The Constitutional History of England from 1760 to 1860

ullum Tempus Act concerning Crown Property; it is sought to Extend it to Church Property, but the A

mother, the Princess Dowager of Wales, who, however, in the latter capacity, was only to act with the advice of a council, composed of her brother-in-law, the Duke of Cumberland, and nine principal officers of state. It was not concealed by either the King or the Duke that they would have preferred a different arrangement, one which would have conferred an uncontrolled Regency on the Duke himself; but the bill was passed by great majorities in both Houses, and served in some respects as a model for that which was now to be brought forward, the difference being that the Regent was not to be expressly named in it. To quote the words of the royal speech, the King "proposed to the consideration of the two Houses whether, under the present circumstances, it would not be expedient

was eventually superseded, when, on the failure of his immediate descendants, the representative of his elder sister, whom he had passed over, was seated on the throne, to the exclusion of the descendants of his younger sister, to whom he had given the preference. In France, the last

es as scandal had formerly reported him to be, and that George III., under the pressure of their combined influence, would be induced to name his mother rather than his wife as the future Regent. And he was so entirely swayed by this ridiculous and wholly groundless fear, that, when the bill to give effect to the royal recommendation was introduced into the House of Lords, he instigated one of his friends to raise the question who were included in the general term "the royal family," which Lord Halifax, as Secretary of State, answered by saying that he regarded it as meaning "those only who were in order of succession to the throne." Such a definition would have excluded the Queen as effectually as the Princess Dowager; and when Mr. Grenville found the peers reluctant to accept this view (which, indeed, his own Lord Chancellor pronounced untenable), he then sent another of his colleagues to represent to the King that hi

tented that the name should be omitted; indeed, that statesmen of the present century agree in holding that an arrangement of such importance should be made by the Houses of Parliament, in concurrence with the sovereign, and not by the sovereign alone, is shown by the steps taken to provide for a Regency in the event of the demise of th

g out of civil war. Lord Rockingham's ministry, which succeeded Mr. Grenville's, had, as is well known, but a brief existence, and was replaced by the cabinet so whimsically composed by Mr. Pitt, who reserved to himself the office of Privy Seal, with the Earldom of Chatham; the Duke of Grafton being the nominal head of the Treasury, but the direction of affairs being wholly in the hands of the new Earl, till the fai

and authorizing the detention of any vessels lying in any British harbor which might be loaded with such a cargo. Our annals furnished no instance of such an embargo having been laid on any article of commerce in time of peace; but the crisis was difficult, the danger to the tranquillity of the kingdom was great and undeniable, the necessity for instant action seemed urgent, and probably few would have been inclined to cavil at Lord Chatham's assertion, that the embargo "was an act of power which, during the recess of Parliament, was justifiable on the ground of necessity," had the ministry at once called Parliament together to sanction the measure by an act of indemnity. But Lord Chatham was at all times inclined to carry matters with a high hand, and willingly adopted the opinion advanced by the Chancellor (Lord Northington), that "the measure was strictly legal, and that no indemnity was necessary." Lord Northington's language on the subject Lord Campbell describes as "exhibiting his characteristic rashness and recklessness, which seemed to be aggravated by age and experience,"[19] and the censure does not seem too

g power were really one of the lawful prerogatives of the sovereign. Reference was made to the powers in more than one instance, and especially in the case of ship-money claimed and exercised by Charles I.; and it was affirmed that "the dispensing and suspending power, and that of raising money without the consent of Parliament, were precisely alike, and stood on the very same ground. They were born twins; they lived together, and together were buried in the same grave at the Revolution, past all power of resurrection." It was even argued that the dispensing or suspending power was yet more dangerous than that of raising money without a Parliamentary vote, since it was a power which might do the most mischief, and with the greatest speed, so many were the subjects which it included. It would be a return to the maxims of the idolators of prerogative as understood in those earlier days, that is, of absolute and arbitrary power, a Deo Rex, a Rege Lex. It was farther argued that, unless it could be said that the moment Parliament breaks up the King stands in its place, and that the continuance of acts is consigned int

nor a prudent minister who, even in a doubtful case, commits the prerogative, by a wanton experiment, to what degree the people will bear the extent of it. The opposite course was that by which a minister

some remedy, should not at times arise; and, unless Parliament be sitting at the time, such can only be adequately dealt with if the ministers of the crown have the courage to take such steps as are necessary, whether by the suspension of a law or by any other expedient, on their own responsibility, trusting in their ability to satisfy the Parliament, instantly convoked to receive their explanation, of the necessity or wisdom of their proceedings; and in the candor of the Parliament to recognize, if not the judiciousness of their action,

to Sir James the lands he prayed for at a rent which could only be regarded as nominal. The injustice of the proceeding was so flagrant, that in the beginning of 1768 Sir George Savile brought in a bill to prevent any repetition of such an act by making the statute of James I. perpetual, so that for the future a possession for sixty years should confer an indisputable and indefeasible title. The ministers opposed it with great vehemence, even taking some credit to themselves for their moderation in not requiring from the Duke a repayment of the proceeds of the lands in question for the seventy years during which he had held them. But the case was so bad that they could only defeat Sir George Savile by a side-wind and a scanty majority, carrying an amendment to defer any decision of the matter till the next session. Sir George, however, was not discouraged; he renewed his motion in 1769, when it was carried by a large majority, with an additional clause extending its operation to the Colonies in North America; and thus, in respect of its territorial rights, the crown was placed on the same footing as any private individual, and the same length of tenure which enabled a possessor to hold a property against another subject henceforth equally enabled him to hold it against the crown. The policy not less than the justice of such an enactment might have been thought to commend it to every thinking man as soon as the heat engendered by a party debate had passed away. It had merely placed the sovereign and the subject on the same footing in respect of the security which prescription gave to possession. And it might, therefore, have been thought that the vote of 1769 had settled the point in every case; since what was the law between one private individual and another, and between the sovereign and a subject, might well have been taken to be of universal application. But the ministry were strangely unwilling to recognize such a universal character in the late act, and found in the peculiar character of ecclesiastical bodies and ecclesiastical property a pretext for weakening the force of the late enactment, by denying the applicability of the principle to the claims of ecclesiastical chapters. In 1772 Mr. Henry Seymour, one of the members for Huntingdon, moved for leave to bring in a bill, which he described as one "

d his own inclinations to the combined considerations of pride of birth and the interests of his kingdom. And, though there was a manifest difference between the importance of the marriage of the sovereign himself and that of princes who were never likely to become sovereigns, he thought it not unreasonable that he should be empowered to exercise such a general guardianship over the entire family, of which he was the head, as might enable him to control its members in such arrangements, by making his formal sanction indispensable to the validity of any matrimonial alliances which they might desire to contract. A somewhat similar question had been raised in 1717, when George I., having quarrelled with the Prince of Wales (afterward George II.), asserted a claim to control and direct the education of all the Prince's children, and, when they should be of marriageable age, to arrange their marriages. The Prince, on the other hand, insisted on his natural and inalienable right, as their father, to have the entire government of his own offspring, a right which, as he contended, no royal prerogative could be enabled or permitted to override. That question was not, however, brought before Parliament, to which, at that time, the King could, probably, not have trusted for any leanings i

rriage without the previous consent of the reigning sovereign, signified under his sign-manual, and that any marriage contracted without such consent should be null and void. The King or the ministers apparently doubted whether Parliament could be prevailed on to make such a prohibition life-long, and therefore a clause was added which provided that if any prince or princess above the age of twenty-five years should determine to contract a marriage without such

o had in their turn succeeded to the crown, had been the offspring of two of those wives; and in the last century James II., while Duke of York, had married the daughter of an English gentleman; and, though it had not been without notorious reluctance that his royal brother had sanctioned that connection, it was well known that Charles II. himself had proposed to marry the niece of Cardinal Mazarin. In the House of Peers, Lord Camden especially objected to the clause annulling a marriage between persons of full age; and in the Commons, Mr. Dowdeswell, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Rockingham's administration, dwelt with especial vigor on the unreasonableness of the clause which fixed twenty-five as the age before which no prince or princess could marry without the King's consent. "Law, positive law," he argued, "and not the

gainst it on nine different grounds, one of which condemned it as "an extension of the royal prerogative for which the great majority of the judges found no authority;" while anot

y improbable that either of his brothers or any of their children would ever come to the throne; while, as a previously existing law barred any prince or princess who might marry a Roman Catholic from the succession, the additional re

metimes kept them "waiting three hours in the lobby among their lordships' footmen before they admitted them." Burke affirmed that this had happened to himself, and that he "spoke of it, not out of any personal pride, nor as an indignity to himself, but as a flagrant disgrace to the House of Commons, which, he apprehended, was not inferior in rank to any other branch of the Legislature, but co-ordinate with them." And the irritation which such treatment excited led the Commons, perhaps not very unnaturally, to seek some opportunity to vindicate their dignity. They found it in an amendment which the Lords made on a corn bill. In the middle of April, 1772, resolutions had been passed by the Commons, in a committee of the whole House, imposing certain duties on the importation of wheat[30] and other grain when they were at a certain price, which was fixed at 48s., and granting bounties on exportation when the price fell below 44s. The Lords made several amendments on the bill, and, among others, one to strike out the clause which granted bounties. But when the bill thus amended came back to the Commons, even those who disliked the principle of bounties resented this act of the Lords in meddling with that question, which they regarded as a violation of their peculiar and most cherished privilege, the exclusive right of dealing with questions of taxation. Governor Pownall, who had charge of the bill, declared that the Lords had forgotten their duty when they interfered in raising money by the insertion of a clause that "no bounty should be paid upon exported corn." And on this ground he moved the rejection of the bill.[31] In the last chapter of this volume, a more fitting occasion for examining the rights and usages of the House of Lords with respect to money-bills will be furnished by a series of resolutions on the subject, moved by the Prime-minister of the day. It is sufficient here to say that the power of rejection is manifestly so different from that of origin

te

in his royal wisdom, he shall think fit to propose to the consideration of Parliament for the execution of those high trusts, this House apprehending it not warranted by precedent nor agreeable to the principles of this free constitution to vest in any person or persons not particularl

r the influence of Lord Bute, and was designed for the preservat

, the Duke of Sussex stated that George III. had nominated the Queen as Regen

ves of the Chance

was not yet understood that Parliament could not

ng and Dispensing Prerogative," etc., with a foot-note explaining that "this speech was supposed to be penned by Lord Mansfield, but was, in fact, written by Mr. Macintosh, assisted by Lord Temple and Lord Lyttleton." It certainly seems to contain internal evidence that it was not written by any lawyer, from the sneers at and denunciations of lawyers which it contains, as a class of men who "have o

den, that, in a case of great public emergency, the crown could by law dispense with an act of parliament. The question arising from the embargo on the exportation of corn, in consequence of apprehended famine, he proved triumphantly that, although the measure was expedient and proper, it

1818 a bill of indemnity was passed to sanction the action of the ministry in arresting and detaining in prison,

24: Vol. x

is "Lives of the Chancellors," c. cxxi. (life of Lord Mac

e royal authority in person had been fixed at eighteen; and it is so stated in the speech in which the

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ct of the pair in violent terms, and angrily asked the Attorney-general, Sir John Scott, why he had not prosecuted all the parties concerned in this abominable marriage. Sir John's reply, as he reported it himself, was sufficiently conclusive: "I answered that it was a very difficult business to prosecute; that the act, it was understood, had been drawn by Lord

jections, as "contrary to the original inherent rights of human nature ... exceeding the power permitted by Divine Providence to hu

n flour, when the price of wheat in the kingdom should be at or above 48s.; when it was at or

Ministry, the peers having made amendments on the American Intercourse Bill, "the Speaker observed that, as the bill empowered the crown to impose duties, it was, strictly speaking, a money-bill, and therefore the House could not, consistently with its own orders, suffer the Lords to make any amendments on it, and he recommended that the consideration of their amendments should be postponed for three months, and in the mean time a new bill framed according to the Lords' amendments should be passed." The recommendation was approved by Mr. Pitt, as leader of the Opposition, and approved and acted on by Mr. Fox, as leader of the ministry in that House. But, at the same time, Mr. Fox fully admitted the right of the Lords to discuss such questions, "for it would be very absurd indeed to send a loan bill to the Lords for their concurrence, and at the same tim

rliamentary Histo