Daily Inspiration Quote by Henry Addington

A sentence like this is how a government admits it has been stalling without ever using the word. Addington’s “deep regret” isn’t emotional disclosure; it’s political upholstery, padding the hard fact that Parliament has been kept waiting. The real action sits in the passive construction: “the determination to assemble” has been delayed. Not “I delayed it,” not “we chose not to meet,” but an abstract “determination” that somehow failed to arrive on time. Responsibility evaporates into grammar.

That matters in Addington’s Britain, where Parliament is both legitimizing theater and an obstacle course. Calling it late acknowledges constitutional expectations while signaling the executive’s preference for control. He’s performing deference to representative government even as he reminds everyone that summoning it is still a prerogative, a switch the ministry flips when it suits the moment. The phrase “so long delayed” is carefully elastic: long enough to be criticized, vague enough to dodge specifics about why.

The intent, then, is twofold: soothe critics who see delay as contempt for scrutiny, and reframe the delay as unfortunate necessity rather than strategy. Subtext whispers that events (war pressures, fiscal strain, political management) required time and quiet, and that debate will happen only after the cabinet has arranged the room. It’s the voice of a statesman trying to look accountable while keeping the timetable - and therefore the narrative - firmly in hand.