In considering the line of conduct adopted in this emergency by Pitt and his great rival Fox, Pitt has one manifest advantage on his side, that it is impossible to attribute the course which he took to any personal motive, or any desire for the retention of official power; while it is equally impossible to doubt that Fox was in no slight degree,[116] and that Lord Loughborough, the prince's chief adviser on points of law, was wholly influenced by the hope of supplanting the ministry. Pitt had never the least doubt that on the establishment of the Regency he should be dismissed, and was prepared to return to the Bar. But his knowledge of the preference which the Prince entertained for his rival did not lead him to hesitate for a single moment as to the propriety of placing him in a situation to exercise that preference. On the reassembling of Parliament, he at once took what he conceived to be the proper parliamentary course of proceeding; at his suggestion committees in both Houses were appointed to take a formal examination of the royal physicians; and, when those committees had reported that the King was for the present incapable of discharging his royal functions, though likely at some future period to be able to resume them, he moved the House of Commons to appoint another committee, to search for "precedents of such proceedings as might have been taken in the case of the personal exercise of the royal authority being prevented or interrupted by infancy, sickness, or infirmity, with a view to provide for the same." Such a search for precedents was no novelty, and may be thought to have been especially proper in such a case as this, since history recorded the appointment of several regencies, one under circumstances strikingly resembling those now existing, when, in 1454, Henry VI. had fallen into a state of imbecility, and the Parliament appointed the Duke of York Protector[117] of the kingdom.
But Fox instantly opposed it with extreme vehemence, declaring that the appointment of such a committee would be a pure waste of time. It was notorious, he affirmed, that no precedent existed which could have any bearing on the present case, since there was in existence a person such as had never been found on any previous occasion, an heir-apparent of full age and capacity to exercise the royal authority; and he declared it to be his deliberate opinion that the Prince of Wales had "as clear and express a right to assume the reins of government, and to exercise all the powers of sovereignty, during the illness and incapacity of the sovereign, as if that sovereign were actually deceased." Such an assertion of indefeasible right was so totally at variance with the Whig doctrines which Pitt, equally with Fox, regarded as the true principles of the constitution, that Pitt at once perceived the advantage which it gave him, by enabling him to stand forward as the supporter of the supreme authority of Parliament, which Fox had by implication denied. He instantly replied that to assert an inherent indefeasible right in the Prince of Wales, or any one else, independently of the decision of the two Houses, fell little short of treason to the constitution; but, at the same time, to prevent any one pretending to misconceive his intentions, he allowed it to be seen with sufficient plainness that, when once the right of Parliament to appoint the Regent had been established, he should agree in the propriety of conferring that office on the Prince of Wales. The committee was appointed; but, even before it could report the result of its investigations, the doctrine advanced by Fox had been the subject of discussion in the House of Lords, where Lord Camden, who had presided over the meeting of the Privy Council a few days before, on moving for the appointment of a similar committee of peers, had taken occasion to declare that, if Fox had made such an assertion as rumor imputed to him, it was one which had no foundation in "the common law of the kingdom." He had never read nor heard of such a doctrine. Its assertors might raise expectations not easily laid, and might involve the country in confusion. And he contended, as Pitt had done in the Commons, that its assertion was a strong argument in favor of the appointment of a committee, that it might be at once seen whether it were warranted by any precedent whatever. The reports of the two committees bore out Fox's statement, that no precedent entirely applicable to the case before them had ever occurred. But by this time Fox had learned that the argument which he had founded on it was in the highest degree unpalatable both to Parliament and to the nation; and for a moment he sought to modify it by an explanation that, though he had claimed for the Prince "the naked right, he had not by that expression intended to maintain that that right could be reduced into possession without the consent of Parliament;" an explanation not very reconcilable to common sense, since, if a right were inherent and indefeasible, Parliament could not, without absolute tyranny, refuse to sanction its exercise; and, in fact, his coadjutor, Sheridan, on the very same evening, re-asserted his original doctrine in, if possible, still more explicit terms, warning the minister "of the danger of provoking the Prince to assert his right," while a still greater man (Burke) declared that "the minister had taken up an attitude on the question tantamount to that of setting himself up as a competitor to the Prince." Such inconsiderate violence gave a great advantage to Pitt, one of whose most useful characteristics as a debater was a readiness and presence of mind that nothing could discompose. He repelled such menaces and imputations with an equally lofty scorn, and, after a few necessary preliminaries, brought forward a series of resolutions, one of which declared the fact of the sovereign's illness, and consequent incapacity; a second affirmed it to be the right and duty of the two Houses of Parliament to provide the means for supplying the defect in the royal authority; and a third imposed on the Houses the task of deciding on the mode in which the royal assent necessary to give their resolutions the authority of law should be signified. It was impossible to object to the first; but the second was stubbornly contested by the Opposition, the chiefs of the Coalition Ministry once more fighting side by side; though Lord North contented himself with arguing that the affirmation of the right and duty of Parliament was a needless raising of a disputable point, and moving, therefore, that the committee should report progress, as the recognized mode of shelving it. Fox, however, carried away by the heat of debate, returned to the assertion of the doctrine of absolute right, overlooking his subsequent modification of it, and again gave Pitt the advantage, by condescending to impugn his motives for proposing the resolution, as being inspired, not by a zeal for the constitution, but by a consciousness that he did not deserve the confidence of the Prince, and, therefore, anticipated his instant dismissal by the Regent. The re-affirmation of the Prince's inherent right was, indeed, necessary to Fox as the foundation for the objections which he took to other parts of Pitt's scheme. For the minister, while admitting to its full extent the irresistible claim which the Prince of Wales possessed to the preference of Parliament for the Regency, proposed at the same time to impose certain limitations on his exercise of the authority, so long as there was a reasonable hope of his royal father's recovery. He was not to have the power to create peerages, nor to alienate the property of the crown, nor to grant offices in reversion; and, as the Queen was to have the care of his Majesty's person, she also was to have the appointment of all the offices in the royal household. Fox, on the other hand, objected with extreme earnestness to the impropriety of imposing any limitations whatever on the power of the Regent; and then the question whether the Prince was to derive his right to the Regency from the authority of Parliament, or from his natural position and inalienable preceding right as his father's heir, became one of practical importance. If the Parliament had the right to confer authority, it had clearly the right to limit the authority it conferred. If the Prince had an indefeasible right to the Regency, independently of the will of Parliament, then Parliament could have no pretence to limit or restrain the exercise of an authority which in no degree flowed from itself. Fox, indeed, took another objection to the imposing of limitations to the authority to be intrusted to the Regent, contending that this would be to create a power unknown to the constitution-a person in the situation of King without regal power. But, not to mention precedents drawn from the reigns of Edward III., Richard II., and Henry VI., in the twenty-fourth year of the very last reign, George II., on the death of his son, the father of the present King, had enjoined the Parliament to provide for the government, in the case of his own death, while the heir was still a minor, recommending to them the appointment of the Princess Dowager of Wales as Regent, "with such powers and limitations as might appear expedient." And, in conformity with his desire, the Parliament had appointed the Princess Regent, with a Council of Regency to assist her; and had enacted that "several portions of the regal power" should be withheld from the Regent, if she could not obtain the consent of the Council thus appointed.[118]