"With regard to the motive and object of the limitations and restrictions proposed, the Prince can have but little to observe. No light or information is offered him by his majesty's ministers on these points. They have informed him what the powers are which they mean to refuse him, not why they are withheld.

"The Prince, however, holding as he does, that it is an undoubted and fundamental principle of this constitution, that the powers and prerogatives of the crown are vested there, as a trust for the benefit of the people; and that they are sacred only as they are necessary to the preservation of that poise and balance of the constitution, which experience has proved to be the true security of the liberty of the subject, must be allowed to observe, that the plea of public utility ought to be strong, manifest, and urgent, which

ealls for the extinction or suspension of any one of those essential rights in the supreme power or its representative; or which can justify the Prince in consenting, that in his person an experiment shall be made, to ascertain with how small a portion of the kingly power the executive government of this country may be carried on.

"The Prince has only to add, that if security for his majesty's repossessing his rightful government, whenever it shall please Providence, in bounty to the country, to remove the calamity with which he is afflicted, be any part of the object of this plan, the Prince has only to be convinced that any measure is necessary, or even conducive, to that end, to be the first to urge it as the preliminary and paramount consideration of any settlement in which he would consent to share.

"If attention to what is presumed

might be his majesty's feelings and wishes on the happy day of his majesty's recovery, be the object, it is with the truest sincerity the Prince expresses his firm conviction, that no event would be more repugnant to the feelings of his royal father, than the knowledge, that the government of his son and representative had exhibited the sovereign power of the realm in a state of degradation, of curtailed authority and diminished energy-a state hurtful in practice to the prosperity and good government of his people, and injurious in its precedent to the security of the monarch, and the rights of his family.

Upon that part of the plan which regards the King's real and personal property, the Prince feels himself compelled to remark, that it was not necessary for Mr. Pitt, nor proper to suggest to the Prince, the restraints he

proposes against the Prince's granting away the King's real and personal property. The Prince does not conceive, that, during the King's life, he is, by law, entitled to make any such grant; and he is sure, that he has never shewn the smallest inclination to possess any such power. But it remains with Mr. Pitt to consider the eventual interests of the royal family, and to provide a proper and natural security against the mismanagement of them by others.

"The Prince has discharged an indispensible duty, in thus giving his free opinion on the plan submitted for his consideration.

"His conviction of the evils which may arise to the King's interests, to the peace and happiness of the royal family, and to the safety and welfare of the nation, from the government of the country remaining longer in its present maimed and debilitated state,

outweighs, in the Prince's mind, every other consideration, and will determine him to undertake the painful task imposed upon him by the present melancholy necessity (which of all the King's subjects he deplores the most) in full confidence that the affection and loyalty to the King, the experienced attachment to the house of Brunswick, and the generosity which has always distinguished this nation, will carry him through the many difficulties, inseparable from this most critical situation, with comfort to himself, with honour to the King, and with advantage to the public.

Carlton House, January 2, 1789.

(Signed) G. P."

Dangerous as their plan seemed to be in theory, and hostile to the true spirit of the constitution, ministers were encouraged to proceed with it, by the addresses that were presented