Chapter IV · THE REIGN OF GEORGE III

When George II. died, his grandson and successor, George III., was twenty-two years of age. The Civil List of the new King was fixed at £800,000 a year, "a provision," says Phillimore, in his "History of England," "that soon became inadequate to the clandestine purposes of George III., and for the purchase of the mercenary dependents, on the rapport of whom his unconstitutional proceedings obliged him to depend." The Civil List of George III. was not, however, really so large as that of her present Majesty. The Civil List disbursements included such items as Secret Service, now charged separately; pensions and annuities, now charged separately; diplomatic salaries, now forming distinct items; fees and salaries of ministers and judges, now forming no part of the charge against the Civil List. So that though £924,041 was the Civil List of George III. four years after he ascended the throne, in truth to-day the Royal Family alone get much more than all the great offices and machinery of State then cost. The Royal Family at the present time get from the country, avowedly and secretly, about one million sterling a year.

"At the accession of George III.," says Thackeray, "the Patricians were yet at the height of their good fortune. Society recognized their superiority, which they themselves pretty calmly took for granted. They inherited not only titles and estates, and seats in the House of Peers, but seats in the House of Commons. There were a multitude of Government places, and not merely these, but bribes of actual £500 notes, which members of the House took not much shame in assuming.. Fox went into Parliament at twenty, Pitt was just of age, his father not much older. It was the good time for Patricians."

A change of political parties was imminent; Whig rule had lasted seventy years, and England had become tolerably disgusted with the consequences.

"Now that George II. was dead," says Macaulay, "a courtier might venture to ask why England was to become a party in a dispute between two German powers. What was it to her whether the House of Hapsburg or the House of Brandenburg ruled in Silesia? Why were the best English regiments fighting on the Maine? Why were the Prussian battalions paid with English gold? The great minister seemed to think it beneath him to calculate the price of victory. As long as the Tower guns were fired, as the streets were illuminated, as French banners were carried in triumph through London, it was to him matter of indifference to what extent the public burdens were augmented. Nay, he seemed to glory in the magnitude of those sacrifices which the people, fascinated by his eloquence and success, had too readily made, and would long and bitterly regret. There was no check on waste or embezzlement. Our commissaries returned from the camp of Prince Ferdinand, to buy boroughs, to rear palaces, to rival the magnificence, of the old aristocracy of the realm. Already had we borrowed, in four years of war, more than the most skilful and economical government would pay in forty years of peace."

The Church allied itself with the Tories, who assumed the reins of government, and thenceforth totally forgot the views of liberty they had maintained when in opposition. The policy of all their succeeding legislation was that of mischievous retrogression; they sought to excel the old Whigs in their efforts to consolidate the aristocracy at the expense of the people.

"This reactionary movement," says Buckle, "was greatly aided by the personal character of George III.; for he, being despotic as well as superstitious, was equally anxious to extend the prerogative, and strengthen the Church. Every liberal sentiment, everything approaching to reform, nay, even the mere mention of inquiry, was an abomination in the eyes of that narrow and ignorant Prince. Without knowledge, without taste, without even a glimpse of one of the sciences, or a feeling for one of the fine arts, education had done nothing to enlarge a mind which nature had more than usually contracted. Totally ignorant of the history and resources of foreign countries, and barely knowing their geographical position, his information was scarcely more extensive respecting the people over whom he was called to rule. In that immense mass of evidence now extant, and which consists of every description of private correspondence, records of private conversation, and of public acts, there is not to be found the slightest proof that he knew any one of those numerous things which the governor of a country ought to know; or, indeed, that he was acquainted with a single duty of his position, except the mere mechanical routine of ordinary business, which might have been effected by the lowest clerk in the meanest office in his kingdom.

"He gathered round his throne that great party, who, clinging to the tradition of the past, have always made it their boast to check the progress of their age. During the sixty years of his reign, he, with the sole exception of Pitt, never willingly admitted to his councils a single man of great ability: not one whose name is associated with any measure of value, either in domestic or foreign policy. Even Pitt only maintained his position in the State by forgetting the lessons of his illustrious father, and abandoning those liberal principles in which he had been educated, and with which he entered public life. Because George III. hated the idea of reform, Pitt not only relinquished what he had before declared to be absolutely necessary, but did not hesitate to persecute to death the party with whom he had once associated in order to obtain it. Because George III. looked upon slavery as one of those good old customs which the wisdom of his ancestors had consecrated, Pitt did not dare to use his power for procuring its abolition, but left to his successors the glory of destroying that infamous tracle, on the preservation of which his royal master had set his heart. Because George III. detested the French, of whom he knew as much as he knew of the inhabitants of Kamschatka or Thibet, Pitt, contrary to his own judgment, engaged in a war with France, by which England was seriously imperilled, and the English people burdened with a debt that their remotest posterity will be unable to pay. But, notwithstanding all this, when Pitt, only a few years before his death, showed a determination to concede to the Irish a small share of their undoubted rights, the King dismissed him from office, and the King's friends, as they were called, expressed their indignation at the presumption of a minister who could oppose the wishes of so benign and gracious a master. And when, unhappily for his own fame, this great man determined to return to power, he could only recover office by conceding that very point for which he had relinquished it; thus setting the mischievous example of the minister of a free country sacrificing his own judgment to the personal prejudices of the reigning sovereign. As it was hardly possible to find other ministers who to equal abilities would add equal subservience, it is not surprising that the highest offices were constantly filled with men of notorious incapacity. Indeed, the King seemed to have an instinctive antipathy to everything great and noble. During the reign of George II. the elder Pitt had won for himself a reputation which covered the world, and had carried to an unprecedented height the glories of the English name. He, however, as the avowed friend of popular rights, strenuously opposed the despotic principles of the Court; and for this reason he was hated by George III. with a hatred that seemed barely compatible with a sane mind. Fox was one of the greatest statesmen of the 18th century, and was better acquainted than any-other with the character and resources of those foreign nations with which our interests were intimately connected. To this rare and important knowledge he added a sweetness and amenity of temper which extorted the praises even of his political opponents. But he, too, was the steady supporter of civil and religious liberty; and he, too, was so detested by George III., that the King, with his own hand, struck his name out of the list of Privy Councillors, and declared that he would rather abdicate the throne than admit him to a share in the government.

"While this unfavorable change was taking place in the sovereign and ministers of the country, a change equally unfavorable was being effected in the second branch of the imperial legislature. Until the reign of George III. the House of Lords was decidedly superior to the House of Commons in the liberality and general accomplishments of its members. It is true that in both Houses there prevailed a spirit which must be called narrow and superstitious if tried by the larger standard of the present age.

"The superiority of the Upper House over the Lower was, on the whole, steadily maintained during the reign of George II., the ministers not being anxious to strengthen the High Church party in the Lords, and the King himself so rarely suggesting fresh creations as to cause a belief that he particularly disliked increasing their numbers. It was reserved for George III., by an unsparing use of his prerogative, entirely to change the character of the Upper House, and thus lay the foundation for that disrepute into which, since then, the peers have been constantly falling. The creations he made were numerous beyond all precedent, their object evidently being to neutralize the liberal spirit hitherto prevailing, and thus turn the House of Lords into an engine for resisting the popular wishes, and stopping the progress of reform. How completely this plan succeeded is well known to the readers of our history; indeed, it was sure to be successful considering the character of the men who were promoted. They consisted almost entirely of two classes: of country gentlemen, remarkable for nothing but their wealth, and the number of votes their wealth enabled them to control; and of mere lawyers, who had risen to judicial appointments partly from their professional learning, but chiefly from the zeal with which they repressed the popular liberties, and favored the royal prerogative.

"That this is no exaggerated description may be ascertained by any one who will consult the lists of the new-peers made by George III.

"Here and there we find an eminent man, whose public services were so notorious that it was impossible to avoid rewarding them; but, putting aside those who were in a manner forced upon the sovereign, it would be idle to deny that the remainder, and of course the overwhelming majority, were marked by a narrowness and illiberality of sentiment which, more than anything else, brought the whole order into contempt. No great thinkers, no great writers, no great orators, no great statesmen, none of the true nobility of the land, were to be found among the spurious nobles created by George III."

In the early part of his reign, George III. (whom even the courtly Alison pictures as having "little education and no great acquired information") was very much under the influence of his mother, who had, previously to his being King, often spoken of her son with contempt. The Princess of Wales, in turn, was almost entirely guided by Lord Bute, represented by scandal, says Macaulay, as "her favored lover." "Of this attachment," says Dr. Doran, "the Prince of Wales himself is said to have had full knowledge, and did not object to Lord Bute taking solitary walks with the Princess, while he could do the same with Lady Middlesex." The most infamous stories were circulated in the Whisperer, and other journals of the time, as to the nature of the association between the Scotch Peer and the King's mother, and its results. Phillimore regards the Princess of Wales as "before and after her husband's death the mistress of Lord Bute." The Princess Dowager seems to have been a hard woman. Walpole tells us how, when the Princess Dowager reproved one of her maids of honor for irregular habits, the latter replied, "Madame, chacun a son But." "Seeing," says Thackeray, "the young Duke of Gloucester silent and unhappy once, she sharply asked him the cause of his silence. 'I am thinking,' said the poor child. 'Thinking, sir! and of what?'—'I am thinking if ever I have a son, I will not make him so unhappy as you make me.'"

John Stuart, Earl of Bute, shared with William Pitt and John Wilkes the bulk of popular attention during the first ten years of the King's reign. Bute had risen rapidly to favor, having attracted the attention of the Princess Dowager at some private theatricals, and he became by her influence Groom of the Stole. His poverty and ambition made him grasp at power, both against the great Commoner and the Pelham faction; and a lady observer described the great question of the day, in 1760, as being whether the King would burn in his chamber Scotch coal, Newcastle coal, or Pitt coal. Macaulay, who seems to have followed Lord Waldegrave's "Memoirs," says of Bute: "A handsome leg was among his chief qualifications for the stage.... His understanding was narrow, his manners cold and haughty." His qualifications for the part of a statesman were best described by Prince Frederick, who often indulged in the unprincely luxury of sneering at his dependents. "Bute," said his Royal Highness, "you are the very man to be envoy at some small proud German Court> where there is nothing to do." Phillimore speaks of Lord Bute as "a minion raised by Court favor to a post where his ignorance, mean understanding, and disregard of English honor, became national calamities."

The King's speech on his accession is said to have been drawn up by Bute, who did not then belong to the Council, but the terms being vehemently objected to by Pitt, it was actually altered after delivery, and before it found its way to the printer.

Whatever were the relations between Lord Bute and the Princess Dowager, it is quite certain that on more than one occasion George III. condescended not only to prevaricate, but to lie as to the influence exercised by Lord Bute. It is certain, from the "Memoirs" of Earl Waldegrave, and other trustworthy sources, that the Scotch Earl, after being hissed out of office by the people, was still secretly consulted by the King, who, like a truly Royal Brunswick, did not hesitate to use falsehood on the subject even to his own ministers. Phillimore, in remarkably strong language, describes George III. as "an ignorant, dishonest, obstinate, narrow-minded boy, at that very moment the tool of an adulteress and her paramour." The Duke of Bedford has put upon record, in his correspondence, not only his conviction that the King behaved unfaithfully to his ministers, but asserts that he told him so to his face.

In 1759, George was married to Hannah Lightfoot, a Quakeress, in Curzon Street Chapel, May Fair, in the presence of his brother, Edward, Duke of York. Great doubt has, however, been cast on the legality of this marriage, as it would, if in all respects valid, have rendered null as a bigamous contract the subsequent marriage entered into by the King. Dr. Doran says that the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., when needing money in later years, used this Lightfoot marriage as a threat against his royal parents—that is, that he threatened to expose his mother's shame and his own illegitimacy if the Queen would not use her influence with Pitt. Glorious family, these Brunswicks! Walpole affirms that early in his reign George III. admitted to his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, "that it had not been common in their family to live well together."

On the 18th of September, 1761, George was married to the Princess Charlotte Sophia, of Mecklenburgh Strelitz, Hannah Lightfoot being still alive. Of the new Queen, Philli-more says: "If to watch over the education of her children and to promote their happiness be any part of a woman's duty, she has little claim to the praises that have been so lavishly bestowed on her as a model of domestic virtue. Her religion was displayed in the scrupulous observance of external forms. Repulsive in her aspect, grovelling in her instincts, sordid in her habits; steeped from the cradle in the stupid pride which was the atmosphere of her stolid and most insignificant race; inexorably severe to those who yielded to temptation from which she was protected, not more by her situation and the vigilance of those around her, than by the extreme homeliness of her person; bigoted, avaricious, unamiable to brutality, she added dulness and gloom even to the English court."

In 1761, the Duke of Bedford was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; that unfortunate country, for centuries governed by men who tried to exterminate its natives, and which was used under the first three reigns of the House of Brunswick as a sponge out of which, regardless of much bloodshed and more misery, gold could be squeezed for the dependents and relatives of aristocrats in office. His reign of office in Ireland was brief. Walpole says that "the ill-humor of the country determined the Duke of Bedford to quit the Government, after having amply gratified his family and dependents with pensions." It was this Duke of Bedford who consented that the Princess of Hesse should have a pension of £6,000 a year out of the Irish revenues, and who gave to his own relative, the Lady Betty Waldegrave, £800 a year from the same source. Shortly after this, Prince Charles, of Strelitz, the Queen's brother, received £30,000 towards the payment of the debts he owed in Germany. This £30,000 was nominally given by the King out of the Civil List, but was really paid by the nation when discharging the Civil List debts which it increased. On the motion of Lord Barrington, £400,000 subsidy was granted this year to the Landgrave of Hesse, under a secret treaty made by George II., without the knowledge or consent of Parliament, and £300,000 was also voted to the Chancery of Hanover for forage for Hanoverian, Prussian, and Hessian Cavalry.

On August 12th, 1762, George, Prince of Wales, was born; and in the same year, with the direct connivance of George III., the peace of Paris was made; a peace as disgraceful to England, under the circumstances, as can possibly be imagined. Lord Bute, who was roundly charged with receiving money from France for his services, and this with the knowledge of the mother of George III., most certainly communicated to the French minister "the most secret councils of the English Cabinet."

This was done with the distinct concurrence of George III., who was himself bribed by the immediate evacuation of his Hanoverian dominions. In the debate in the Lords on the preliminaries of peace, Horace Walpole tells us that "the Duke of Grafton, with great weight and greater warmth, attacked them severely, and looking full on Lord Bute, imputed to him corruption and worse arts." Count Virri, the disreputable agent employed in this matter by the King and Lord Bute, was rewarded under the false name of George Charles with a pension of £1,000 a year out of the Irish revenues. Phillimore may well declare that Lord Bute was "a minion, raised by court favor to a post where his ignorance, mean understanding, and disregard of English honor, became national calamities." To carry the approval of this peace of Paris through the Commons, Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, was purchased with a most lucrative appointment, although only shortly before he had published a print of George, with the following lines, referring to the Princess Dowager and Lord Bute, written under the likeness:—

To gain a majority in the House of Commons, Walpole tells us "that a shop was publicly opened at the pay office, whither the members flocked and received the wages of their venality in bank bills even to so low a sum as £200, for their votes on the treaty. £25,000 was thus issued in one morning." Lord Chesterfield speaks of the large sums disbursed by the King "for the hire of Parliament men."

As an illustration of the unblushing corruption of the age, the following letter from Lord Saye and Sele to Mr. Grenville, then Prime Minister of England, tells its own terrible tale:—

"November 26th, 1763.

"Honored Sir:—I am very much obliged to you for that freedom of converse you this morning indulged me in, which I prize more than the lucrative advantage I then received. To show the sincerity of my words (pardon, sir, the over-niceness of my disposition), I return enclosed the bill for £300 you favored me with, as good manners would not permit my refusal of it when tendered by you.

"Your most obliged and obedient servant,

"Sate and Sele.

"As a free horse needs no spur, so I stand in need of no inducement or douceur to lend my small assistance to the King or his friends in the present Administration."

That this was part of the general practice of the Government under George III. may be seen by the following extract from an infamous letter written about fifteen years later by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland: "No man can see the inconvenience of increasing the Peers more forcibly than myself, but the recommendation of many of those persons submitted to his Majesty for that honor, arose from the engagements taken up at the press of the moment to rescue questions upon which the English Government were very particularly anxious. My sentiments cannot but be the same with reference to the Privy Council and pensions, and I had not contracted any absolute engagements of recommendations either to peerage or pension, till difficulties arose which necessarily occasioned so much anxiety in his Majesty's Cabinet, that I must have been culpable in neglecting any possible means to secure a majority in the House of Commons."

A good story is told of the great Commoner Pitt's repartee to Fox (afterwards Lord Holland), in one of the debates of this period. "Pitt," says the London Chronicle, "in the heat of his declamation, proceeded so far as to attack the personal deformity of Fox; and represented his gloomy and lowering countenance, with the penthouse of his eye-brows, as Churchill phrases it, as a true introduction of his dark and double mind. Mr. Fox was nettled at this personal reflection, and the more so, perhaps, that it was as just as it was cutting. He therefore got up, and after inveighing bitterly against the indecency of his antagonist, in descending to remark on his bodily defects, observed that his figure was such as God Almighty had made it, and he could not look otherwise; and then, in a tone between the plaintive and indignant, cried out, 'How, gentlemen, shall I look?' Most of the members, apprehending that Mr. Pitt had gone rather too far, were inclined to think that Mr. Fox had got the better of him. But Mr. Pitt started up, and with one of those happy turns, in which he so much excels, silenced his rival, and made him sit down with a countenance, if possible more abashed than formerly. 'Look! Sir,' said he—'look' as you cannot look, if you would—look as you dare not look, if you could—look like an honest man.'"

In the London Chronicle for March, 1763, we find bitter complaints that since 1760, "every obsolete, useless place has been revived, and every occasion of increasing salaries seized with eagerness," and that a great Whig leader "has just condescended to stipulate for an additional salary, without power, as the price of his support to the Tory Government."

In March, 1763, George III. gave four ships of war to the King of Sardinia at the national expense, and in August appears to have given a fifth vessel.

On the 23d of April, 1763, No. 45 of the North Briton, a journal which had been started in opposition to Lord Bute's paper, the Briton, was published, severely criticising the King's speech, and warmly attacking Lord Bute. This issue provoked the ministers to a course of the utmost illegality. A general warrant to seize all persons concerned in the publication of the North Briton, without specifying their names, was immediately issued by the Secretary of State, and a number of printers and publishers were placed in custody, some of whom were not at all concerned in the obnoxious publication. Late on the night of the 29th of April, the messengers entered the house of John Wilkes, M.P. for Aylesbury (the author of the article in question), and produced their warrant, with which he refused to comply. On the following morning, however, he was carried before the Secretary of State, and committed a close prisoner to the Tower, his papers being previously seized and sealed, and all access to his person strictly prohibited. The warrant was clearly an illegal one, and had only been previously resorted to in one or two instances, and under very extraordinary circumstances, of which there were none in the present case. Wilkes's friends immediately obtained a writ of habeas corpus, which the ministers defeated by a mean subterfuge; and it was found necessary to obtain a second before they could bring the prisoner before the Court of King's Bench, by which he was set at liberty, on the ground of his privilege as a Member of Parliament. He then opened an angry correspondence, followed by actions at law, against the Secretaries of State, on the seizure of his papers, and for the wrongful arrest. These actions abated, although in the one for the seizure of the papers a verdict was given for £1,000 damages and costs. But in the mean time the Attorney-General had been directed to institute a prosecution against Wilkes, in the King's Bench, for libel, and the King had ordered him, to be deprived of his commission as Colonel in the Buckinghamshire Militia. The King further exhibited his resentment by depriving Lord Temple of the Lord-Lieutenancy of the same county, and striking his name out of the Council-book, for an expression of personal sympathy which had fallen from him. Worse than all, this King George III. actually deprived General A'Court, MP. for Heytesbury, of his commission as colonel of the 11th Dragoons, for having voted that the arrest of Wilkes was a breach of privilege. He also caused it to be intimated to General Conway, "that the King cannot trust his army in the hands of a man who votes in Parliament against him." The House of Commons ordered the North Briton to be burned by the common hangman; but when the authorities attempted to carry out the sentence, the people assembled, rescued the number, and burned instead a large jack-boot, the popular hieroglyphic for the unpopular minister.

Amongst the many rhymed squibs the following is worth repetition:—

The North Briton of the last line is, of course, the Scotch Earl Bute.

As an illustration of the then disgraceful state of the English law, it is enough to notice that Lord Halifax, the Secretary of State, by availing himself of his privileges as a peer, managed to delay John Wilkes in his action from June, 1763, to November, 1764; and then, Wilkes having been outlawed, the noble Earl appeared and pleaded the outlawry as a bar to further proceedings. Ultimately, after five years' delay, Wilkes annulled the outlawry, and recovered £4,000 damages against Lord Halifax. For a few months Wilkes was the popular idol, and, had he been a man of real earnestness and integrity, might have taken a permanently leading position in the State.

In August, 1763, Frederick, Duke of York, was born. He was created Prince Bishop of Osnaburg before he could speak. The King and Queen were much dissatisfied because the clergy of the diocese, who did not dispute the baby bishop's ability to attend to the souls of his flock, yet refused to entrust to him the irresponsible guardianship of the episcopal funds. This bishopric had actually been kept vacant by the King nearly three years, in order that he might not give it to the Duke of York or Duke of Cumberland. The income was about £25,000 a year, and it was to secure this Prince Bishopric for the Duke of Cumberland that George II. burdened the country with several subsidies to petty European sovereigns.

The King's sister, Augusta, was, like the rest of the Brunswick family, on extremely bad terms with her mother, the Princess of Wales. The Princess Augusta was married on January 16th, 1764, to the hereditary Prince of Brunswick, who received £80,000, besides £8,000 a year for becoming the husband of one of our Royal Family. In addition to this, George III. and Queen Charlotte insulted the newly-married couple, who returned the insult with interest. Pleasant people, these Brunswicks!

In March, 1764, the first steps were taken in the endeavor to impose taxes on the American colonies, an endeavor which at length resulted in their famous rebellion. The commanders of our ships of war on the American coast were sworn in to act as revenue officers, the consequence of which was the frequently illegal seizures of ships and cargoes without any means of redress for the Americans in their own colony. As though to add to the rising disaffection, Mr. Grenville proposed a new stamp-tax. As soon as the Stamp Act reached Boston, the ships in the harbor hung their colors half-mast high, the bells-were rung muffled, the Act of Parliament was reprinted with a death's head for title, and sold in the streets as the "Folly of England and Ruin of America." The Americans refused to use stamped paper. The Government distributors of stamps were either forced to return to England, or were obliged to renounce publicly and upon oath their official employment; and, when the matter was again brought before the English House of Commons, Pitt denied the right of Parliament to levy taxation on persons who had no right to representation, and exclaimed: "I rejoice that America has resisted; three millions of people so dead to all feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest." The supporters of the Government actually advanced the ridiculously absurd and most monstrous pretension that America was in law represented in Parliament as part of the manor of East Greenwich.

The Earl of Abercorn and Lord Harcourt appear to have been consulted by the Queen as to the effect of the previous marriage of George III. with Hannah Lightfoot, who seems to have been got rid of by some arrangement for a second marriage between her and a Mr. Axford, to whom a sum of money was paid. It is alleged that this was done without the knowledge of the King, who entreated Lord Chatham to discover where the Quakeress had gone. No fresh communication, however, took place between George III. and Hannah Lightfoot; and the King's first attack of insanity, which took place in 1764, is strongly suggested to have followed the more than doubts as to the legality of the second marriage and the legitimacy of the Royal Family. Hannah Lightfoot died in the winter of 1764, and in the early part of the year 1765, the King being then scarcely sane, a second ceremony of marriage with the Queen was privately performed by the Rev. Dr. Wilmot at Kew palace. Hannah Lightfoot left children by George III., but of these nothing is known.

In the winter of 1764, and spring of 1765, George III. was, in diplomatic language, laboring under an indisposition; in truth, he was mad. Her present Gracious Majesty often labors under an indisposition, but no loyal subject would suggest any sort of doubt as to her mental condition. A Bill was introduced in 1764 in the House of Lords, to provide for a Regency in case of the recurrence of any similar attack. In the discussion on this Bill, a doubt arose as to who were to be regarded as the Royal Family; fortunately, the Law Lords limited it to the descendants of George II. If a similar definition prevailed to-day, we should, perhaps, not be obliged to pay the pensions to the Duke of Cambridge and Princess Mary, which they at present receive as members of the Royal Family.

On the 80th of October, 1765, William, Duke of Cumberland, the King's uncle, died. Dr. Doran says of him: "As he grew in manhood, his heart became hardened; he had no affection for his family, nor fondness for the army, for which he affected attachment. When his brother (Prince Frederick) died, pleasure, not pain, made his heart throb, as he sarcastically exclaimed, 'It's a great blow to the country, but I hope it will recover in time.' He was the author of what was called 'the bloody mutiny act.' 'He was dissolute and a gambler.' After the 'disgraceful surrender of Hanover and the infamous convention of Kloster-seven,' his father George II. said of him, 'Behold the son who has ruined me, and disgraced himself.'" His own nephew, George III., believed the Duke to be capable of murder. The Dukes of Cumberland in this Brunswick family have had a most unfortunate reputation.

In 1766, William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, brother of the King, married Maria, Countess-Dowager of Waldegrave.

This marriage was at the time repudiated by the rest of the Royal Family.

In October of the same year Caroline Matilda, the King's sister, married Christian, King of Denmark, an unfeeling, dissolute brute. Our Princess, who lived very unhappily, was afterwards accused of adultery, and rescued from punishment by a British man-of-war.

In the autumn of 1766, in consequence of the high price of provisions and taxes, large gatherings took place in many parts of the kingdom; these assemblages were dispersed with considerable loss of life, of course by the military, which the House of Brunswick was not slow to use in checking political manifestations. At Derby the people were charged by the cavalry, at Colton eight were shot dead, in Gloucestershire many lives were lost; in fact, from Exeter to Berwick-on-Tweed there was one ferment of discontent and disaffection. The people were heavily taxed, the aristocracy corrupt and careless. As an instance of the madness of the governing classes, it is sufficient to point out that in 1767, while taxation was increasing, the landed gentry, who were rapidly appropriating common lands under Private Enclosure Acts, most audaciously reduced the land tax by one-fourth. During the first thirty-seven years of the reign of George III., there were no less than 1,532 Enclosure Acts passed, affecting in all 2,804,197 acres of land fliched from the nation by a few families. Wealth took and poverty lost; riches got land without burden, and labor inherited burden in lieu of land. It is worth notice that in the early part of the reign of George III., land yielding about a sixth or seventh of its present rental, paid the same nominal tax that it does to-day, the actual amount paid at the present time being however smaller through redemption; and yet then the annual interest on the National Debt was under £4,500,000, while to-day it is over £26,000,000. Then the King's Civil List covered all the expenses of our State ministers and diplomatic representatives; to-day, an enormous additional sum is required, and a Prime Minister professing economy, and well versed in history, has actually the audacity to pretend that the country gains by its present Civil List arrangement.

In 1769 George III. announced to his faithful Commons he owed half a million. John Wilkes and a few others protested, but the money was voted.

In 1770 King George III. succeeded in making several buttons at Kew, and as this is, as far as I am aware, the most useful work of his life, I desire to give it full prominence. His son, afterwards George IV., made a shoebuckle. No other useful product has resulted directly from the efforts of any male of the family.

In 1770 Henry, Duke of Cumberland, the King's brother, was sued by Lord Grosvenor for crim. con., and had to pay £10,000 damages. This same Henry, in the following year, went through the form of marriage with a Mrs. Horton, which marriage, being repudiated by the Court, troubled him but little, and in the lifetime of the lady contracted a second alliance, which gave rise to the famous Olivia Serres legitimacy issue.

The Royal Marriage Act, a most infamous measure for ensuring the perpetuation of vice, and said to be the result of the Lightfoot experience, was introduced to Parliament by a message from George III, on the 20th February, 1772, twelve days after the death of the Princess-Dowager, of Wales. George III. wrote to Lord North on the 26th February: "I expect every nerve to be strained to carry the Bill. It is not a question relating to the Administration, but personally to myself, therefore I have a right to expect a hearty support from every one in my service, and I shall remember defaulters."

In May, 1773, the East India Company, having to come before Parliament for borrowing powers, a select committee was appointed, whose inquiries laid open cases of rapacity and treachery involving the highest personages, and a resolution was carried in the House of Commons affirming that Lord Clive had dishonorably possessed himself of £234,000 at the time of the deposition of Surajah Dowlah, and the establishment of Meer Jaffier. Besides this, it was proved that Lord Clive received several other large sums in succeeding years. Phillimore describes this transaction, in terrific language, as one of "disgusting and sordid turpitude," declaring that "individual members of the English Government were to be paid for their treachery by a hire, the amount of which is almost incredible." A few years after this exposure, Lord Clive committed suicide.

On the 18th of December, 1773, the celebrated cargoes of tea were thrown over in Boston Harbor. The tea duty was a trifling one, but was unfortunately insisted upon by the King's Government as an assertion of the right of the British Parliament to tax the unrepresented American colonies, a right the colonists strenuously and successfully denied.

The news of the firm attitude of the Bay State colonists arrived in England early in March, 1774, and Lord North's Government, urged by the King, first deprived Boston of her privileges as a port; secondly, took away from the State of Massachusetts the whole of the executive powers granted by the charter of William III., and vested the nomination of magistrates of every kind in the King, or royally-appointed Governor; and thirdly, carried an enactment authorizing persons accused of political offences committed in Boston to be sent home to England to be tried.

These monstrous statutes provoked the most decided resistance; all the other American colonists joined with Boston, and a solemn league and covenant was entered into for suspending all commercial intercourse with Great Britain until the obnoxious acts were repealed. On the 5th of Sept., 1774, a congress of fifty-one representatives from twelve old colonies assembled in Philadelphia. The instructions given to them disclaimed every idea of independence, recognized the constitutional authority of the mother country, and acknowledged the prerogatives of the crown; but unanimously declared that they would never give up the rights and liberties derived to them from their ancestors as British subjects, and pronounced the late acts relative to the colony of Massachusetts Bay to be unconstitutional, oppressive and dangerous. The first public act of the congress was a resolution declarative of their favorable disposition towards the colony above mentioned; and, by subsequent resolutions, they formally approved the opposition it had given to the obnoxious acts, and declared that, if an attempt were made to carry them into execution by force, the colony should be supported by all America.

The following extract is from the "Address of the Twelve United Provinces to the Inhabitants of Great Britain," when force was actually used:—"We can retire beyond the reach of your navy, and, without any sensible diminution of the necessaries of life, enjoy a luxury, which from that period you will want—the luxury of being free."

On the 16th of November, 1775, Edmund Burke proposed the renunciation on the part of Great Britain of the exercise of taxation in America, the repeal of the obnoxious duty on tea, and a general pardon for past political offenders. This was directly opposed by the King, who had lists brought to him of how the members spoke and voted, and was negatived in the House of Commons by 210 votes against 105. On the 20th November, after consultation with George III., Lord North introduced a Bill by which all trade and commerce with the thirteen United colonies were interdicted. It authorized the seizure, whether in harbor or on the high seas, of all vessels laden with American property, and by a cruel stretch of refined tyranny it rendered all persons taken on board American vessels liable to be entered as sailors on board British ships of war, and to serve (if required) against their own countrymen. About the same time, as we learn by a "secret" dispatch from Lord Dartmouth to General Howe, the King had been unmanly enough to apply to the Czarina of Russia for the loan of 20,000 Russian soldiers to enable him to crush his English subjects in the American colonies. As yet the Americans had made no claim for independence. They were only petitioners for justice.

In order to crush out the spirit of liberty in the American colonies, the Government of George III., in February, 1776, hired 17,000 men from the Landgrave and Hereditary Prince of Hesse Cassel, and from the Duke of Brunswick. Besides these, there were levies of troops out of George III.'s Hanoverian dominions, and that nothing might be wanting to our glory, the King's agents stirred up the Cherokee and Creek Indians to scalp, ravish, and plunder the disaffected colonists. Jesse says: "The newly arrived troops comprised several thousand kidnapped German soldiers, whom the cupidity of the Duke of Brunswick, of the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, and other German Princes, had induced to let out for hire to the British Government.... Frederick of Prussia not only denounced the traffic as a most scandalous one, but wherever, it is said, the unfortunate hirelings had occasion to march through any part of his dominions, used to levy a toll upon them, as if they had been so many head of bullocks.... They had been sold, he said, as cattle, and therefore he was entitled to exact the toll."

The consequence of all this was, on the 4th of July, 1776, the famous declaration of the American Congress. "The history of the reigning sovereign, they said, was a history of repeated injuries and usurpations. So evidently was it his intention to establish an absolute despotism, that it had become their duty, as well as their right, to secure themselves against further aggressions.... In every stage of these oppressions," proceeds the Declaration, "we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our petitions have been answered only by repeated injuries.

"A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." And the United Colonies solemnly declare themselves to be "free and independent States."

In 1777, during this American war, Earl Chatham, in one of his grand speeches, after denouncing "the traffic and barter driven with every little pitiful German Prince that sells his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country," adds: "The mercenary aid on which you rely, irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, whom you overrun with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms, never! never! never!" In reply to Lord Suffolk, who had said, in reference to employing the Indians, that "we were justified in using all the means which God and nature had put into our hands," "I am astonished," exclaimed Lord Chatham, as he rose, "shocked, to hear such principles confessed, to hear them avowed in this House, or in this country; principles equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and un-Christian. That God and Nature put into our hands! I know not what idea that Lord may entertain of God and Nature, but I know that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife, to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, roasting, and eating; literally, my Lords, eating the mangled victims of his barbarous battles!"

And yet even after this we find George III. writing to Lord North, on the 22d of June, 1779: "I do not yet despair that, with Clinton's activity, and the Indians in their rear, the provinces will soon now submit."

Actually so late as the 27th of November, 1781, after the surrender of Cornwallis, we find George III. saying that "retaining a firm confidence in the wisdom and protection of Divine Providence," he should be able "by the valor of his fleets and armies to conquer America." Fox, in the House of Commons, denounced this speech of the King's as one "breathing vengeance, blood, misery, and rancor;" and "as containing the sentiments of some arbitrary, despotic, hard-hearted, and unfeeling monarch, who, having involved his subjects in a ruinous and unnatural war, to glut his feelings of revenge, was determined to persevere in it in spite of calamity." "Divest the speech," said he, "of its official forms, and what was its purport? 'Our losses in America have been most calamitous; the blood of my subjects has flowed in copious streams; the treasures of Great Britain have been wantonly lavished; the load of taxes imposed on an over-burthened country is become intolerable; my rage for conquest is unquenched; my revenge unsated; nor can anything except the total subjugation of my American subjects allay my animosity.'"

The following table shows what this disastrous war ultimately cost this country in mere money; no table can efficiently show its cost in blood and misery:—

The American war terminated in 1783; but as the loans of the two following years were raised to wind up the expenses of that struggle, it is proper they should be included. The total expense of the American war will stand thus:—

In addition to this must be noted £1,340,000 voted as compensation to American loyalists in 1788, and £4,000 a year pension since, and even now, paid to the descendants of William Penn, amounting, with compound interest, to an enormous additional sum, even to the present date, without reckoning future liability. And this glorious colony parted from us in blood and shame, in consequence of a vain attempt to gratify the desire of the House of Brunswick to make New England contribute to their German greed as freely and as servilely as Old England had done.

Encouraged by the willingness with which his former debts had been discharged, George HI., in 1777, sent a second message, but this time for the larger sum of £600,-000, which was not only paid, but an additional allowance of £100,000 a year was voted to his Majesty, and £40,000 was given to the Landgrave of Hesse.

As an illustration of the barbarity of our laws, it is enough to say that, in 1777, Sarah Parker was burnt for counterfeiting silver coin. In June, 1786, Phoebe Harris was burnt for the same offence. And this in a reign when persons in high position, accused of murder, forgery, perjury, and robbery, escaped almost scot free.

In April, 1778, £60,000 a year was settled on the six younger princes, and £30,000 a year on the five princesses. These pensions, however, were professedly paid out of the King's Civil List, not avowedly in addition to it, as they are to-day. The Duke of Buckingham stated that in 1778, and again in 1782, the King threatened to abdicate. This threat, which, unfortunately, was never carried out, arose from the King's obstinate persistence in the worse than insane policy against the American colonies.

In December, 1779, in consequence of England needing Irish soldiers to make war on America, Ireland was graciously permitted to export Irish woollen manufactures. The indulgences, however, to Ireland—even while the Ministers of George III. were trying to enlist Irishmen to kill the English, Scotch, and Irish in America—were made most grudgingly. Pious Protestant George III. would not consent that any Irish Catholic should own one foot of freehold land; and Edmund Burke, in a letter to an Irish peer, says that it was "pride, arrogance, and a spirit of domination" which kept up "these unjust legal disabilities."

On the 8th February, 1780, Sir G. Savile presented the famous Yorkshire petition, signed by 8,000 freeholders, praying the House of Commons to inquire into the management and expenditure of public money, to reduce all exorbitant emoluments, and to abolish all sinecure places and unmerited pensions. Three days later, Edmund Burke proposed a reduction of the national taxation (which was then only a sixth part of its amount to-day), and a diminution of the power of the Crown. Burke was defeated, but shortly after, on the motion of Mr. Dunning, the House of Commons declared, by a majority of 18 against the Government, "That the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished."

On the 20th March, 1782, Lord North, in consequence of the impossibility of subduing the American colonies, determined to resign. The King opposed this to the last, declaring that no difficulties should induce him to consent to a peace acknowledging the Independence of America. "So distressing," says Jesse, "was the conflict which prevailed in the mind of George III., that he not only contemplated abandoning the Crown of England for the Electorate of Hanover, but orders had actually been issued to have the royal yacht in readiness for his flight." What a blessing to the country if he had really persevered in his resolution!

Charles James Fox, who now came into power for a brief space, had, says Jesse, "taught himself to look upon his sovereign as a mere dull, obstinate, half-crazed, and narrow-minded bigot; a Prince whose shallow understanding had never been improved by education, whose prejudices it was impossible to remove, and whose resentments it would be idle to endeavor to soften."

In 1784, George, Prince of Wales, was over head and ears in debt, and the King, who appears to have hated him, refusing any aid, he resorted to threats. Dr. Doran says: "A conversation is spoken of as having passed between the Queen and the Minister, in which he is reported as having said, 'I much fear, your Majesty, that the Prince, in his wild moments, may allow expressions to escape him that may be injurious to the Crown.'—'There is little fear of that,' was the alleged reply of the Queen; 'he is too well aware of the consequences of such a course of conduct to himself. As regards that point, therefore, I can rely upon him.'" Jesse says of the Prince of Wales, that between eighteen and twenty, "to be carried home drunk, or to be taken into custody by the watch, were apparently no unfrequent episodes in the career of the Heir to the Throne. Under the auspices of his weak and frivolous uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, the Prince's conversation is said to have been a compound of the slang of grooms and the wanton vocabulary of a brothel." "When we hunt together," said the King to the Duke of Gloucester, "neither my son nor my brother speak to me; and lately, when the chase ended at a little village where there was but a single post-chaise to be hired, my son and brother got into it, and drove off, leaving me to go home in a cart, if I could find one." And this is the family Mr. Disraeli holds up for Englishmen to worship!

In July, 1782, Lord Shelburne came into office; but he "always complained that the King had tricked and deserted him," and had "secretly connived at his downfall." He resigned office on the 24th February, 1783. An attempt was made to form a Coalition Ministry, under the Duke of Portland. The King complained of being treated with personal incivility, and the attempt failed. On the 23d March, the Prince of Wales, at the Queen's Drawing-room, said: "The King had refused to accept the coalition, but by God he should be made to agree to it." Under the great excitement the King's health gave way. The Prince, says Jesse, was a member of Brooks's Club, where, as Walpole tells us, the members were not only "strangely licentious" in their talk about their sovereign, but in their zeal for the interests of the heartless young Prince "even wagered on the duration of the King's reign." The King repeated his threat of abandoning the Throne, and retiring to his Hanoverian dominions; and told the Lord-Advocate, Dundas, that he had obtained the consent of the Queen to his taking this extraordinary step. Young William Pitt refusing twice to accept the Premiership, Fox and Lord North came again into power. £30,000 was voted for the Prince of Wales's debts, and a similar sum to enable him to furnish his house. The "unnatural" Coalition Ministry did not last long. Fox introduced his famous India Bill. The King, regarding it as a blow at the power of the Crown, caballed and canvassed the Peers against it. "The welfare of thirty millions of people was overlooked in, the excitement produced by selfish interests, by party zeal, and officious loyalty." "Instantly," writes Lord Macaulay, "a troop of Lords of the Bedchamber, of Bishops who wished to be translated, and of Scotch peers who wished to be reelected, made haste to change sides." The Bill had passed the Commons by large majorities. The King opposed it like a partisan, and when it was defeated in the Lords, cried, "Thank God! it is all over; the House has thrown out the Bill, so there is an end of Mr. Fox." The Ministers not resigning, as the King expected they would, his Majesty dismissed them at once, sending to Lord North in the middle of the night for his seals of office.

On the 19th December, 1783, William Pitt, then twenty-four years of age, became Prime Minister of England. The House of Commons passed a resolution, on the motion of Lord Surrey, remonstrating with the King for having permitted his sacred name to be unconstitutionally used in order to influence the deliberations of Parliament. More than once the Commons petitioned the King to dismiss Pitt from office. Pitt, with large majorities against him, wished to resign; but George III. said, "If you resign, Mr. Pitt, I must resign too," and he again threatened, in the event of defeat, to abandon England, and retire to his Hanoverian dominions. Now our monarch, if a king, would, have no Hanoverian dominions to retire to.

In 1784, £60,000 was voted by Parliament to defray the King's debts. In consequence of the large debts of the Prince of Wales, an interview was arranged at Carlton House, on the 27th April, 1785, between the Prince and Lord Malmesbury. The King, the Prince said, had desired him to send in an exact statement of his debts; there was one item, however, of £25,000, on which the Prince of Wales would give no information. If it were a debt, argued the King, which his son was ashamed to explain, it was one which he ought not to defray. The Prince threatened to go abroad, saying, "I am ruined if I stay in England. I shall disgrace myself as a man; my father hates me, and has hated me since I was seven years old.... We are too wide asunder to ever meet. The King has deceived me; he has made me deceive others. I cannot trust him, and he will not believe me." And this is the Brunswick family to which the English nation are required to be blindly loyal!

In 1785, George, Prince of Wales, was married to a Roman Catholic lady, Mrs. Fitzherbert, a widow. It is of course known that the Prince treated the lady badly. This was not his first experience, the history of Mary Robinson forming but one amongst a long list of shabby liaisons. A question having arisen before the House of Commons, during a discussion on the debts owing by the Prince, Charles James Fox, on the written authority of the Prince, denied that any marriage, regular or irregular, had ever taken place, and termed it ah invention.... destitute of the slightest foundation. Mr. Fox's denial was made on the distinct written authority of the Prince, who offered, through Fox, to give in the House of Lords the "fullest assurances of the utter falsehood" of the allegation; although not only does everybody know to-day that the denial was untrue, but in point of fact the fullest proofs of the denied marriage exist at this very moment in the custody of Messrs. Coutts, the bankers. Out of all the Brunswicks England has been cursed with, George I. is the only one against whom there is no charge of wanton falsehood to his ministers or subjects, and it is fairly probable that his character for such truthfulness was preserved by his utter inability to lie in our language.

Not only did George, Prince of Wales, thus deny his marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert, but repeated voluntarily the denial after he became King George IV. Despite this denial, the King's executors, the Duke of Wellington and Sir William Knighton, were compelled by Mrs. Fitzherbert to admit the proofs. The marriage took place on the 21st December, 1785, and Mrs. Fitzherbert being a Roman Catholic, the legal effect was to bar Prince George and prevent him ever becoming the lawful King of England. The documents above referred to as being at Coutts's include— 1. The marriage certificate. 2. A letter written by the Prince of Wales acknowledging the marriage. 3. A will, signed by him, also acknowledging it, and other documents. And yet George, our King, whom Mr. Disraeli praises, authorized Charles James Fox to declare the rumor of his marriage "a low, malicious falsehood;" and then the Prince went to Mrs. Fitzherbert, and, like a mean, lying hypocrite as he was, said, "O Maria, only conceive what Fox did yesterday; he went down to the House and denied that you and I were man and wife."

Although when George, Prince of Wales, had attained his majority, he had an allowance of £50,000 a year, £60,000 to furnish Carlton House, and an additional £40,000 for cash to start with, yet he was soon after deep in debt. In 1787, £160,000 was voted, and a portion of the Prince's debts was paid. £20,000 further was added as a vote for Carlton House. Thackeray says: "Lovers of long sums have added up the millions and millions which in the course of his brilliant existence this single Prince consumed. Besides his income of £50,000, £70,000, £100,000, £120,000 a year, we read of three applications to Parliament; debts to the amount of £160,000, of £650,000, besides mysterious foreign loans, whereof he pocketed the proceeds. What did he do for all this money? Why was he to have it? If he had been a manufacturing town, or a populous rural district, or an army of five thousand men, he would not have cost more. He, one solitary stout man, who did not toil, nor spin, nor fight—what had any mortal done that he should be pampered so?"

The proposed impeachment of Warren Hastings, which actually commenced on February 13th, 1788, and which did not conclude until eight years afterwards, excited considerable feeling, it being roundly alleged that Court protection had been purchased by the late Governor-General of India, by means of a large diamond presented to the King. The following rhymed squib tells its own story. It was sung about the streets to the tune of "Derry Down":—

It was believed that the King had received not one diamond, but a large quantity, and that they were to be the purchase-money of Hastings's acquittal. Caricatures on the subject were to be seen in the window of every print-shop. In one of these Hastings was represented wheeling away in a barrow the King, with his crown and sceptre, observing, "What a man buys, he may sell;" and, in another, the King was exhibited on his knees, with his mouth wide open, and Warren Hastings pitching diamonds into it. Many other prints, some of them bearing evidence of the style of the best caricaturists of the day, kept up the agitation on this subject. It happened that there was a quack in the town, who pretended to eat stones, and bills of his exhibition were placarded on the walls, headed, in large letters, "The great stone-eater!" The caricaturists took the hint, and drew the King with a diamond between his teeth, and a heap of others before him, with the inscription, "The greatest stone-eater!"

We borrow a few sentences from Lord Macaulay to enable our readers to judge, in brief space, the nature of Warren Hastings's position, standing impeached, as he did, on a long string of charges, some of them most terrible in their implication of violence, falsehood, fraud, and rapacity. Macaulay thus pictures the situation between the civilized Christian and his tributaries: "On one side was a band of English functionaries, daring, intelligent, eager to be rich. On the other side was a great native population, helpless, timid, and accustomed to crouch under oppression." "When some new act of rapacity was resisted there came war; but a war of Bengalees against Englishmen was like a war of sheep against wolves, of men against demons." There was a long period before any one dreamed that justice and morality should be features of English rule in India. "During the interval, the business of a servant of the Company was simply to wring out of the natives a hundred or two hundred thousand pounds as speedily as possible, that he might return home before his constitution had suffered from the heat, to marry a peer's daughter, to buy rotten boroughs in Cornwall, and to give balls in St. James's Square." Hastings was compelled to turn his attention to foreign affairs. The object of his diplomacy was at this time simply to get money. The finances of his government were in an embarrassed state, and this embarrassment he was determined to relieve by some means, fair or foul. The principle which directed all his dealings with his neighbors is fully expressed by the old motto of one of the great predatory families of Teviotdale: "Thou shalt want ere I want." He seems to have laid it down, as a fundamental proposition which could not be disputed, that, when he had not as many lacs of rupees as the public service required, he was to take them from anybody who had. One thing, indeed, is to be said in excuse for him. The pressure applied to him by his employers at home was such as only the highest virtue could have withstood, such as left him no choice except to commit great wrongs, or to resign his high post, and with that post all his hopes of fortune and distinction. Hastings was in need of funds to carry on the government of Bengal, and to send remittances to London; and Sujah Dowlah had an ample revenue. Sujah Dowlah was bent on subjugating the Rohillas; and Hastings had at his disposal the only force by which the Rohillas could be subjugated. It was agreed that an English army should be lent to Nabob Vizier, and that for the loan he should pay four hundred thousand pounds sterling, besides defraying all the charge of the troops while employed in his service. "I really cannot see," says Mr. Gleig, "upon what grounds, either of political or moral justice, this proposition deserves to be stigmatized as infamous." If we understand the meaning of words, it is infamous to commit a wicked action for hire, and it is wicked to engage in war without provocation. In this particular war, scarcely one aggravating circumstance was wanting. The object of the Rohilla war was this, to deprive a large population, who had never done us the least harm, of a good government, and to place them, against their will, under an execrably bad one.... The horrors of Indian war were let loose on the fair valleys and cities of Rohilcund. The whole country was in a blaze. More than a hundred thousand people fled from their homes to pestilential jungles, preferring famine, and fever, and the haunts of tigers, to the tyranny of him to whom an English and a Christian government had, for shameful lucre, sold their substance, and their blood, and the honor of their wives and daughters.... Mr. Hastings had only to put down by main force the brave struggles of innocent men fighting for their liberty. Their military resistance crushed, his duties ended; and he had then only to fold his arms and look on, while their villages were burned, their children butchered, and their women violated.... We hasten to the end of this sad and disgraceful story. The war ceased. The finest population in India was subjected to a greedy, cowardly, cruel tyrant. Commerce and agriculture languished. The rich province which had tempted the cupidity of Sujah Dowlah became the most miserable part even of his miserable dominions. Yet is the injured nation not extinct. At long intervals gleams of its ancient spirit have flashed forth; and even at this day valor, and self-respect, and a chivalrous feeling rare among Asiatics, and a bitter remembrance of the great crime of England, distinguish that noble Afghan race."

Partly in consequence of the proposed legislation by Fox on the affairs of the East India Company, and partly from personal antagonism, members of the Indian Council hostile to Governor-General Hastings were sent out to India.

Amongst his most prominent antagonists was Francis, the reputed author of Junius's Letters. It was to Francis especially that the Maharajah Nuncomar of Bengal addressed himself. "He put into the hands of Francis, with great ceremony, a paper containing several charges of the most serious description. By this document Hastings was accused of putting offices up to sale, and of receiving bribes for suffering offenders to escape. In particular, it was alleged that Mahommed Reza Khan had been dismissed with impunity, in consideration of a great sum paid to the Governor-General.... He stated that Hastings had received a large sum for appointing Rajah Goordas treasurer of the Nabob's household, and for committing the care of his Highness's person to Munny Begum. He put in a letter purporting to bear the seal of the Munny Begum, for the purpose of establishing the truth of his story."

Much evidence was taken before the Indian Council, where there was considerable conflict between the friends and enemies of Hastings. "The majority, however, voted that the charge was made out; that Hastings had corruptly received between thirty and forty thousand pounds; and that he ought to be compelled to refund."

Now, however, comes an item darker and more disgraceful, if possible than what had preceded.

"On a sudden, Calcutta was astounded by the news that Nuncomar had been taken up on a charge of felony, committed, and thrown into the common jail. The crime imputed to him was, that six years before he had forged a bond. The ostensible prosecutor was a native. But it was then, and still is, the opinion of everybody, idiots and biographers excepted, that Hastings was the real mover in the business." The Chief-Justice Impey, one of Hastings's creatures, pushed on a mock trial; "a verdict of Guilty was returned, and the Chief-Justice pronounced sentence of death on the prisoner.... Of Impey's conduct it is impossible to speak too severely. He acted unjustly in refusing to respite Nuncomar. No rational man can doubt that he took this course in order to gratify the Governor-General. If we had ever had any doubts on that point, they would have been dispelled by a letter which Mr. Gleig has published. Hastings, three or four years later, described Impey as the man 'to whose support he was at one time indebted for the safety of his fortune, honor, and reputation.' These strong words can refer only to the case of Nuncomar; and they must mean that Impey hanged Nuncomar in order to support Hastings. It is therefore our deliberate opinion that Impey, sitting as a judge, put a man unjustly to death in order to serve a political purpose."

Encouraged by success, a few years later, Hastings, upon the most unfair pretext, made war upon and plundered the Rajah of Benares, and a little later subjected the eunuchs of the Begums of Oude to physical torture, to make them confess where the royal treasure was hidden.

It is evident from Miss Burney's diary that the King and Queen warmly championed the cause of Warren Hastings, who, after a wearisome impeachment, was acquitted.

In 1788, the King's insanity assumed a more violent form than usual, and on a report from the Privy Council, the subject was brought before Parliament. In the Commons, Pitt and the Tory party contended that the right of providing for the government of the country in cases where the monarch was unable to perform his duties, belonged to the nation at large, to be exercised by its representatives in Parliament. Fox and the Whigs, on the other hand, maintained that the Prince of Wales possessed the inherent right to assume the government. Pitt, seizing this argument as it fell from Fox, said, at the moment, to the member seated nearest to him, "I'll unwhig the gentleman for the rest of his life."

During the discussions on the Regency Bill, Lord Thurlow, who was then Lord Chancellor, acted the political rat, and coquetted with both parties. When the King's recovery was announced by the royal physicians, Thurlow, to cover his treachery, made an extravagant speech in defence of Pitt's views, and one laudatory of the King. After enumerating the rewards received from the King, he said, "and if I forget the monarch who has thus befriended me, may my great Creator forget me." John Wilkes, who was present in the House of Lords, said, in a stage aside, audible to many of the peers, "Forget you! he will see you damned first." Phillimore, describing Lord Chancellor Thurlow, says that he—"either from an instinctive delight in all that was brutal" (which did not prevent him from being a gross hypocrite), "or from a desire to please George III.—supported the Slave Trade, and the horrors of the Middle Passage, with the uncompromising ferocity of a Liverpool merchant or a Guinea captain."

It appears that the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York exhibited what was considered somewhat indecent eagerness to have the King declared irrecoverably insane, and on more than one occasion the Queen refused to allow either of these Royal Princes access to the King's person, on the ground that their violent conduct retarded his recovery. The Prince of Wales and Duke of York protested in writing against the Queen's hostility to them, and published the protest. Happy family, these Brunswicks! Dr. Doran declares: "There was assuredly no decency in the conduct of the Heir-apparent, or of his next brother. They were gaily flying from club to club, party to party, and did not take the trouble even to assume the sentiment which they could not feel. 'If we were together,' says Lord Granville, in a letter inserted in his Memoirs, 'I would tell you some particulars of the Prince of Wales's behavior to the King and Queen, within these few days, that would make your blood run cold.' It was said that if the King could only recover and learn what had been said and done during his illness, he would hear enough to drive him again into insanity. The conduct of his eldest sons was marked by its savage inhumanity." Jesse says: "The fact is a painful one to relate, that on the 4th December—the day on which Parliament assembled, and when the King's malady was at its worst—the graceless youth (the Duke of York) not only held a meeting of the opposition at his own house, but afterwards proceeded to the House of Lords, in order to hear the depositions of the royal physicians read, and to listen to the painful details of his father's lunacy. Moreover the same evening we track both the brothers (the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York) to Brooks's, where in a circle of boon companions, as irreverent as themselves, they are said to have been in the habit of indulging in the most shocking indecencies, of which the King's derangement was the topic. On such occasions, we are told, not only did they turn their parents into ridicule, and blab the secrets of the chamber of sickness at Windsor, but the Prince even went to such unnatural lengths as to employ his talents for mimicry, in which he was surpassed by few of his contemporaries, in imitating the ravings and gestures of his stricken father. As for the Duke of York, we are assured that 'the brutality of the stupid sot disgusted even the most profligate of his associates.'" Even after the King's return to reason had been vouched by the physicians, William Grenville, writing to Lord Buckingham, says that the two princes "amused themselves with spreading the report that the King was still out of his mind." When the great thanksgiving for the King's recovery took place at Saint Paul's, the conduct of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, in the Cathedral itself, is described "as having been in the highest degree irreverent, if not indecent." Sir William Young writes to Lord Buckingham, "The day will come when Englishmen will bring these Princes to their senses." Alas for England, the day has not yet come!

In 1789, a great outcry was raised against the Duke of York on account of his licentiousness. In 1790, the printer of the Times newspaper was fined £100 for libelling the Prince of Wales, and a second £100 for libelling the Duke of York. It was in this year that the Prince of Wales, and the Dukes of York and Clarence, issued joint and several bonds to an enormous amount—it is said, £1,000,000 sterling, and bearing 6 per cent, interest. These bonds were taken up chiefly abroad; and some Frenchmen who subscribed, being unable to obtain either principal or interest, applied to the Court of Chancery, in order to charge the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall. Others of the foreign holders of bonds had recourse to other proceedings to enforce their claims. In nearly every case the claimants were arrested by the Secretary of State's order, and sent out of England under the Alien Act, and when landed in their own country were again arrested for treasonable communication with the enemy, and perished on the scaffold. MM. De Baume, Chaudot, Mette, Aubert, Vaucher, and others, all creditors of the Prince, were thus arrested under the Duke of Portland's warrant, and on their deportation rearrested for treason, and guillotined. Thus were some of the debts of the Royal Family of Brunswick settled, if not paid. Honest family, these Brunswicks!

George, Prince of Wales, and the Duke of York were constant patrons of prize fights, races, and gambling tables, largely betting, and not always paying their wagers when they lost. In the autumn of 1791 a charge was made against the Prince of Wales that he allowed his horse Escape to run badly on the 20th of October, and when heavily betted against caused the same horse to be ridden to win. A brother of Lord Lake, who was friendly to the Prince, and who managed some of his racing affairs, evidently believed there was foul play, and so did the Jockey Club, who declared that if the Prince permitted the same jockey, Samuel Chiffney, to ride again, no gentleman would start against him. A writer employed by George, Prince of Wales, to defend his character, says: "It may be asked, why did not the Prince of Wales declare upon his honor, that no foul play had been used with respect to Escape's first race? Such a declaration would at once have solved all difficulties, and put an end to all embarrassments. But was it proper for the Prince of Wales to have condescended to such a submission? Are there not sometimes suspicions of so disgraceful a nature afloat, and at the same time so improbable withal, that if the person, who is the object of them, condescends to reply to them, he degrades himself? Was it to be expected of the Prince of Wales that he should purge himself by oath, like his domestic? Or, was it to be looked for, that the first subject in the realm, the personage whose simple word should have commanded deference, respect, and belief, was to submit himself to the examination of the Jockey Club, and answer such questions as they might have thought proper to have proposed to him?"

This, coming from a family like the Brunswicks, and from one of four brothers who, like their highnesses of Wales, York, Kent, and Cumberland, had each in turn declared himself upon honor not guilty of some misdemeanor or felony, is worthy a note of admiration. George, Prince of Wales, declared himself not guilty of bigamy; the Duke of York declared himself not guilty of selling promotion in the army. Both these Princes publicly declared themselves not guilty of the charge of trying to hinder their royal father's restoration to sanity. The Duke of Kent, the Queen's father, declared that he was no party to the subornation of witnesses against his own brother. The Duke of Cumberland pledged his oath that he had never been guilty of sodomy and murder.

In September, 1791, the Duke of York was married to the Princess Frederica, daughter of the King of Prussia, with whom he lived most unhappily for a few years. The only effect of this marriage on the nation was that £18,000 a year was voted as an extra allowance to his Royal Highness, the Duke of York. This was in addition to 100,000 crowns given out of the Civil List as a marriage portion to the Princess. Dr. Doran says of the Duchess of York: "For six years she bore with treatment from the 'Commander-in-Chief' such as no trooper under him would have inflicted on a wife equally deserving. At the end of that time the ill-matched pair separated." Kind husbands, these Brunswicks!

In a print published on the 24th May, 1792, entitled "Vices Overlooked in the New Proclamation," Avarice is represented by King George and Queen Charlotte, hugging their hoarded millions with extreme satisfaction, a book of interest tables lying at hand. This print is divided into four compartments, representing: 1. Avarice; 2. Drunkenness, exemplified in the person of the Prince of Wales; 3. Gambling, the favorite amusement of the Duke of York; and 4. Debauchery, the Duke of Clarence and Mrs. Jordan—as the four notable vices of the Royal family of Great Britain. If the print had to be re-issued to-day, it would require no very vivid imagination to provide materials from the living members of the Royal Family to refill the four compartments.

Among various other remarkable trials occurring in 1792, those of Daniel Holt and William Winterbottom are here worthy of notice, as illustrating the fashion in which the rule of the Brunswick monarchy has trenched on our political liberties. The former, a printer of Nottingham, was convicted and sentenced to two years' imprisonment for re-publishing, verbatim, a political tract, originally circulated without prosecution by the Thatched House Tavern Association, of which Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Richmond had been members. The other, a dissenting minister at Plymouth, of virtuous and highly respectable character, was convicted of sedition, and sentenced to four years' imprisonment in the jail of Newgate, for two sermons preached in commemoration of the revolution of 1688. The indictment charged him with affirming, "That his Majesty was placed upon the throne on condition of keeping certain laws and rules, and if he does not observe them, he has no more right to the crown than the Stuarts had." All the Whigs in the kingdom might, doubtless, have been comprehended in a similar indictment. And if the doctrine affirmed by the Rev. Mr. Winterbottom be denied, the monstrous reverse of the proposition follows, that the King is bound by no conditions or laws; and that, though resistance to the tyranny of the Stuarts might be justifiable, resistance under the same circumstances to the House of Brunswick is not. This trial, for the cruelty and infamy attending it, has been justly compared to the celebrated one of Rosewell in the latter years of Charles II., to the events of which those of 1792 exhibit, in various respects, a striking and alarming parallel.

Before his election to the National Convention, Thomas Paine published the second part of his "Rights of Man," in which he boldly promulgated principles which, though fiercely condemned at the date of their issue, are now being gradually accepted by the great mass of the people. Paine's work was spread through the kingdom with extraordinary industry, and was greedily sought for by people of all classes. Despite the great risk of fine and imprisonment, some of the most effective parts were printed on pieces of paper, which were used by Republican tradesmen as wrappers for their commodities. Proceedings were immediately taken against Thomas Paine as author of the obnoxious book, which was treated as a libel against the government and constitution, and on trial Paine was found guilty. He was defended with great ability by Erskine, who, when he left the court, was cheered by a crowd of people who had collected without, some of whom took his horses from his carriage, and dragged him home to his house in Serjeant's Inn. The name and opinions of Thomas Pain were at this moment gaining influence, in spite of the exertions made to put them down. From this time for several years it is almost impossible to read a weekly journal without finding some instance of persecution for publishing Mr. Paine's political views.

The trial of Thomas Paine was the commencement of a series of State prosecutions, not for political offences, but for political designs. The name of Paine had caused much apprehension, but many even amongst the Conservatives dreaded the extension of the practice of making the publication of a man's abstract opinions criminal, when unaccompanied with any direct or open attempt to put them into effect. In the beginning of 1793 followed prosecutions in Edinburgh, where the ministerial influence was great, against men who had associated to do little more than call for reform in Parliament; and five persons, whose alleged crimes consisted chiefly in having read Paine's "Rights of Man," and in having expressed either a partial approbation of his doctrines, or a strong declaration in favor of Parliamentary reform, were transported severally: Joseph Gerrald, William Skirving, and Thomas Muir for fourteen, and Thomas Fyshe Palmer and Maurice Margarot for seven years! These men had been active in the political societies, and it was imagined that, by an exemplary injustice of this kind, these societies would be intimidated. Such, however, was not the case, for, from this moment, the clubs in Edinburgh became more active than ever, and they certainly took a more dangerous character; so that, before the end of the year, there was actually a "British Convention" sitting in the Scottish capital. This was dissolved by force at the beginning of 1794, and two of its members were added to the convicts already destined for transportation. Their severe sentences provoked warm discussions in the English Parliament, but the ministers were inexorable in their resolution to put them in execution.

The extreme severity of the sentences passed on the Scottish political martyrs, even as judged by those admitting the legality and justice of their conviction, was so shameful as to rouse general interest. Barbarous as the law of Scotland appeared to be, it became a matter of doubt whether the Court of Justiciary had not exceeded its power, in substituting the punishment of transportation for that of banishment, imposed by the Act of Queen Anne, for the offence charged on those men.

In 1794, the debts of the Prince of Wales then amounting to about £650,000, not including the amounts due on the foreign bonds, a marriage was suggested in order to give an excuse for going to Parliament for a vote. This was at a time when the Prince was living with Mrs. Fitzherbert as his wife, and when Lady Jersey was his most prominent mistress. The bride selected was Caroline of Brunswick. A poor woman for a wife, if Lord Malmesbury's picture is a true one, certainly in no sense a bad woman. But her husband our Prince! When she arrived in London, George was not sober. His first words, after greeting her, were to Lord Malmesbury, "Get me a glass of brandy." Tipsy this Brunswicker went to the altar on the 8th of April, 1794; so tipsy that he got up from his knees too soon, and the King had to whisper him down, the Archbishop having halted in amaze in the ceremony. Here there is no possibility of mistake. The two Dukes who were his best men at the wedding had their work to keep him from falling; and to one, the Duke of Bedford, he admitted that he had had several glasses of brandy before coming to the chapel.

Thackeray says, "What could be expected from a wedding which had such a beginning—from such a bridegroom and such a bride? Malmesbury gives us the beginning of the marriage story—how the prince reeled into chapel to be married; how he hiccupped out his vows of fidelity—you know how he kept them; how he pursued the woman whom he had married; to what a state he brought her; with what blows he struck her; with what malignity he pursued her; what his treatment of his daughter was; and what his own life. He, the first gentleman of Europe!"

The Parliament not only paid the Prince of Wales's debts, but gave him £28,000 for jewels and plate, and £26,000 for the furnishing of Carlton House.

On the 12th of May, Mr. Henry Dundas brought down on behalf of the government, a second message from the King, importing that seditious practices had been carried on by certain societies in London, in correspondence with other societies; that they had lately been pursued with increasing activity and boldness, and had been avowedly directed to the assembling of a pretended National Convention, in contempt and defiance of the authority of Parliament, on principles subversive of the existing laws and the constitution, and tending to introduce that system of anarchy prevailing in France; that his Majesty had given orders for seizing the books and papers of those societies, which were to be laid before the House, to whom it was recommended to pursue measures necessary to counteract their pernicious tendency. A large collection of books and papers was, in consequence, brought down to the House; and, after an address had been voted, a resolution was agreed to, that those papers should be referred to a committee of secrecy. A few days after the King's message was delivered, the following persons were committed to the Tower on a charge of high treason: Mr. Thomas Hardy, a shoemaker in Piccadilly, who officiated as secretary to the London Corresponding Society; Mr. Daniel Adams, secretary to the Society for Constitutional Information; Mr. John Home Tooke; Mr. Stewart Kyd; Mr. Jeremiah Joyce, preceptor to Lord Mahon, eldest son of the Earl of Stanhope; and Mr. John Thelwall, who had for some time delivered lectures on political subjects in London.

Under the influence of excitement resulting from the Government statement of the discovery of a plot to assassinate the King, and which plot never existed outside the brains of the Government spies, a Special Commission of Oyer and Terminer was issued on the 10th of September, 1794, for the trial of the State prisoners confined in the Tower on a charge of high treason. On the 2d of October, the Commission was opened at the Sessions House, by Lord Chief Justice Eyre, in an elaborate charge to the grand jury. Bills were then found against all who had been taken up in May, except Daniel Adams. Hardy was first put on his trial at the Old Bailey. The trial commenced on the 28th of October, and continued with short adjournments until the 5th of November. Mr. Erskine was counsel for Hardy, and employed his great talents and brilliant eloquence with the most complete success. After consulting together for three hours, the jury, who, though the avowed friends of the then administration, were men of impartiality, intelligence, and of highly respectable characters, returned a verdict of Not Guilty. There has seldom been a verdict given in a British court of justice which afforded more general satisfaction. It is doubtful whether there has been a verdict more important in its consequences to the liberties of the English people. On the 17th of November, John Horne Tooke was put on his trial. The Duke of Richmond, Earl Camden, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Beaufoy, were subpoenaed by the prisoner; and the examination of William Pitt by Mr. Tooke and his counsel formed the most important feature in the trial, as the evidence of the Prime Minister tended to prove that, from the year 1780 to 1782, he himself had been actively engaged with Mr. Tooke and many others in measures of agitation to procure a Parliamentary reform, although he now not only deemed the attempt dangerous and improper, but sought to condemn it as treasonable, or at least as seditious. Mr. Erskine, who was counsel for Mr. Tooke also, in a most eloquent and powerful manner contended that the conduct of his client was directed only to the same object as that previously sought by Pitt himself, and that the measures resorted to, so far from being criminal, were perfectly constitutional. Mr. Pitt was extremely guarded in his replies, and professed very little recollection of what passed at the meetings which he attended. A letter he had written to Mr. Tooke at that time on the subject was handed to him, which he pretended he could scarcely recognize, and which the judge would not permit to be read. Mr. Sheridan, who was likewise engaged in the agitation for political reform, and subpoenaed by Mr. Tooke, gave unqualified evidence in favor of Mr. Tooke respecting the proceedings at those meetings. The trial continued till the Saturday following, when the jury were out of court only six minutes, and returned a verdict of Not Guilty!

The opening of Parliament was looked forward to with great anxiety, on account of the extreme distress under which the country was laboring. As the time approached, popular meetings were held in the metropolis, and preparations were made for an imposing demonstration. During the morning of the 29th of October, the day on which the King was to open the session in person, crowds of men continued pouring into the town from the various open spaces outside, where simultaneous meetings had been called by placards and advertisements; and before the King left Buckingham House, on his way to St. James's, the number of people collected on the ground over which he had to pass is admitted in the papers of the day to have been not less than two hundred thousand. At first the state carriage was allowed to move on through this dense mass in sullen silence, no hats being taken off, nor any other mark of respect being shown. This was followed by a general outburst of hisses and groans, mingled with shouts of "Give us peace and bread!" "No war!" "No King!" "Down with him! down with George!" and the like; and this tumult continued unabated until the King reached the House of Lords, the Guards with much difficulty keeping the mob from closing on the carriage. As it passed through Margaret Street the populace seemed determined to attack it, and when opposite the Ordnance Office a stone passed through the glass of the carriage window. A verse published the following day says:—