Note 341 — Chapter XVI · ON THE STATE OF THE CONSTITUTION IN THE REIGNS OF ANNE, GEORGE I., AND GEORGE II.

Parl. Hist. vi. 972. Burnet, 560, makes some observations on the vote passed on this occasion, censuring the late ministers for advising an offensive war in Spain. "A resolution in council is only the sovereign's act, who upon hearing his counsellors deliver their opinions, forms his own resolution; a counsellor may indeed be liable to censure for what he may say at that board; but the resolution taken there has been hitherto treated with a silent respect; but by that precedent it will be hereafter subject to a parliamentary inquiry." Speaker Onslow justly remarks that these general and indefinite sentiments are liable to much exception, and that the bishop did not try them by his whig principles. The first instance where I find the responsibility of some one for every act of the Crown strongly laid down is in a speech of the Duke of Argyle, in 1739. Parl. Hist. ix. 1138. "It is true," he says, "the nature of our constitution requires that public acts should be issued out in his majesty's name; but for all that, my lords, he is not the author of them."