The only writer, as far as I am aware, who advocates the opposite view is Lord Campbell, who, after quoting the speech of Lord Camden, from which extracts have been made, comments on it, and on the whole transaction, in the following terms:  “From the course then adopted and carried through, I presume it is now to be considered part of our constitution that if ever, during the natural life of the sovereign, he is unable by mental disease personally to exercise the royal functions, the deficiency is to be supplied by the two Houses of Parliament, who, in their discretion, will probably elect the heir-apparent Regent, under such restrictions as they may please to propose, but who may prefer the head of the ruling faction, and at once vest in him all the prerogatives of the crown.  On the two occasions referred to in the reign of George III., the next heir being at enmity with the King and his ministers, this was considered the loyal and courtly doctrine; and, from its apparent advancement of the rights of Parliament, there was no difficulty in casting odium on those who opposed it.  But I must avow that my deliberate opinion coincides with that of Burke, Fox, and Erskine, who pronounced it to be unsupported by any precedent, and to be in accordance with the principles of the Polish, not the English, monarchy.  The two Houses of Parliament would be the proper tribunal to pronounce that the sovereign is unable to act; but then, as if he were naturally as well as civilly dead, the next heir ought of right to assume the government as Regent, ever ready to lay it down on the sovereign’s restoration to reason, in the same way as our Lady Victoria would have returned to a private station if, after her accession, there had appeared posthumous issue of William IV. by his queen.  It is easy to point out possible abuses by the next heir as Regent, to the prejudice of the living sovereign; but there may be greater abuses of the power of election imputed to the two Houses, whereby a change of dynasty might be effected.  I conceive, therefore, that the Irish Parliament[121] in 1789 acted more constitutionally in acknowledging the right of the next heir, in scouting the fiction of a commission or royal assent from the insane sovereign, and in addressing the Prince of Wales to take on himself the government as Regent.”

Though the sneers at the possibility of Parliament preferring “the head of the ruling faction” to the heir-apparent be hardly consistent with the impartial candor which is one of the most imperative duties of an historical critic, and though the allusion to the principles of the Polish monarchy be not very intelligible, yet no one will refuse to attach due weight to the deliberate opinion of one who won for himself so high a professional reputation as Lord Campbell.  But, with all respect to his legal rank, we may venture to doubt whether he has not laid down as law, speaking as a literary man and an historian, a doctrine which he would not have entertained as