In the popular view which Mr. Pitt found it convenient to take of this
question, he was led, or fell voluntarily into some glaring errors, which
pervaded the whole of his reasonings on the subject. In his anxiety to
prove the omnipotence of Parliament, he evidently confounded the Estates
of the realm with the Legislature, [Footnote: Mr. Grattan and the Irish
Parliament carried this error still farther, and founded all their
proceedings on the necessity of "providing for the deficiency of the
Third _Estate_."] and attributed to two branches of the latter such
powers as are only legally possessed by the whole three in Parliament
assembled. For the purpose, too, of flattering the people with the notion
that to them had now reverted the right of choosing their temporary
Sovereign, he applied a principle, which ought to be reserved for extreme
cases, to an exigence by no means requiring this ultimate appeal,--the
defect in the government being such as the still existing Estates of the
realm, appointed to speak the will of the people, but superseding any
direct exercise of their power, were fully competent, as in the instance
of the Revolution, to remedy. [Footnote: The most luminous view that has
been taken of this Question is to be found in an Article of the Edinburgh
Review, on the Regency of 1811,--written by one of the most learned and
able men of our day, Mr. John Allen.]

Indeed, the solemn use of such language as Mr. Pitt, in his over-acted
Whiggism, employed upon this occasion,--namely, that the "right" of
appointing a substitute for the Royal power was "to be found in the voice
and the sense of the people,"--is applicable only to those conjunctures,
brought on by misrule and oppression, when all forms are lost in the
necessity of relief, and when the right of the people to change and
choose their rulers is among the most sacred and inalienable that either
nature or social polity has ordained. But, to apply the language of that