eld
without a struggle; and on the 17th one of his partisans in the House of
Commons, Mr. Baker, one of the members for Hertfordshire, brought
forward some resolutions on the subject of the late division in the
House of Lords. He professed to rest them solely on rumors, but he urged
that "it was the duty of that House to express its abhorrence even of
that rumor," since by such an action as was alleged "that responsibility
of ministers which was the life of the constitution would be taken away,
and with it the principal check that the public had upon the crown." And
he urged "the members of that House, as the guardians of the
constitution, to stand forward and preserve it from ruin, to maintain
that equilibrium between the three branches of the Legislature, and that
independence without which the constitution could no longer exist," and
with this view to resolve "that to report any opinion, or pretended
opinion, of his Majesty upon any bill or other proceeding depending in
either House of Parliament, with a view to influence the votes of the
members, is a high crime and misdemeanor, derogatory to the honor of the
crown, a breach of the fundamental privileges of Parliament, and
subversive of the constitution of the country." It was opposed by Pitt,
chiefly on the ground that Mr. Baker only based the necessity for such a
resolution on common report, which he, fairly enough, denied to be a
sufficient justification of it; and partly on the undoubted and
"inalienable right of peers, either individually or collectively, to
advise his Majesty, whenever they thought the situation of public
affairs made such a step an essential part of their duty." But it was
supported by Lord North as "necessary on constitutional principles,"
since the acts so generally reported and believed "affected the freedom
of debate;" and by Fox, who declared that the action which was reported,
if true, "struck at the great bulwark of our liberties, and went to the
absolute annihilation, not of our chartered rights only, but of those
radical and fundamental ones which are paramount to all charters, which
were consigned to our care by the sovereign disposition of Nature, which
we cannot relinquish without violating the most sacred of all
obligations, to which we are entitled, not as members of society, but as
individuals and as men; the right of adhering steadily and uniformly to
the great and supreme laws of conscience and duty; of preferring, at all
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