Lord Temple lost no time in availing himself of the permission thus granted him; and, as it was by no means his object to keep the transaction secret, his conduct was made the subject of severe comment by the Prime-minister himself the next time that the bill was mentioned in the Upper House.  The Duke of Portland, indeed, professed to have learned it only from common report, and to hope that the report was unfounded, since, were it true, “he should be wanting in the duty he owed to the public as a minister if he did not take the opportunity of proposing a measure upon it to their lordships that would prove that they felt the same jealousy, the same detestation, the same desire to mark and stigmatize every attempt to violate the constitution as he did.”  Lord Temple, in reply, abstained from introducing any mention of the King’s opinions or wishes, but avowed plainly that he had used his privilege as a peer to solicit an interview with his Majesty, and that at that interview “he had given his advice.  What that advice had been he would not then say; it was lodged in the breast of his Majesty, nor would he declare the purport of it without the royal consent, or till he saw a proper occasion.  But, though he would not declare affirmatively what his advice to his sovereign was, he would tell their lordships negatively what it was not.  It was not friendly to the principle and objects of the bill."[87] The debate lasted till near midnight.  Of the speakers, a great majority declared against the bill; and, on the division, it was rejected by a majority of nineteen.[88] This took place on the 15th of December.  On the 18th, as the ministers had not resigned—­not regarding a single defeat in the Upper House as a necessary cause for such a step—­the King sent messengers to them to demand their resignation, and the next day it was publicly announced in the House of Commons that Pitt had accepted the office of Prime-minister.

But Fox, who had anticipated the dismissal of himself and his colleagues, was by no means inclined to acquiesce in it, or to yield without a struggle; and on the 17th one of his partisans in the House of Commons, Mr. Baker, one of the members for Hertfordshire, brought forward some resolutions on the subject of the late division in the House of Lords.  He professed to rest them solely on rumors, but he urged that “it was the duty of that House to express its abhorrence even of that rumor,” since by such an action as was alleged “that responsibility of ministers which was the life of the constitution would be taken away, and with it the principal check that the public had upon the crown.”  And he urged “the members of that House, as the guardians of the constitution, to stand forward and preserve it from ruin, to maintain that equilibrium between the three branches of the Legislature, and that independence without which the constitution could no longer exist,” and with this view to resolve “that to report any opinion, or pretended opinion, of his Majesty upon any bill