On a review of the whole of this extraordinary transaction, or series of transactions, it is impossible to avoid regarding the issue of the struggle as an all-important element in the case, and a test almost decisive of the correctness of conduct of the rival leaders.  We may leave out of the question the action of the King in his communication to Lord Temple, which, although sanctioned by the great legal authority of Lord Thurlow, we are, for reasons already given, compelled to regard as unconstitutional, but for which Mr. Pitt was only technically responsible; having, indeed, made himself so by his subsequent acceptance of office, but having had no previous suspicion of the royal intentions.  Similarly, we may dismiss from our consideration the merits or demerits of Fox’s India Bill, the designs which were imputed to its framers, or the consequences which, whether intended or not by them, were predicted as certain to flow from it.  And we may confine ourselves to the question whether, in the great Parliamentary struggle which ensued, and which lasted for more than three months,[104] the doctrines advanced by Mr. Fox, and the conduct pursued by him, were more or less in accordance with the admitted rules and principles of the constitution.

These doctrines may be reduced to two:  the first a declaration that no minister is justified in retaining office any longer than he is sustained in it by the favorable judgment of the representatives of the people.  Taken by itself, this, but for one consideration, might be pronounced the superfluous assertion of a truism; superfluous, because it is obvious that a House of Commons hostile to a minister can compel his resignation by obstructing all his measures.  And Pitt himself recognized this as fully as Fox, though we may hardly agree with him that the Opposition was bound to allow him time to develop his policy, and to bring forward his various measures, before it pronounced an opinion adverse to them.  In 1835, when Sir R. Peel first met Parliament after his acceptance of office, consequent on the King’s dismissal of Lord Melbourne’s ministry, the Opposition encountered and defeated him twice in the first week of the session—­on the choice of a Speaker, and on the address, though the latter had been framed with the most skilful care to avoid any necessity for objection; but no attempt was made by him to call in question the perfect right of Lord J. Russell and his followers in the House to choose their own time and field of battle.  But there is one farther consideration, that the authority belonging to the judgment of the House of Commons depends on that judgment being not solely its own, but the judgment also of the constituencies which have returned it, and whose mouth-piece it is; and also that the House is not immortal, but is liable to be sent back to those constituencies, to see whether they will ratify the judgment which their representatives have expressed; whether, in other words, their judgment be the judgment of the nation also.  This farther consideration was, in fact, Pitt’s plea for resisting the majorities which, through January and February, so repeatedly pronounced against him.  And in determining to appeal to the constituencies, as the court of ultimate resort, he was clearly within the lines of the constitution.