived from the Revolution: I will say merely to a precedent which parliament did adopt which stands recorded on our Journals, as the law of parliament upon this question, until it shall be repealed and abrogated. Surely it must be felt that if no great benefit can be shewn to result from the abandonment of a recent precedent, it must on the other hand be productive of no inconsiderable evil. It must throw loose to all succeeding times a question, which we even now perceive the inconvenience of having to discuss, on conflicting authorities, and by remote and disputable inferences: it must give to both these opposite decisions, and ensure to those that may be to be discussed hereafter, the character of so many irregular impulses of passion, or inclination, controuled by no general principle, and conformable to no uniform system. Whereas if we adopt now the precedent of 1789, so far as it was completed by parliament, the concurrence of these two proceedings will settle the question for all time to come.

^* See Cobbett's Parliamentary History, vol. 5, pp. 59, 66.

There is but one point more which I have to state on the subject of the proposed proceeding by Address. And it forms, I confess, in my mind an insuperable objection to it. I cannot conceive how we can satisfactorily to our own sense of duty provide for the care of the King's person, and for the resumption of his authority, in the happy event of his convalescence, otherwise than by Bill, and by a Bill, which shall precede the actual investiture of the sovereign power in any other hands. That these objects should be amply provided for, is not more the duty of parliament, than it must be, and is undoubtedly the wish of the illustrious person to whom we are all agreed in confiding the exercise of the regal authority: that they would be provided for as amply with his consent, and without parliamentary enactment, by the mere impulse of his royal mind—there can be no question. But we are providing for all future times, and all possible cases: and we should not, I think, do our duty fully, if even in an instance where, without any special provision, we might rest assured, that the objects would be accomplished, we yet were not to take, upon a strict and abstract view of the case, the best security that the case admits—that is, the security of parliamentary enactment. Other limitations or restrictions which might be thought necessary, to accompany the delegation of the regal authority, might perhaps be provided by Address. But I must take the opportunity of expressing my opinion, that, as that which I have just stated, is the only provision in the nature of limitation or restriction (if it can properly be called either) which I think cannot be properly made except by Bill—so it is the only one, which I should wish to see, under the circumstances of the present times, attached to the exercise of the powers of the crown, in the hands, in which we are about to place them, or in any hands, in which it is fit that they should be placed.

My right hon. friend (the Chancellor of the Exchequer,) has intimated an intention of proposing other restrictions; on the model, as I understand, of those proposed in 1789. As he has not entered into any detail upon them, and has professed to wish, that the discussion of them may not be anticipated to night, I will abstain from any detailed exposition of my view of this part of the subject. I will only say, that respecting as I do the precedent of 1789, so far as it rests in principle, and is established by authority; I do not conceive all parts of all that was proposed on that occasion to be of equally permanent obligation. What depended upon the circumstances of the time—the change of circumstances may naturally vary. And I own I cannot conceive a period less favourable than that in which I am now speaking, for the abrogation, or suspension of any of the legitimate powers of the crown. If I doubted the expediency of such an experiment before this night, I have heard this night enough to convince me of its inexpediency. When the hon. baronet asked, why, if such powers, as it is proposed to suspend, can be dispensed with for a limited time, they should not be dispensed with altogether? I do not quarrel with the justness of his reasoning: but I content myself with observing that in 1789 there was no party in this country, which would have been prepared to apply and to act upon this inference.—That is in my mind a consideration indicating change enough in the circumstances of the country to warrant great caution in adopting that part of the proceeding of 1792. The time will come for stating more at large this argument, and others which appear to me to be conclusive against the policy of such restrictions at this period, as may cripple and degrade the executive authority.

I will now only add, that I have formed my opinion upon this point upon the best deliberation that I could give to it, without concert or understanding with any party, or any set of men whatever, and with no other object than the consideration of what may be best for the public service. Having formed this opinion, I have thought it candid, and honest, to avow it undis- guisedly on the first mention of the subject of restrictions in this House; and while I may yet hope perhaps that the decision of those who have the conduct of this measure is not finally and unalterably made up. I am not one of those, who think the executive power in this country too strong; or who think it can be weakened, in whatever hands, without disadvantage to the public interests.

I have now stated my sentiments upon the whole of this most anxious, painful, and distressing subject to the Committee. I do not concur with those who blame his Majesty's ministers for not having sooner brought it under our consideration. On the contrary I approve of the reluctance and delicacy, which they have manifested: and if my right hon. friend could now assure the House and the country that a still further procrastination would not be attended with any injurious consequences to the country, I should, on that assurance, have no hesitation in agreeing to defer to a still more distant day the painful duty, which we are now proceeding to discharge. Called upon to proceed in the discharge of it, we must endeavour to remember and to combine in our decisions, what we owe to public duty, and what to our feelings of affection and veneration for the exalted individual whose situation is the cause of our discussions; what we owe "patriœ Priamoque," to our country and to our king: not doubting however that these duties, though double in their obligation, will be proved concurrent in their practical discharge. The effect of the vote in which I shall concur this night is, at the same time that we recognize and record our duty, to assert our right to execute the awful trust which is unfortunately devolved upon us. The application of the right and power which we claim will be the subject of future discussions. But I am satisfied that in using our power liberally we shall find that we use it wisely.

having the misfortune to differ from those friends, on the bench beside him, with whom he generally acted, was anxious to explain as early as possible, the causes of that difference. He was rather for adopting the mode proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, of proceeding by Bill than by Address, because he thought it more consistent with the principles of the constitution. The constitution looked to three estates of the realm to complete the legislation, and from these three estates all power was derivable. These were the premises on which he should proceed, and which must be taken for granted ere they came to a conclusion. The royal power in this country was permanent: its suspension was only temporary, and even where the monarch was, by disease, stretched on the bed of death, his authority by a fiction still remained. A case of suspension now arose, and it was their business, to limit themselves to the temporary necessity, and not to take advantage of that necessity, in order to extend their own power: they ought to put the country in such a state, as that the existing deficiency should be as soon supplied as possible. But the question was, how were they to act? He had no hesitation in saying, that they had a right to use the Great Seal, in order to fill up the vacancy, caused by the suspension of the power, to which that seal peculiarly belonged. The Great Seal was the symbol of royalty, and when the royal functions were suspended, then it was the duty of the three estates, to act and employ that seal to provide for the suspension. If he was asked, in what book he found this doctrine? he would answer, that he found it in the book of the constition—in the same book where his honourable friends near him, found the authority of the Houses of Parliament, to confer the power on the Regent; and surely when they said, they could confer the royal power, he ought not to be contradicted for saying, on the same grounds, that they could use the royal seal. The precedent of the Revolution had been relied on, by his friends near him. In his opinion, that precedent went quite a different way. Let them recollect the language of sir Robert Sawyer, sir Robert Temple,^* and the other great men of that time, who uniformly said, that nothing but the absolute vacancy of the throne, could have justified their measures. The law was suppressed, the great seal was taken away, the government was relinquished, and in the emphatic words of sir Robert Sawyer, "there was no way of getting at the parliament." What was to be inferred from all this, but that if the Great Seal could have been obtained, it should have been used! What was this but saying, that if they had any way of getting at the parliament, parliament would have been exerted to supply the defect? In the language of the House of Commons to the House of Lords, the same principle was avowed when it was said, that if the throne was not vacant, then king James 2 was in existence as a king; all that they had done was undone, unless they could be supposed to set up a regency, which they not the power to do. Such were the principles adopted at the Revolution, and he would ask therefore how, could the Revolution be brought as a precedent, where the law was administered, whilst the king was on his throne, and when parliament was prepared to take steps, for supplying the deficiency in the executive. What was the fact at the Restoration? They said that the rights of Charles the 2nd commenced immediately on the death of Charles the 1st, and not that they, or any one, filled up the interval. Upon the authority of those men, and of those times, he would say, that parliament had no right whatever, to address the Prince of Wales, while the King was living; their Address would confer no power. It was their business, if the King could not exercise the Great Seal, to supply that defect, but he hoped he would never hear of an Address, by the estates of the realm, being equal to the law of the land. But it had been said, that a confirmation of the legislature, would be necessary to the power of the Regent; if it was necessary, it was plain that an Address, could not give that power; for, if it could give the power, the confirmation would be unnecessary. It was further contended, that, if they could exert the power of the Great Seal, to assemble parliament, they might address the Prince; but the distinction was plain, as they might perform a duty but not devolve a power. He could not avail thinking the principles, which his right hon. friend had laid down, of dangerous tendency: he allowed that from the Prince of Wales, nothing could be expected but what was right, yet they should look from the particular case, to the general consequence, and reflect upon what might be apprehended in another case. If they establish the doctrine of empowering a Regent by their Address, to assume the powers of government, might he not exercise that power by dissolving them. The situation, indeed, afforded only a choice of difficulties. His object was to get the royal assent by a reality, but his right hon. friend's argument went to set up a mockery of power, which had no existence in law. He concluded with expressing his deter- mination, to reserve himself upon the specific points of restriction, asserting, however, at the same time, that in times like these, the country could not be saved by any thing short of royal authority.

^* See Cobbett's Parliamentary History, vol. 5, pp. 38, 47, 119.

considered the present a question of the greatest importance, as involving every thing to the country. It was of the last moment that all party prejudices should be laid aside, and the real welfare of the state attended to. The noble lord recommended the attention of the House, to the situation of Ireland, and thought that something should be done, towards conciliating that part of the United Empire. He concurred with the right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as to the expediency of a Bill for providing for the deficiency in one of the branches of the executive government, and though well assured of the amiable qualities of his royal highness, still he must prefer a Bill rather than the mode of Address suggested by the other side.

thought it was clear that the regulation and care of the royal person was separate and distinct from the prerogatives of the crown, and ought to be directed by the legislature. If the amendment was carried, a resolution could afterwards be passed with respect to the care of the King, &c. and these might be incorporated in due time in a regular act of parliament. With respect to the great and momentous question before the Committee, he had no hesitation in saying, that whether he considered analogies or precedent, in his opinion they ought to proceed by resolution. The only precedent on which the Chancellor of the Exchequer relied was that of 1788. The reason was, because there was no other fact in all history to warrant what he proposed. At the commencement of that period the Great Seal was put to the commission, parliament was assembled; in the mean time the King recovered, and he then appointed commissioners to communicate further grounds for the proceedings of parliament by a speech from the throne. The speech was made, and an address, as usual an echo to the speech, was carried. This address (carried unanimously) the Chancellor of the Exchequer contended had committed every member of that parliament to an approbation of the preceding measures of the session. Far from it—the words of the address were merely vague and complimentary, only shewing indeed a due allegiance to the monarch, but by no means arguing a commendation of any former proceeding. The very phrase of the King in shewing, by his commissioners, farther cause for the meeting of parliament, argued a seeming doubt as to the legality of the original cause of their assembling. There was not a proposition more clear in the constitutional law of the country, than that the constitution had been violated in the precedent of 1788. It had been said, that the political capacity of the King never ceased: this he fully admitted, and the only impeachment or denial of the doctrine which he heard was conveyed in the intended proceeding of the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself. The precedent on which he acted was one of all others unworthy of imitation; commenced in an untoward time; continued in the midst of much party-heat, and cautiously framed by those then in power, in order to throw as much difficulty as possible in the way of those who were expected to succeed them in office. The precedent itself was an awkward and imperfect imitation of that from which it was taken. In the time of Henry VI, when he was an infant, the then lord Chancellor at his own risk, by the advice of the privy council, put the Great Seal to a proclamation to assemble parliament. Parliament, however, did not assemble, but the duke of Gloucester was declared Regent, the duke of Bedford his elder brother being absent in France. Such was the precedent on which the proceeding of 1788 was founded. Now, he would ask, how did the precedent of 1788 follow its origin? Why, in no respect? In the one case, the Chancellor, at his own risk, put the Great Seal to the commission: in the other, the Chancellor, desirous to be guaranteed in his temerity, made an application to the two Houses, begging their direction; the one was a responsible act, without any protection; the other was an irresponsible act, with every protection. Such was the precedent now sought to be acted on: a precedent, which, if pursued, might bring us back to the dreadful times of 1641. And yet that precedent was to be compared with that of 1688! That glorious, ever memorable epoch, which established on a solid and unshakeable foundation the liberties of this land—which combined in blended security the rights of the people and the prerogatives of the throne—which gave to this realm a government of law, and abolished a government of whim. The nature of the act of 1788, which was now proposed to be acted on, destroyed, as he had said, all responsibility.—He now came to consider the good which it went to substitute. In the first place, then, with respect to its safety. He denied that it was by any means a safer mode, or indeed so safe a mode as that by Address, which assumed no power and made no innovation.—The hon. and learned gentleman went on to observe, that after having appointed the Regent, the two Houses would then naturally proceed to lay down all the rules and regulations on which he was to act, and thus establish a government of responsibility, of which there otherwise could be none. As to the care of the royal person being placed in the hands of the Queen, that was not a restriction but a regulation: and he was convinced that no person could be more anxious than his royal highness that such a regulation should be established. With regard to the proposed restrictions on the powers of the Regent, they should meet with his decided reprobation. The whole of the prerogatives of the crown were public trusts, conferred for the benefit of the people, and could not be done away with or infringed upon without essential detriment to the public service. The proposition of withholding from the Regent the power of creating peers for a year and until six weeks after the meeting of parliament, appeared to him pregnant with consequences of the most disagreeable nature; for it brought the prerogatives of the crown to be discussed in parliament; and it might absolutely happen, that the upper House, from an idea of preserving their own powers and privileges, by preventing any increase of their numbers, might continue this restriction ad infinitum. Upon the whole, the sooner the House got into the regular march of the constitution the better, and this, in his opinion, would be best done by the proposed Address of his right hon. friend.

spoke in reply. He alluded to what had taken place on the appointment of a Regent in the reign of Henry 6. At that period, his father being dead, and no Parliament sitting, the Chancellor put the royal seal to a Commission for summoning a new Parliament. This, in fact, from the urgency of the circumstances, was a proceeding absolutely necessary; and Parliament, thus summoned, afterwards proceeded to settle the Regency. The wise men of that time saw that measures of that sort should be carried into execution by the Lords and Commons. In the same way, at present, there must be found some mode of exercising the functions of royalty; and was there any better mode than that of the two Houses directing the Lord Chancellor to affix the Great Seal to a commission for that purpose? It was true we were placed in a situation of difficulty, but be had heard no reason to shew that our proceeding in the mode of Address, was a safer or more constitutional course than that by way of Bill. In such a case, then, we ought to look to the practice of our ancestors, and particularly to the precedent of 1788, as that which, upon the whole, it would be most expedient to follow.

wished to deliver his opinion very shortly on the present occasion. To him it appeared, that the first Resolutions contained an absolute contradiction to the method which was proposed in the Resolution that followed. We had already resolved that it was the right and duty of the Lords and Commons to supply the vacancy in the executive, occasioned by the lamented incapacity of his Majesty; and yet we were afterwards to proceed to procure the royal assent to a Bill which should pass the two Houses, without the possibility of his Majesty assenting at all. Under such unfortunate circumstances, how could we devise any means of getting the assent of his Majesty but by the most palpable fiction? Was the will of the Lords and Commons the will of the King, or how could any such construction be given to it? His right hon. friend, in proposing the present Resolutions, had relied on one precedent alone; but he had said nothing at all of the two Houses of Parliament taking upon themselves to legislate; and not only so, but to pass a measure, under the fictitious semblance of its being an act of all the branches of the legislature. He could not look upon that precedent in any other light but as a fraudulent trick, and altogether inconsistent with the open and manly manner in which every act of legislation should be performed. In matters of civil life, what would be said of a set of men joining together and making a contract for another in a state of insanity, and employing a person as his solicitor to affix his seal or his signature to such a deed? Should we not say that such a deed was a gross imposture, and absolutely null and void? The application to the present case was easy and obvious. Undoubtedly, there was a distinction between the natural and political capacity of the sovereign. It proceeded from the latter, that in his courts of justice all writs and acts proceeded in his name, though his presence there was by no means necessary. But here we were extending the political capacity of the sovereign to cases of a very different sort; to acts of legislation, where either his personal assent or his assent by commission was absolutely essential to their validity, and could not be dispensed with. In fact, if they could proceed to one act of legislation, why not to others? Why should not the two Houses make war or peace, lay on an embargo, or do any thing else according to the principles of the constitution competent to the sovereign alone; and then say that it was the pleasure of his Majesty, because the two Houses thought proper to do it, and to command the sanction of the Great Seal? There was not the smallest necessity for a Bill, in order to render valid the restrictions or regulations under which the Regency was to be held. These might be introduced into an Address with perfect propriety, and the very acceptance of that Address would, in itself, be also an acceptance of the conditions with which it might be accompanied.

contended, that the proceeding by way of Bill and that by way of Address were substantially the same thing, and only differed in the mode of effecting the same object. It was said, that to use the King's name in assenting to the Bill was a fiction. But even in the Address proposed by the right hon. gent., was not the Regent desired to act in the name and on the behalf of the King? Even under a Regency, was not every act of the government still to proceed in the King's name? All this was perfectly proper; and where, then, was the impropriety of the two Houses ordering the Chancellor to put the Great Seal to a legislative measure in the name of the King? If the Regent was to act in the name of the King, why also might not the Chancellor? Suppose the King an infant, substantially no act could be done by him, yet all the transactions of government would be conducted in his name; though naturally incapable, his political capacity would still exist; and it was precisely on this ground that the two Houses, in a case of necessity, were authorised to order the Chancellor to affix the Great Seal to an act of legislature.

said, that considering the principles and views of the constitution professed by the learned gentleman who had spoken last, it was no wonder he preferred whatever mode of proceeding was proposed by the minister. Were it not for such authority, the learned gentleman, consistently with his own opinions, might be quite indifferent to the question, whether the Houses of Parliament ought to proceed in this great transaction, by Bill or by Address. For, in the beginning of his speech he had declared, that if this House pretended to give away the whole sovereign authority to a particular person by mere Address, it might as well usurp to itself the whole of the sovereign power in all its branches; and that he could see no difference between the one usurpation and the other. What difference the learned gentleman was able to perceive between them in the instance of a Bill, which he could not discern in an Address, he had not explained. The distinction, however, between assuming the royal power and conferring it was so essential, that the two Houses could not lose sight of it for an instant in providing for the necessities of the present emergency, without confounding all the functions of the constitution, and without danger of subverting the very foundations of the monarchy. It was their duty, on the one hand, to abstain from any the smallest usurpation of executive authority; and, on the other to provide, with the least possible delay, the means of supplying the defect which had unhappily occurred in the personal exercise of that authority by his Majesty. The learned gentleman had stated one doctrine, which, if correct, might be thought a decisive objection at once to the measure of conferring the powers of Regency by Address: he said, that the office of Regent was one of which the functions were not known nor defined, and the authority of which could not be judicially recognized in Westminster-hall; and he demanded, in what book of the common law the judges were to look for the description of this officer and his capacities? He had put this question with an air of triumph; yet the most satisfactory negative he could receive in answer would furnish no adequate reason for the inference which he meant to convey. The nature of the office of Regent, and the description of its authority and functions, do not belong to the common law of the or- dinary courts of justice, but are to be sought, where they will most distinctly be found, in the law and custom of parliament. It was too much the practice both of the right hon. and the learned gentlemen on the Treasury bench, to make reference to the common law and the learning of the courts below, upon subjects which lie altogether within the compass of the law of parliament: a law, not known at all to the professors of the common law in that capacity; of which the sources were coeval in antiquity with the common law, and necessarily anterior to the statutes; which was to be collected only from the Rolls and Journals of parliament; and the supreme authority of which, within its proper sphere, had been submitted to with reverence by the most ancient as well as by all modern judges, and had been appealed to by the best friends of liberty in the House of Commons in all former times. So far was the learned gentleman from being accurate, when he supposed that the office of Regent was not known to the constitution, that the most ancient instance preserved in our history of what may be called a parliamentary proceeding, to supply a defect in the personal exercise of the royal authority, is the nomination of a Regent; in the case of the Earl of Pembroke, who, upon the accession of King Henry the third, an infant of nine years of age, was appointed Regent by the Great Council of the Nation assembled at Bristol, and carried on the whole administration of the government, with the full authority of the crown, by the style and title of "Rector Regis et Regni." That the office of Regent was known in all times to the constitution and the law of parliament, was well proved by an entry upon the Rolls, respecting the appointment of Richard Duke of York to be Protector during the illness of Henry the sixth. The Parliament of that day thought fit to give him only a limited authority; and to that effect entered a declaration upon the Roll, that they would not confer upon him the name of Regent, because it imported authority of government of the land, but only the name of Protector, which imported a personal duty of attendance to the defence of the kingdom. It was not to be doubted, that if the Prince of Wales should take the style and authority of Regent in pursuance of an Address of the two Houses, the courts of law would be bound to recognize his authority as that of the crown. And though it might be fit, after he had assumed the royal style and had met his parliament, that an act should pass to confirm his title, and to ratify those proceedings of the two Houses; yet it was no more to be supposed, that, prior to such ratification, the judges would dispute an authority which the two Houses had directed his royal highness to assume, than, if the two Houses should prefer the fiction of a Bill, that the judges would presume to canvass the validity of the fiction. The difficulty, which the learned gent. had raised, with respect to the legal authority of a Regent appointed by Address, was never felt with respect to the authority of the Guardians and Lords Justices, who, repeatedly since the Revolution, have been appointed by commission from the King. By the terms of such commissions, they were invested with power to execute the office of Guardians and Justices, and to order all acts of government which by virtue of that office had been usual or might be lawfully performed. The books of common law, however, furnish no special delineation of the legal capacity and functions of such officers; the nature and extent of whose authority must be gathered from the usage and practice of the realm, as recorded in the memorials of parliament and in the archives of the state.—The same learned gent. had urged as an objection, what if the House of Lords should not agree to your Address? To this argument, it was enough to answer by another objection, what if the House of Lords should not agree to your Bill? Were such a difficulty to arise in either case, we must trust in the prudence and public spirit of both Houses, and in their mutual disposition sincerely to effect what must be a joint transaction, and which may therefore require some concessions.—He would admit to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the present question was to be debated upon the ground of parliamentary precedents; understanding always, that no single precedent could over-rule either express law, or settled and fundamental principles. In this point of view, the question was nearly reduced to a choice between the precedent of the Revolution, and that of the year 1788. But as something had been said by the Attorney General, of the proceedings which took place in the reign of king Henry the sixth, he would advert shortly to the history of those proceedings; because, in all the circumstances, which could be considered as applicable to the present situation of the two Houses of Parliament, that history would be found full of instruction, in opposition to the arguments of those who would urge the two Houses to usurp the prerogative of the third branch of the legislature. The transactions, which occurred in the reign of Henry VI, consisted of two parts: the provision made for the executive administration during his infancy, and the measures taken by parliament towards the close of his reign, when he fell into a malady similar to that with which his present Majesty is afflicted. The case of the minority of Henry the sixth, differed wholly from the present: by the demise of the preceding king, the parliament then in being expired; and when a new parliament met, to consider of the means of providing for the infant king's minority, it was a full parliament regularly convoked and opened, at which all the three branches of the legislature were present. As soon as the news of Henry the fifth's death reached England, several peers of the realm held a council at Windsor; and, taking it upon themselves under their responsibility to provide for the imminent necessity of the State, they put the Great Seal to a writ for summoning a parliament, and authorising Humphrey duke of Gloucester to hold that parliament as Commissioner in the King's name. In the parliament, so held, the crown was fully represented in its legislative capacity by the duke of Gloucester: and with perfect regularity according to all the forms of law, after an indemnity to those who had acted in this emergency and a confirmation of their acts, the parliament, (consisting of the King represented by his Commissioner, the Lords spiritual and temporal, and the Commons), appointed the duke of Bedford Protector of the realm. Such appointment, by a full parliament, is no precedent to justify the proposed appointment by the two Houses alone in the name of a full parliament. The same observation applies to the proceedings which took place, in the nomination of a Protector, when king Henry the sixth fell into a state of imbecility or lethargy, which disabled him from personally exercising the functions of government. But it is important to attend to the course of those proceedings. Before the king sunk into that unhappy state, he had opened his parliament in person; which, after several prorogations under the authority of regular commissions, was actually assembled at the time when the disorder seized him. It was still a full parliament, though he was himself unable to attend it, because he was legally represented there by his Commissioner, or lieutenant for holding the parliament, the duke of York, appointed by letters patent from the king himself. And it is material to observe, that the Commissioner for holding parliaments, at that period of our constitution, had, by the terms of his written authority and by the constant practice of the state, the entire legislative powers of the King; he opened the causes of summons, he could prorogue, he could dissolve it, he gave the royal assent or negative to bills and petitions according to his own ministerial, and, no doubt, responsible discretion. At a subsequent period, it became the settled practice of the constitution, that the royal assent was never given in the absence of the king himself, except under a special commission reciting that his majesty had seen and perfectly understood the particular bill assented to: But prior to the accession of the Tudor line, and during the whole reign of Henry VI. the constitution of parliament was different in this respect; the Commissioner, authorised by the king's letters patent to hold the parliament, having power to give the royal assent without taking the king's pleasure. When Henry VI. therefore became deranged, the duke of York being Commissioner, there was no imperfection in the parliament; it was complete in all its branches, and competent for all legislative measures. We find accordingly, that, notwithstanding the incapacity, of the king to attend his parliament, its proceedings went on without interruption, and it was not deemed necessary to supply the defect in the exercise of the royal authority. An event at length occurred, which imposed upon parliament the necessity of interposing, in order to provide the means of supplying that defect. The keeper of the Great Seal died; parliament was not competent to appoint a new one; that must be a personal act of the king himself. It was necessary to vest the royal authority in some person, who, by virtue of that authority, could deliver the Great Seal and create a Lord Chancellor. In this emergency, the parliament, consisting of all its three branches, (the duke of York as Commissioner or lieutenant of the King, the Lords spiritual and temporal, and the Commons, in full parliament assembled), by Bill, which passed the two Houses, and to which the Commissioner, as in the ordinary course, gave the royal assent, nominated the duke of York during the incapacity of the king, to be Protector of the kingdom, and first of the council. It is clear, that this furnishes nothing like a precedent for proceeding, in the two Houses, without the presence of the third branch, actual or represented, to manufacture a royal assent; while, on the other hand, it shews how scrupulous the two Houses were, at that period, of assuming, or pretending to exercise in their own capacity, any of the executive prerogatives of the crown.—With respect to the great precedent of the Revolution in 1688, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had contented himself with disposing of it in the most summary manner. Premising in general terms, that if there is a direct precedent we ought not to resort to one which holds only by analogy, (which, as a general maxim, was not to be denied); the Chancellor of the Exchequer was then pleased to affirm that the case of 1788 was direct, and that of the Revolution a precedent only by analogy; but without shewing, why it was to be regarded as no more than analogical. So far as the mode and order of proceeding were concerned, the measures taken by the Convention Parliament formed strictly a direct precedent. True, the political capacity of the king was then suspended, which at present suffers no discontinuance; the Convention of that day had a greater defect to supply, than is now to be provided for. But the principle, which authorises an extraordinary interposition of the states of the realm, is in both cases precisely the same; the necessity is of the same kind; the proceeding must bear the same character; the difference in the extent of the defect that is to be supplied, does not require a different mode and form of supplying it. Or if a stricter adherence to the established forms of legislation were required in one case than in the other, and if procrastination were more justifiable; delay was more to be justified, and solemn formality more to be desired, where the work to be accomplished was of greater magnitude, where, instead of naming a provisional Regent, they had to raise a new line of succession to the crown. And if, upon the abstract principles of the constitution, any difference could be stated, between the situation of the Convention and that of the two Houses at present, it would be this; that when the political capacity of the crown was in the former instance discontinued, the whole power of the crown, legislative as well as executive, might theoretically be considered as devolving upon the states of the realm, so that without usurpation they might have used, and have affixed to their proceeding, the forms of assent by the third branch of the legislature; whereas, while the throne is full, it is mere usurpation to seize the King's legislative power, as it is an absurdity in terms that the means of supplying the royal incapacity must have the sanction of the form of royal assent. The great statesmen and lawyers, who accomplished the Revolution, were incapable of such fictions and unsound refinements as compose the proceedings of 1788; they went straight to their object, guided by those analogies of the constitution which preserve the spirit of its rules in the exceptions that seem most wide. Those to whom the contrivances of 1788 ought to be ascribed, had secretly no predilection for the event of the Revolution or for the characters that were engaged in it. Indeed on this day it had been spoken of more than once with a slight, which no former House of Commons would have borne. The Chancellor of the Exchequer called it a taking precedent; a sneer, however unbecoming, which he trusted they, at whom it was directed, would long continue to merit, by their adherence to those memorable principles, and by their determination to act upon the same in all similar emergencies. Another right hon. gentleman (Mr. Canning) had spoken of the leaders of the Revolution, in terms of praise indeed, but with such qualifications as if forsooth they stood in need of pardon, for the length to which they had gone, impelled by a just necessity. Yet, not the talents which shone among those illustrious men, nor even the flame of liberty by which they were inspired, were more admirable, than the moderation with which they proceeded through their great work. And when the Committee is called upon to compare their proceedings with those of 1788, and to choose between them, it is impossible not to contrast the virtuous forbearance of all parties at the Revolution in concurring to provide for the public interests, with the struggle that was made for power in the other instance; and above all, to contrast the studied delays by which power was then so factiously retained, with the dispatch with which our ancestors finished in one short month their task of establishing at once the succession to the crown, reducing its prerogatives within limitations by law, and founding the whole structure of our civil and religious liberties. The right hon. gent. (Mr. Canning) had said, that some of the arguments, used in the debates at the Revolution, furnished a sort of authority in favour of our proceeding in the present instance by a Bill rather than by Address; because the Tories, who dissented from the famous vote of abdication, insisted, that the case ought to be provided for as if the King had become a lunatic, and urged the propriety of appointing a Regent for the life of king James, according to the ancient laws and practice of the realm. The topic, however; as used then, had no bearing upon the present question. It was not used with reference to the form of proceeding; no question of that sort was raised, and no one objected then to the Address. It was urged by the Tories in illustration of their doctrine, in which they fundamentally differed from the others, that the misconduct of the king was to be held as making a forfeiture only for his own life, without breaking the succession. The just conclusion to be drawn, was therefore the reverse of that of the right hon. gent.; that when the Tories of that day supposed a case of lunacy in the sovereign, they considered it fit indeed, that the vacancy should be filled by a Regent according to the ancient practice of the realm, but it never occurred to them that an Address was not the most proper mode of appointing him. And from this the Solicitor General might learn, that the Tories at the Revolution, some of whom were most eminent lawyers, had no difficulty in recognizing a regency as an office known to the laws and the constitution.—Opposed to the high authority of the Convention Parliament, stood the single precedent of 1788 and 89. He was at that period too young a man, to have received any of the impressions, which the agitation and resentments of that time may have left upon those who took a part in the scene. He had, without any bias upon his mind, endeavoured to judge candidly of the whole proceeding, and of its historical circumstances, no unimportant part of every parliamentary precedent. And he had no hesitation to say, that the Resolution, which asserts the right of the two Houses to provide for the exigency, commanded his full assent, both as the true result of more ancient precedents, and as a principle of constitutional law: provided it be understood in the sense, in which it was clear that the Houses of 1788 understood it, as declaratory of their right and duty to vest the royal authority in proper hands, but carrying no implication that the two Houses can ever themselves legally assume the exercise of any of the functions of royal authority. With regard, however, to the other part of the precedent of 1788, the Resolution to which the committee was now called to assent, and by which the two Houses proposed to raise the fiction of a royal assent by usurping the King's Great Seal, that appeared to him so repugnant to the fundamental maxims of the constitution, if not a direct violation of express law, that no weight of precedent could ever sanction it, far less a single case so discredited by its own circumstances as that of 1788. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had attempted to shew, that the proceedings of 1788 were more than a precedent of the two Houses assembled as at present; as if, by what passed subsequently; they had been converted into a precedent of the full parliament. His first argument for this purpose was, that various bills were brought in, and proceeded through their several stages in both Houses, while the parliament sat under the commission (as it may be described) from the two Houses, which bills, after the King had met his parliament by a regular commission, received the royal assent, without again going through the previous stages. But the argument was incomplete, unless the right hon. gent. denied, that the two Houses, as assembled in their present circumstances, were incompetent to receive bills and to forward through all the proper steps, to await the royal assent. The right hon. gent., he was persuaded, would be deterred, by the practical consequences of such a proposition, from maintaining it; nor could it be maintained. The parliament was in legal existence, by force of the original writ of summons; the two Houses of Parliament, though not now in parliament assembled on account of the absence of the King, were regularly assembled here by authority of the King's last writ of prorogation, which called them to Westminster on the 1st Nov. last. Their adjournment on that day was as much an act of the parliamentary capacity of each House, as any vote upon a bill could be. Here assembled, under the writ of prorogation, they had all their privileges and capacities in full force; though the proceedings which they might hold by bill could not be completed, without the King's assent. If the two Houses, as now met without any commission, could pass a bill through the stages of each House, there was an end of the argument of the right hon. gent. that the subsequent assent in 1789 to certain bills, sanctioned the commission given by the two Houses; and that they could entertain bills without any commission at all, was implied in the whole of the proceeding which he himself recommended. The other argument of the right hon. gent. to this point, was still more inconclusive; he went so far as to say, that the resolution having been agreed to by both Houses, and the King, after his recovery having, in the speech of his commissioners; thanked the Houses for the additional proof they had given of attachment to his person, it was to be inferred that the resolution had thus received the assent of all the three branches of parliament. If this had any meaning, the argument was this, that the expression in the King's speech echoed by the addresses, should be considered as having ratified, by the voice of the three branches assembled in parliament, the irregular proceedings of the two Houses in their preceding irregular assembly. It was the first time that the King's speech and its address were stated to have the character and efficacy of an act of parliament; if a ratification or an indemnity had been required, that was surely no act of ratification and indemnity; but assuming, as the right hon. gent. assumed by his argument, that the proceedings stood in need of such confirmation, the true inference was, that, as there had been no indemnity granted and no ratification passed, those proceedings were left and still remained in all their original irregularity. Though the precedent of 1788, however, could not be argued as high as the Chancellor of the Exchequer wished to raise it; though it was not a precedent in full parliament, it was certainly, in point of form, a precedent for the two Houses assembled in the peculiar circumstances of their present situation. As such, it stands in opposition to that of the Revolution; and it was for the Committee to weigh and compare them together; to compare a precedent, to the form of which no objection was urged at the time by those who most disliked its substance, which had been stamped with the sanction of an approving posterity, to which no objection in point of principle could even now be stated, with another precedent which at the time and ever since had been condemned by high parliamentary authorities, and which was liable to the strongest objections both from express laws and from constitutional principles. The statute of the 13th of Charles 2, made it a præmunire to maintain, that both Houses of Parliament, or either, had a legislative power without the King: yet the object of this Resolution was, to assume a legislative power by the two Houses without the King. That statute was levelled at the doctrines as well as the conduct of the Long Parliament; nor since the time of that parliament, had such doctrine and such language been heard within these walls, as the ministers had this day used to serve the purpose of the day. The Long Parliament, indeed, did not scruple to make a Great Seal for themselves; to justify the measure, they resorted to many of the topics which had been urged this day; their antiquarian pamphleteer Prynne used and perverted his toilsome industry and obscure erudition, in an argument for the parliament; and some of the expressions which fall from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, seemed to have been taken from the title of Prynne's pamphlet, which is, That the Great Seal attends the Parliament. In speaking of the Long Parliament, he wished not to be misunderstood, or to be supposed deficient in veneration for those able patriots, who, in the commencement of the struggle, disappointed as it was in the end, and stained by lawless ambition and atrocious violence, had stood forth to vindicate our just liberties, and to bring delinquents to condign punishment. The flight of king Charles to York, and his stealth of the Great Seal, justified their subsequent step; it was justified by the necessities of the state, which must over-rule other considerations; but let not those, who neither have the necessities of the Long Parliament to plead, nor are actuated by their constitutional principles, imitate their usurpation where there is no similar necessity, and borrow their language and arguments to give practical effect to principles of a very different description. Besides the evidence, which the statute of Charles 2 afforded, of the great doctrine of the law, that there is no legislative power in the Houses of Parliament without the King, there were express acts of parliament which prescribed the mode, and prohibited every other, of giving the royal assent to bills passed by the two Houses. The 33d of Henry the 8th, chapter 21, declares, that the King's assent by his letters patent, notified in his absence to both Houses assembled together in the upper chamber of parliament, is of the same force as if personally and publicly declared by himself; but the letters must not only be under his Great Seal, but they must be signed with his own hand. The act of the first year of Philip and Mary respecting the attainder of the duke of Norfolk, which is a public statute, contains a still more explicit declaration of the law, that letters patent for giving the royal assent to bills have no validity or efficacy, unless signed with the King's own hand, as well as passed under the Great Seal. The commission, under which the royal assent was pretended to be given, on the last day of Henry the 8th's life, to the bill for attainting the duke of Norfolk, had the Great Seal in due form; it had also the King's name affixed by a stamp: but at the time these forms were gone through, king Henry was insensible and incapable of attending to public business. In the first year of Philip and Mary, after an inquiry into the transaction respecting this commission, and upon a confession of these circumstances before the House of Commons by lord Paget, who had been king Henry's Secretary of State at the time, parliament removed the attainder; not in the ordinary form, by a bill to reverse the act of attainder, but, which is most material in the present argument, by a bill declaring that act to have been void from the beginning, expressly for want of the royal assent in due form. Before this proceeding took place in parliament, a question had been raised in Westminster Hall, whether that act of attainder could be regarded even there as a perfect statute, on account of the manner in which the assent had been given. The Solicitor General, who had called so loudly for references to the law books, would find in sir James Dyer's Reports that the question was much debated among the justices, in a suit between the duke and certain purchasers of some of his forfeited estates; and although the judicial determination of the point was superseded by the parliamentary reversal, it might be well for the learned gentleman to consider whether to his mind the existence of such a judicial doubt ought not to hold good as an argument, against proceeding to make a Regent by a Bill in the manner proposed, lest the justices hereafter might take it into debate whether a Bill assented to by the phantom were a perfect statute. But how strong soever the reasons against such a proceeding might be thought, founded upon the express statute law of the land, it was still more strongly condemned by the essential first principles of the constitution of the monarchy. It was a proposal to break down and confound all the boundaries of legislative authority, as distributed among the three independent branches of parliament; to usurp the legislative power of the crown; and, by a gross and illegal fiction, to steal the semlance of an assent where there could be no negative, with the absurdity of affecting to sanction by the royal assent itself, the remedy made necessary by the incapacity of the King to assent to any thing. Such was the measure, which the Committee were called upon to prefer to the direct and clear precedent of the Revolution. They had to chuse between a contrivance, the purpose of which, though denied, was palpable; a fiction, which could only be executed by a parliamentary falsehood and fraud, which must be attended with indefinite delay, which would involve their proceedings in a maze of complex and inconsistent forms; the invention, it was well known, of a refining lawyer, more addicted to scholastic subtleties and the caprices of ingenuity, than remarkable for enlargement of mind: they had to chuse between this, and the explicit, plain, prompt course adopted at the Revolution, by the best of our ancestors at the best æra of our history, a precedent formed by statesmen of much experience and large views, and by lawyers, who, with all the learning of their profession, were found no unequal associates to such statesmen.

complimented the hon. and learned gent. who had just sat down, not more on the ingenuity he had displayed on the topics he had chosen, than his prudence in wholly avoiding those that constituted the chief difficulties of the case. Any one who had only heard the speech of the hon. and learned gent., would imagine that instead of being reduced to a choice of difficulties, (as other gentlemen had confessed we were) we had a clear, open, and unobjectionable course to pursue. On one side, all was represented by the hon. and learned gent. as error and intricacy; but no doubt, no hesitation even, had been expressed as to the regularity and simplicity of the proceedings recommended by the other. The hon. and learned gent. had endeavoured to shew, by much learned argument, that it was not regular for the Houses of Parliament to direct the Chancellor to affix the Great Seal to patents or commissions: but this was not what, for his purpose, he should have contented himself with proving; because the irregularity, though it was defended on the score of necessity, had never been denied; and the hon. and learned gent. had, therefore, expended his ingenuity in proving what was already admitted. That, which he should have proved, and which he had not even, attempted to do, was, that the course proposed by his friends would get rid of the difficulty; that while it was absurd and unconstitutional to direct the Chancellor to affix the seal, it was right, legal, and orderly to direct an agent to direct him to do so; and that a chain of absurdity could be made good sense, by adding another link to it! The hon. and learned gent. must be aware that however we proceed now, the Great Seal must be finally called into use. He must know, that if even the Regent were appointed by Address, the appointment would still be incomplete. The courts of law would not recognize his authority till it had received the sanction of that Great Seal under which they themselves were sitting; and the Regent's first act must be that which the right hon. gent. opposite (Mr. Ponsonby) ridiculed as an absurdity in the Chancellor of, the Exchequer's proceedings, namely, the giving the King's consent to his own appointment, and affixing the Great Seal to a commission for that purpose. Undoubtedly, the right hon. gent. had argued these points with great, eloquence; but he had not been able to shew that all his ridicule and all his reasoning did not equally apply to his own case, when, after the Address, the Regent would have to make use of the Great Seal. So that, in fact, the mode of proceeding by Address only staved off the difficulty, it removed what was called the fiction, one step farther; but that fiction, sooner or later, had neither the right hon. gent. nor any of his hon. friends shew how it was Possible to avoid.

But the course proposed by and the arguments used by the right hon. gent. involved others and still more serious diffi- culties, and the affixing the Great Seal to his own appointment would not be the only absurd and irregular process, the Regent would have to execute, before he could be fully invested with his power. The right hon. gent., when he was arguing against the Chancellor of the Exchequer, remembered that the Great Seal could not be legally affixed without the King's sign manual previously obtained; but this circumstance he appeared to have forgotten when he came to recommend his own plan of proceeding. How would the right hon. gent. obviate, in his own proceedings, this difficulty? Would he omit the sign manual all together?—that is the very irregularity which he objects to us.—Then he must mean to have the sign manual—whose sign manual would he have not the King's, the King is incapable of signing. He can then only have the Regent's: but the law on which the right hon. gent. founds himself, says nothing of a Regent or any such person. It says, the sign manual must be the King's, and that it is high treason to counterfeit it! Again, the Regent's power, whatever it may be, can commence only after his appointment shall have passed. How can he make it commence before, by previously directing and legalizing such an appointment? It follows, therefore, that the sign manual of the Regent, as Regent, will not answer. But the right hon. gent. will say the Regent may sign the King's name by the King's consent; but where does he find the King's consent? no where; the King is as incompetent to give his consent as to sign. But the right hon. gent. will suppose it, he will feign it; and thus in his zeal to avoid all irregularity and fiction he doubles the irregularity, and creates a second fiction, more serious, more liable to rational and constitutional objections than the former.

But the right hon. gentlemen were not more inconsistent with themselves, than they were with the speech of his hon. and learned friend who had just set down. That hon. and learned gent. had dwelt much on the precedents in the early and in the latter parts of Henry the sixth's reign. The hon. and learned gent. had admitted them to be good, and had reasoned upon them as founded in the law and the constitution. With this opinion of these precedents, how the hon. and learned gent. could either consent to adopt the course, or to subscribe to the arguments of his right hon. friend (Mr. Ponsonby) was more than he could conceive, for these very precedents so refined to, so approved, contained in terms that very fiction which the right hon. gent. (Mr. Ponsonby) had characterized by the names of absurdity, imposture and fraud. The right hon. gent. had said, "What, shall we, by affixing the Great Seal, make the King say, as it were, 'I am sane so far as to admit my insanity; I am competent to admit my incompetency;' what a gross and monstrous fiction it is, to endeavour to supply a defect in the royal authority by that very authority which you presume to be deficient!" And, yet, this is precisely what the precedents relied upon by the other hon. gent. have done. In the very early parts of the King's reign the Chancellor affixed the Great Seal to Commissions for calling parliaments and appointing Regents, which set forth, in the King's own name, his incompetency. The deficiency of power in the King to do any act is admitted in the very instrument in which, nominally, he performs a most important duty. This precedent, then, would fall under the ridicule of the right hon. gent.: and it is not a solitary precedent. The practice was frequently repeated, and never, in all the heat and fury of these or of succeeding times, questioned by either of the parties that divided the state. What are the precedents of the latter period of that reign, referred to by the hon. and learned gent.? Still stronger, still more in point, still more to our present purpose, and still more obnoxious to all the objections of the right hon. gent.

The King at that time laboured under a mental derangement, and was incapable of meeting his parliament, or of performing any other function of royalty. What was the course adopted then on the numerous occasions that arose? Why, that which we now propose and which the right hon. gent. ridicules; the use of the Great Seal under the authority of the council or the parliament. Parliaments were called, acts were passed, Regents from time to time, under various names and descriptions were appointed, by commissioners under the Great Seal. In one instance remarkable for its near analogy if not similarity with the case now before us, the Houses of Parliament desirous to make provision for supplying the deficiency in the royal authority by appointing the Prince of Wales Regent or Protector of the kingdom, when he shall be- come of age, they do it by act of parliament, assented to by the King's commission, and the same day the Great Seal is put to letters patent, running in these words: "We Henry, by the Grace of God, &c, &c. taking into consideration the infirmity with which it has pleased God to afflict us, and that it would be injurious to our person, and would delay the speedy recovery of our health, if we were personally to attend to the affairs of the realm, and reposing confidence, &c. in our eldest son Edward, do, by and with the advice and consent of Parliament, appoint him Protector of my kingdom, to exercise his power according to the tenor and provisions of an act, of the said parliament, made this day." Can any precedent be more strongly in point than this, and can any precedent involve a greater fiction? Would the right hon. gent. deny that this was making insanity sane, and incompetency competent? Yet it was the precedent which his hon. and learned friend admitted to be sound and constitutional. How the hon. gentlemen would reconcile their opinions and their votes he could not guess. The distinctions the hon. and learned gent. made between the cases was, to be sure, somewhat extraordinary. "We," he says, "would direct the Chancellor to affix the Great Seal, and in the case of Henry the 6th he did it on his own responsibility."

The hon. and learned gent. said, he would not stop to examine the accuracy of this fact, nor to decide whether the Chancellor of that day acted with or without the orders of parliament. He would admit the fact to have been as the hon. and learned gent. had stated it, and gave him the whole weight of argument that resulted from it. What did it amount to? Merely this; that the hon. and learned gent. thought it would be better that the Chancellor should do this important duty of his own mere motion, than with the advice of both Houses of Parliament—that the assumption of this great and extraordinary power by an individual was better than the exercise than of it by the estates of the realm. To state the proposition was to answer it!" But he might come down," says the hon. and learned gent., "afterwards to the parliament to indemnify him." This gave up the whole argument, for the Chancellor might as well have the sanction of parliament before as its indemnity after. The course we would proceed in did not differ from the hon. add learned gent.'s in principle; he would allow the Chancellor to act and come afterwards for indemnity, we directed the Chancellor to act, and thus as it were anticipated the indemnity.

The hon. and learned gent. trusted that he had now shewn that the precedents of the time of Henry the 6th, instead of supporting the hon. and learned gent.'s propositions, were directly in favour of the course proposed by his right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer—a course which if even there had no direct precedent, would have recommended itself to the House by the soundness of the legal and constitutional principles in which it proceeded.

On the subject of the precedent, as it had been called, of the Restoration, he would say but one word, and that was to deny that it was a precedent, or that it, in any degree resembled or was analogous to the present case. He could hardly tell why it had been mentioned. He supposed because there had been an Address from the Parliament to the King (hear! hear! from the Opposition)—but what kind of Address was that? Was it an Address to resume his power? No. The throne was full, the King acknowledged.—Parliament claimed no right either to make him king or to restrict him in the exercise of his royal office. He entered into the engagement of royalty as of his own absolute right; and the Address of Parliament was a mere Address of congratulation and respect, and was no more applicable to such a case as the present, than any address to the sovereign on the birth or marriage of one of his children. But the Restoration was a venerable name, and the honourable gentlemen opposite would not lose the advantage of the sound; though it was, in this instance, but an empty one.

The hon. and learned member next followed the hon. gent. on the other side of the House to the consideration of the Revolution; an event which, with his right hon. friends near him, he totally denied to be a case in point. But he was ready to admit, that though not exactly in point, it was a great and most important case, the analogies of which might be usefully resorted to, not as establishing a precedent, but as offering the purest sources of constitutional information. Now, in his opinion, the case of the Revolution and all the doctrines and analogies arising out of it were decidedly in favour of the course which he supported. The hon. gent. opposite wished to have erected the Revolution into a direct precedent as an example strictly and accurately governing the present case, and this because the defect in the royal power had been, on that occasion, supplied, not by Bill as we now proposed, but by a mere Address, as the hon. gent. opposite would induce us to proceed. But the hon. gent. had really not stated the case of the Revolution fairly. There was an Address, he would admit: there were, indeed, three Addresses to the Prince of Orange, and there was one final Address which requested him to ascend the throne. But, were there no preliminary steps to that Address? No limitations? no restrictions? nay, did not the Lords and Commons of that day proceed in the way the nearest to the proceeding by Bill that the nature of the case would allow? did they not shew, that if they had had the means, they would have strictly adhered to Parliamentary forms? They at last addressed the Prince—and so should we! But we, like them, had first some preliminary measures to take. Let it be recollected what the proceedings, at the Revolution were, and what the Addresses of which so much had been said: The first Address was from the irregular assembly that was collected after the king's flight: they addressed the Prince to call a parliament, and, from the urgent necessity of the case, to conduct the administration of public affairs, until that parliament should meet. The parliament met, and if they had then at once and without delay addressed the Prince to become King, the analogy of the precedent might be argued to be in favour of the course proposed from the opposite side of the House. But no such thing did they! they paid little attention to the topics of the Prince's Letter delivered to them at the opening of the sitting, but they addressed him, to do what? to continue for some time longer to administer the public affairs, until they should have opportunity to deliberate on what it might be proper finally to establish. And how did they finally proceed? not suddenly, not precipitately, not by Address merely; they weighed and debated the State of the Nation^* in both Houses of Parliament, and framed with the most deliberative caution, that celebrated paper called the Declaration of Rights, which, (amongst its other clauses, containing as it were, a summary of the constitution) included one, conferring the crown upon the Prince and Princess of Orange. This solemn Act was communicated from one House to the other, and debated with all the earnestness and care that such a measure demanded: in fact, it assumed the shape, experienced the delays, and almost went through the forms of a Bill: It had every thing but the royal assent; which, as one of its objects was to dethrone a king, and another to place a successor in his stead, it was from the nature of the case impossible to supply by any reality or by any fiction. But this identical Declaration of Rights, was that which, afterwards, when a king had been created, passed verbatim into a law. And to this day this act is called not the Act of Rights, but the Bill of Rights, a title which is, in some degree, erroneous, as applied to an act of the whole legislature, but which it seems to have obtained from the original Declaration being considered in the nature of a Bill, and as having, as it certainly had, all the force and efficiency of a law. When this Declaration, this Bill, he might call it, this Law, for such in effect it was, had after many amendments and much debate passed both Houses of Parliament, it was presented to the Prince and Princess of Orange, with an Address that they should accept the crown, according to the provisions of that Declaration. The Address did not confer the crown: it was the Declaration that did so; that solemn Act of the Parliament which the Address only accompanied as a form of duty and respect. So that it is plain, that the Convention Parliament, though they could not in this proceeding have all the formalities of the law, adhered to as many as they could, and the principle that guided them seems to have been, to depart as little as possible from the received usages and forms of the constitution. This is the principle on which the House should now proceed; this is the conduct they should imitate. They cannot unhappily preserve all the forms of the law, for it is the deficiency of one branch of the legislature that creates the necessity of proceeding at all; but they should at least imitate the leaders of the Revolution, and carry the law and its forms with them as far as they had the power of so doing.

^* See 5 Cobbett's Parliamentary History, 36.

A noble lord opposite (earl Temple) had well observed and proved indeed, from the opinion of sir Robert Sawyer, that at the time of the Revolution, the loss of the Great Seal was considered as one of the difficulties of the case, and that it had occurred to some persons, that if the Great Seal could have been found, it might have been made use of, even for the purposes of the Revolution: and this opinion the historians of the times seem also to allude to, when they account for king James's having made away with the seal, by supposing him to have done so, in order to throw affairs into still greater confusion. But what say the hon. gentlemen opposite: Is the Great Seal a talisman: was there no means of framing another piece of silver into a Great Seal, if they had wished to use that instrument? Certainly, they could have made such another piece of silver as the Great Seal; but where was the regal power to sanction it; King James had, as might have been supposed, his own Great Seal in his possession; he could not have sanctioned the second; the Prince had no power to confer on the Great Seal, that was only to be done by the King; so that by this manufacturing process they could obtain a silver die, but not a legal and constitutional Great Seal, which the courts of law would have recognized and obeyed.

But he would confess, that the notions of using the Great Seal, if it had not been carried off, were vague and speculative—they never were acted upon in any way, and do not offer a precedent to controul or bind our conduct. He was inclined to think that if the Great Seal had fallen into the Prince's hands, it might have been used for the calling of the Parliament; but for passing the Declaration of Rights into an act, he conceived it could not have been, from the reason of the case. Could king James's Great Seal be used to dethrone him? Certainly not; and there is the great distinction between the Revolution and the present case. If we were dethroning the King, we should not use his Great Seal either, but our object was quite the reverse—we wished to maintain the King's power unimpaired, and to provide for the execution of his royal functions in his name and on his behalf; and it was for the maintenance of that power, and in his name and in his behalf, that it was now proposed to employ his Great Seal.

The hon. and learned member hoped that he had thus shewn, that, by taking the forms of law along with them, as far as they could be carried, the House would best follow the precedent of the Revolu- tion; and that if in this case the forms of the constitution would go one step further than they did in the Revolution, it should be considered as fortunate that the irregularity was diminished in the same degree, and the present existence in full authority of the Great Seal, under which the House and the courts of justice were at the moment sitting, relieved them from difficulties of a nature the most intricate and embarrassing.

The hon. and learned gent. further observed, that, in replying to one point of this precedent, which had been ably put by his right hon. friend below him (Mr. Canning), and by the noble lord (Earl Temple), the hon. and learned gent. (Mr. Horner), had hardly dealt fairly, as he had not quoted the whole statement of the precedent, which was directly what had been originally represented, and diametrically opposite to what the hon. and learned gent. represented it to be. The point was the proposition of the Tories for the appointing the Prince of Orange as Regent; which the hon. and learned gent. had said, was offered as an amendment to the proposition for making him King: but which if the Tories had been victorious they would not have objected to carry into effect by an Address. "On the contrary," said the hon. and learned gent. "they did not find any fault with the mode of proceeding by Address, and there was good reason to presume that they would have made their Regent in that way." The hon. and learned gent. must permit him to say, that he had mis-read the history of this transaction, and therefore misrepresented it. The argument of the Tories, as stated by all the historians, applied to the form as well as to the substance: they said, "that if a Regent was to be appointed, the old forms of the constitution and the practices of preceding times should be followed." These were nearly the words of the writers of that day, concerning this proposition, and from this it followed, as well that the hon. and learned gent. was wrong in representing the Tories as willing to appoint a Regent by Address, as that there were certain old forms of the constitution by which Regents had been heretofore appointed. What, then, were those forms? They were to be found in the Journals of that House: the precedents already so much discussed, of Henry the Sixth, contain them. There was no instance, ancient or modern, of a Regent appointed by Address; there were fre- quent instances of such appointments by acts of parliament and under the Great Seal: these were, therefore, the ancient forms referred to at the Revolution; these were the usages and precedents which we were now bound to follow.

The hon. and learned gent. concluded by saying, that he would not repeat what had been so often and so well argued on the subject of the precedent of 1788; it had been amply defended in all its points, by his right hon. friends: He had, indeed, not intended to have troubled the House at all on this subject, but that the statements, or he would beg leave to say, mis-statements, of the earlier precedents by the hon. gent. on the other side appeared to him to demand some observation. He would now only add, that though he hoped he had shewn that these precedents did not bear out the hon. gent. either in their arguments or their propositions, he was still ready to repeat the admission, that the proceeding by Bill must of necessity be, in some degree, irregular. But the hon. gentlemen opposite, had shrunk from the challenge which they had received, and had not even attempted to shew how they could remove the difficulty. A Bill must be informal, and all that he should think it necessary to say further for it was, that an Address would be still more so. For the Commission and the Bill there were old and modern precedents—for the Address no precedent at all. He did not conceal from himself the difficulty that existed, and which he thought was not so much to be attributed to this or that form of proceeding, as to the peculiar and embarrassing nature of the case: but he must also recollect, that the duty of the House was to render the embarrassment as light as circumstances would admit. In the proceeding which he supported, the difficulty was made as little as possible; in that recommended from the other side of the House, it seemed to him to be rendered more complicated by the addition of another step to the process. He must therefore adhere to the precedent of 1788, notwithstanding the difficulty that it involved, until the hon. gentlemen opposite should be pleased to explain by what mechanism, he had almost said by what magic, they intended to remove the still greater difficulties that their proceedings incurred.

rose and said, that at that late hour of the night, it was not his intention to trespass for more than a few minutes upon the attention of the House; he could not, however avoid making a few observations upon what had just fallen from the hon. and learned gent. who spoke last. The hon. and learned gent. had dealt with his precedents, in whatever way he thought proper. He had spoken of writings which no man ever wrote, and of signatures that no man had ever signed. It was not, however, his intention to follow the hon. and learned gent. through all the mazes of his learned confusion. The subject upon which the House was now deliberating was certainly of the most momentous importance. His Majesty had been labouring for seven long weeks under the most afflicting of maladies; the exercise of the royal authority had been interrupted; and the ministers had dared to exercise the royal functions without making any communication to the two Houses of Parliament. The right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer had stated to that House, that the symptoms of his majesty's disorder were become more favourable, and that a speedy recovery was to be confidently looked for. Now, however, it had come out, that from the 1st to the 14th of November the symptoms were very violent. Could the right hon. gent. say, upon the evidence of the Physicians who had been examined, that recovery was likely to be speedy? Every one of them had declared that they could not give any such encouraging information. But even supposing, that his Majesty were to recover: even supposing that he should again be restored to the use of his reason, would he not, in all probability, be subject, for the remainder of his life, to a frequent recurrence of the same calamity? Had the parliaments, which have existed between the year 1788 and the present period, done their duty in making no provisions for such a recurrence? Certainly not. There was such a recurrence in the year 1801. Of that disease there was then a distinct relapse; and yet the minister of the day had arrogantly dared to carry on the business of the nation. In 1804, his Majesty was again in the same melancholy state. He (Mr. W.) could not make up his mind to the opinion, that the King was then fit to transact public business; he could not believe, that a person so subject to "hurries," as the Physicians, had termed it, could be in a fit state to wield the executive power. He reverenced the King as much as any man living; but he could not forget that he was the Sovereign of a people, of whom he (Mr. W.) was one of the representatives. When the approach to that royal personage, even in perfect sanity, was cut off; when we knew that in 1801 and 1804, the public business had been carried on without his participation, was it not the bounden duty of that House now to provide for the due discharge of the kingly office? If the throne was vacant, if the royal authority was extinct, happily, there existed one, towards whom all eyes were turned for supplying the deficiency. The hon. gent. next adverted to the Resolutions that had been proposed by the right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer. To the first, there could be no possible objection. He must, however, say, that it was not necessary for that right hon. gent. to have thrown any apple of discord among the members of that House, by contrasting the different conduct of contending parties at the period of 1788, and at the present day. As however he had referred to the precedent of 1788, that right hon. gent. would give him leave to look to that precedent, as matured by the wisdom of Parliament. Fortunately, however, for the country, this was a precedent which was never acted upon, and the fruits of which, thanks be to God, we had never had occasion to deplore. An hon. and learned gent. had enumerated the many advantages which a Bill possessed over an Address; and amongst others, that it afforded a number of different stages of discussion. That hon. and learned gent. ought rather to have said, stages of delay; a delay which might ultimately render the Bill altogether unnecessary. On the contrary, the possibility of immediate execution, was, with the mode of proceeding, by Address.—Of the speech of his right hon. friend (Mr. Ponsonby)—a speech so well characterized by another right hon. gent. who spoke after him — the arguments had not been attempted to be answered. The mode of proceeding by Address was to all intents and purposes, the most complete and perfect: "We the Lords spiritual and, temporal—We the Commons of this realm, beg leave to offer to your Royal Highness the executive power." Was there any tribunal higher than this? No, there was none. If we addressed, then, the Prince, our proceedings would have the highest authority; but if we went to make an act of parliament, which was not an act of parliament, the want of the executive deprived it of its efficiency. When the right hon. gent. referred to the precedent of 1788, he could scarcely believe that he had looked into this Bill, which he had eulogised as a master-piece of wisdom; for it did more than King, Lords and Commons united could do; it bound both Lords and Commons in fetters, and tied up their hands, which was more than an act of parliament could do. After the deliberate wisdom of the House had been so long employed in, the framing of this Bill, we find in it that the Prince was to be prevented from making any use of the Privy Purse. The framers of this notable Bill must have been guided by the passions to which human nature was, unfortunately, too prone. Happily, however, for the country, the precedent of 1788 was never acted upon. If his royal highness the Prince of Wales had been able to exercise the functions of the executive during a struggle of three years, such a Bill must have done an irreparable injury to it, and degraded its consequence in the eyes of the nation.—The hon. gent. said he had no objection to attack the crown when it was in full force and vigour, but he would not attack it when it was obscured. He had repeatedly fought against it in the measure of Reversions, (a measure which was lost in the House of Lords) because they were odious to the people, and not beneficial to the crown. Certainly, the right hon. gent. opposite, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, had not been so lavish in the grant of these Reversions, as some of his predecessors in office had been. This might be owing to the merit of the right hon. gent. himself; and it might also be the act of his Majesty, who having been formerly so repeatedly assailed and importuned, might at length have thought proper to withdraw his countenance to such a system. The hon. gent. paid his tribute of respect to the dignified reserve of his royal highness the Prince of Wales from the first hour of his Majesty's illness up to the present moment. No man living, he believed, could taunt his Royal Highness, by saying that he knew how he intended to act on such or such an occasion. Ministers, however, seemed resolved to render him almost a mere pageant, and to deprive him of the power which was necessary to the due discharge of his high office. A certain general had said: "Give me an army of 40,000 men, and if I invade this country, I shall either entirely subdue it, or make it not worth having." So, in like manner the minister seemed anxious to say, "Give me these Restrictions, and if I have not the power myself, I will at least make power not worth having." Why, exclaimed the hon. gent., would you tie up the hands of the executive? Why would you attempt to shade the splendour of the throne? Was the splendour of the throne calculated to make the man happy who filled it. Alas, No. It could make no man happy. It existed for the benefit of the nation. Was not the Regent completely under your subjection? Could you not annihilate him when you pleased? You made him with the Great Seal, and with the Great Seal you could deprive him of his authority. He had no security. Parliament had six weeks for consideration after the commencement of a session, whether he was again to be continued with the powers with which he was invested. And thus, he was brought as it were to the bar of your House. Whether or no the Constitution could go on in this way, was a question of most serious consideration: It might accidentally turn out well; but we were taking a leap in the dark. If it walked this course for weeks and months, why might it not walk on so for ever? The right hon. gent. opposite talked of Jacobins; but what Jacobin ever proposed more alarming measures than these. He would have us preserve the royal authority, not for the people for whom it was intended, but for the King (Hear! hear!) Say, then, that it was for the King. It was not for the individual king alone, but for his successors. Comparing the Prince of Wales with King William, we had certainly additional reason for confiding in his royal highness. Was there such security from King William as a King, as we have from George Prince of Wales, that he will execute the office of Regent with duty to the people and affection to the King? Did we know a more delicate hand than his into which his royal father could be confided? but he wished that his Majesty should rather be under the guardianship of the Queen: But, in whose guardianship had the King been for the last seven weeks? Why, in the hands of these usurpers. The hon. gent. said, that he had asked in the Committee, a question of the physicians, which, from his being over-ruled, received no answer; namely, who had sent for a certain physician? He was stopped; but he would now repeat it, as a question that ought to be resolved. Who had exercised all the royal functions for the last seven weeks? Ought things to go on in a way like this? We knew that his Majesty was only accessible by one sense. Let the House reflect, that even when the King was in perfect health, it was impossible for any information to be conveyed to him, but through the medium of his ministers, and sometimes, perhaps, of his minions. Let them reflect on the unhappy state into which Sweden had fallen after the death of Charles the twelfth, in the attempt to abridge the power of his successors, when in fact, the King became the mere servant of the state; and if they were wise, they would assuredly be cautious of setting a precedent to this country, of a similar degradation of the royal authority.

argued in favour of the proceeding by Bill, rather than by Address. It was now admitted on all sides, that the task devolved on the two Houses of parliament to make provision for supplying the defect in the third estate of the realm; that it was not only their right but their duty to do so; that upon them devolved the responsibility, and consequently the discretion of making an adequate provision in the existing emergency, for the temporary exercise of the royal authority, during the indisposition of the sovereign. As no claim of express right was or could be contended for, either in favour of any individual or of any particular arrangement, it became a question of expediency for parliament to decide, on constitutional grounds, what that system was which would best and most gradually provide for his Majesty's interests, as connected with those of the public, during his personal incapacity.

All opinions happily concurred in looking to the Prince of Wales, as the proper depository during the interval of his father's authority. Under what Restrictions and limitations (if any) his Royal Highness should exercise the royal authority, would be a subject of distinct consideration, in a subsequent stage of our proceedings: the only question now was, as to the proper mode of proceeding to invest the Regent with the necessary authority to act. It certainly was desirable as much as possible, to avoid delay; but time would be gained to little purpose, if the Regent's authority was not constituted, in such a manner, as the courts of law could take notice of it. As matters now stood, all the ordinary functions of government, where the personal intervention of the sovereign, by sign manual or otherwise, did not necessarily occur, proceeded regu- larly and legally under the subverting commissioners from the crown, and all officers usually accustomed to convey the King's commands might still (taking the responsibility upon themselves) carry forward the public service in its accustomed channels, by signifying the King's pleasure, a disobedience to which no subordinate officer could justify. But, were a Regent to be created simply by Address, whether with or without restrictions, could he proceed effectually to exercise his authority before an act of parliament was passed enabling him to do so? Could he upon an Address of the two Houses form a government? Would the orders of his secretaries of state be valid and supersede those of the King? Would the sign manual of a Regent so appointed render any military commission valid? Could any man be legally convicted before a court martial for disobedience to an officer acting under such a commission? Could any judge sittting in a court of justice take notice of such an authority; must he not, on the contrary, still declare the King's authority every thing, and the Regent's nothing.

If then an act must pass, and if the Regent can have no valid or effectual authority till this is done, what is gained by proceeding, in the first instance, by Address, instead of by Bill? Is it advisable to constitute a Regent by Address, merely to pass the act which creates his own power? To make a law which the courts of law can take notice of, the Great Seal must be affixed. During the King's incapacity, it is clear the Great Seal must be put in motion by an extraordinary act of power, justified only by the necessity of the case; out of this necessity and limited by it, grows the power of parliament to act. Why should the two Houses give activity to the Great Seal through a Regent, (whose authority in this case would not in law be recognized as more valid, than on any other) instead of directing the officer in whose custody the Great Seal is, at once to affix it to the act appointing the Regent? If it is conceived, that the moment the Regent is appointed, the third estate is entire, and the legislature May then and not till then properly proceed to restrict the Regent, it may be answered, parliament is then no longer master of the question—they are virtually throwing the responsibility off their own shoulders in dividing it with a Regent, and why put a Regent in the painful dilemma of either being obliged to make use of his negative to defeat the views of parliament, or to become the instrument of imposing Restrictions upon himself, which he conscientiously may disapprove.

The noble lord urged this view of the question in other shapes. He distinguished also between the cases of the Restoration and the Revolution, and the present. In the first, he observed, nothing was requisite but to recognize the authority of their lawful King; in the second, the Throne was declared vacant; but, in the present instance, the Throne being full, and the political capacity of the King entire, the duty, and consequently the power of Parliament was limited to making provision for the temporary exercise of the royal authority.—He concluded by stating, that as the Regent's authority must finally receive the sanction of law, and as it was nothing without it, such an officer being unknown to the common law, he conceived the natural course was to proceed by Bill; at once to create the office, describing it at the same time on the face of the act, its functions and authorities, and passing that Bill, (the King being still on his throne) with no wider deviation from the ordinary course of passing Bills, than what resulted from the incapacity of the moment personally to authorize the Great Seal to be affixed; an order, which, unless the Resolution establishing the right of the two Houses to provide for the deficiency in the third Estate, was utterly false and groundless, it belonged to Parment and to no other authority to issue. The noble lord said, that at so late an hour there was only one other point which he should wish to advert to, which was the reference made by an hon. member (Mr. Whitbread) to a relapse which had occurred, after his Majesty had been considered in the year 1804 competent to see his Ministers upon business. Having been a member of his Majesty's government at that period, although the particular department he filled (the Board of Controul) did not render it necessary for him, at that time, to attend his Majesty on business, yet be could positively state, and it was due to his noble friend, (lord Sidmouth) then at the head of the government, he should state, that none of his confidential servants approached his Majesty on business without previously satisfying themselves by an Examination of the Physicians in cabinet, not only that his Majesty was competent to transact business, but that his pleasure might be taken without prejudice to his recovery. He trusted, therefore, the House would feel that any insinuation that the King had been called on, when incapable to exercise his royal functions, was wholly without foundation; and with respect to the relapse in question, which was proved to have been of very short duration, the noble lord said, he left it to the House to judge, whether either the Physicians or the Ministers were called upon, he would even say whether they would have been justified in exciting the public anxiety upon so slight grounds, by renewing the Bulletins, which had, at that time, been discontinued for several days.

A division then took place upon the third Resolution.—Ayes, 269; Noes, 157; Majority, 112.

The House was then resumed, and the Report of the Committee was ordered to be received to-morrow.