On the 30th of January the two committees presented to the Prince of Wales and the Queen the resolutions of the two houses.

To this committee his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was graciously pleased to give the following answer.

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"MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,

"I THANK you for communicating to me the resolutions agreed upon by the two houses, and I request you to assure them in my name, that my duty to the King my father, and my anxious concern for the safety and "interests of the people, which must be endangered, by a long "suspension of the exercise of the royal authority; together "with my respect for the united desires of the two houses, "outweigh, in my mind, every other consideration, and will de "termine me to undertake the weighty and important trust proposed to me, in conformity to the resolutions now commu"nicated to me. I am sensible of the difficulties that must "attend the execution of this trust, in the peculiar circumstan“ces, in which it is committed to my charge, of which, as E am acquainted with no former example, my hopes of a "successful administration cannot be founded on any past "experience. But confiding that the limitations on the exercise "of the royal authority deemed necessary for the present, have "been approved by the two houses only as a temporary mea" sure, founded all the loyal hope, in which I ardently partici66 pate, that his majesty's disorder may not be of long duration, "and trusting, in the mean while, that I shall receive a zealous "and united support in the two houses and in the nation, propor❝tioned to the difficulty attending the discharge of my trust in "this interval; I will entertain the pleasing hope, that my "faithful endeavours to preserve the interests of the king, his crown, and the people, may be successful."

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When the committee presented the resolutions of the lords and commons concerning the custody of his majesty's person, her majesty was graciously pleased to give the following

answer.

"MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,

"My duty and gratitude to the king, and "the sense I must ever entertain of my great obligations to "this country, will certainly engage my most earnest attention "to the anxious and momentous trust intended to be reposed in 66 me by parliament. It will be a great consolation to me to "receive the aid of a council, of which I shall stand so much in "need, in the discharge of a duty wherein the happiness of my future life is indeed deeply interested, but which a higher

"object, the happiness of a great, loyal, and affectionate people, renders still more important."

These resolutions and answers were ordered to be entered on the journals; and the minister, when business was resumed in the house, emphatically entreated gentlemen to pause, and by giving the bill, that would be laid before them a deliberate perusal and cool unbiassed reflection, proceed in future with the caution due to such a momentous transaction. On the 31st of January, 1789, the house of lords being in a committee of the whole house on the state of the nation, Lord Camden began with remarking, that being still merely a convention, they could do no one legislative act till they were enabled so to do by the presence or assent of the sovereign. Deprived of the assistance of his majesty in his natural capacity, they were compelled to resort to his political capacity. There was but one organ by which this assistance could be obtained, and that organ was the great seal. This mode of proceeding, he knew, had already been ridiculed as a phantom. But would those, who were thus free of their ridicule impart any other mode, by which they could be extricated from their present difficulties? They were compelled, therefore, by necessity to resort to the reso lutions of the two houses, impowering the proper person to make use of the great seal; an instrument, which his lordship said, was of such great and particular authority, that even if the lord chancellor committed a high misdemeanor by affixing it to letters patent, those instruments must be considered valid; they would have the whole force of law, and could not be disputed by the judges. His lordship, in support of this doctrine, quoted the conduct of lord chancellor Hardwicke, who had suffered the great seal to be affixed to an instrument in the manner he now proposed. Two resolutions he said, would be therefore found necessary to be adopted under their present circumstances to complete the legislature. The first was, to establish a commission to open and hold the parliament in due form the second would follow up the first at a convenient time, for the purpose of empowering the royal assent to be given in his majesty's name to the bill of regency, by the same, or by another commission. His lordship concluded by moving, "That it is expedient and necessary that letters patent, under "the great seal of Great Britain, be impowered to be issued by "the authority of the two houses of parliament, in the tenor and "form following:" Then followed an exact transcript of the writ usually issued under the sign manual, impowering certain commissioners to open and hold the king's parliaments at Westminster. The commissioners nominated by the present letters patent, were, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, the Dukes

of Cumberland and Gloucester, together with the other persons usually inserted therein.

The motion having been seconded, Lord Portchester arose, and observed, they were now in that precise situation, where they stood two months since, with this difference only, that they were now going to do, by a pretended act of parliament, what should have been done by a declaration of the two houses. But besides this fiction of the great seal, there were other stumbling blocks in their way. By two acts of parliament, the sign manual was made essentially necessary to the validity of any act: these were, the acts of 33d of Henry the Eighth, and the 1st of Philip and Mary; the former declaring, that no act could be valid unless signed by the sovereign, or, in his absence, by the custos regni; and the latter, in deciding on the attainder of the Duke of Norfolk, speaking the same language, but in stronger

terms.

Lord Camden replied, that a different meaning was to be attached to those acts: they were, he contended, acts merely affirmative; that is, they asserted, that acts so signed, were legal; but they no where contained the assertion, that those acts could not be legalized in any other form. His lordship added a precedent in point, that of the 28th of Elizabeth, which had actually passed under the great seal only, and without the sign manual.

His Royal Highness the Duke of York rose unexpectedly at this moment, and said, he had not been informed, that it was intended to insert his name in the commission, and therefore it had not been in his power to take any steps to prevent it. He could not sanction the proceedings with his name, not wishing to stand upon record, and be handed to posterity, as approving such a measure. His opinion of the whole system adopted was already known: he deemed the measure proposed, as well as every other that had been taken respecting the same subject, to be unconstitutional and illegal. He desired, therefore, to have nothing to do with any part of the business; and requested that his name, and that of his brother, the Prince of Wales, might be left out of the commission.

Lord Camden said, upon a requisition thus communicated, there could be no hesitation. He should not for a moment resist the royal duke's desire, but would readily agree to omit his royal highness's name, and that of his royal highness the Prince of Wales.

The Dukes of Cumberland and Gloucester desired their names might also be omitted, which was complied with.

The resolutions, as amended and passed by the lords, on February the 2d, having been communicated to the House of Commons, Mr. Pitt moved for their concurrence therein. This

motion, which was at length carried without a division, gave rise to a warm and long debate. The resolutions were defended, as affording the only legal security to their proceedings, which the case admitted of. On the other side, it was urged, that however they might thus be made formally legal, yet being substantially and historically otherwise, it would have been much more safe, that the whole case should stand upon its own ground, distinguished as an irregular proceeding, justified only by necessity, than to call in counterfeit props to support it. The precedents of the reign of Henry the Sixth, upon which so much stress had been laid, whilst ministers were contending for the right of the two houses to nominate a regent, were now totally abandoned. In conformity to those precedents, the Prince of Wales ought to be empowered, by the proposed commission, to open the parliament in the king's name, and to exercise the legislative authority of the king, in the passing of such acts as might be tendered for the royal assent. Nor could there be now any ground of apprehension that he should reject a bill of limitation, as he had already declared his willingness to ac cept the regency with the restrictions proposed.

Mr. Burke, in a long and able speech, supported the exclu sive right of the Prince of Wales to the regency; and endeavoured to impress the committee with a sense of the fatal consequences that might follow, from admitting any idea of competition in it, to the unity of the empire, the integrity of the constitution, and the hereditary succession to the throne itself.

The day following, February the 3d, the speaker with the commons being at the bar of the House of Lords, Earl Bathurst, who sat as speaker for the lord-chancellor, acquainted them, that the illness of his majesty had made it necessary, that a commission in his name should pass the great seal, which they would hear read. The clerk having read the commission, Lord Bathurst, in a short speech,* opened the causes of their present meeting, and the objects, for which they were to provide.

As soon as the commons had returned to their house, and had gone through the usual forms, Mr. Pitt rose, and after a * Lord Bathurst's speech was as follows:

"MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,

"IN pursuance of the authority given to us by his majesty's commission under the great seal, which has been read, amongst "other things, to declare the causes of your present meeting, we have only to "call your attention to the melancholy circumstances of his majesty's illness; "in consequence of which, it becomes necessary to provide for the care of "his majesty's royal person, and for the administration of the royal authority, during the continuance of this calamity, in such manner as the exigency of "the case seems to require."

short preface, moved, that leave be given to bring in a bill to provide for the care of his majesty's royal person, and for the administration of the regal authority during his majesty's illness. Leave was accordingly given; and the bill was brought in and read for the first time, without a debate, on the day following.

So far in this delicate and important situation of the British empire, had the minister laid down and successfully put in train, a system of provisional regency, during the uncertain duration of his majesty's incapacity, fettered and clogged with restric tions and limitations, which it was frequently urged by the gentlemen in the opposition, were industriously calculated to produce a weak government with a strong opposition. Mr. Burke particularly observed, that it was insulting and injurious to the prince, as his royal highness's conduct had never given the remotest ground for suspecting him of a disposition to abuse power. It was evidently the intention, and probably the expectation of the Britsh minister, that the two houses of the Irish parliament should follow the example of those of Great Britain. This national calamity had too recently followed the declaration of Irish legislative independence, to ground any reasonable expectation in our cabinet, that the parliament of Ireland would be dictated to by a British convention, with all the auxiliary powers and effects intended to be attached to the application of the great seal. Many grounds of anxiety, mistrust, and alarm, with reference to the conduct of the Irish on this trying occasion, agitated the breasts of the British and Irish cabinets. The conscious unpopularity of the Marquis of Buckingham; the real congeniality of principle in the bulk of every independent Irishman with that party, which had given them independence in 1782, and now opposed the galling and humiliating fetters about to be rivetted on the regent; the sympathy of the true Irish character, with the native prowess, generosity, and magnanimity of the prince; the national disgust, contempt, and detestation of any thing mean, sordid, and suspicious; and, above all, the brilliant and important occasion of exercising their national independence in ascertaining and establishing the constitutional boundaries of the royal authority in the person of their favourite prince. All these considerations, deterred the joint cabinet from convening the Irish parliament. From the moment, however, of the melancholy tidings of the king's malady having been announced in Ireland, effects were daily more and more discernable of the rising difficulties, which the government would have to encounter in persuading or forcing the Irish nation to adopt the very extraordinary measures of the British cabi

net.

Amongst the first impressions, which the fatal news of his majesty's incapacity to exercise the executive functions of go