against the minister that he trusted to the good-will of the people to enable him to disregard the verdict of the House of Commons, he forgot that it was only as representing the people that the House had any right to pronounce a verdict; and that, if it were true that the judgment of the people was more favorable to the minister than that of the House of Commons, the difference which thus existed was a condemnation of the existing House, and an irresistible reason for calling on the constituencies to elect another.

Pitt, therefore, had no slight advantage in defending himself against so rash an assailant.  “He did not shrink,” he said, “from avowing himself the friend of the King’s just prerogative,” and in doing so he maintained that he had a title to be regarded as the champion of the people not less than of the crown.  “Prerogative had been justly called a part of the rights of the people, and he was sure it was a part of their rights which they were never more inclined to defend, of which they were never more jealous, than at that hour."[100] And he contended that Fox’s objections to a dissolution betrayed a consciousness that he had not the confidence of the nation.  At last, when the contest had lasted nearly two months, Fox took the matter into his own hands, and, no longer putting his partisans in the front of the battle, on the 1st of March he himself moved for an address to the King, the most essential clause of which “submitted to his Majesty’s royal consideration that the continuance of an administration which did not possess the confidence of the representatives of the people must be injurious to the public service.” ...  And, therefore, that “his Majesty’s faithful Commons did find themselves obliged again to beseech his Majesty that he would be graciously pleased to lay the foundation of a strong and stable government by the previous removal of his present ministers.”  In the speech with which he introduced this address he put himself forward as especially the champion of the House of Commons.  He charged the Prime-minister with an express design “to reduce the House to insignificance, to render it a mere appendage to the court, an appurtenance to the administration.”  He asserted the existence of a systematic “design to degrade the House, after which there was not another step necessary to complete the catastrophe of the constitution.”  And on this occasion he distinguished the feelings of the King from those which influenced the minister, affirming his confidence “that the King’s heart had no share in the present business."[101]

Pitt, on the other hand, in reply, affirmed that he was called on by duty “to defend the rights of the other branches of the Legislature; the just and constitutional prerogative of the sovereign,” upon which the Opposition was seeking to encroach, without even having shown a single reason to justify such invasion.  He freely admitted that, if the House of Commons or either of the other branches of