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HISTORY OF EUROPE,

1811.

CHAP. I.

Proceedings concerning the Regency. Debates upon the Regency Bill. Installation of the Regent.

THE session having been opened by commission, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Secretary Ryder, Lord Clive, the Master of the Rolls, and the Attorney and Solicitor General, were instructed to bring in a bill to provide for the administration of the royal authority, and for the care of his majes ty's royal person during the continuance of his illness, and for Jan. 15. the resumption of the exercise of the royal authority by his majesty. Mr Whitbread, ob. serving that the bill appeared to him to differ in some points from the resolutions upon which it was founded, moved that the committee should be em. powered to take those resolutions into consideration; and this haJan. 17. ving been agreed to, the house resolved itself into a committee upon the subject. In the fifth clause, which provided for the resumption of the royal authority, Mr Whitbread objected to the wording of the clause, as too loose and general;

VOL. IV. PART I.

and instead of the words, “When his majesty shall be restored to such a state of health as to be capable of resuming the personal exercise of the royal authority, and shall have declared his royal will and pleasure thereupon," moved, as an amendment, that these words should be inserted, "When his majesty shall be restored to a full state of mental health, so as to be capable of undertaking the personal exercise of the royal authority." "The king," he said, "ought not to be restored to authority until he was restored to health; and when he considered the conduct of ministers, from the year 1789 down to the present moment, he saw the necessity that existed for speaking plainly and explicitly upon this occasion." "This amendment was negatived without a division.

The ninth clause declared, "that the regent should take and subscribe such oaths, and make and subscribe such declarations, and do all such acts as are required by the laws to qualify +

A.

persons to hold offices and places of trust, and to continue in the same in such manner as by the laws are required, and under such pains, penalties, forfeitures, and disabilities as are therein appointed." Upon this Sir Samuel Romilly declared, "he considered this clause as the most objectionable part of the whole bill. Its effect would be to make the regent a responsible officer, an effect which he did not suppose was in the contemplation of the framers of it; but if the committee were to agree to it, they would, in effect, alter the government. The supreme executive magistrate of this country was responsible only by his advisers, and to make the person filling that exalted station personally responsible, however it might appear a better form of government to theorists, would be to subvert the constitution. What a monstrous circumstance it would be, if the regent, on the king's recovery, were to be liable to an information by his majesty's attorney-general, for not having properly executed the trust confided to him!" Mr Perceval replied," that he had been studious to preserve as much as possible the words adopted in the bill of 188, not from any partiality to them, but that it might not be said he wished to introduce any alteration. It might be a question, whether any subject raised to the rank of regent should be responsible; but the solution of that question certainly did not go to free the ministers of the regent, who were considered in the light of the king's ministers, and of course liable to the same responsibility." Mr Tierney said, "the clause was directly different from the resolutions. The resolutions stated, that the regent was to have the prerogatives of the king, and they were now by the bill imposing oaths on him." Sir Samuel Romilly whispered here, "Excise oaths." "Aye," Mr Tierney repeated, "oaths which placed him

in the station of an exciseman. The resolutions spoke of him in pompous, high-sounding terms, and then the bill went to level him with the lowest of fice in the land. And it was worthy of notice, that the regent was mentioned in the clause merely as a person ;' a phrase which no man could have supposed would have been applied to the Prince of Wales. It would be well if the right honourable gentleman had considered before he introduced this clause, dwindling the regent down to the holder of a mere office in trust."

Upon this Mr Perceval replied with allowable warmth, "that he very little expected, copying as he had done the words of the clause from the bill of 1788, that he should be accused of attempting to degrade the Prince of Wales. It would be well, however, (repeating Mr Tierney's phrase) if that right honourable gentleman was to read the clause upon which he chose to comment; it would be well if the would form an opinion upon considering what he had read; and it would be well also if he did not thus expose himself, by censuring as performed what never was even intended. Because the low officers of the nation took oaths, was it therefore to be stated that an oath had been imposed upon a higher one merely to degrade him? The king himself took oaths; and it could not possibly be considered as a degradation to the present Prince of Wales, in tendering him an office, to do as our ancestors had always done in similar circumstances. If the wording of the clause was supposed to throw any responsibility on the regent, he was willing to use other words; but he had merely used the form which had been adopted over and over again." "Mr Ponsonby said, "it by no means followed that, because the words were introduced in the bill of 1788, that therefore they must be proper. They might perhaps have escaped observa

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