administration, which avowedly only differed from Pitt on the single
subject of the Catholic question.

The appointment was at once made the subject of motions in both Houses
of Parliament. In the House of Lords, Lord Bristol, who brought the
question forward, denounced "this identification of a judge with the
executive government as injurious to the judicial character, subversive
of the liberty of the people, and having a direct and alarming tendency
to blend and amalgamate those great elementary principles of political
power which it is the very object of a free constitution to keep
separate and distinct." In the House of Commons, Mr. Canning took a
similar objection; and, though he admitted that a precedent for the act
might be found in the case of Lord Mansfield who, while Chief-justice,
had also been a cabinet minister in the administration of 1757, he
argued forcibly that that precedent turned against the ministry and the
present appointment, because Lord Mansfield himself had subsequently
admitted that "he had infringed the principles of the constitution by
acting as a cabinet minister and Chief-justice at the same time." Fox,
in reply, relied principally on two arguments. The first was, that "he
had never heard of such a thing as the cabinet council becoming the
subject of a debate in that House. He had never known of the exercise of
the King's prerogative in the appointment of his ministers being brought
into question on such grounds as had now been alleged." The second, that
"in point of fact there is nothing in the constitution that recognizes
any such institution as a cabinet council; that it is a body unknown to
the law, and one which has in no instance whatever been recognized by
Parliament." He farther urged that as Lord Ellenborough was a privy
councillor, and as the cabinet is only a select committee of the Privy
Council, he was, "in fact, as liable to be summoned to attend the
cabinet, as a privy councillor, as he was in his present situation."

The last argument was beneath the speaker to use, since not one of his
hearers was ignorant that no member of the Privy Council unconnected
with the government ever is summoned to the deliberations of the
cabinet; and though, as he correctly stated, "there is no legal record
of the members comprising any cabinet," it may safely be affirmed that
since July, 1714, when the Duke of Argyll and the Duke of Somerset
claimed admission to the deliberations of the min