contents of George III.'s first regency act; the king bereft of his reason in 1788-89; how to a regency circum stances; Fox's contention; vested unconditionally with the right of appointing any person he might choose as regent; but in the bill as finally passed,2 his right of nomination under his sign manual was limited to the queen, the princess of Wales, or to any descendant of George II. resident in the kingdom, the nominee to be guardian of his successor while under eighteen years of age, and "regent of the kingdom." A council of regency was then appointed, and the relative powers of regent and council defined upon the basis of the act of George II. The question of a regency next arose in 1788-89, when the king's illness so completely deprived him of his reason that he had to be placed under restraint. The question was how to provide for the provide for administration of the powers of an insane king under a constiunder such tution that contained no method for his removal. The bill then introduced brought on a discussion memorable for the extreme views expressed, on the one hand, by Fox as to the rights of the prince of Wales, and, on the other, by Pitt as to the right of parliament to name a regent under such circumstances. Fox, blinded by prejudice and self-interest, went so far as to declare that during the king's incapacity the prince of Wales had as much right to exercise the powers of the sovereign as if he were actually dead; and that parliament possessed only the right to declare the exact time when the exercise of such powers by the prince should begin. Pitt, on contention; the other hand, while correctly assuming that the whole power each over- of providing for a regency rested in parliament alone, overstated the case by declaring that "unless by their decision, the prince of Wales had no more right- speaking of strict right to assume the government than any other individual subject of the country." When the question came on for discussion in the house of lords, the duke of York disavowed declaration any claim of right upon the part of the prince, who "understood," he said, "too well the sacred principles which seated the house of Brunswick on the throne, ever to assume or exercise any power, be his claim what it might, not derived from the will of the people, expressed by their representatives and their lordships in parliament assembled." 4 That declaration Pitt's stated his case; duke of York's in the lords; 1 Walpole's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 98. 8 Parl. Hist., vol. xxvii. pp. 707-709. cism of both extremes, see his Memoir of Fox, vol. ii. p. 263. 4 Parl. Hist., vol. xxvii. pp. 678, 684; May, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 177–188. cut short April, 1789; cellor can royal of 1810-11; on lines was the only practical outcome of the controversy, cut short controversy by the king's sudden recovery in April, 1789, except the set- by king's tlement of the principle that, in the event of the mental inca- recovery in pacity of the sovereign, the lord chancellor can be empowered when the by a vote of the two houses to affix the great seal even to lord chancommissions for opening parliament, and for giving to a give the regency bill the royal assent. Passing over the ministerial assent; embarrassments, caused by the king's third illness in 1801,2 we come to the proceedings that took place in 1810-11, when regency act the poor demented old man, after reigning for fifty years, passed into the custody of keepers, while the royal authority was assumed under the regency act of that year by the prince of Wales. In the enactment of that statute parliament followed substantially the same course that had been laid down constructed in 1788,8 the royal assent being given by commission author- laid down ized by resolution of both houses. By the terms of the act in 1788; the prince of Wales was appointed regent during the king's prince of incapacity without the aid of a council of regency; and while regent his power to grant peerages, offices, and pensions was re- without a strained, there was no limitation upon his authority, as in previous acts, to make war and peace, treaties with foreign nations, and to adjourn or dissolve parliament. At the acces- arrange sion of William IV. the duchess of Kent was appointed guar- a regency dian and regent in the event the present queen should come of William to the throne before attaining eighteen years. In that event IV.; the regent was to carry on the government, with the aid of the responsible ministers of the crown, without any special council of regency. At Queen Victoria's accession, when the at the king of Hanover became the presumptive heir, an act was of Queen passed providing that, in the event of the queen's death while Victoria; her successor was out of the realm, the government should be carried on in his name and until his arrival by lords justices acting as a kind of regency council. After the present queen's marriage the last statute upon the subject was enacted, in Wales council; ments for at accession accession last act upon the subject passed after her marriage with Prince Albert. Regency of George IV.; after a feeble effort to install which her husband, Prince Albert, was appointed regent without a council of regency, in the event that any child of her majesty should succeed to the throne before arriving at the age of eighteen years. The only limitation upon the authority of the regent was embodied in the usual prohibition to assent to the certain acts specially named in the regency act of George II. From 1811 to 1820 the royal authority was exercised by and reign the prince regent as such; from 1820 to 1830 he exercised it in his own right as George IV. As the bosom friend of Fox and Sheridan, it was supposed upon his accession as regent that he would force the Tory ministry then in power, with Perceval at its head, to give way to a new one to be composed of the Whigs. When, however, the opportunity for change was offered by the assassination of Perceval in May, 1812, the faint-hearted effort of the regent to install the Whigs was foiled by mutual distrust; and the result was the restorathe Whigs, tion of the old ministry under Lord Liverpool, who continued continued in office down to 1827, when, after two short administrations in power under under Canning and Viscount Goderich, the direction of affairs Liverpool; succeeded' passed in 1828 to the duke of Wellington, who was in office at the king's death. During the twenty years occupied by the regency and reign of George IV., the ministerial system was thus in the hands of the Tories, who managed the affairs of the nation with little interference from the king, except when his little royal personal interests or those of the royal family were directly Tories by Wellington in 1828; affairs managed with but interfer ence; conflict arising out of the divorce; ministers finally assented to a bill of pains and penalties; involved.1 And yet, even in matters of that character, he was not always permitted to dominate. Immediately after his accession as king he was brought into collision 2 with his ministers through his desire not only to procure a divorce from Queen Caroline, who, like himself, had no doubt been guilty of serious misconduct, but also to proceed against her for high treason. Finally, upon her imprudent return to England, in July, 1820, all the ministers, except Canning, were induced to consent to the introduction in the house of lords of a bill of 1 He could then be very determined. Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. vii. pp. 345, 346; Todd, Parl. Government, vol. i. pp. 67, 68, 92. 2 Their original objections were embodied in minutes of the cabinet of the roth and 14th of February, 1820. Stapleton's Life of Canning, pp. 266, 279, 299. Ibid., pp. 290-295, 315-323; May, Const. Hist., vol. iii. pp. 129-133 man; after ma lords had pains and penalties, providing for the dissolution of her marriage with the king upon the ground of adultery and for her degradation. When the charges contained in the preamble brilliantly assailed by came on to be heard, Brougham and Denman, by their bold Brougham and brilliant defence of the queen, so aroused popular sym- and Denpathy in her favor, by holding her up as a deserted and persecuted woman, that the ministry deemed it wise to drop the dropped bill after the majority in its favor in the lords had dwindled jority in the to nine. The personal humiliation thus put upon the king at dwindled the beginning of his reign was repeated at its close, when his to nine; ministers, headed by Wellington and Peel, extorted from him by tendering their resignations his assent to the measure of 1829 in favor of catholic emancipation.1 "It may, therefore, catholic be said that, from the beginning of his regency in 1811 to pation; the close of his reign in 1830, the regal influence was limited to the strict exercise of the prerogative. George IV. had no personal influence; instead of his popularity supporting the ministry, the difficulty was for the ministry to support his unpopularity, and to uphold the respect for the crown when it encircled the head of such a sovereign." 2 Thus it was that final the short-lived yet desperate struggle inaugurated by George of the triumph III. for the reëstablishment of the medieval supremacy of the ministerial royal office ended under his less resolute successor in the complete triumph of the existing ministerial system. emanci system. reform the tive system; Pitt not to seek 9. The attempt which has now been made to indicate the Struggle to progress of cabinet government during the reigns of George representaIII. and George IV. was prefaced by a summary of the causes whose combined influence at the beginning of that period took away from the house of commons its character as a free and representative organ, through which the nation as a whole counselled could impress its will upon its rulers.3 By reason of the exist- George II. ence of such conditions the elder Pitt was impelled to counsel the voice of his people George II. to look for the voice of his "people in other places "within the than within the house of commons ;" and in the same way the great unrepresented body outside of the legislature was forced channels to employ with a fresh vigor the press, the right of public which public meeting, and the right of petition, as substitutes for the normal opinion means of expression, which the constitution failed to supply. itself, 1 See above, p. 430. 2 Lewis, Adminis., p. 421. 8 See above, p. 463 et seq. house of commons; " through expressed during seventy years of agitation that accession of Pitt's denunciation of the borough representation in 1766; in 1774; Such were the weapons that began to be actively employed during the stormy period of agitation that followed the acces sion of George III.; and during the seventy years that elapsed followed between that time and the death of George IV. the imperious George III. demand never ceased to be heard in parliament and without, that the house of commons should be so reformed as to make it the representative not of the crown and the aristocracy, but "the express image of the feelings of the nation." Pitt, who was the first to advocate reform, boldly denounced in the lower house in 1766 the borough representation as "the rotten part of our constitution. It cannot continue the century; if it does not drop, it must be amputated;"1 and in 1770 he proposed that a third member should be added to every county, "in order to counterbalance the weight of corrupt and venal Stanhope's boroughs."2 In 1774 appeared Lord Stanhope's pamphlets, pamphlets which seem to have been the earliest publications in favor of reform; and in 1776 they were followed by the work of John Cartwright, whose second edition was entitled "The Legisla tive Rights of the Commonalty vindicated." In that year it scheme of was that John Wilkes introduced a comprehensive scheme of introduced reform, which embodied substantially all the principles that by Wilkes; have been successfully advocated since that time. He moved for a bill, which was negatived without a division,3 to give additional members to Middlesex, Yorkshire, and other large counties, as well as to the metropolis; to disfranchise the rotten boroughs, and to add the electors to the county constituencies; and, finally, to enfranchise "rich populous trading towns" like Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, and Birmingham. fate of duke In 1780, when the duke of Richmond, in the midst of the Lord George Gordon riots, presented a bill for the establishment of annual parliaments, equal electoral districts, and universal suffrage, the upper house likewise set aside, without a division, a scheme then considered unworthy of serious consideration.4 work of Cartwright in 1776; reform then of Rich mond's scheme in 1780. Younger Pitt under Such was the prelude to the efforts in favor of reform made took work by the younger Pitt, who introduced in May, 1782, while Rockingham was in power, a motion for a committee to inquire into of reform in 1782; 1 Debates on the Address, January, 1766, Cobbett's Parl. Hist., vol. xvi. p. 100; vol. xvii. p. 223. 2 Walpole, Memoirs, vol. iv. p. 58. |