l the offices in the royal household. Fox, on the other hand, objected
with extreme earnestness to the impropriety of imposing any limitations
whatever on the power of the Regent; and then the question whether the
Prince was to derive his right to the Regency from the authority of
Parliament, or from his natural position and inalienable preceding right
as his father's heir, became one of practical importance. If the
Parliament had the right to confer authority, it had clearly the right
to limit the authority it conferred. If the Prince had an indefeasible
right to the Regency, independently of the will of Parliament, then
Parliament could have no pretence to limit or restrain the exercise of
an authority which in no degree flowed from itself. Fox, indeed, took
another objection to the imposing of limitations to the authority to be
intrusted to the Regent, contending that this would be to create a power
unknown to the constitution--a person in the situation of King without
regal power. But, not to mention precedents drawn from the reigns of
Edward III., Richard II., and Henry VI., in the twenty-fourth year of
the very last reign, George II., on the death of his son, the father of
the present King, had enjoined the Parliament to provide for the
government, in the case of his own death, while the heir was still a
minor, recommending to them the appointment of the Princess Dowager of
Wales as Regent, "with such powers and limitations as might appear
expedient." And, in conformity with his desire, the Parliament had
appointed the Princess Regent, with a Council of Regency to assist her;
and had enacted that "several portions of the regal power" should be
withheld from the Regent, if she could not obtain the consent of the
Council thus appointed.[118]

This part of the case was so plain, that when, after the different
resolutions proposed by Pitt had been adopted in both Houses, Fox
insisted that, instead of proceeding by a bill to create a Regency, and
to appoint the Prince of Wales Regent, the only course which could be
adopted with propriety would be to present an address to the Prince, to
entreat him to assume the government, he failed to induce the House to
agree with him; and finally, as if he were determined to find a
battle-field in every clause, he made a vigorous resistance to the
expedient by which Pitt proposed that the formal royal assent which was
necessary to make the bill law should be given. Fox, on one occasi