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I will endeavour to do this with as much perspicuity, with as muchbrevity, and with as much impartiality as possible. '

« I will mispeiid no portion of Your Lordships’ time, in de-ploring the sad necessity for this day’s debate. The calamity withwhich the nation is afflicted would have been a great one, had themonarch been a bad one; what it is now, may far more easily beconceived by you than expressed by me; for you would listen tome with impatience and disdain, if I undertook by reasoning toprove, what is felt by all, that it is one of the greatest whichcould have befallen us as a people. All ranks, all parties, allindividuals, who have any knowledge of, any value for our consti-tution, agree in thinking that it is so; and all, 1 hope, unite inpraying to Almighty God to relieve us from it, by restoring ourafflicted Sovereign to perfect sanity of body and mind.

“ But, My Lords, till it shall please God to do this, my opinionis — I humbly submit it to the house, with that firmness whichbecomes an impartial enquirer after truth; but with that diffi-dence also which becomes a man frequently conscious of his ina-bility to attain it; and who on every difficult question, whetherof policy, of philosophy, or of religion, is by nature and habitmore disposed to doubt than to dogmatize — my clear opinionis, that in the very outset of this business, as soon as ever thetwo Houses of Parliament had, by solemn investigation, ascer-tained the single fact of the King’s incapacity to govern the land,they ought to have empowered, (I beg, My Lords, it may beobserved that I question not the competency of the two housesto empower,) His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, the nextin blood to the throne, by a commission under the great seal orotherwise, to take upon him, not, I think, the whole regal power,

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