if I had not understood from Dundas that the
Duke of York, though quite determined against adopting the
substitution you propose, seemed to think that in order to avoid
putting you under difficulties of any sort, he could forbear to
make the demand on your regiment.

I do not say that I like this expedient, but I see no other without
his abandoning a measure which, for one, I should be very sorry to
see abandoned, believing, as I do, that things of much more
importance than the matter of any legal question of a Militia Act,
depend upon it. I really believe that you are not accurately
informed when you speak of the wishes of the Militia in general
being against this measure. But on this point you have certainly
better means of knowing individual opinions than I can have. On the
legal point, the opinion of the King's law servants must of course
be the only guide for a Commander-in-chief, even if he were not a
Prince of the blood, but much more when he is so, and consequently
not supposed to enter into discussions of that sort, or to be
responsible for them.

I grieve that in these times you should set the example of raising
these questions; but I am confident you would not do so if you did
not think it right. I own I should have thought that any idea of
_disobeying, as a Militia officer_, a command of the
Commander-in-chief, was out of the question in the present moment,
and that if the case (I had almost said) which you yourself put,
had occurred, that of being ordered to embark on board Lord
Bridport's fleet, you would have done so, with a protest of _ne
trahatur in exemplum_.

Dundas will, as I understand from him, explain to you what he
considers to be the case about your letter, which he states to me
to have been an official letter addressed, I think, to P. W. Howe
or his Adjutant-General, and which therefore he did not consider in
any other light than as an accurate statement of the doubt given in
officially and meant to be so considered. But all this is of very
little consequence in comparison of that of the light in which the
thing itself places you, if it were possible that you could adopt
the resolution you speak of.

I take it for granted that Dundas's Bill is meant only to extend to
British subjects, or may easily be so limi