I conceive, therefore, that the Irish Parliament[121] in 1789 acted more constitutionally in acknowledging the _right_ of the next heir, in scouting the fiction of a commission or royal assent from the insane sovereign, and in addressing the Prince of Wales to take on himself the government as Regent." Though the sneers at the possibility of Parliament preferring "the head of the ruling faction" to the heir-apparent be hardly consistent with the impartial candor which is one of the most imperative duties of an historical critic, and though the allusion to the principles of the Polish monarchy be not very intelligible, yet no one will refuse to attach due weight to the deliberate opinion of one who won for himself so high a professional reputation as Lord Campbell.

But, with all respect to his legal rank, we may venture to doubt whether he has not laid down as law, speaking as a literary man and an historian, a doctrine which he would not have entertained as a judge.

For, if we consider the common law of the kingdom, it is certain that, in the case of subjects, if a man becomes deranged, his next heir does not at once enter on his property "as if he were naturally as well as civilly dead." And if, as in such cases is notoriously the practice, the Court of Chancery appoints a guardian of the lunatic's property, analogy would seem to require that the Houses of Parliament, as the only body which can possibly claim authority in such a matter, should exercise a similar power in providing for the proper management of the government to that which the law court would exercise in providing for the proper management of an estate; and that, therefore, the principles of constitutional[122] statesmanship, which is deeply interested in upholding the predominant authority of Parliament, must justify the assertion of the ministers that the two Houses had the entire and sole right to make regulations for the government of the kingdom during the incapacity of the sovereign; and that the next heir, even when a son of full age, can have no more right to succeed to his father's royal authority in his lifetime than, if that father were a subject, he would have to succeed to his estate.
The opposite doctrine would seem to impugn the legality of the whole series of transactions which placed William and Mary on the throne.

The admission of an indefeasible right of the heir-apparent would have borne a perilous resemblance to a recognition of that divine right, every pretension to which the Revolution of 1688 had extinguished.

If, again, as Fox and his followers at one time endeavored to argue, the Houses in 1789 had no right to the name or power of a Parliament, because the King had no part in their meetings, the convention that sat a century before (as, indeed, was admitted) was certainly far less entitled to that name or power, for it had not only never been called into existence by a King, but was assembled in direct defiance of the King.