t and the nation on
that act. Thus William IV. acted in the autumn of 1834; and thus George
III. himself acted at the end of the month of which we are speaking. But
to retain them in their offices, and to employ an unofficial declaration
of his dissent from them to defeat their policy, is neither consistent
with the straightforward conduct due from one gentleman to another, nor
with the principle on which the system of administration, such as
prevails in this country, is founded.

As has been already mentioned, the King at once dismissed the Coalition
Ministry. Mr. Pitt accepted the conduct of affairs, and by so doing
accepted the responsibility for all the acts of the King which had
conduced to his appointment. Lord John Russell, who in his "Memorials
and Correspondence of Fox" has related and examined the whole
transaction at considerable though not superfluous length, while blaming
the prudence, and in some points the propriety, of Fox's conduct, at the
same time severely censures Pitt as "committing a great fault in
accepting office as the price of an unworthy intrigue," and affirms that
"he and his colleagues who accepted office upon the success of this
intrigue placed themselves in an unconstitutional position."[92] This
seems to be a charge which can hardly be borne out. In dismissing his
former ministry, the King was clearly acting within his right; and, if
so, Pitt was equally within his in undertaking the government. The truer
doctrine would seem to be, that, in so undertaking it, he assumed the
entire responsibility for the dismissal of his predecessors,[93] and
left it to the people at large, by the votes of their representatives,
to decide whether that dismissal were justified, and whether, as its
inevitable consequence, his acceptance of office were also justified or
not. The entire series of transactions, from the meeting of Parliament
in November, 1783, to its dissolution in the following March, may be
constitutionally regarded as an appeal by the King from the existing
House of Commons to the entire nation, as represented by the
constituencies; and their verdict, as is well known, ratified in the
most emphatic manner all that had been done. And we may assert this
without implying that, if the single act of empowering Lord Temple to
influence the peers by the declaration of the King's private feeling had
been submitted by itself to the electors, they would have justified
that. The stirring excitement of