ose points, we shall
be considered as a council of wisdom and weight to advise, and not
merely as an accuser of competence to criminate.[64] This House claims
both capacities; and we trust that we shall be left to our free
discretion which of them we shall employ as best calculated for his
Majesty's and the national service. Whenever we shall see it expedient
to offer our advice concerning his Majesty's servants, who are those of
the public, we confidently hope that the personal favor of any minister,
or any set of ministers, will not be more dear to his Majesty than the
credit and character of a House of Commons. It is an experiment full of
peril to put the representative wisdom and justice of his Majesty's
people in the wrong; it is a crooked and desperate design, leading to
mischief, the extent of which no human wisdom can foresee, to attempt
to form a prerogative party in the nation, to be resorted to as occasion
shall require, in derogation, from the authority of the Commons of Great
Britain in Parliament assembled; it is a contrivance full of danger, for
ministers to set up the representative and constituent bodies of the
Commons of this kingdom as two separate and distinct powers, formed to
counterpoise each other, leaving the preference in the hands of secret
advisers of the crown. In such a situation of things, these advisers,
taking advantage of the differences which may accidentally arise or may
purposely be fomented between them, will have it in their choice to
resort to the one or the other, as may best suit the purposes of their
sinister ambition. By exciting an emulation and contest between the
representative and the constituent bodies, as parties contending for
credit and influence at the throne, sacrifices will be made by both; and
the whole can end in nothing else than the destruction of the dearest
rights and liberties of the nation. If there must be another mode of
conveying the collective sense of the people to the throne than that by
the House of Commons, it ought to be fixed and defined, and its
authority ought to be settled: it ought not to exist in so precarious
and dependent a state as that ministers should have it in their power,
at their own mere pleasure, to acknowledge it with respect or to reject
it with scorn.

It is the undoubted prerogative of the crown to dissolve Parliament; but
we beg leave to lay before his Majesty, that it is, of all the trusts
vested in his Majesty, the most criti