se that prerogative in
opposition to the House of Commons would be a measure as unsafe as
unjustifiable,"[99] but to confine the right of deciding the title of
the ministers to confidence to the existing House of Commons. He accused
Pitt of "courting the affection of the people, and on this foundation
wishing to support himself in opposition to the repeated resolutions of
the House passed in the last three weeks." Had he confined himself to
urging the necessity of the ministers and the House of Commons being in
harmony, even though such a mention of the House of Commons by itself
were to a certain extent an ignoring of the weight of the other branches
of the Legislature, he would have only been advancing a doctrine which
is practically established at the present day, since there has been
certainly more than one instance in which a ministry has retired which
enjoyed the confidence of both the sovereign and the House of Lords,
because it was not supported by a majority in the House of Commons. But
when he proceeded to make it a charge against the minister that he
trusted to the good-will of the people to enable him to disregard the
verdict of the House of Commons, he forgot that it was only as
representing the people that the House had any right to pronounce a
verdict; and that, if it were true that the judgment of the people was
more favorable to the minister than that of the House of Commons, the
difference which thus existed was a condemnation of the existing House,
and an irresistible reason for calling on the constituencies to elect
another.

Pitt, therefore, had no slight advantage in defending himself against so
rash an assailant. "He did not shrink," he said, "from avowing himself
the friend of the King's just prerogative," and in doing so he
maintained that he had a title to be regarded as the champion of the
people not less than of the crown. "Prerogative had been justly called a
part of the rights of the people, and he was sure it was a part of their
rights which they were never more inclined to defend, of which they were
never more jealous, than at that hour."[100] And he contended that Fox's
objections to a dissolution betrayed a consciousness that he had not the
confidence of the nation. At last, when the contest had lasted nearly
two months, Fox took the matter into his own hands, and, no longer
putting his partisans in the front of the battle, on the 1st of March he
himself moved for an address to the King