very reconcilable to common sense, since, if a right were inherent and indefeasible, Parliament could not, without absolute tyranny, refuse to sanction its exercise; and, in fact, his coadjutor, Sheridan, on the very same evening, re-asserted his original doctrine in, if possible, still more explicit terms, warning the minister “of the danger of provoking the Prince to assert his right,” while a still greater man (Burke) declared that “the minister 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 all the offices in the royal household.  Fox, on the other hand, objected with extreme earnestness to the impropriety of imposing