expresses

"Every one," they said, " regret that the king, or that any other human being, should be afflicted with blindness. But old age is old age, and blindness is blindness, in a king as well as in other men; and when blindness is unhappily added to old age, and to both are added mental derangement, is it unreasonable that people, whose happiness or misery must, in a great degree, depend upon their government, should be solicitous that great caution should be used in the resumption of the royal authority, by a person thus afflicted?" Throw him into a corner!" exclaimed a ministerial writer, expressing with indignation the wishes of this party; "tell him, this is the lot reserved for a king who has reign ed so long!" Here also the reply was any thing rather than a confutation or denial of the charge. "We have had nothing to do with the lot," said the mouthpiece of the anarchists ; have had no hand in making the king either old or blind, or mentally deranged. The lot has fallen upon him. The first is the lot of every man, and is generally esteemed a very fortunate lot; the second is nothing very rare, and it is by no means an unfrequent companion of old age; and the third, and all three, are the work of nature, and not of any of us. And as to the king's having reigned so long, there is neither merit nor demerit in that, either in him or his people."

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no other reform than that of curtailing the power of what they called the borough-mongering faction, there never was a time when the prince and the better part of the people would have been so well inclined to listen to their arguments. Mr Perceval had never stood so high in public estimation as at this moment. When first he came into power, the tide of popularity was in favour of him and his colleagues; because any men would have been popular who succeeded to such an administration as that of All the Talents; but a series of untoward events had for a time lessened his hold upon the country, without in any degree lessening the contempt and odium in which his opponents were held. In the case of the Duke of York, it was felt that his conduct was rather that of an advocate for one of the parties, than of a man called upon to decide impartially upon the evidence before him; and the unhappy expedition to Walcheren, which speedily followed, drew after it a cry of grief and disappointment, against which, perhaps, he could scarcely have borne up, if Sir Francis Burdett, by his factious dispute with the House of Commons, had not, most unintentionally, but most effectually, drawn off the public attention at the very moment when the decision upon the inquiry came on. It was always asserted by his enemies, that he held his situation, not by any weight of influence in the country, nor of talents in parliament, but by the confidence and especial favour of the king; and that nothing could be more unfit than that the British minister should be thus dependent upon, and literally, as it were, the servant of the crown. They who argued thus against Mr Perceval's administration, did not perceive how strong and unanswerable an argument this was against that borough. system, to which they themselves owed their only power; certain, however, it

Whether the agitators and anarchists really believed that the prince could be so infatuated as to countenance their plans for a radical and sweeping change, or whether they held out this hope to their dupes and disciples, in order that their certain disappointment might engender a deadlier disaffection, is best known to themselves: but if the Burdettites, abstaining from their indecent attempts to show that the king ought never to be permitted to resume his authority, had talked of

is, that Mr Perceval was thought a weak minister, because he wanted this influence; and a sense of this weakness seems sometimes to have made him assent to measures which he would gladly have prevented, if he had held his situation by a stronger tenure. But when the prop upon which he really had leaned, and by which it was believed that he was entirely supported, was suddenly taken away, then it was that he felt his own resources, and the people saw him confident in his motives and measures, and with the strength of integrity hold on his steady course; not to be deterred from what he knew to be his duty, either by the clamours and threats of the faction within doors, and the demagogues without; nor by the expressed displeasure of the prince, in whose power it would so soon be to dismiss him from office. Then, perhaps for the first time, he became conscious of his own powers, and the dignity of his nature shone forth; it was seen that the man, whose individual character was without a spot, carried the pure principles of his privacy into public action, and possessed the steadiness and intrepidity of a statesman in as eminent a degree as the milder and most endearing virtues of domestic life.

As to the mode of proceeding, whether it should be by bill or address; and the restrictions, whether any should be enacted, or what: these were questions in which the great body of the people felt no interest; for, looking neither to the analogy of former proceedings as a guide, nor to the fitness of establishing a clear and unexcep. tionable precedent for the future, all that they wished was, that provision should be made for the present deficiency. These were points upon which they had no opinion; but as the course which Mr Perceval was pursuing had been pursued by Mr Pitt, and had received the full and unqualified appro

bation of the king upon his subsequent recovery, they desired no better proof that that course was the right one. This therefore had their ready assent; but their hearty and ardent approbation went with the ministry in those adjournments at the commencement of the king's illness, against which the opposition inveighed with such violence; in that regard which was manifested to his feelings; and in all the provisions which were made for his recovery. Mr Perceval never stood so high in their opinion as the favoured minister of the king, in full and secure possession of power, as now, when he appeared the faithful servant of a master who was no longer sensible of his services, and no longer capable of supporting him. There was an occurrence also, during the progress of the bill, which contributed in no little degree to increase their high opinion of the falling minister, and their dislike to one of his principal opponents.

Issues of money were necessary for the army and navy money had been appropriated by parliament for those services. The Exchequer Act required that the issue should be under the great seal, or under the privy seal, or by authority of an act of parliament. Under the present circumstances, Mr Perceval thought it would be proper to use the privy seal; the keeper of the privy seal was willing to undertake this responsibility; but the signature of Mr Larpent, the clerk of the privy seal, was also necessary, and that tleman refused to affix it, pleading scruples on account of his oath of office. Mr Perceval then issued an order from the Treasury to the Exche quer, thinking this would be sufficient, and thinking also that it was better for the responsible servants of the crown to take upon themselves the consequences of making issues for the public service, and risk the censure, or wait the indemnity of parliament,

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than to procrastinate public business, by bringing such topics into discussion in the house from time to time. But when these warrants were brought to Lord Grenville, in his chaJan. 1. racter of Auditor of the Exchequer, he returned an answer to Mr Perceval, requiring time "to consider the nature and extent of the duties which this new and unexpected course of proceeding imposed upon him ;" and therefore requesting to know when it was necessary that the money should be issued. He was informed, "that, according to the usual course of supplying the weekly issues to the navy and army, it would be necessary that sums should be issued to both services, beyond the amount of the existing credit at the Exchequer, either on the morrow, or the next day at farthest; but if an actual issue could be made on the Monday following, (that was six days thence,) no serious inconvenience was apprehended." Lord Grenville then desired that the opinions of the Attorney and Solicitor Ġeneral should be taken, "in order that he might have the sanction of their legal advice and authority in a matter of such novel and unprecedented difficulty." These law officers delivered it as their opinion, that they "did not think the warrant of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury was in law a sufficient authority imperative upon the auditor, nor, consequently, a legal sanction for his proceeding to obey the same; nor that any discretion was left to him by the law on this occasion, for the exercise of which he would not be responsible." The Lords Commissioners of the Treasury transmitted this opinion to Lord Gren ville, informing him at the same time, "that their sense of the mischief to the public service, which would arise if any delay should take place in the issue of this money, appeared to ren

VOL IV. PART I.

der it indispensably necessary that the warrants should be forthwith complied with, and that they were consequently ready to take upon themselves the responsibility of any act which might be essential for that purpose." Lord Grenville replied, that it was matter of the deepest concern to him to be made the involuntary cause of any, even the shortest delay, in an issue of his majesty's Treasury, stated to him from such high authority to be important to the public service. "If,” said he, "I could be satisfied of the propriety of my doing what is required from me by the warrants which I have had the honour to receive from your lordships, there is no personal responsibility which I would not readily incur for the public interests; but I cannot persuade myself, that I could obey those warrants, without a breach of my official duty in that point, which is above all others peculiarly obligatory on the person placed in the situation of Auditor of the Exchequer ; nor without a high and criminal violation both of a positive statute, and also of the essential principles of our monarchical and parliamentary constitution.

"I am told," he continued, " that I must act on my own discretion, for the exercise of which I must alone be responsible. This responsibility, if it legally attaches upon me, I certainly cannot transfer to any other persons, and least of all to your lordships, whatever willingness you have expressed to take it on yourselves. My attempting to do so, would itself be criminal; tending to confound the official relations in which I have the honour to stand towards your lordships, and to annul those checks which the law has established to ensure the faithful discharge of our respective duties, and thereby the security of the public treasure.-But I beg leave humbly to submit to your lordships, that the law ተ

A truth invested me with no dison this question. The exigencies of the public ser*., which your lordships have condeded to detail to me in these your warrants, are matters of state, of which, 4 Auditor of the Exchequer, I have no knowledge, and can take no cognizance; my official duty is strictly limited to an observance of the accustomed forms of the Exchequer, and of the laws which have from time to time been passed for its regulation. To these I am bound to adhere; and it is on the fullest consideration which this pressure of time has permitted me to give to them, that I am compelled to decline, but with all due respect to your lordships, a compliance with the requisition contained in those warrants to which this letter refers." His lordship concluded, by recommending that the difficulty should be submitted to the consideration of the two houses of parliament, with whom rested the right and duty to provide the means of removing it, and to whose pleasure he would defer with entire submission.

Mr Perceval immediately laid this correspondence before parliament, saying, “that, though, if it had not been for the difficulty thus unexpectedly started, he should not have Jan. 3. thought it expedient to bring the subject under their immediate notice, yet he had always anticipated it as his duty to submit it to their consideration, not for the purpose of obtaining a previous vote of indemnity, but, having incurred the responsbility of action, with the view of call ing on the house to determine whether or not ministers had acted justinably." Mr Ponsonby did not let pass this opportunity of attacking him. It was very imprudent," he said, "to postpone this application to parliament, till the issue of money was immediately wanted. On a former occasion, the right honourable gentleman had decla

red, that no public inconvenience was likely to arise from the adjournment to which he persuaded the house to agree; but it was now proved that a very great inconvenience to the public service was likely to accrue." When the house had resolved itself into a committee, Mr Perceval moved a resolution, that the lords of the Treasury should issue their warrants for the payment of such sums as were necessary, and that the auditors and officers of the Exchequer should obey those warrants. had no intention,” he said, “of pass ing any censure on the conduct of the noble lord at the head of the Exchequer; yet when the lords of the Treasury had offered to take upon themselves the whole responsibility of the act, he had hoped that the course which that noble lord would have ta ken, would have beea to comply with the requisition, in consideration of the urgent necessity of the case; but at the same time to make a protest against the informality or illegality of the proceeding, in order distinctly to mark that he was no party to the transac tion, and to cast the responsibility al together upon those, under whose authority he had been induced to act. The grounds upon which he himself had acted," he continued, "appeared perfectly satisfactory to his own mind. His conduct had been regulated throughout this business to the best of his judgement, with a scrupulous regard to the principles of the constitution. If he had been capable of acting differently, if, instead of acting as he had done, he had come originally to parliament, he should have expected that his conduct would have been censured as one of the greatest acts of pusillanimity that ever disgraced a publie

officer, thus to fear applying the money voted by parliament for certain purposes to the services for which it had been granted. Such were his ideas on the subject ; and if, instead of act

ing conformably to those ideas, he had thrown unnecessarily more of the executive power into parliament, and tremblingly abstained from ordering such issues as he felt the emergency of the case required, from a dread of their censure, that censure would have been richly deserved. The principles upon which he had acted, were those which appeared to him most consistent with his duty, and best calculated to promote the public service; and, however it might please gentlemen to compare him to Reubell, or any other member of the directory of Revolutionary France, he should not be deterred by any such imputations from pursuing what his conscience told him was the line of his duty. In the same spirit of fairness, he and his colleagues had been called usurpers, who had taken the whole executive power into their own hands; but he trusted the house would not be greatly surprised at finding he was but little alarmed at such imputations. This was one of the usurpations of which he had been guilty-this was one of the stretches of power which might be laid to his charge."

Sir John Sebright upon this rose to say, "that the course which Mr Perceval had adopted was the best, the wisest, and the manliest, that could have been adopted; that he had done his best for the public good, standing forward fairly, and not shrinking from any responsibility, and therefore he was entitled to the applause of the country." Sir John Sebright, in thus delivering his opinion, spoke the sentiments of the great body of the people. The opposition, however, repeated those charges of usurpation, which Mr Perceval so properly despised. "What was it," said Lord Temple, "that the right honourable gentleman wanted the Auditor of the Exchequer to do? Why, having himself brought the country into this exigency, he calls upon Lord Grenville to help him for

whatever time he chooses to retain the power in his own hands, by issuing money from the Exchequer in a manner contrary to law, and to the practice of the office. This was what he could hardly expect Lord Grenville to do. If there was not some check or limitation

on the powers of the right honourable gentleman, he would have no occasion to fill up the deficiency in the royal authority at all. He might go on for weeks, for months, or years, without a regent, if he was enabled on his own warrant, or the warrant of three lords of the Treasury, to draw the whole revenues of the nation out of the Exchequer, and apply them as he thought proper."

Mr Ponsonby objected to the resolution, as growing out of their original error, their original sin. "It showed," he said, " more strongly than all the logic and all the eloquence of all the members of that house, the necessity of supplying without delay the deficiency in the executive government, and the imprudence of the course which they had been persuaded to take."-Sir Arthur Piggott maintained, that if the principle for which ministers now contended were once admitted, they might take upon themselves the whole executive government; to make peace and war, to create chancellors if necessary; in short, to do what only one parliamentary assembly had ever done before them, the assembly of the Long Parliament.-Mr Tierney reminded the house, that they were giving to the mi nisters unlimited controul over three millions of money; and Mr Whitbread, recurring to the favourite object of his party, declared, that the only remedy was to advert to the mode of proceeding by address.-Mr Perceval noticed the argument, that public inconvenience was now proved to have arisen from the delay occasioned by adjournments. "We have," said he, “this marked, monstrous, abominable, and