On Monday the 8th, Mr. Pitt, either convinced upon further consideration of the propriety of Mr. Viner's suggestion, or expecting that the probability of his majesty's recovery would become more apparent upon a fuller inquiry into the case, came forward and moved, "That a committee of twenty-one members be appointed to examine the physicians who have attended his majesty, touching the state of his health." In answer to Mr. Pitt,

Mr. BURKE observed, that he rose not to controvert any one point in the right honourable gentleman's argument, nor even to excite a doubt concerning any point which he had advanced, but merely to enter his protest, which he must ever do on any occasion, against what the right honourable gentleman had stated on a former day, and just hinted at that day, though, indeed, he had not much rested on it, and that was, the inefficacy of an examination before that House, because they had not the power to administer an oath to witnesses. He never would suffer that to be made an argument against the House proceeding in its inquisitorial capacity, without resisting so dangerous a doctrine. Maimed and imperfect, cramped and limited as the House might be in some particulars, he conjured them to preserve all their capacities, and most especially was it necessary for them to hold their capacities sacred, and maintain them with firmness in situations of extreme delicacy and importance, and such he considered the present to be. He reminded them, that in questions of the highest judicial importance, affecting considerations of the first magnitude, the House had never satisfied itself, but on the examination of witnesses at their own bar, or, what he considered as the same thing, before a committee of their own members, appointed by the House, and acting as their representative. He stated the case of a divorce bill, which, as they well knew, always originated in the spiritual court in Doctors' Commons, where all the proceedings were upon oath; it next travelled to Westminster-hall, where the witnesses also delivered their evidence upon oath, and they were afterwards heard at the bar of the House of Lords upon oath

likewise; and after that triple knot of evidence legally. given, it was customary, when the bill came down to that House, for the House to disregard all that had passed, and to ground their proceedings with regard to the bill, on the evidence of the witnesses examined at their own bar, according to their own forms. The more arduous, delicate, and difficult the business that came before the House was, the more tenacious they ought to be of their privileges and capacities, and in order to enforce that, it was, that he had risen, not to object to any of the principles or inferences of the right honourable gentleman, but merely to question one of his premises, which, in his mind, called for observation.

The motion was agreed to, and a committee was accordingly appointed.

December 10.

THE report of the said committee being brought up on the 10th, and ordered to be printed, Mr. Pitt moved, “That a committee be appointed to examine the Journals of the House, and report precedents of such proceedings as may have been had in cases of the personal exercise of the royal authority being prevented or interrupted by infancy, sickness, infirmity, or otherwise, with a view to provide for the same," The motion being made, Mr. Fox observed, that if it were carried, it must be considered that it was loss of time. What were they going to search for? Not precedents upon their journals, not parliamentary precedents, but precedents in the history of England. He would be bold to say, nay, they all knew, that the doing so would prove a loss of time, for there existed no precedent whatever that could bear upon the present case. The circumstance to be provided for did not depend upon their deliberations as a house of parliament; it rested elsewhere. There was then a person in the kingdom different from any other person that any existing precedents could refer to—an heir apparent of full age and capacity to exercise the royal power. It behoved them, therefore, to waste not a moment

unnecessarily, but to proceed with all becoming diligence to restore the sovereign power and the exercise of the royal authority. Mr. Pitt rose with some heat, to controvert the doctrine advanced by Mr. Fox. He declared it to be little less than treason against the constitution; and pledged himself to maintain, on the contrary, that the heir apparent had no more right, in the case alleged, to the exercise of the executive power, than any other subject in the kingdom; and that it belonged to the two remaining branches of the legislature, in behalf of the people, to make such provision for supplying the temporary deficiency as they might think most proper, to preserve unimpaired the interests of the sovereign, and the safety and the welfare of the nation. He added, that from the mode in which the right honourable gentleman had treated the subject, a new question presented itself, and that of much greater magnitude than the question originally before them; it was a question of their own rights; it was become a doubt, whether the House had on this important occasion any deliberative power at all. The motion he had made could therefore no longer be called nugatory, but was become absolutely necessary, in order to learn and ascertain their own rights.

Mr. BURKE said, that he could not but reflect with astonishment upon the style and manner in which the right honourable gentleman had debated the question; and contended, that if ever there was a question which, peculiarly called for temper and moderation, it was that to which the present argument referred. The question did not point merely to an affliction of bodily infirmity, to an illness affecting the meanest and most perishable part of the human frame, but to the most humiliating of all human calamities which had fallen upon the highest situation. In that moment, when it peculiarly behoved every one of them to keep himself cool, and preserve the little share of reason with which Heaven had blessed him, the right honourable gentleman had burst into a flame; and, with a degree of unpardonable violence, had accused others of treason, because they ventured to mention the rights of any part of the royal family. The right honourable gentleman, in such a case, must not only have been aware

of what people expected at their hands, but of what he owed to the importance and delicacy of the subject, and to his own high situation and character. The right honourable gentleman had expressed his hopes for a regency in a subject, at the very time that he was bringing forward a charge of treason. When he could not convince any one by his arguments, he had endeavoured to intimidate all who had dared to mention only the rights of the royal family, and had threatened them with the lash of the law. Where was the freedom of debate, where was the privilege of parliament, if the rights of the Prince of Wales could not be spoken of in that House, without their being liable to be charged with treason by one of the prince's competitors? [Here there was a loud cry of order from the treasury side of the House.] Mr. Burke said, he would repeat and justify his words. The right honourable gentleman had expressly declared, that the Prince of Wales had no more right to claim the exercise of the sovereign power, than any other individual subject; he was warranted, therefore, in stating the right honourable gentleman as having described himself as one of the prince's competitors. For his part, he was too humble in situation to make such a renunciation of right to the crown himself, but he would venture to say, that none belonging to the proudest and most exalted families, those who enjoyed the highest dignities, and were loaded with the most splendid titles and honours, would dare to hope for a chance of the regency, or to state themselves as having an equal right to claim it with the Prince of Wales. He must own he trembled when he considered that he stood before that prince, who held the lash of vindictive law over the heads of those who dared to question the subject. The right honourable gentleman had talked of the discretion of that and of the other House of parliament: let him remember, that the first step of discretion was coolness of temper, and let him shew his own discretion before he recommended discretion to others. Before he gave his elective vote, for he might possibly be made an elector

against his will, the prince opposite to him (Mr. Burke said) ought not to measure people of low and timid dispositions by his own aspiring greatness of soul. He had read in some old law book, that nothing was so dreadful as when a subject was convicted of treason, without knowing what he had done that was treasonable. Let the right honourable gentleman recollect the 25th of Edward the Third, and not be so eager to hurl his constructive treasons on the heads of those who differed from him respecting the regency. He had ever understood, that our constitution was framed with so much circumspection and forethought, that it wisely provided for every possible exigency, and that the exercise of the sovereign executive power could never be vacant. He put the case, if he supposed that there might be a right in the Prince of Wales, (in whose patent of creation as Prince of Wales, he was declared and considered to be one and the same with the king,) to succeed his father in the exercise of the royal prerogative, and should proceed upon that supposition to urge a suit in the court of chancery, or any other court, should he be liable to be convicted of high crime and misdemeanor for such an assertion? In that case he conceived the charge of treason would not be made upon a sudden; but, if urged at all, it would be urged without any attempt at intimidation, any look of fury, or any voice of harshness. And yet, perhaps, the charge was thrown out merely to advise in the first place, that the Prince of Wales had no more right than any other person; and all his hitherto conceived notions of the meaning of a loud and most vehement tone of voice was possibly wrong; since it might mean nothing more than to make the expression which it accompanied clearly understood! Be that as it might, if he were to give an elective vote, it should be in favour of that prince, whose amiable disposition was one of his many recommendations, and not in favour of a prince, who charged the assertors of the right and claim of the Prince of Wales with constructive treason.