It follows that Fox, in protesting against a dissolution, in threatening even to take steps to prevent it, was acting in self-evident violation of all constitutional principle and precedent.  He was denying one of the most universally acknowledged of the royal prerogatives.  The distinction which he endeavored to draw between a dissolution at the close of a session and one in the middle of it, had manifestly no validity in law or in common-sense.  The minister had a clear right to appeal from the House of Commons to the people, and one equally clear to choose his own time for making that appeal.  The appeal was made, the judgment of the nation was pronounced, and its pronouncement may be, and indeed must be, accepted as a sufficient justification, in a constitutional point of view, of Pitt’s conduct both in accepting and retaining office.  If he retained it for three months, in opposition to the voice of the existing House of Commons, he could certainly allege that he was retaining it in accordance with the deliberate judgment of the nation.

And this is the verdict of a modern statesman, a very careful student of the theory of our Parliamentary constitution, and one whom party connection would notoriously have inclined to defend the line taken by Mr. Fox, had it been possible to do so.  Indeed, he may be said to show his bias in that statesman’s favor when he affirms that he would have been right in moving a resolution of censure on Pitt for “his acceptance of office,” which he presently calls the result of “the success of a court intrigue,"[105] and, without a particle of evidence to justify the imputation, affirms to “have been prepared beforehand with much art and combination.”  But amicus Fox, sed magis arnica veritas; and though he thus passes censure on Pitt, where the facts on which he bases it are at least unproved, on those points as to which the facts are clear and certain he condemns Fox altogether, affirming that his “attempt to show that the crown had not the prerogative of dissolving Parliament in the middle of a session had neither law nor precedent in its support."[106] And he proceeds to lay down, with great clearness and accuracy, “the practice as well as the theory of our mixed government,” which is, that “when two of the powers of the state cannot” agree, and the business of the state is stopped, the only appeal is to the people at large.  Thus, when in the reign of Queen Anne the House of Lords and the House of Commons fulminated resolutions at each other, a dissolution cleared the air and restored serenity.  If no case had occurred since the Revolution of a quarrel between the crown and the House of Commons, the cause is to be sought in the prudence with which every sovereign who had reigned since that event had wielded his constitutional authority.  If George III. had been wanting in that prudence, it did not follow that he was debarred from the right of appealing to the people.  Any other doctrine would invest the House of Commons,