Pitt, therefore, had no slight advantage in defending himself against so rash an assailant. "He did not shrink," he said, "from avowing himself the friend of the King's just prerogative," and in doing so he maintained that he had a title to be regarded as the champion of the people not less than of the crown. "Prerogative had been justly called a part of the rights of the people, and he was sure it was a part of their rights which they were never more inclined to defend, of which they were never more jealous, than at that hour."[100] And he contended that Fox's objections to a dissolution betrayed a consciousness that he had not the confidence of the nation. At last, when the contest had lasted nearly two months, Fox took the matter into his own hands, and, no longer putting his partisans in the front of the battle, on the 1st of March he himself moved for an address to the King, the most essential clause of which "submitted to his Majesty's royal consideration that the continuance of an administration which did not possess the confidence of the representatives of the people must be injurious to the public service." ... And, therefore, that "his Majesty's faithful Commons did find themselves obliged again to beseech his Majesty that he would be graciously pleased to lay the foundation of a strong and stable government by the previous removal of his present ministers." In the speech with which he introduced this address he put himself forward as especially the champion of the House of Commons. He charged the Prime-minister with an express design "to reduce the House to insignificance, to render it a mere appendage to the court, an appurtenance to the administration." He asserted the existence of a systematic "design to degrade the House, after which there was not another step necessary to complete the catastrophe of the constitution." And on this occasion he distinguished the feelings of the King from those which influenced the minister, affirming his confidence "that the King's heart had no share in the present business."[101]
Pitt, on the other hand, in reply, affirmed that he was called on by duty "to defend the rights of the other branches of the Legislature; the just and constitutional prerogative of the sovereign," upon which the Opposition was seeking to encroach, without even having shown a single reason to justify such invasion. He freely admitted that, if the House of Commons or either of the other branches of the Legislature "disapproved of an administration on proper grounds, it would not be well for that administration to retain office." But in the present instance he contended that "no ground for disapprobation had been shown." The existing administration "had, in fact, by an unaccountable obstinacy and untowardness of circumstances, been deprived of all opportunity" of showing its capacity or its intentions. "If any accusations should be made and proved against it, if any charges should be substantiated, it would, indeed be proper for the ministers to resign; and if, in such a case he were afterward to continue in office, he would suffer himself to be stigmatized as the champion of prerogative, and the unconstitutional supporter of the usurpation of the crown. But till this period arrived, he should reckon it his duty to adhere to the principles of the constitution, as delivered to us by our ancestors; to defend them against innovation and encroachment, and to maintain them with firmness." "The constitution of this country," he presently added, "is its glory; but in what a nice adjustment does its excellence consist! Equally free from the distractions of democracy and the tyranny of monarchy, its happiness is to be found in its mixture of parts. It was this mixed government which the prudence of our ancestors devised, and which it will be our wisdom to support. They experienced all the vicissitudes and distractions of a republic; they felt all the vassalage and despotism of a simple monarchy. They abandoned both; and, by blending each together, extracted a system which has been the envy and admiration of the world. This system it is the object of the present address to defeat and destroy. It is the intention of this address to arrogate a power which does not belong to the House of Commons; to place a negative on the exercise of the prerogative, and to destroy the balance of power in the government as it was settled at the Revolution."
Fox had urged that our history afforded no example of a ministry retaining office after the House of Commons had passed a resolution condemning it. Pitt, in reply, urged that our history equally failed to furnish any instance of a ministry having been called on to retire without any misconduct being alleged against them. And the result of the division showed that his arguments and his firmness were producing an impression on the House, for, though he was again defeated, the majority against him (only twelve) was far smaller than on any previous division.[102] A week later, this feeling in his favor was shown still more decidedly, when Fox, on moving for a fresh address, or, as he termed it, a representation to the King that the House had received his Majesty's reply to their address "with surprise and affliction," he could only carry it by a single vote.[103] And this division closed the struggle. Fox made no farther effort. Before the end of the month the Parliament was dissolved, and the general election which ensued sent to the House a majority to support the ministers which Pitt was fairly warranted in claiming as the full justification of the course which he had pursued.
On a review of the whole of this extraordinary transaction, or series of transactions, it is impossible to avoid regarding the issue of the struggle as an all-important element in the case, and a test almost decisive of the correctness of conduct of the rival leaders. We may leave out of the question the action of the King in his communication to Lord Temple, which, although sanctioned by the great legal authority of Lord Thurlow, we are, for reasons already given, compelled to regard as unconstitutional, but for which Mr. Pitt was only technically responsible; having, indeed, made himself so by his subsequent acceptance of office, but having had no previous suspicion of the royal intentions. Similarly, we may dismiss from our consideration the merits or demerits of Fox's India Bill, the designs which were imputed to its framers, or the consequences which, whether intended or not by them, were predicted as certain to flow from it. And we may confine ourselves to the question whether, in the great Parliamentary struggle which ensued, and which lasted for more than three months,[104] the doctrines advanced by Mr. Fox, and the conduct pursued by him, were more or less in accordance with the admitted rules and principles of the constitution.
These doctrines may be reduced to two: the first a declaration that no minister is justified in retaining office any longer than he is sustained in it by the favorable judgment of the representatives of the people. Taken by itself, this, but for one consideration, might be pronounced the superfluous assertion of a truism; superfluous, because it is obvious that a House of Commons hostile to a minister can compel his resignation by obstructing all his measures. And Pitt himself recognized this as fully as Fox, though we may hardly agree with him that the Opposition was bound to allow him time to develop his policy, and to bring forward his various measures, before it pronounced an opinion adverse to them. In 1835, when Sir R. Peel first met Parliament after his acceptance of office, consequent on the King's dismissal of Lord Melbourne's ministry, the Opposition encountered and defeated him twice in the first week of the session-on the choice of a Speaker, and on the address, though the latter had been framed with the most skilful care to avoid any necessity for objection; but no attempt was made by him to call in question the perfect right of Lord J. Russell and his followers in the House to choose their own time and field of battle. But there is one farther consideration, that the authority belonging to the judgment of the House of Commons depends on that judgment being not solely its own, but the judgment also of the constituencies which have returned it, and whose mouth-piece it is; and also that the House is not immortal, but is liable to be sent back to those constituencies, to see whether they will ratify the judgment which their representatives have expressed; whether, in other words, their judgment be the judgment of the nation also. This farther consideration was, in fact, Pitt's plea for resisting the majorities which, through January and February, so repeatedly pronounced against him. And in determining to appeal to the constituencies, as the court of ultimate resort, he was
clearly within the lines of the constitution.
It follows that Fox, in protesting against a dissolution, in threatening even to take steps to prevent it, was acting in self-evident violation of all constitutional principle and precedent. He was denying one of the most universally acknowledged of the royal prerogatives. The distinction which he endeavored to draw between a dissolution at the close of a session and one in the middle of it, had manifestly no validity in law or in common-sense. The minister had a clear right to appeal from the House of Commons to the people, and one equally clear to choose his own time for making that appeal. The appeal was made, the judgment of the nation was pronounced, and its pronouncement may be, and indeed must be, accepted as a sufficient justification, in a constitutional point of view, of Pitt's conduct both in accepting and retaining office. If he retained it for three months, in opposition to the voice of the existing House of Commons, he could certainly allege that he was retaining it in accordance with the deliberate judgment of the nation.
And this is the verdict of a modern statesman, a very careful student of the theory of our Parliamentary constitution, and one whom party connection would notoriously have inclined to defend the line taken by Mr. Fox, had it been possible to do so. Indeed, he may be said to show his bias in that statesman's favor when he affirms that he would have been right in moving a resolution of censure on Pitt for "his acceptance of office," which he presently calls the result of "the success of a court intrigue,"[105] and, without a particle of evidence to justify the imputation, affirms to "have been prepared beforehand with much art and combination." But amicus Fox, sed magis arnica veritas; and though he thus passes censure on Pitt, where the facts on which he bases it are at least unproved, on those points as to which the facts are clear and certain he condemns Fox altogether, affirming that his "attempt to show that the crown had not the prerogative of dissolving Parliament in the middle of a session had neither law nor precedent in its support."[106] And he proceeds to lay down, with great clearness and accuracy, "the practice as well as the theory of our mixed government," which is, that "when two of the powers of the state cannot" agree, and the business of the state is stopped, the only appeal is to the people at large. Thus, when in the reign of Queen Anne the House of Lords and the House of Commons fulminated resolutions at each other, a dissolution cleared the air and restored serenity. If no case had occurred since the Revolution of a quarrel between the crown and the House of Commons, the cause is to be sought in the prudence with which every sovereign who had reigned since that event had wielded his constitutional authority. If George III. had been wanting in that prudence, it did not follow that he was debarred from the right of appealing to the people. Any other doctrine would invest the House of Commons, elected for the ordinary business of the state, with a supreme power over every branch of it. This supreme power must rest somewhere; according to our constitution it rests in the common assent of the realm, signified by the persons duly qualified to elect the members of the House of Commons; and Lord Russell, in thus expounding his ideas on this subject, was undoubtedly expressing the view that ever since the transactions of which we have been speaking has been taken of the point chiefly in dispute. Since that day there has been more than one instance of Parliament being dissolved in the middle of a session; but, though the prudence of the different ministers who advised such dissolutions may, perhaps, have been questioned-nay, though in one memorable instance it was undoubtedly a penal dissolution in the fullest sense of the word[107]-no one has ever accused the sovereign's advisers of seducing him into an unconstitutional exercise of his prerogative.
Pitt was now Prime-minister, with a degree of power in Parliament and of popularity out-of-doors that no former minister, not even his own father, had ever enjoyed. As such, by the confession of one who was certainly no friendly critic,[108] "he became the greatest master of Parliamentary government that has ever existed." His administration may be regarded as a fresh starting-point in the history of the country, as the inauguration of the principle of steady amendment, improvement, and progress, in place of the maxims which had guided all his predecessors since the Revolution, of regarding every thing as permanently settled by the arrangements made at that time, and their own duty, consequently, as binding them to keep everything in its existing condition. But, of all the ministers recorded in our annals, there is not one so greatly in advance of his time as Pitt; and from the very outset of his ministerial career he applied himself, not only to the removal or correction of admitted abuses or defects, but, in cases where the fault, being in our general system of policy, had been less conspicuous, to the establishment of new principles of action which have been the rules of all succeeding statesmen. He was not, indeed, the first raiser of the question of Parliamentary Reform, but he was the first to produce an elaborate scheme with that object, parts of which, such as the suppression of the smaller boroughs and the enfranchisement of places which had gradually become more important, have been leading features of every subsequent bill on the subject. He was the first to propose the removal of those political disabilities under which the Roman Catholics labored, which no one before him had regarded as consistent with the safety of the state, and to which he sacrificed office. He was the first to conceive the idea of developing our national industries and resources by commercial treaties with other nations, even choosing for his essay-piece a treaty with a country with which our relations for nearly five hundred years had been almost uninterruptedly hostile, and which Fox, in the heat of his opposition, objected even to consider in any other light than that of an enemy. He laid the foundation for all subsequent legislation connected with our colonies in his Bill for the Government of Canada; and he established a system for the government of our Indian dependencies on so statesman-like a principle, that all subsequent administrations concurred in upholding it, till subsequent events compelled the abolition of all the share in the government of the country previously possessed by the Company.
The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 Page 14