Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/410

396 political capacity, was now as fully in power and entity as ever, and therefore the great seal could be used for him as validly as at any other time. A more dangerous and revolutionary doctrine could not have been conceived; for, if the great seal could be used by ministers when the king was utterly incapable of knowing or approving of it, what should put a limit to this arbitrary exercise of his power? what should restrain the ministers and parliament from actually conveying away the crown to another line? For, supposing there was a disposition so to do, in the ministers and parliament, the authority, by this doctrine, lay fully in the great seal to do it. Surely, it was a far less dangerous, a far more constitutional doctrine, that the heir-apparent, being of sound mind, of full age, and being in all other respects in harmony with the constitution, should succeed to the regency in case of the king's incapacity, as he would succeed, as a matter of course, on the king's demise.



But this would have overthrown the power of Pitt and his majority, and they determined to carry through the monstrous fiction. In vain did Burke exclaim that it was "a phantom," "a fiction of law," "a mere mummery, a piece of masquerade buffoonery, formed to burlesque every species of government." In the midst of the debate, Mr. Rushworth, the young member for Newport, in Hampshire, standing on the floor of the house, exclaimed, in a loud and startling tone—"I desire that gentlemen of more age and experience than myself will refer to the glorious reign of George II. Let them recall to their memory the year 1745. Suppose that great and good king had lain under a similar affliction of madness at that period, where are the men, much less a minister, that would have dared to come down to that house, and boldly, in the face of the world, say that the prince of Wales had no more right to the regency than any other subject? The man or minister who could have dared to utter such language must henceforward shelter in some other place than in the house of commons, and in some other country than England!"

This most appropriate suggestion was received with tumultuous cheers by the whigs, and with loud murmurs by the ministerial party, but Pitt went on. The prince of Wales, by letter, complained of the little respect shown to him or his rights, but Pitt treated the prince himself with as little courtesy as he did his rights; he carried the resolution regarding the great seal, that it should be appended to a commission for opening parliament in due form, it only now occupying the position of a convention, and then should