In the present dilemma,
therefore, he recommended that the two Houses should direct
letters-patent to be issued under the Great Seal, authorizing
commissioners to open Parliament in the name of his Majesty. He "must
use the liberty to say that those who treated this proposal with
ridicule were ignorant of the laws of their country. A fiction it might
be termed, but it was a fiction admirably calculated to preserve the
constitution, and, by adopting its forms, to preserve its substance."
The authority of the Great Seal he explained to be such that, "even if
the Lord Chancellor, by caprice, put it to any commission, it could not
afterward be questioned;" and he adduced a precedent of a very similar
character to the course now proposed, which occurred "at the
commencement of the reign of Henry VI., when, the sovereign being an
infant of nine months old, the Great Seal was placed in his hand, and it
was supposed to be given to him by the Master of the Rolls, whereupon
many commissions were sealed by it, and the government was carried on
under its authority." That precedent, he reminded the peers, had been
followed as recently as the year 1754, when, during an illness of George
II., Lord Chancellor Hardwicke affixed the Great Seal to a commission
for opening a session of Parliament.
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