not recover―he sincerely wished that he might; but from what was more strong in his mind, even than the satisfaction which must result from his knowing that his majesty was restored to his health - his desire that the people should be acquainted with the truth. In such a cause, he was not ashamed to confes himself warm, and avow his determination to resist an attempt to deceive an affectionate people, and to prevent that House from being deluded, under false pretences, into a mode of government which would sacrifice the constitution. In such a cause, he felt a warmth superior even to his attachment to majesty; superior to the love and loyalty which a subject owed his sovereign; an attachment founded in a love of truth, and a detestation of falsehood. At the manner in which the cry had been given from the other side, when Dr. Warren's name had been mentioned, it was impossible for the friends of that gentleman, and for every man feeling like a gentleman, not to glow with the utmost contempt. A physician's eminence, above all other professions, stood upon the most secure and certain footing. No man employed a physician from favour: no man employed a physician because he was of his party, nor because he had given him his interest at an election; but, they trusted their health in his hands, because he was known to possess superior skill, and on that account alone. He would believe that the learned personage before alluded to by him, (the lord chancellor,) had an ill opinion of Dr. Warren, when he should hear that the noble and learned lord trusted his health, when he should next have the misfortune to be ill, in any other hands. These were not encomiums, but facts. It was the confidence with which people of the most exalted ranks trusted their healths in Dr. Warren's hands, that made him so unusually eminent as a physician. The cry therefore, if it meant any thing, must have been meant to convey an insinuation against Dr. Warren's integrity; but, as the opinion of Dr. Warren's skill never could rise, so no more could the opinion of his integrity rise, though his integrity undoubtedly equalled his skill. The right honourable gentleman had been pleased to say, that he thought the probability of his majesty's recovery was greater than before, and had added, that he was provoked to declare that to be his private opinion. I will not be provoked, observed Mr. Fox, to declare any private opinion of mine to the contrary, nor will I assent to that of the right honourable gentleman; but if the House is to proceed on shades of difference of opinion, as to the probability of his majesty's recovery, which I think is extremely absurd, I must still contend, that the inquiry should be as free and open as possible.

After much altercation on this subject, it was agreed that a new committee should be appointed, and that the physicians should be re-examined. The committee sat till the 13th, when the report was brought up, and a motion was made by Mr. Burke, and seconded by Mr. Windham, that it should be re-committed, on account of their not having examined into the grounds of the different opinions held by the physicians, respecting the probability of the king's recovery. This motion was negatived without a division: the report was ordered to be printed, and to be taken into consideration in a committee of the whole House on the state of the nation upon the Friday following, on which day Mr. Pitt opened his plan to the House. The first four resolutions were agreed to. The fifth was posponed to the Monday following.

This day Mr. Pitt moved the fifth resolution, namely, “That the care of his majesty's royal person, during the continuance of his majesty's illness, should be committed to the queen's most excellent majesty, and that her majesty should have power to remove from, and to nominate and appoint such persons as she shall think proper, to the several offices in his majesty's household, and to dispose, order, and manage, all other matters and things relating to the care of his majesty's royal person, during the time aforesaid. And that for the better enabling her majesty to discharge this important trust, it is also expedient that a council should be appointed to advise and assist her majesty in the several matters aforesaid, and with power, from time to time, as they may see cause, to examine, upon oath, the physicians and others touching the state of his majesty's health, and all matters relative thereto." Mr Pitt was supported by Mr. Dundas and the solicitor-general. On the other side, Lord Maitland, Mr. Grey, and others, objected to the limitations in general, not only as tending to distract and embarrass the new government, but as nugatory and ineffectual for the purpose which they were meant to

secure.

Mr. Fox followed on the same side. After adverting to the remarks which had been thrown out on the comparative talents of the two sides of the House, he observed, that he could not deny that he had a partiality for the talents of his friends, and of those with whom he was nearly and closely connected by a similarity of opinion and conduct; but, partial as he was to their endowments and abilities, he disclaimed that want of candour which might induce him to withhold from gentlemen on the other side of the House, the just praise due to great ingenuity and to eminent talents. That ingenuity and those talents had often been displayed on occasions in which he differed with them in opinion,

and which occasioned him to lament that he was compelled to oppose abilities so distinguished; but he must say that, on the present occasion, they had not furnished him with reason for such a lamentation. A measure supported with so little argument, he never witnessed. A debate like the present, in which so much had been said on the one side, and so little on the other, he did not recollect; and in this estimate of the matter, he must include the very laboured essay of the honourable and learned solicitor-general. That the subject would not admit of defence was manifest from this, that even the honourable and learned gentleman, whose education and daily habits furnished him abundantly with the modes and forms of reasoning, and who, on other topics, had shewn so fruitful a mind, was, on this, unable to advance a single clear and unsophisticated argument for the measure which he espoused, but had, as heretofore, endeavoured to entangle the understandings of gentlemen in the intricacies of legal metaphysics.

For his own part, in the discussion of the important question before them, he would follow the very proper example of an honourable and learned gentleman, whom he did not see in his place, in avoiding the utterance of a single word in praise of the personal virtues of the royal and exalted characters who were immediately concerned. He would neither speak of the virtues of the heir apparent on the one side, nor of her majesty on the other; such eulogiums unquestionably were neither political nor perfectly manly. To say that which none could contradict, was not manly, and to make the particular virtues of the present royal persons an argument either for the adoption or rejection of a great measure, which might in its tendency apply to other times and other persons, was surely not political. He would rather make the honourable gentleman his model, who, at an early stage of this business, had said that in discussing it he would not take into his view the plan of the regency, as it related to the Prince of Wales, but as it might relate hereafter to a Prince of Wales: so, he would not consider the present resolution as it affected the queen, but as it might affect a queen; abstracting from the question every personal motive, and viewing it as it might apply to other times and to other persons, and to its future probable consequences on the government and constitution of the kingdom. The honourable and learned gentleman had begun his speech with a repetition of that doctrine which he had early started, and frequently pressed in debate with the existence and union of the personal and politic character of his majesty: "That the king's political character was, in the eye of the law, inseparable from his personal that it remained

entire and perfect--and would continue so to do until his natural demise." This doctrine, which had been frequently urged, he had wished in vain to hear explained; for, how that person, whose political faculties were confessedly suspended by a severe visitation of Providence, could still exist in the full enjoyment of his political character, was beyond his understanding to comprehend. The doctrine partook of, and seemed indeed to be founded on, those blind and superstitious notions, by which, as they all knew from history, human institutions had been deified, and by which, for the purpose, perhaps, of impressing a strong and implicit reverence in the minds of the multitude, the fables of men were stated to be of divine origin. That resort was had in those early times to such means, for wise purposes, by men highly gifted, he was not unwilling to admit; and that, even in our own history, there might be, and certainly were, among that description of persons in our own country, who, at different times, bore the epithets of tories, high churchmen, and so forth, several who might think that, by propagating the idea of divine right, they surrounded the person of majesty with a mysterious grandeur and authority, which inspired in an enthusiastic people a more prompt and steady obedience. If such was the view in which the honourable and learned gentleman wished to consider this mysterious character of complete political existence, without political capacity, he could only observe on his doctrine, that he took up the superstitions of antiquity and rejected the morality; for, while he thus enveloped the sacred person of majesty with a political veil, which, by ancient superstition, was calculated to inspire awe, and secure obedience, he was labouring to enfeeble the arm of government, to cripple it in all its great and essential parts, to expose it to hostile attack and to contumely, to take from it the dignity which appertained to itself, and the use for which it was designed towards the people. Such was the tendency of this metaphysical doctrine-a doctrine which, though it might have found proselytes in the dark and gloomy days of antiquity, was not calculated for the intelligence and just understanding of the relative duties of sovereign and subject at the present æra.

The honourable and learned gentleman, in the pursuit of his doctrine, had said, that his allegiance would continue during the life of the king, whatever might be the condition of his mind. That duty, loyalty, affection, and every rational sentiment which could animate the breast of an Englishman, would lead them all to venerate, to love, and to protect the sacred person of his majesty, however long and however calamitous his malady might prove, was a feeling so predomi nant, that it was not necessary to take up a moment of their

time in asserting its existence. But, when the honourable and learned gentleman stated this as the definition of allegiance, he must enter his protest against it. He, for his part, considered allegiance as a reciprocal duty, springing up in the heart, in consequence of protection, and which was of equal existence. If the honourable and learned gentleman's definition of allegiance was true, and that it was not dependant either on the political capacity, or the exercise of political capacity, but on the bare personal existence of the king, then, all which they had heard that day from a right honourable and learned gentleman who spoke early, (Mr. Dundas,) and from the honourable and learned gentleman himself, that these limitations were but temporary, and that the time would come when they must be revised, and the full power be given to the regent, was inconsistent and impossible. For, whether the king's malady endured one year or thirty years, it was precisely the same in the contemplation of this doctrine, and the legislature could not vest the full powers of the crown in any other hands, while the person of the king remained. That such was the latent designs of gentlemen on the other side of the House he did not doubt; and if the honourable and learned gentleman would speak out, he was sensible that he would say that this was his feeling and determination on the subject. In the present moment, they thought it prudent to conceal this intention. Gentlemen, however, could not be deceived - they would compare the argument with the assertion. The argument was, that he felt and acknowledged the immutable perfection of the king, to which he had sworn allegiance. The assertion was, that if he did not recover within a short time, the two Houses must alter the present arrangement, and give to the regent full authority!

The honourable and learned gentleman had cursorily men-. tioned the time when, perhaps, it might be proper to review those restrictions. Perhaps, at the end of a twelvemonth it might be proper. "But," says he, "if, in the present instance, the House were to limit the duration of them to twelve or eighteen months, at which time they should cease of course, and the king should recover his faculties but a fortnight after the restraints had ceased, what evil consequences might not ensue from that single fortnight of uncontrolled power!" What consequences? Let us examine, said Mr. Fox, what, even in the full stretch of the honourable and learned gentleman's fears, they are likely to be, and what, on the contrary, are likely to prove the consequences of passing this regency bill for an indefinite time. In this dreadful fortnight, the unrestrained regent might, perhaps, in