Rolle endeavored to give the
clause a more pointed meaning by an amendment to enact that the
forfeiture should be incurred by the mere celebration of any marriage
ceremony, whether the marriage thus performed were legal and valid or
not. His amendment, however, was unanimously rejected. The bill was
passed without alteration by the House of Commons; the Prince, while
protesting in an elaborate and most able letter, drawn up for him by
Burke, against the restrictions imposed by the bill, nevertheless
consented to sacrifice his own judgment to the general good of the
kingdom, and to accept the authority, limited as it was. And by the
middle of February the bill was sent up to the House of Lords. There
Lord Camden had charge of it, and his position as a former Chancellor
gave irresistible weight to his opinion that the mode proposed to give
the final sanction to the bill was strictly in accordance with the
spirit and practice of the constitution. The point with which he dealt
was the previous one, how Parliament, which was to pass the bill, was to
be opened, for, "circumstanced as it was, Parliament could not at
present take a single step." The law, as he put it, declared that the
King must be present, either in person or by a representative. When he
could not attend personally, the legal and constitutional process was to
issue letters-patent under the Great Seal.
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