More than one change of
ministry had recently taken place. In 1807 Lord Grenville had been
compelled, as Pitt had been in 1801, to choose between yielding his
opinions on the Catholic question or resigning his office, and had
chosen the latter alternative. He had been succeeded for two years by
the Duke of Portland; but in 1809 that nobleman had also retired, and
had been succeeded by his Attorney-general, Mr. Perceval, the only
practising barrister who had ever been so promoted. And he now being
Prime-minister, and, as such, forced to make arrangements for carrying
on the government during the illness of his sovereign, naturally
regarded the course pursued in 1789 as the precedent to be followed.
Accordingly, on the 20th of December he proposed for the adoption of the
House of Commons the same resolutions which Pitt had carried twenty-two
years before--that the King was prevented by indisposition from
attending to public business; that it was the duty of Parliament to
provide means for supplying the defect of the personal exercise of the
royal authority, and its duty also to determine the mode in which the
royal assent to the measures necessary could be signified. And he also
followed Pitt's example in expressing by letter to the Prince of Wales
his conviction that his Royal Highness was a person most proper to be
appointed Regent, and explaining at the same time the restrictions which
seemed proper to be imposed on his immediate exercise of the complete
sovereign authority; though the advanced age at which the King had now
arrived made it reasonable that those restrictions should now be limited
to a single year.
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