elected for the ordinary business of the state, with a supreme power over every branch of it.  This supreme power must rest somewhere; according to our constitution it rests in the common assent of the realm, signified by the persons duly qualified to elect the members of the House of Commons; and Lord Russell, in thus expounding his ideas on this subject, was undoubtedly expressing the view that ever since the transactions of which we have been speaking has been taken of the point chiefly in dispute.  Since that day there has been more than one instance of Parliament being dissolved in the middle of a session; but, though the prudence of the different ministers who advised such dissolutions may, perhaps, have been questioned—­nay, though in one memorable instance it was undoubtedly a penal dissolution in the fullest sense of the word[107]—­no one has ever accused the sovereign’s advisers of seducing him into an unconstitutional exercise of his prerogative.

Pitt was now Prime-minister, with a degree of power in Parliament and of popularity out-of-doors that no former minister, not even his own father, had ever enjoyed.  As such, by the confession of one who was certainly no friendly critic,[108] “he became the greatest master of Parliamentary government that has ever existed.”  His administration may be regarded as a fresh starting-point in the history of the country, as the inauguration of the principle of steady amendment, improvement, and progress, in place of the maxims which had guided all his predecessors since the Revolution, of regarding every thing as permanently settled by the arrangements made at that time, and their own duty, consequently, as binding them to keep everything in its existing condition.  But, of all the ministers recorded in our annals, there is not one so greatly in advance of his time as Pitt; and from the very outset of his ministerial career he applied himself, not only to the removal or correction of admitted abuses or defects, but, in cases where the fault, being in our general system of policy, had been less conspicuous, to the establishment of new principles of action which have been the rules of all succeeding statesmen.  He was not, indeed, the first raiser of the question of Parliamentary Reform, but he was the first to produce an elaborate scheme with that object, parts of which, such as the suppression of the smaller boroughs and the enfranchisement of places which had gradually become more important, have been leading features of every subsequent bill on the subject.  He was the first to propose the removal of those political disabilities under which the Roman Catholics labored, which no one before him had regarded as consistent with the safety of the state, and to which he sacrificed office.  He was the first to conceive the idea of developing our national industries and resources by commercial treaties with other nations, even choosing for his essay-piece a treaty with a country with which our relations for