As soon as the new Privy Councillors had been sworn in, it was necessary to submit to them a grave and pressing question.

Could the Convention now assembled be turned into a Parliament?
The Whigs, who had a decided majority in the Lower House, were all for the affirmative.
The Tories, who knew that, within the last month, the public feeling had undergone a considerable change, and who hoped that a general election would add to their strength, were for the negative.

They maintained that to the existence of a Parliament royal writs were indispensably necessary.

The Convention had not been summoned by such writs: the original defect could not now be supplied: the Houses were therefore mere clubs of private men, and ought instantly to disperse.
It was answered that the royal writ was mere matter of form, and that to expose the substance of our laws and liberties to serious hazard for the sake of a form would be the most senseless superstition.

Wherever the Sovereign, the Peers spiritual and temporal, and the Representatives freely chosen by the constituent bodies of the realm were met together, there was the essence of a Parliament.