ster had taken up an attitude on the question tantamount
to that of setting himself up as a competitor to the Prince." Such
inconsiderate violence gave a great advantage to Pitt, one of whose most
useful characteristics as a debater was a readiness and presence of mind
that nothing could discompose. He repelled such menaces and imputations
with an equally lofty scorn, and, after a few necessary preliminaries,
brought forward a series of resolutions, one of which declared the fact
of the sovereign's illness, and consequent incapacity; a second affirmed
it to be the right and duty of the two Houses of Parliament to provide
the means for supplying the defect in the royal authority; and a third
imposed on the Houses the task of deciding on the mode in which the
royal assent necessary to give their resolutions the authority of law
should be signified. It was impossible to object to the first; but the
second was stubbornly contested by the Opposition, the chiefs of the
Coalition Ministry once more fighting side by side; though Lord North
contented himself with arguing that the affirmation of the right and
duty of Parliament was a needless raising of a disputable point, and
moving, therefore, that the committee should report progress, as the
recognized mode of shelving it. Fox, however, carried away by the heat
of debate, returned to the assertion of the doctrine of absolute right,
overlooking his subsequent modification of it, and again gave Pitt the
advantage, by condescending to impugn his motives for proposing the
resolution, as being inspired, not by a zeal for the constitution, but
by a consciousness that he did not deserve the confidence of the Prince,
and, therefore, anticipated his instant dismissal by the Regent. The
re-affirmation of the Prince's inherent right was, indeed, necessary to
Fox as the foundation for the objections which he took to other parts of
Pitt's scheme. For the minister, while admitting to its full extent the
irresistible claim which the Prince of Wales possessed to the preference
of Parliament for the Regency, proposed at the same time to impose
certain limitations on his exercise of the authority, so long as there
was a reasonable hope of his royal father's recovery. He was not to have
the power to create peerages, nor to alienate the property of the crown,
nor to grant offices in reversion; and, as the Queen was to have the
care of his Majesty's person, she also was to have the appointment of
al