"[92] This
seems to be a charge which can hardly be borne out. In dismissing his
former ministry, the King was clearly acting within his right; and, if
so, Pitt was equally within his in undertaking the government. The truer
doctrine would seem to be, that, in so undertaking it, he assumed the
entire responsibility for the dismissal of his predecessors,[93] and
left it to the people at large, by the votes of their representatives,
to decide whether that dismissal were justified, and whether, as its
inevitable consequence, his acceptance of office were also justified or
not. The entire series of transactions, from the meeting of Parliament
in November, 1783, to its dissolution in the following March, may be
constitutionally regarded as an appeal by the King from the existing
House of Commons to the entire nation, as represented by the
constituencies; and their verdict, as is well known, ratified in the
most emphatic manner all that had been done. And we may assert this
without implying that, if the single act of empowering Lord Temple to
influence the peers by the declaration of the King's private feeling had
been submitted by itself to the electors, they would have justified
that. The stirring excitement of the three months' contest between the
great rivals led them to pronounce upon the transaction as a whole, and
to leave unnoticed what seemed for the moment to be the minor
issues--the moves, if we may borrow a metaphor from the chess-table,
which opened the game; and it may be observed that, though, on the 17th
of December, Pitt resisted Mr.
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