Lord Campbell describes as "exhibiting his characteristic rashness and
recklessness, which seemed to be aggravated by age and experience,"[19]
and the censure does not seem too severe, since he presently "went so
far as to maintain that the crown had a right to interfere, even against
a positive act of parliament, and that proof of the necessity amounted
to a legal justification." But, however ill-considered his language may
have been, Lord Chatham adopted it, and acted on it so far as to decline
calling the Parliament together before the appointed time, though, when
the Houses did meet, he allowed General Conway, as Secretary of State,
to introduce a bill of indemnity in the House of Commons. It was warmly
opposed in that House, partly on the ground that, if such a measure as
the embargo had been necessary, it would have been easy to have
assembled Parliament before the Order in Council was issued (for, in
fact, the proclamation against forestallers and regraters had been
issued on the 10th of September, when Parliament, if not farther
prorogued, would have met within a week). But on that same day
Parliament was farther prorogued from the 16th of September till the
11th of November,[20] and it was not till after that prorogation, on the
24th of September, that the Order in Council was issued.

In the House of Lords it seems to have been admitted that the embargo
was, under all the circumstances, not only desirable, but "indispensably
necessary."[21] But the Opposition in that House, being led by a great
lawyer (Chief-justice Lord Mansfield), took a wider view of the whole
case; and, after denouncing the long prorogation of Parliament as having
been so culpably advised that there was no way left of meeting the
emergency but by an interposition of the royal power, directed the
principal weight of their argument against the doctrine of the existence
of any dispensing power. It was urged that the late Order in Council
could only be justified by "the general proposition that of any, and, if