the opinion of our judges on
the point. But you do not seem to consider that, whenever that case
occurs, you may have to decide _on the moment_, either to quit your
Government, and to swear in the new Lord-Lieutenant, or to hold it
against him, in contradiction to the orders of English Government.
Suppose he should himself be the messenger of his own appointment,
as was the case with the Duke of Portland. The same reason exactly
exists for it now as before, namely, the fear of suffering the
dismissed Lord-Lieutenant to meet the Parliament, especially in a
moment when their conduct is so important. The best and, indeed,
almost only security that you could have in such a case for the
justification of your own conduct, whatever it might be, would be
the having given a full previous intimation to the English
Government of the difficulties and dangers of the case.

You say that I should feel myself at liberty to act for you on the
pressure of any unforeseen case. I certainly should; and my
confidence in your affection, and in your persuasion of my desire
to do the best for you, would encourage me to take, if it were
absolutely necessary, steps even of considerable delicacy and
difficulty. But I cannot but be infinitely anxious, as far as
possible, to be previously in possession of your ideas on every
case that can be foreseen. Besides this, I am at present unable to
do the precise thing which I think would be the most desirable,
because I am not myself in possession of the particular forms of
your commission's passing in England and in Ireland, so as to be
able to state them to others. And yet this is the point on which,
in one view of the case, the whole question turns. I confess that,
in my own individual opinion, there is another point distinct from
that of forms, on which I should be disposed to maintain the
incompetence of any English revocation of your commission. It is
this:

_We_ (that is Pitt and his friends) hold and have persuaded
Parliament to declare that, in such a case as the present, the
right of providing for the emergency rests in the two Houses, not
as branches of the Legislature, but as a full and free
representative of all the orders and classes of the people of Great
Britain. Now the moment that we admit this, we do it on th