The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Impeachment of The House of Brunswick, by Charles Bradlaugh This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Impeachment of The House of Brunswick Author: Charles Bradlaugh Release Date: May 29, 2011 [EBook #36265] Last Updated: January 26, 2013 Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSE OF BRUNSWICK *** Produced by David Widger
PREFACE TO FIFTH AND AMERICAN EDITION.
IMPEACHMENT OF THE HOUSE OF BRUNSWICK.
| CHAPTER I. | INTRODUCTORY |
| CHAPTER II. | THE REIGN OF GEORGE I |
| CHAPTER III. | THE REIGN OF GEORGE II |
| CHAPTER IV. | THE REIGN OF GEORGE III |
| CHAPTER V. | THE REIGN OF GEORGE IV |
| CHAPTER VI. | THE REIGN OF WILLIAM IV |
| CHAPTER VII. | THE PRESENT REIGN |
The kindly reception given to me personally throughout those portions of the United States it has yet been my good fortune to visit, tempts me to comply with the request of many friends, that I should issue here an edition of my impeachment of the reigning family in England. The matter contained in these pages has been delivered orally throughout Great Britain, and, with one exception, no Digitized by has been offered to it. Abuse has been plentiful, and threats of prosecution not infrequent; but although at least one hundred and fifty thousand persons have listened to the lectures, and four editions of the pamphlet have been exhausted in England, only one attempt was made, in the Gentleman's Magazine, to advance any kind of reply. And even in this case, when a formal written discussion had been commenced, the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine refused to allow any rejoinder to his second paper.
It is sometimes alleged against me that the pamphlet is a too personal criticism; my answer is that in every case the points dealt with have affected our national honor, or augmented our national taxation.
This pamphlet is not a Republican one; it is only an indictment alleging the incapacity and viciousness of the House of Brunswick, and a statement of the legal right of the British people to dethrone the succession on a vacancy arising.
That I am a Republican is perfectly true; that I believe a Republican form of government to be possible, by peaceful means in England, is well-known to those who have heard my lectures; and, in issuing this essay to American readers, I desire to show that there are no reasons of personal loyalty, there is no plea of gratitude for personal service, which ought to be urged on behalf of George I. and his descendants.
English by birth, by hope and in ambition, I seek to win from the descendants of those who broke loose from the Brunswicks nearly a century ago, sympathy for those who work with me now to a like end. If I fail, the fault is in the weakness of my tongue and pen, and not from any defects in the cause I advocate.
The more than fair hearing given to my voice emboldens me to hope a patient investigation of the case my pen presents; and should a verdict be given on this great continent unfavorable to me, I feel confident the jury of my readers will patiently weigh my statements before delivering their judgment.
Charles Bradlaugh.
By statutes of the 12 and 13 Will. HE., and 6 Anne c. 11, Article 2, the British Parliament, limiting the monarchy to members of the Church of England, excluded the Stuarts, and from and after the death of King William and the Princess Anne without heirs, contrived that the Crown of this kingdom should devolve upon the Princess Sophia, Duchess Dowager of Hanover, and the heirs of her body, being Protestants. Heirs failing to Anne, although seventeen times pregnant, and Sophia dying about seven weeks before Anne, her son George succeeded under these Acts as George I. of England and Scotland.
It is said, and perhaps truly, that the German Protestant Guelph was an improvement on the Catholic Stuart, and the Whigs take credit for having effected this change in spite of the Tories. This credit they deserve; but it must not be forgotten that it was scarce half a century before that the entire aristocracy, including the patriotic Whigs, coalesced to restore to the throne the Stuarts, who had been got rid of under Cromwell. If this very aristocracy, of which the Whigs form part, had never assisted in calling back the Stuarts in the person of Charles II., there would have been no need to thank them for again turning that family out.
The object of the present essay is to submit reasons for the repeal of the Acts of Settlement and Union, so far as the succession to the throne is concerned, after the abdication or demise of the present monarch. It is of course assumed, as a point upon which all supporters of the present Royal Family will agree, that the right to deal with the throne is inalienably vested in the English people, to be exercised by them through their representatives in Parliament. The right of the members of the House of Bruns wick to succeed to the throne is a right accruing only from the acts of Settlement and Union, it being clear that, except from this statute, they have no claim to the throne. It is therefore submitted, that should Parliament in its wisdom see fit to enact that after the death or abdication of her present Majesty, the throne shall no longer be filled by a member of the House of Brunswick, such an enactment would be perfectly within the competence of Parliament. It is further submitted that the Parliament has full and uncontrollable authority to make any enactment, and to repeal any enactment heretofore made, even if such new statute, or the repeal of any old statute, should in truth change the constitution of the Empire, or modify the character and powers of either Parliamentary Chamber. The Parliament of the English Commonwealth, which met on April 25th, 1660, gave the Crown to Charles II., and the Parliament of the British Monarchy has the undoubted right to withhold the Crown from Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. The Convention which assembled at Westminster on January 22d, 1688, took away the crown from James II., and passed over his son, the then Prince of Wales, as if he had been non-existent. This Convention was declared to have all the authority of Parliament—ergo. Parliament has admittedly the right to deprive a living King of his Crown, and to treat a Prince of Wales as having no claim to the succession.
In point of fact two of the clauses of the Act of Settlement were repealed in the reign of Queen Anne, and a third clause was repealed early in the reign of George I., showing that this particular statute has never been considered immutable or irrepealable. It is right to add that the clauses repealed were only of consequence to the nation, and that their repeal was no injury to the Crown. The unbounded right of the supreme Legislature to enlarge its own powers was contended for and admitted in 1716, when the duration of Parliament was extended four years, a triennial Parliament declaring itself and all future Parliaments septennial. Furthermore, it has been held to be sedition to deny the complete authority of the Irish Parliament to put an end to its own existence.
It has been admitted to be within the jurisdiction of Parliament to give electoral privileges to citizens theretofore unenfranchised; Parliament claims the unquestioned right to disfranchise persons, hitherto electors, for misconduct in the exercise of electoral rights, and in its pleasure to remove and annul any electoral disability. The right of Parliament to decrease or increase the number of representatives for any borough has never been disputed, and its authority to decrease the number of Peers sitting and voting in the House of Lords was recognized in passing the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill, by which several Bishops were summarily ejected from amongst the Peers. It is now submitted that Parliament possesses no Legislative right but what it derives from the people, and that the people are under no irrevocable contract or obligation to continue any member of the House of Brunswick on the throne. In order to show that this is not a solitary opinion, the following Parlimentary dicta are given:—
The Honorable Temple Luttrell, in a speech made in the House of Commons, on the 7th November, 1775, showed "that of thirty-three sovereigns since William the Conqueror, thirteen only have ascended the throne by divine hereditary right.... The will of the people, superseding any hereditary claim to succession, at the commencement of the twelfth century placed Henry I. on the throne, "and this subject to conditions as to laws to be made by Henry. King John was compelled solemnly to register an assurance of the ancient rights of the people in a formal manner;" and this necessary work was accomplished by the Congress at Runnymede, in the year 1115. "Sir, in the reign of Henry III. (about the year 1223), the barons, clergy and freeholders, understanding that the King, as Earl of Poictou, had landed some of his continental troops in the western ports of England, with a design to strengthen a most odious and arbitrary set of ministers, they assembled in a Convention or Congress, from whence they despatched deputies to King Henry, declaring that if he did not immediately send back those Poictouvians, and remove from his person and councils evil advisers, they would place upon the throne a Prince who should better observe the laws of the land. Sir, the King not only hearkened to that Congress, but shortly after complied with every article of their demand, and publicly notified his reformation. Now, Sir, what are we to call that assembly which dethroned Edward II. when the Archbishop of Canterbury preached a sermon on this Text, 'The voice of the people is the voice of God'?" "A Prince of the house of Lancaster was invited over from banishment, and elected by the people to the throne" on the fall of Richard II. "I shall next proceed to the general Convention and Congress, which, in 1461, enthroned the Earl of March by the name of Edward IV., the Primate of all England collecting the suffrages of the people." "In 1659, a Convention or Congress restored legal Monarchy in the person of Charles II."
William Pitt, on the 16th December, 1788, being then Chancellor of the Exchequer, contended that "the right of providing for the deficiency of Royal authority rested with the two remaining branches of the Legislature;" and again, "on the disability of the Sovereign, where was the right to be found? It was to be found in the voice, in the sense of the people; with them it rested." On the 22d December, Mr. Pitt said that Mr. Fox had contended that "the two Houses of Parliament cannot proceed to legislate without a King." His (Mr. Pitt's) answer was: "The conduct of the Revolution had contradicted that assertion; they had acted legislatively, and, no King being present, they must, consequently, have acted without a King."
Mr. Hardinge, a barrister of great repute, and afterwards Solicitor-General and Judge, in the same debate, said: "The virtues of our ancestors and the genius of the Government accurately understood, a century ago, had prompted the Lords and Commons of the realm to pass a law without a King; and a law which, as he had always read it, had put upon living record this principle: 'That whenever the supreme executive hand shall have lost its power to act, the people of the land, fully and freely represented, can alone repair the defect.'"
On the 26th December, in the House of Lords, discussing the power to exclude a sitting Monarch from the throne, the Earl of Abingdon said: "Will a King exclude himself? No! no! my Lords, that exclusion appertains to us and to the other House of Parliament exclusively. It is to us it belongs; it is our duty. It is the business of the Lords and Commons of Great Britain, and of us alone, as the trustees and representatives of the nation." And following up this argument, Lord Abingdon contended that in the contingency he was alluding to, "the right to new model or alter the succession vests in the Parliament of England without the King, in the Lords and Commons of Great Britain solely and exclusively."
Lord Stormont, in the same debate, pointed out that William III. "possessed no other right to the throne than that which he derived from the votes of the two Houses."
The Marquis of Lansdowne said: "One of the best constitutional writers we had was Mr. Justice Foster, who, in his book on the 'Principles of the Constitution,' denies the right even of hereditary succession, and says it is no right whatever, but merely a political expedient.... The Crown, Mr. Justice Foster said, was not merely a descendable property like a laystall, or a pigstye, but was put in trust for millions, and for the happiness of ages yet unborn, which Parliament has it always in its power to mould, to shape, to alter, to fashion, just as it shall think proper. And in speaking of Parliament," his Lordship said, "Mr. Justice Foster repeatedly spoke of the two Houses of Parliament only."
My object being to procure the repeal of the only title under which any member of the House of Brunswick could claim to succeed the present sovereign on the throne, or else to procure a special enactment which shall for the future exclude the Brunswicks, as the Stuarts were excluded in 1688 and 1701, the following grounds are submitted as justifying and requiring such repeal or new enactment:—
1st. That during the one hundred and fifty-seven years the Brunswick family have reigned over the British Empire, the policy and conduct of the majority of the members of that family, and especially of the various reigning members, always saving and excepting her present Majesty, have been hostile to the welfare of the mass of the people. This will be sought to be proved at length by a sketch of the principal events in the reign of each monarch, from August 1st, 1714, to the present date.
2d. That during the same period of one hundred and fifty-seven years, fifteen-sixteenths of the entire National Debt have been created, and that this debt is in great part the result of wars arising from the mischievous and pro-Hanoverian policy of the Brunswick family.
3d. That in consequence of the incompetence or want of desire for governmental duty on the part of the various reigning members of the House of Brunswick, the governing power of the country has been practically limited to a few families, who have used government in the majority of instances as a system of machinery for securing place and pension for themselves and their associates; while it is submitted that government should be the best contrivance of national wisdom for the alleviation of national suffering and promotion of national happiness. Earl Grey even admits that "Our national annals, since the Revolution of 1688, present a sad picture of the selfishness, baseness and corruption of the great majority of the actors on the political stage."
4th. That a huge pension list has been created, the recipients of the largest pensions being in most cases persons who are already members of wealthy families, and who have done nothing whatever to justify their being kept in idleness at the national expense, while so many workers in the agricultural districts are in a state of semi-starvation; so many toilers in large works in Wales, Scotland, and some parts of England, are in constant debt and dependence; and while large numbers of the Irish peasantry—having for many generations been denied life at home—have until lately been driven to seek those means of existence across the sea which their own fertile land should have amply provided for them.
5th. That the monarchs of the Brunswick family have been, except in a few cases of vicious interference, costly puppets, useful only to the governing aristocracy as a cloak to shield the real wrong doers from the just reproaches of the people.
6th. That the Brunswick family have shown themselves utterly incapable of initiating or encouraging wise legislation. That George I. was shut out practically from the government by his utter ignorance of the English language, his want of sympathy with British habits, and his frequent absences from this country. A volume of history, published by Messrs. Longmans in 1831, says that "George I. continued a German princeling on the British throne—surrounded still by his petty Hanoverian satellites, and so ignorant even of the language of his new subjects, that his English minister, who understood neither French nor German, could communicate with him only by an imperfect jargon of barbarous Latin." He "discarded his wife, and had two mistresses publicly installed in their Court rights and privileges." Earl Grey declares that "the highly beneficial practice of holding Cabinet Councils without the presence of the sovereign arose from George the First's not knowing English." Leslie describes George I. as altogether ignorant of our language, laws, customs and constitution. Madame de Maintenon writes of him as disgusted with his subjects. That George II. was utterly indifferent to English improvement, and was mostly away in Hanover. Lord Hervey's "Memoirs" portray him as caring for nothing but soldiers and women, and declare that his highest ambition was to combine the reputation of a great general with that of a successful libertine. That George III. was repeatedly insane, and that in his officially lucid moments his sanity was more dangerous to England than his madness. Buckle says of him that he was "despotic as well as superstitious.... 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." Lord Grenville, his Prime Minister, said of him: "He had perhaps the narrowest mind of any man I ever knew." That George IV. was a dissipated, drunken debauchee, bad husband, unfaithful lover, untrustworthy friend, unnatural father, corrupt regent, and worse king. Buckle speaks of "the incredible baseness of that ignoble voluptuary." That William IV. was obstinate, but fortunately fearful of losing his crown, gave way to progress with a bad grace when chicanery was no longer possible, and continued resistance became dangerous.
7th. That under the Brunswick family, the national expenditure has increased to a frightful extent, while our best possessions in America have been lost, and our home possession, Ireland, rendered chronic in its discontent by the terrible misgovernment under the four Georges.
And 8th. That the ever increasing burden of the national taxation has been shifted from the land on to the shoulders of the middle and lower classes, the landed aristocracy having, until very lately, enjoyed the practical, monopoly of tax-levying power.
On August 1st, 1714, George Lewis, Elector of Hanover, and great-grandson of James I., of England, succeeded to the throne; but being apparently rather doubtful as to the reception he would meet in this country, he delayed visiting his new dominions until the month of October. In April, 1714, there was so little disposition in favor of the newly-chosen dynasty, that the Earl of Oxford entreated George not to bring any of his family into this country without Queen Anne's express consent. It seems strange to read in the correspondence of Madame Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans, her hesitation "to rejoice at the accession of our Prince George, for she had no confidence in the English;" and her fears "that the inconstancy of the English will in the end produce some scheme which may be injurious to the French monarchy." She adds: "If the English were to be trusted, I should say that it is fortunate the Parliaments are in favor of George, but the more one reads the history of English revolutions, the more one is compelled to remark the eternal hatred which the people of that nation have had towards their kings, as well as their fickleness." To-day it is the English who charge the French with fickleness. Thackeray says of George I. that "he showed an uncommon prudence and coolness of behavior when he came into his kingdom, exhibiting no elation; reasonably doubtful whether he should not be turned out some day; looking upon himself only as a lodger, and making the most of his brief tenure of St. James's and Hampton Court, plundering, it is true, somewhat, and dividing amongst his German followers; but what could be expected of a sovereign who at home could sell his subjects at so many ducats per head, and make no scruple in so disposing of them?" At the accession of George I. the national debt of this country, exclusive of annuities, was about £36,000,000; after five Brunswicks have left us, it is £800,000,000 for Great Britain and Ireland, and much more, than £110,000,000 for India. The average annual national expenditure under the rule of George I. was £5,923,079; to-day it is more than £70,000,-000, of which more than £20,000,000 have been added in the last twenty years. During the reign of George I. land paid very nearly one-fourth the whole of the taxes; to-day it pays less than one-seventieth part; and yet, while its proportion of the burden is so much lighter, its exaction from labor in rent is ten times heavier.
George I. came to England without his wife, the Princess of Zelle. Years before, he had arrested her and placed her in close confinement in Ahlden Castle, on account of her intrigue with Philip, Count Konigsmark, whom some say George I. suspected of being the actual father of the Electoral Prince George, afterwards George II. To use the language of a writer patronized by George, Prince of Wales, in 1808, "The coldness between George I. and his son and successor, George II., may be said to have been almost coeval with the existence of the latter." Our King, George I., described by Thackeray as a "cold, selfish libertine," had Konigsmark murdered in the palace of Heranhausen; confined his wife, at twenty-eight years of age, in a dungeon, where she remained until she was sixty; and when George Augustus, Electoral Prince of Hanover, tried to get access to his mother, George Lewis, then Elector of Hanover, arrested Prince George also, and it is said, would have put him to death if the Emperor of Germany had not protected him as a Prince of the German Empire. During the reign of George II., Frederick, Prince of Wales, whom his father denounced as a "changeling," published an account of how George I. had turned Frederick's father out of the palace. These Guelphs have been a loving family. The Edinburgh Review declares that "the terms on which the eldest sons of this family have always lived with their fathers have been those of distrust, opposition, and hostility." Even after George Lewis had ascended the throne of England, his hatred to George Augustus was so bitter, that there was some proposition that James, Earl Berkeley and Lord High Admiral, should carry off the Prince to America and keep him there.
Thackeray says: "When George I. made his first visit to Hanover, his son was appointed regent during the Royal absence. But this honor was never again conferred on the Prince of Wales; he and his father fell out presently. On the occasion of the christening of his second son, a Royal row took place, and the Prince, shaking his fist in the Duke of Newcastle's face, called him a rogue, and provoked his august father. He and his wife were turned out of St. James's, and their princely children taken from them, by order of the Royal head of the family. Father and mother wept piteously at parting from their little ones. The young ones sent some cherries, with their love, to papa and mamma, the parents watered the fruit with their tears. They had no tears thirty-five years afterwards, when Prince Frederick died, their eldest son, their heir, their enemy."
A satirical ballad on the expulsion of Prince George from St. James's Palace, which was followed by the death of the newly-christened baby Prince, is droll enough to here repeat:—
The King then took his gray goose quill,
And dip't it o'er in gall;
And, by Master Vice Chamberlain,
He sent to him this scrawl:
"Take hence yourself, and eke your spouse,
Your maidens and your men;
Your trunks, and all your trumpery,
Except your chil-de-ren."
The Prince secured with nimble haste
The Artillery Commission;
And with him trudged full many a maid,
But not one politician.
Up leapt Lepel, and frisked away,
As though she ran on wheels;
Miss Meadows made a woful face,
Miss Howe took to her heels.
But Belenden I needs must praise,
Who, as down stairs she jumps,
Sang "O'er the hills and far away,"
Despising doleful dumps.
Then up the street they took their way,
And knockt up good Lord Grant-ham;
Higgledy-piggledy they lay,
And all went rantam scantam.
Now sire and son had played their part,
What could befall beside?
Why, the poor babe took this to heart,
Kickt up its heels, and died.
Mahon, despite all his desire to make out the best for the Whig revolution and its consequences, occasionally makes some pregnant admissions: "The jealousy which George I. entertained for his son was no new feeling. It had existed even at Hanover, and had since been inflamed by an insidious motion of the Tories that out of the Civil List £100,-000 should be allotted as a separate revenue for the Prince of Wales. This motion was overruled by the Ministerial party, and its rejection offended the Prince as much as its proposal had the King.... In fact it is remarkable.... that since that family has reigned, the heirs-apparent have always been on ill terms with the sovereign. There have been four Princes of Wales since the death of Anne, and all four have gone into bitter opposition." "That family," said Lord Carteret one day in full Council, "always has quarrelled, and always will quarrel, from generation to generation."
"Through the whole of the reign of George I., and through nearly half of the reign of George II.," says Lord Macaulay, "a Tory was regarded as the enemy of the reigning house, and was excluded from all the favors of the Crown. Though most of the country gentlemen were Tories, none but Whigs were appointed deans and bishops. In every County, opulent and well-descended Tory squires complained that their names were left out of the Commission of the Peace, while men of small estate and of mean birth, who were for toleration and excise, septennial parliaments and standing armies, presided at Quarter Sessions, and became deputy-lieutenants."
In attacking the Whigs, my object is certainly not to write in favor of the Tories, but some such work is needful while so many persons labor under the delusion that the Whigs have always been friends to liberty and progress.
Although George I. brought with him no wife to England, he was accompanied by at least two of his mistresses, and our peerage roll was enriched by the addition of Madame Kielmansegge as Countess of Darlington, and Mademoiselle Erangard Melosine de Schulenberg as Duchess of Kendal and Munster, Baroness of Glastonbury, and Countess of Feversham. These peeresses were received with high favor by the Whig aristocracy, although the Tories refused to countenance them, and "they were often hooted by the mob as they passed through the streets." The Edinburgh Review described them as "two big blowsy German women." Here I have no room to deal fairly with Charlotte Sophia, Baroness of Brentford and Countess of Darlington; her title is extinct, and I can write nothing of any good or useful act to revive her memory. Lord Chesterfield says of George I.: "No woman came amiss to him, if she were only very willing and very fat." John Heneage Jesse, in his "Memoirs of the Court of England"—speaking of the Duchess of Kendal, the Countess Platen (the co-partner in the murder of Konigsmark), afterwards Countess of Darlington, and many others less known to infamy—says that George I. "had the folly and wickedness to encumber himself with a seraglio of hideous German prostitutes." The Duchess of Kendal was for many years the chief mistress of George, and being tall and lean was caricatured as the Maypole or the Giraffe. She had a pension of £7,500 a year, the profits of the place of Master of the Horse, and other plunder. The Countess of Darlington's figure may be judged from the name of Elephant or Camel, popularly awarded to her. Horace Walpole says of her: "I remember as a boy being terrified at her enormous figure. The fierce black eyes, large and rolling, between two lofty-arched eyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed, and was not distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays. No wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress." She died 1724. Mahon says: "She was unwieldy in person, and rapacious in character."
Phillimore declares that "George I. brought with him from Hanover mistresses as rapacious, and satellites as ignoble, as those which drew down such deserved obloquy on Charles H., Bothman, Bernstoff, Robethon, and two Turks—Mustapha and Mahomet,—meddled more with public affairs, and were to the full as venal as Chiffin, Pepys and Smith." Mahon, who calls Robethon "a prying, impertinent, venomous creature," adds that "coming from a poor electorate, a flight of hungry Hanoverians, like so many famished vultures, fell with keen eyes and bended talons on the fruitful soil of England."
One of the earliest acts of the Whig aristocracy, in the reign of George I., was to pass a measure through Parliament, lengthening the existence of that very Parliament to seven years, and giving to the King the power to continue all subsequent Parliaments to a like period. The Triennial Parliaments were thus lengthened by a corrupt majority. For the committal of the Septennial Bill there was a majority of 72 votes, and it is alleged by the Westminster Review, "that about 82 members of the honorable house had either fingered Walpole's gold, or pocketed the bank-notes which, by the purest accident, were left under their plates.... In the ten years which preceded the Septennial Act, the sum expended in Secret Service money was £337,960. In the ten years which followed the passing of the Septennial Act, the sum expended for Secret Service was £1,453,400." The same writer says: "The friends and framers of the Triennial Bill were for the most part Tories, and its opponents for the most part Whigs. The framers and friends of the Bill for long Parliaments were all Whigs, and its enemies all Tories." When the measure came before the Lords, we find Baron Bernstoff, on the King's behalf, actually canvassing Peers' wives, with promises of places for their relatives, in order to induce them to get their husbands to vote for the Bill. Another of the early infringements of public liberty by the Whig supporters of George I., was the passing (1 George I., c. 5) the Riot Act, which had not existed from the accession of James I. to the death of Queen Anne. Sir John Hinde Cotton, a few years afterwards, described this Act, which is still the law of England, as "An Act by which a little dirty justice of the peace, the meanest and vilest tool a minister can use, had it in his power to put twenty or thirty of the best subjects of England to immediate death, without any trial or form, but that of reading a proclamation." In order to facilitate the King's desire to spend most of his time in Hanover, the third section of the Act of Settlement was repealed. Thackeray says: "Delightful as London city was, King George I. liked to be out of it as much as ever he could, and when there, passed all his time with his Germans. It was with them as with Blucher one hundred years afterwards, when the bold old Reiter looked down from St. Paul's and sighed out, 'Was fur plunder!' The German women plundered, the German secretaries plundered, the German cooks and intendants plundered; even Mustapha and Mahomet, the German negroes, had a share of the booty. Take what you can get, was the old monarch's maxim."
There was considerable discontent expressed in the early years of George's reign. Hallam says: "Much of this disaffection was owing to the cold reserve of George I., ignorant of the language, alien to the prejudices of his people, and continually absent in his electoral dominions, to which he seemed to sacrifice the nation's interest.... The letters in Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole, abundantly show the German nationality, the impolicy and neglect of his duties, the rapacity and petty selfishness of George I. The Whigs were much dissatisfied, but the fear of losing their places made them his slaves." In order to add the duchies of Bremen and Verden to Hanover, in 1716, the King, as Elector, made a treaty with Denmark against Sweden, which treaty proved the source of those Continental wars, and the attendant system of subsidies to European powers, which have, in the main, created our enormous National Debt. Bremen and Verden being actually purchased for George I. as the Elector of Hanover, with English money, Great Britain in addition was pledged by George I. to guarantee Sleswick to Denmark. Sweden and Denmark quarrelling—and George I. as Elector of Hanover having, without the consent of the English Parliament, declared war against Sweden—an English fleet was sent into the Baltic to take up a quarrel with which we had no concern. In addition we were involved in a quarrel with Russia, because that power had interfered to prevent Mecklenburg being added to George's Hanoverian estates. The chief mover in this matter was the notorious Baron Bernstoff, who held some village property in Mecklenburg. In all these complications, Hanover gained, England lost. If Hanover found troops, England paid for them, while the Electorate solely reaped the benefit. Every thoughtful writer admits that English interests were always betrayed to satisfy Hanoverian greed.
The King's fondness for Germany provoked some hostility, and amongst the various squibs issued, one in 1716, from the pen of Samuel Wesley, brother of John Wesley, is not without interest. It represents a conversation between George and the Duchess of Kendal:—
"As soon as the wind it came fairly about, That kept the King in and his enemies out, He determined no longer confinement to bear, And thus to the Duchess his mind did declare:
"Quoth he, 'My dear Kenny, I've been tired along while, With living obscure in this poor little isle, And now Spain and Pretender have no more mines to spring, I'm resolved to go home and live like a King."
The Duchess approves of this, describes and laughs at all the persons nominated for the Council of Regency, and concludes:—
"On the whole, I'll be hanged if all over the realm There are thirteen such fools to be put to the helm; So for this time be easy, nor have jealous thought, They ha'n't sense to sell you, nor are worth being bought."
"'Tis for that (quoth the King, in very bad French), I chose them for my regents, and you for my wench, And neither, I'm sure, will my trust e'er betray, For the devil won't take you if I turn you away."
It was this same Duchess of Kendal who, as the King's mistress, was publicly accused of having received enormous sums of money from the South Sea Company for herself and the King, in order to shield from justice the principal persons connected with those terrible South Sea frauds, by which, in the year 1720, so many families were reduced to misery.
In 1717, Mr. Shippen, a member of the House of Commons, was committed to the Tower, for saying in his place in the House, that it was the "infelicity of his Majesty's reign that he is unacquainted with our language and constitution." Lord Macaulay tells us how Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl Granville, rose into favor. The King could speak no English; Carteret was the only one of the Ministry who could speak German. "All the communication that Walpole had with his master was in very bad Latin." The influence Carteret wielded over the King did not extend to every member of the Royal Family. The Princess of Wales afterwards described the Lords Carteret and Bolingbroke as two she had "long known to be two as worthless men of parts as any in the country, and who I have not only been often told are two of the greatest liars and knaves in any country, but whom my own observation and experience have found so."
Under George I. our standing army was nearly doubled by the Whig Ministry, and this when peace would rather have justified a reduction than an increase. The payments to Hanoverian troops commenced under this king, a payment which William Pitt afterwards earned the enmity of George II. by very sharply denouncing, and which payment was but a step in the system of continental subsidies which have helped to swell our national debt to its present enormous dimensions.
In this reign the enclosure of waste lands was practically commenced, sixteen enclosure Acts being passed, and 17,-660 acres of land enclosed. This example, once furnished, was followed in the next reign with increasing rapidity, 226 enclosure Acts being passed in the reign of George II., and 318,778 acres of land enclosed. As Mr. Fawcett states, up to 1845, more than 7,000,000 acres of land, over which the public possessed invaluable rights, have been gradually absorbed, and individuals wielding legislative influence have been enriched at the expense of the public and the poor.
Within six years from his accession, the King was about £600,000 in debt, and this sum was the first of a long list of debts discharged by the nation for these Brunswicks. When our ministers to-day talk of obligations on the part of the people to endow each additional member of the Royal Family, the memory of these shameful extravagances should have some effect. George I. had a civil list of £700,000 a year; he received £300,000 from the Royal Exchange Assurance Company, and £300,000 from the London Assurance Companies, and had one million voted to him in 1726 towards payment of his debts.
When the "South Sea Bill" was promoted in 1720, wholesale bribery was resorted to. Transfers of stock were proved to have been made to persons high in office. Two members of the Whig Ministry, Lord Sunderland and Mr. Aislabie, were so implicated that they had to resign their offices, and the last-named, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, was ignominiously expelled the House of Commons. Royalty itself, or at least, the King's sultanas, and several of his German household, shared the spoil. £30,000 were traced to the King's mistresses, and a select committee of the House denounced the whole business as "a train of the deepest villany and fraud with which hell ever contrived to ruin a nation." Near the close of the reign, Lord Macclesfied, Lord Chancellor and favorite and tool of the King, was impeached for extortion and abuse of trust in his office, and, being convicted, was sentenced to pay a fine of £30,000. In 1716, Mademoiselle Schulenberg, then Duchess of Munster, received £5,000 as a bribe for procuring the title of Viscount for Sir Henry St. John. In 1724, the same mistress, bribed by Lord Bolingbroke, successfully used her influence to pass an act through Parliament restoring him his forfeited estates. Mr. Chetwynd, says my Lady Cowper, in order to secure his position in the Board of Trade, paid to another of George's mistresses £500 down, agreed to allow her £200 a year as long as he held the place, and gave her also the fine, brilliant ear-rings she wore.
In 1724 there appeared in Dublin, the first of the famous "Drapier Letters," written by Jonathan Swift against Wood's coinage patent. A patent had been granted to a man named Wood for coining half-pence in Ireland. This grant was made under the influence of the Duchess of Kendal, the mistress of the King, and on the stipulation that she should receive a large share of the profits. These "Drapier Letters" were prosecuted by the Government, but Swift followed them with others; the grand juries refused to find true bills, and ultimately the patent was cancelled. Wood, or the Duchess, got as compensation a grant of a pension of £3,000 a year for eight years.
George died at Osnabruck, on his journey Hanover-wards, in June, 1727, having made a will by which he disposed of his money in some fashion displeasing to his son George II.; and as the Edinburgh Review tells us, the latter "evaded the old king's directions, and got his money by burning his will." In this, George II. only followed his royal father's example. When Sophia Dorothea died, she left a will bequeathing her property in a fashion displeasing to Greorge I., who, without scruple, destroyed the testament and appropriated the estate. George I. had also previously burned the will of his father-in-law, the Duke of Zell. At this time the destruction of a will was a capital felony in England.
In concluding this rough sketch of the reign of George I., it must not be forgotten that his accession meant the triumph of the Protestant caste in Ireland, and that under his rule much was done to render permanent the utter hatred manifested by the Irish people to their English conquerors, who had always preferred the policy of extermination to that of conciliation. Things were so sad in Ireland at the end of this reign, that Dean Swift, in bitter mockery, "wrote and published his 'Modest Proposal' for relieving the miseries of the people, by cooking and eating the children of the poor;" "a piece of the fiercest sarcasm," says Mitchell, "steeped in all the concentrated bitterness of his soul." Poor Ireland, she had, at any rate, nothing to endear to her the memory of George I.
When George I. died there was so little interest or affection exhibited by his son and successor, that Sir Robert Walpole, on announcing to George II. that by the demise of his father he had succeeded to regal honors, was saluted with a volley of oaths, and "Dat is one big lie." No pretence even was made of sorrow. Greorge Augustus had hated George Lewis during life, and at the first council, when the will of the late King was produced by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the new monarch simply took it up and walked out of the room with the document, which was never seen again. Thackeray, who pictures George II. as "a dull, little man, of low tastes," says that he "made away with his father's will under the astonished nose of the Archbishop of Canterbury." A duplicate of this will having been deposited with the Duke of Brunswick, a large sum of money was paid to that Prince nominally as a subsidy by the English Government for the maintenance of troops, but really as a bribe for surrendering the document. A legacy having been left by this will to Lady Walsingham, threats were held out in 1733 by her then husband, Lord Chesterfield, and £20,000 was paid in compromise.
The eldest son of George II. was Frederick, born in 1706, and who up to 1728 resided permanently in Hanover. Lord Hervey tells us that the King hated his son Frederick, and that the Queen Caroline, his mother, abhorred him. To Lord Hervey the Queen says: "My dear Lord, I will give it you under my hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born is the greatest ass, and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille and the greatest beast in the whole world; and that I most heartily wish he were out of it." This is a tolerably strong description of the father of George HI. from the lips of his own mother. Along with this description of Frederick by the Queen, take Thackeray's character of George II.'s worthy father of worthy son: "Here was one who had neither dignity, learning, morals, nor wit—who tainted a great society by a bad example; who in youth, manhood, old age, was gross, low, and sensual."
In 1705, when only Electoral Prince of Hanover, George had married Caroline, daughter of the Margrave of Anspach, a woman of more than average ability. Thackeray describes Caroline in high terms of praise, but Lord Chesterfield says that "she valued herself upon her skill in simulation and dissimulation.... Cunning and perfidy were the means she made use of in business." The Prince of Anspach is alleged by the Whimperer to have raised some difficulties as to the marriage, on account of George I. being disposed to deny the legitimacy of his son, and it is further pretended that George I. had actually to make distinct acknowledgment of his son to King William III. before the arrangements for the Act of Settlement were consented to by that King. It is quite clear from the diary of Lady Cowper, that the old King's feeling towards George II. was always one of the most bitter hatred.
The influence exercised by Queen Caroline over George II. was purely political; and Lord Hervey declares that "wherever the interest of Germany and the honor of the Empire were concerned, her thoughts and reasonings were as German and Imperial as if England had been out of the question."
A strange story is told of Sir Robert Walpole and Caroline. Sir Robert, when intriguing for office under George I., with Townshend, Devonshire, and others, objected to their plans being communicated to the Prince of Wales, saying,
"The fat b———h, his wife, would betray the secret and spoil the project." This courtly speech being made known by some kind friend to the Princess Caroline, considerable hostility was naturally exhibited. Sir Robert Walpole, who held the doctrine that every person was purchasable, the only question being one of price, managed to purchase peace with Caroline when Queen. When the ministry suspended, "Walpole not fairly out, Compton not fairly in," Sir Robert assured the Queen that he would secure her an annuity of £100,000 in the event of the King's death, Sir Spencer Compton, who was then looked to as likely to be in power, having only offered £60,000. The Queen sent back word, "Tell Sir Robert the fat b———h has forgiven him," and thenceforth they were political allies until the Queen's death in 1737.
The domestic relations of George II. were marvellous. We pass with little notice Lady Suffolk, lady-in-waiting to the Queen and mistress to the King, who was sold by her husband for a pension of £12,000 a year, paid by the British tax-payers, and who was coarsely insulted by both their Majesties. It is needless to dwell on the confidential communications, in which "that strutting little sultan George II.," as Thackeray calls him, solicited favors from his wife for his mistress, the Countess of Walmoden; but to use the words of the cultured Edinburgh Review, the Queen's "actual intercession to secure for the King the favors of the Duchess of Modena precludes the idea that these sentiments were as revolting to the royal Philaminte as they would nowadays be to a scavenger's daughter. Nor was the Queen the only lady of the Royal Family who talked openly on these matters. When Lady Suffolk was waning at court, the Princess Royal could find nothing better to say than this: 'I wish with all my heart that he (i. e., the King) would take somebody else, that Mamma might be relieved from the ennui of seeing him forever in her room.'"
Lady Cowper in her diary tells us that George II., when Prince of Wales, intrigued with Lady Walpole, not only with the knowledge of the Princess Caroline, but also with connivance of the Prime Minister himself. Lord Hervey adds that Caroline used to sneer at Sir Robert Walpole, asking how the poor man—"avec ce gros corps, ces jambes enflees et ce villain ventre"—could possibly believe that any woman could love him for himself. And that Sir Robert retaliated, when Caroline afterwards complained to him of the King's cross temper, by telling her very coolly that "it was impossible it could be otherwise, since the King had tasted better things," and ended by advising her to bring pretty Lady Tankerville en rapport with the King.
In 1727 an Act was passed, directed against workmen in the woollen trade, rendering combination for the purpose of raising wages unlawful. Some years afterwards, this Act was extended to other trades, and the whole tendency of the Septennial Parliament legislation manifests a most unfortunate desire on the part of the Legislature to coerce and keep in subjection the artisan classes.
In February, 1728, the celebrated "Beggar's Opera," by Gay, was put on the stage at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, and, being supposed to contain some satirical reflections on court-corruption, provoked much displeasure on the part of Royalty. The Duchess of Queensborough, who patronized Gay, being forbidden to attend court, wrote thus: "The Duchess of Queensborough is surprised and well pleased that the King has given her so agreeable a command as forbidding her the court.... She hopes that, by so unprecedented an order as this, the King will see as few as she wishes at his court, particularly such as dare speak or think truth."
In 1729, £115,000 was voted by Parliament for the payment of the King's debts. This vote seems to have been obtained under false pretences, to benefit the King, whose "cardinal passion," says Phillimore, "was avarice."
The Craftsman during the first decade of the reign, fiercely assailed the Whig ministry for "a wasteful expenditure of money in foreign subsidies and bribes;" and in his place in the House of Commons William Pitt, "the great Commoner," in the strongest language attacked the system of foreign bribery by which home corruption was supplemented.
The rapidly increasing expenditure needed every day increased taxation, and a caricature published in 1732 marks the public feeling. A monster (Excise), in the form of a many-headed dragon, is drawing the minister (Sir Robert Walpole) in his coach, and pouring into his lap, in the shape of gold, what it has eaten up in the forms of mutton, hams, cups, glasses, mugs, pipes, etc.
"See this dragon Excise
Has ten thousand eyes,
And five thousand mouths to devour us;
A sting and sharp claws,
With wide gaping jaws,
And a belly as big as a store-house."
Beginning with wines and liquors,—
"Grant these, and the glutton
Will roar out for mutton,
Your beef, bread, and bacon to boot;
Your goose, pig, and pullet,
He'll thrust down his gullet,
Whilst the laborer munches a root."
In 1730 Mr. Sandys introduced a Bill to disable pensioners from sitting in Parliament. George II. vigorously opposed this measure, which was defeated. In the King's private notes to Lord Townshend, Mr. Sandys' proposed act is termed a "villanous measure," which should be "torn to pieces in every particular."
It was in 1732 that the Earl of Aylesford, a Tory peer, declared that standing armies in time of peace were "against the very words of the Petition of Rights," and that "all the confusions and disorders which have been brought upon this kingdom for many years, have been all brought upon it by means of standing armies." In 1733 Earl Strafford affirmed that "a standing army" was "always inconsistent with the liberties of the people;" and urged that "where the people have any regard for their liberties, they ought never to keep up a greater number of regular forces than are absolutely necessary for the security of the Government." Sir John Barnard declared that the army ought not to be used on political questions. He said: "In a free country, if a tumult happens from a just cause of complaint, the people ought to be satisfied; their grievances ought to be redressed; they ought not surely to be immediately knocked on the head because they may happen to complain in an irregular way." Mr. Pulteney urged that a standing army is "a body of men distinct from the body of the people; they are governed by different laws; blind obedience and an entire submission to the orders of their commanding officer is their only principle. The nations around us are already enslaved by those very means; by means of their standing armies they have every one lost their liberties; it is indeed impossible that the liberties of the people can be preserved in a country where a numerous standing army is kept up."
In 1735 sixteen Scottish peers were elected to sit in the House of Lords, and in a petition to Parliament it was alleged, that the whole of this list of sixteen peers was elected by bribery and corruption. The petition positively asserted "that the list of sixteen peers for Scotland had been formed by persons high in trust under the crown, previous to the election itself, The peers were solicited to vote for this list without the liberty of making any alteration, and endeavors were used to engage peers to vote for this list by promise of pensions and offices, civil and military, to themselves and their relations, and by actual promise and offers of sums of money. Several had received money, and releases of debts owing to the crown were granted to those who voted for this list. To render this transaction more infamous, a battalion of troops occupied the Abbey-Court of Edinburgh, and continued there during the whole time of the election, while there was a considerable body lying within a mile of the city ready to advance on the signal." This petition, notwithstanding the gravity of its allegations, was quietly suppressed.
Lady Sundon, Woman of the Bedchamber and Mistress of the Robes to Queen Caroline, received from Lord Pom-fret jewelry of £1,400 value, for obtaining him the appointment of Master of the Horse.
With a Civil List of £800,000 a year, George II. was continually in debt, but an obedient Ministry and a corrupt Parliament never hesitated to discharge his Majesty's obligations out of the pockets of the unrepresented people. Lord Carteret, in 1733, speaking of a Bill before the House for granting the King half a million out of the Sinking Fund, said: "This Fund, my Lords, has been clandestinely defrauded of several small sums at different times, which indeed together amount to a pretty large sum; but by this Bill it is to be openly and avowedly plundered of £500,000 at once."
On the 27th of April, 1736, Prince Frederick was married to the Princess Augusta, of Saxe Gotha, whom King George II. afterwards described as "cette diablesse Madame la Princesse." In August of the same year, a sharp open quarrel took place between the Prince of Wales and his parents, which, after some resumptions of pretended friendliness, ended, on September 10, 1737, in the former being ordered by the King to quit St. James's palace, where he was residing. On the 22d of the preceding February, Pulteney had moved for an allowance of £100,000 a year to Prince Frederick. George II. refused to consent, on the ground that the responsibility to provide for the Prince of Wales rested with himself, and that "it would be highly indecorous to interfere between father and son." On the Prince of Wales taking up his residence at Norfolk House, "the King issued an order that no persons who paid their court to the Prince and Princess should be admitted to his presence." An official intimation of this was given to foreign ambassadors.
On the 20th of November, 1737, Queen Caroline died, never having spoken to her son since the quarrel. "She was," says Walpole, "implacable in hatred even to her dying moments. She absolutely refused to pardon, or even to see, her son." The death-bed scene is thus spoken of by Thackeray: "There never was such a ghastly farce;" and as sketched by Lord Hervey, it is a monstrous mixture of religion, disgusting comedy, and brutishness. "We are shocked in the very chamber of death by the intrusion of egotism, vanity, buffoonery, and inhumanity. The King is at one moment dissolved in a mawkish tenderness, at another sunk into brutal apathy. He is at one moment all tears for the loss of one who united the softness and amiability of one sex to the courage and firmness of the other; at another all fury because the object of his regrets cannot swallow, or cannot change her posture, or cannot animate the glassy fixedness of her eyes; at one moment he begins an elaborate panegyric on her virtues, then breaks off into an enumeration of his own, by which he implies that her heart has been enthralled, and her intelligence awed. He then breaks off into a stupid story about a storm, for which his daughter laughs at him, and then while he is weeping over his consort's death-bed, she advises him to marry again; and we are—what the Queen was not—startled by the strange reply, 'Non, faurai des maitresses,' with the faintly moaned out rejoinder, 'Cela, n'empeche pas.'" So does the Edinburgh reviewer, following Lord Hervey, paint the dying scene of the Queen of our second George.
After the death of the Queen, the influence of the King's mistresses became supreme, and Sir R. Walpole, who, in losing Queen Caroline had lost his greatest hold over George, paid court to Lady Walmoden, in order to maintain his weakened influence. In the private letters of the Pelham family, who succeeded to power soon after Walpole's fall, we find frequent mention of the Countess of Yarmouth as a power to be gained, a person to stand well with. "I read," says Thackeray, "that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious King's favorite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for £5,000. (He betted her £5,000 that he would not be made a bishop, and he lost, and paid her.) Was he the only prelate of his time led up by such hands for consecration? As I peep into George H.'s St. James's, I see crowds of cassocks rustling up the back-stairs of the ladies of the Court; stealthy clergy slipping purses into their laps; that godless old Bang yawning under his canopy in his Chapel Royal, as the chaplain before him is discoursing."
On the 23d of May, 1738, George William Frederick, son of Frederick, and afterwards George III., was born.
In 1739 Lady Walmoden, who had up to this year remained in Hanover, was brought to England, and formally installed at the English Court. In this year we bound ourselves by treaty to pay 250,000 dollars per annum for three years to the Danish Government. "The secret motive of this treaty," says Mahon, "as of too many others, was not English, but Hanoverian; and regarded the possession of a petty castle and lordship called Steinhorst. This castle had been bought from Holstein by George H. as Elector of Hanover, but the Danes claiming the sovereignty, a skirmish ensued.... The well-timed treaty of subsidy calmed their resentment, and obtained the cession of their claim." Many urged, as in truth it was, that Steinhorst was bought with British money, and Bolingbroke expressed his fear "that we shall throw the small remainder of our wealth where we have thrown so much already, into the German Gulf, which cries Give! Give! and is never satisfied."
On the 19th of May, 1739, in accordance with the wish of the King, war was declared with Spain, nominally on the question of the right of search, but when peace was declared at Aix-la-Chapelle, this subject was never mentioned. According to Dr. Colquhoun, this war cost the country, £46,418,680.
George II. was, despite the provisions of the Act of Settlement, continually in Hanover. From 1729 to 1731, again in 1735 and 1736, and eight times between 1740 and 1755. In 1745 he wished to go, but was not allowed.
On the 2d of October, 1741 (the Pelham family having managed to acquire power by dint, as Lord Macaulay puts it, of more than suspected treason to their leader and colleague), the Duke of Newcastle, then Prime Minister, wrote his brother, Henry Pelham, as follows: "I must freely own to you, that I think the King's unjustifiable partiality for Hanover, to which he makes all other views and considerations subservient, has manifested itself so much that no man can continue in the active part of the administration with honor." The Duke goes on to describe the King's policy as "both dishonorable and fatal;" and Henry Pelham, on the 8th of October, writes him back that "a partiality to Hanover is general, is what all men of business have found great obstructions from, ever since this family have been upon the throne." Yet these are amongst the most prominent of the public defenders of the House of Brunswick, and a family which reaped great place and profit from the connection.
Of the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Macaulay says: "No man was so unmercifully satirized. But in truth he was himself a satire ready made. All that the art of the satirist does for other men, nature had done for him. Whatever was absurd about him stood out with grotesque prominence from the rest of the character. He was a living, moving, talking caricature. His gait was a shuffling trot, his utterance a rapid stutter; he was always in a hurry; he was never in time; he abounded in fulsome caresses and in hysterical tears. His oratory resembled that of Justice Shallow. It was nonsense, effervescent with animal spirits and impertinence. Of his ignorance many anecdotes remain, some well authenticated, some probably invented at coffee-houses, but all exquisitely characteristic. 'Oh, yes, yes, to be sure! Annapolis must be defended; troops must be sent to Annapolis. Pray, where is Annapolis?' 'Cape Breton an island! Wonderful! show it me in the map. So it is, sure enough. My dear sir, you always bring us good news. I must go and tell the King that Cape Breton is an island.' And this man was, during near thirty years, Secretary of State, and during near ten years First Lord of the Treasury! His large fortune, his strong hereditary connection, his great Parliamentary interest, will not alone explain this extraordinary fact. His success is a signal instance of what may be effected by a man who devotes his whole heart and soul without reserve to one object. He was eaten up by ambition. His love of influence and authority resembled the avarice of the old usurer in the 'Fortunes of Nigel.' It was so intense a passion that it supplied the place of talents, that it inspired even fatuity with cunning. 'Have no money dealings with my father,' says Martha to Lord Glenvarloch, 'for, dotard as he is, he will make an ass of you.' It was as dangerous to have any political connection with Newcastle as to buy and sell with old Trapbois. He was greedy after power with a greediness all his own. He was jealous of all colleagues, and even of his own brother. Under the disguise of levity, he was false beyond all example of political falsehood. All the able men of his time ridiculed him as a dunce, a driveller, a child who never knew his own mind for an hour together; and he overreached them all round."
In 1742, under the opposition of Pulteney, the Tories called upon Paxton, the Solicitor to the Treasury, and Scrope, the Secretary to the Treasury, to account for the specific sum of £1,147,211, which it was proved they had received from the minister. No account was ever furnished. George Vaughan, a confidant of Sir Robert Walpole, was examined before the Commons as to a practice charged upon that minister, of obliging the possessor of a place or office to pay a certain sum out of the profits of it to some person or persons recommended by the minister. Vaughan, who does not appear to have ventured any direct denial, managed to avoid giving a categorical reply, and to get excused from answering on the ground that he might criminate himself. Agitation was commenced for the revival of Triennial Parliaments, for the renewal of the clause of the Act of Settlement, by which pensioners and placemen were excluded from the House of Commons, and for the abolition of standing armies in time of peace. The Whigs, however, successfully crushed out the whole of this agitation. Strong language was heard in the House of Commons, where Sir James Dashwood said that "it was no wonder that the people were then unwilling to support the Government, when a weak, narrow-minded prince occupied the throne."
A very amusing squib appeared in 1742, when Sir Robert Walpole's power was giving way, partly under the bold attacks of the Tories, led by Cotton and Shippen; partly before the malcontent Whigs under the guidance of Carteret and Pulteney; partly before the rising power of the young England party led by William Pitt; and somewhat from the jealousy, if not treachery, of his colleague, the Duke of Newcastle. The squib pictures the King's embarrassment and anger at being forced to dismiss Walpole, and to Carteret, whom he has charged to form a ministry:—
"Quoth the King:
'My good lord, perhaps you've been told
That I used to abuse you a little of old,
But now bring whom you will, and eke turn away,
Let but me and my money at Walmoden stay."
Lord Carteret, explaining to the King whom he shall keep of the old ministry, includes the Duke of Newcastle:—
"Though Newcastle's false, as he's silly I know,
By betraying old Robin to me long ago,
As well as all those who employed him before,
Yet I leave him in place, but I leave him no power.
"For granting his heart is as black as his hat,
With no more truth in this than there's sense beneath that,
Yet, as he's a coward, he'll shake when I frown;
You called him a rascal, I'll use him like one.
"For your foreign affairs, howe'er they turn out,
At least I'll take care you shall make a great rout;
Then cock your great hat, strut, bounce, and look bluff,
For, though kick'd and cuff'd here, you shall there kick and cuff
"That Walpole did nothing they all used to say,
So I'll do enough, but I'll make the dogs pay;
Great-fleets I'll provide, and great armies engage,
Whate'er debts we make, or whate'er wars we wage!
"With cordials like these the monarch's new guest
Reviv'd his sunk spirits, and gladdened his breast;
Till in rapture he cried, 'My dear Lord, you shall do
Whatever you will—give me troops to review.'"
In 1743, King George II. actually tried to engage this country, by a private agreement, to pay £300,000 a year to the Queen of Hungary, "as long as war should continue, or the necessity of her affairs should require." #The King, being in Hanover, sent over the treaty to England, with a warrant directing the Lords Justices to "ratify and confirm it," which, however, they refused to do. On hearing that the Lord Chancellor refused to sanction the arrangement, King George H. threatened, through Earl Granvillie, to affix the Great Seal with his own hand. Ultimately the £300,000 per annum was agreed to be paid so long as the war lasted, but this sum was in more than one instance exceeded.
Although George II. had induced the country to vote such large sums to Maria Therese, the Empress-Queen, he nevertheless abandoned her in a most cowardly manner when he thought his Hanoverian dominions in danger, and actually treated with France without the knowledge or consent of his ministry. A rhyming squib, in which the King is termed the "Balancing Captain," from which we present the following extracts, will serve to show the feeling widely manifested in England at that time:—
"I'll tell you a story as strange as 'tis new,
Which all who're concerned will allow to be true,
Of a Balancing Captain, well known hereabouts,
Returned home (God save him) a mere king of clouts.
"This Captain he takes in a gold ballasted ship,
Each summer to terra damnosa a trip,
For which he begs, borrows, scrapes all he can get,
And runs his poor owners most vilely in debt.
"The last time he set out for this blessed place,
He met them, and told them a most piteous case,
Of a sister of his, who, though bred up at court,
Was ready to perish for want of support.
"This Hung'ry sister he then did pretend,
Would be to his owners a notable friend,
If they would at that critical juncture supply her;
They did—but, alas! all the fat's in the fire!"
The ballad then suggests that the King, having got all the money possible, made a peace with the enemies of the Queen of Hungary, described in the ballad as the sister:—
"He then turns his sister adrift, and declares
Her most mortal foes were her father's right heirs:
'G—d z—ds!' cries the world, 'such a step was ne'er taken!'
'Oh, oh!' says Moll Bluff, 'I have saved my own bacon.
"'Let France damn the Germans, and undamn the Dutch,
And Spain on old England pish ever so much;
Let Russia bang Sweden, or Sweden bang that,
I care not, by Robert, one kick of my hat!
"'Or should my chous'd owners begin to look sour,
I'll trust to mate Bob to exert his old power,
Regit animos dictis, or numis with ease
So, spite of your growling, I'll act as I please!'"
The British Nation, described as the owners, are cautioned to look into the accounts of their Captain, who is bringing them to insolvency:—
"This secret, however, must out on the day
When he meets his poor owners to ask for his pay;
And I fear, when they come to adjust the account,
A zero for balance will prove their amount."
The final result of all these subsidy votes was to increase our national debt, up to the signing of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, to £76,000,000; while the seven years' war, which came later, brought the debt to £133,000,000, not including in this the capitalized value of the terminable annuities.
On November 22d, 1743, a caricature was published, which had a wide sale, and which represented the King as a fat Hanoverian white horse riding to death a nearly starved British lion.
In 1744, £200,000 was voted, which King George and Lord Carteret, who was called by William Pitt, his "Hanoverian troop minister," had agreed to give the King of Sardinia. £40,000 was also voted for a payment made by the King to the Duke of Arenberg. This payment was denounced by Mr. Lyttelton as a dangerous misapplication of public money.
The votes for foreign subsidies alone, in 1744, were £691,426, while the Hanoverian soldiers cost us £393,773. The King actually tried in addition, in the month of August, to get a further subsidy for his friend, the Elector of Saxony, and another for the King of Poland, and this when Englishmen and Irishmen were lacking bread. Nor was even a pretence made in some instances of earning the money. £150,000 was paid this year to keep Prince Charles in Alsace, and the moment Austria got the money, Prince Charles was withdrawn, and Henry Pelham, writing to the Duke of Newcastle, says, "The same will be the case with every sum of money we advance. The allies will take it, and then act as suits their convenience and security." In the four years from 1744 to 1747, both included, we paid £4,342,683 for foreign troops and subsidies, not including the Dutch and Hessians, whom we hired to put down the rebellion of 1745. In the case of the whole of this war, in which we subsidized all our allies except the Dutch, it is clear that the direct and sole blame rests upon the King, who cared nothing for English interests in the matter. When firmly remonstrated with by Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, his reply was what the Duke of Newcastle describes as "almost sullen silence."
For the rebellion of 1745—which came so near being successful, and which would have thoroughly succeeded had the Pretender's son possessed any sort of ability as a leader—there is little room to spare here. The attempt to suppress it in its early stages is thus described in a Jacobite ballad:—
"Horse, foot, and dragoons, from lost Flanders they call,
With Hessians and Danes, and the devil and all;
And hunters and rangers led by Oglethorpe;
And the Church, at the bum of the Bishop of York.
And pray, who so fit to lead forth this parade,
As the babe of Tangier, my old grandmother Wade?
Whose cunning's so quick, but whose motion's so slow,
That the rebels marched on, while he stuck in the snow."
The hideously disgusting cruelties and horrible excesses committed by the infamous Duke of Cumberland, and the Hessians and Hanoverians under his command, in suppressing the rebellion after the battle of Culloden, are, alas! too well known. Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Session, and a warm supporter of the Brunswicks, remonstrating with the Duke as to the latter's disregard of the laws of the country, his Royal Highness of Cumberland replied with an oath: "The laws of my country, my lord; I'll make a brigade give laws." Scotland has many reasons for loving the House of Brunswick. Lord Waldegrave, who strove hard to whitewash the Duke of Cumberland, says that "Frederick Prince of Wales gave too much credit to the most malignant and groundless accusations, by showing favor to every man who aspersed his brother's character."
In 1747, £456,733 was voted by Parliament for the payment of the King's debts.
In 1748, considerable difficulty arose in consequence of the King's intrigues to obtain, at the expense of England, the Bishopric of Osnaburg as a princely establishment for his favorite son, the Duke of Cumberland, that pious prince, much esteemed in Scotland as "the butcher." The most open hostility subsisted between the Duke of Cumberland and Prince Frederick, and pamphleteering attacks on the former, for his brutality and excesses, were supposed to be encouraged by the Leicester House party.
Amongst the curious scandals of 1749, it is stated that the King—being present at a masked ball, at which Elizabeth Chudleigh, afterwards Duchess of Kingston, figured as "La Belle Sauvage" in a close-fitting dress of flesh-colored silk, requested permission to place his hand on Miss Chudleigh's breast. The latter replied that she would put the King's hand on a still softer place, and immediately raised it to his own royal forehead.
On the 20th March, 1751, Frederick, Prince of Wales, died. The King, who received the news while playing cards with his mistress, Lady Yarmouth, and who had not spoken to his son for years, merely said, "Freddy is dead." On this subject Thackeray preserves for us the following epitaph:—
"Here lies Fred,
Who was alive, and is dead.
Had it been his father,
I had much rather.
Had it been his brother,
Still better than another.
Had it been his sister,
No one would have missed her.
Had it been the whole generation,
Still better for the nation.
But since 'tis only Fred,
Who was alive, and is dead,
There's no more to be said."
In 1755 there was the second war, estimated to have cost £111,271,996. In this George II. pursued exactly the opposite course of policy to that taken by him in the previous one. The war during the years following 1739 was for the humiliation of the King of Prussia; the policy in the last war was to prevent his humiliation. Mr. Baxter estimates the debt (exclusive of annuities) at £133,000,000; Dr. Colquhoun, adding the value of the annuities, makes it £146,682,843 at the conclusion of this war.
Towards the close of the reign of George II., who died on October 25th, 1760, his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, by an exhibition of great strategy, combined with much discretionary valor, succeeded in making peace on terms which ensured the repose of himself and his Hanoverian forces during the remainder of the war. At home his Royal Highness was much attacked, some venturing to describe his personal conduct as cowardly, and his generalship as contemptible. It is a sufficient refutation of such a calumny to say that the Duke of Cumberland was as brave a soldier and as able a general as our present Commander-in-Chief, his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge.
Lord Waldegrave, who wrote in favor of George II., admits that the King "is accused by his ministers of being hasty and passionate when any measure is proposed which; he does not approve of." That "too great attention to money seems to be his capital failing." And that "his political courage seems somewhat problematical." Philli-more says: "In public life he was altogether indifferent to the welfare of England, except as it affected his Electorate's or his own. Always purchasing concubines, he was always governed by his wife. In private life he was a gross lover, an unreasonable master, a coarsely unfaithful husband, an unnatural parent, and a selfish man."
No more fitting conclusion can be found to this chapter than the following pregnant words from the pen of Lord Macaulay: "At the close of the reign of George II. the feeling of aversion with which the House of Brunswick had long been regarded by half the nation had died away; but no feeling of affection to that house had yet sprung up. There was little, indeed, in the old King's character to inspire esteem or tenderness. He was not our countryman. He never set foot on our soil till he was more than thirty years old. His speech belayed his foreign origin and breeding. His love for his native land, though the most amiable part of his character, was not likely to endear him to his British subjects. He was never so happy as when he could exchange St. James's for Heranhausen. Year after year our fleets were employed to convoy him to the Continent, and the interests of his kingdom were as nothing to him when compared with the interests of his Electorate. As to the rest, he had neither the qualities which make dulness respectable, nor the qualities which make libertinism attractive. He had been a bad son and a worse father, an unfaithful husband and an ungraceful lover. Not one magnanimous or humane action is recorded of him; but many instances of meanness, and of a harshness which, but for the strong constitutional restraints under which he was placed, might have made the misery of his people."
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:—
"Son of a————
I could say more."
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:—
"Because the North Briton inflamed the whole nation,
To flames they commit it to show detestation;
But throughout old England how joy would have spread,
Had the real North Briton been burnt in its stead!"
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:—
Year.
Taxation.
Loans.
1775
£10,138,061
1776
10,266,405
£2,000,000
1777.
10,604,013
6,500,000
1778
10,732,405
6,000,000
1779
11,192,141
7,000,000
1780
12,265,214
12,000,000
1781
12,454,936
12,000,000
1782
12,593,297
13,500,000
1783
11,962,718
12,000,000
1784
12,905,519
12,879,341
1785
14,871,520
10,990,651
Total
£129,975,229
£93,869,992
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:—
Taxes
£129,975,229
Loans
93,869,992
Advances by the Bank of England
110,000
Advances by the East India Company
3,200,000
Increase in the Unfunded Debt
5,170,273
Total
232,325,494
Deduct expense of a peace establishment
for eleven years, as it stood in 1774
113,142,403
Net cost of the American war
£119,183,091
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":—
"I'll sing you a song of a diamond so fine,
That soon in the crown of the monarch will shine;
Of its size and its value the whole country rings,
By Hastings bestowed on the best of all Kings.
Derry down, &c.
"From India this jewel was lately brought o'er,
Though sunk in the sea, it was found on the shore,
And just in the nick to St. James's it got,
Convey'd in a bag by the brave Major Scott
Derry down, &c
"Lord Sydney stepp'd forth, when the tidings were known—
It's his office to carry such news to the throne;—
Though quite out of breath, to the closet he ran,
And stammer'd with joy ere his tale he began.
Derry down, &c.
"'Here's a jewel, my liege, there's none such in the land;
Major Scott, with three bows, put it into my hand:
And he swore, when he gave it, the wise ones were bit,
For it never was shown to Dundas or to Pitt.'
Derry down, &c.
"'For Dundas,' cried our sovereign, 'unpolished and rough,
Give him a Scotch pebble, it's more than enough.
And jewels to Pitt, Hastings justly refuses,
For he has already more gifts than he uses.
Derry down, &c.
"'But run, Jenky, run!' adds the King in delight,
'Bring the Queen and Princesses here for a sight;
They never would pardon the negligence shown,
If we kept from their knowledge so glorious a stone.
Derry down, &c.
"'But guard the door, Jenky, no credit we'll win,
If the Prince in a frolic should chance to step in:
The boy to such secrets of State we'll ne'er call,
Let him wait till he gets our crown, income, and all.
Derry down, &c.
"In the Princesses run, and surprised cry, 'O la!
'Tis big as the egg of a pigeon, papa!'—
'And a pigeon of plumage worth plucking is he,'
Replies our good monarch, 'who sent it to me.'
Derry down, &c.
"Madame Schwellenberg peep'd through the door at a chink,
And tipp'd on the diamond a sly German wink;
As much as to say, 'Can we ever be cruel
To him who has sent us so glorious a jewel?'
Derry down, &c.
"Now God save the Queen! while the people I teach,
How the King may grow rich while the Commons impeach;
Then let nabobs go plunder, and rob as they will,
And throw in their diamonds as grist to his mill.
Derry down, &c."
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:—
"Folks say it was lucky the stone missed the head,
When lately at Caesar 'twas thrown;
I think very different from thousands indeed,—
'Twas a lucky escape for the stone."
The demonstration was, if anything, more fierce on the King's return, and he had some difficulty in reaching St. James's Palace without injury; for the mob threw stones at the state carriage and damaged it considerably. After remaining a short time at St. James's, he proceeded in his private coach to Buckingham House, but the carriage was stopped in the Park by the populace, who pressed round it, shouting, "Bread, bread! Peace, peace!" until the King was rescued from this unpleasant situation by a strong body of the Guards.
Treason and sedition Acts were hurried through Parliament to repress the cries of the hungry for bread, whilst additional taxes were imposed to make the poor poorer.
That the terrible French war—of which it is impossible to give any account in the limits of this essay, a war which cost Great Britain at least £1,000,000,000 in hard cash, without reckoning the hundreds of thousands of killed, wounded, and pauperized, and which Buckle calls "the most hateful, the most unjust, and the most atrocious war England has ever waged against any country"—directly resulted from our government under the Brunswick family is a point on which it is impossible for any one who has examined the facts to have a serious doubt. Sir Archibald Alison tells us that, early in 1791, "The King of England took a vivid interest in the misfortunes of the Royal Family of France, promising, as Elector of Hanover, to concur in any measure which might be deemed necessary to extricate them from their embarrassments; and he sent Lord Elgin to Leopold, who was then travelling in Italy, to concert measures for the common object." It was as Elector of Hanover also that his grandfather, George IT., had sacrificed English honor and welfare to the personal interest and family connections of these wretched Brunswicks.
It is certain too, that, after years of terrible war, on one of the occasions of negotiation for peace, hindrances arose because our Government insisted on describing George III, in the preliminaries, as "King of France." The French naturally said, first, your King George never has been King of any part of France at any time; and next, we, having just declared France a Republic, cannot in a solemn treaty recognize the continued existence of a claim to Monarchy over us.
The following table, which we insert at this stage to save the need for further reference, shows how the labor of the British nation was burdened for generations to come, by the insane affection of the House of Brunswick for the House of Bourbon:—
Years.
Taxes.
1793
£17,656,418
1794
17,170,400
1795
17,308,411
1796
17,858,454
1797
18,737,760
1798
20,654,650
1799
80,202,915
1800
85,229,968
1801
33,896,464
1802
85,415,296
1803
87,240,213
1804
87,677,063
1805
45,859,442
1806
49,659,281
1807
53,304,254
1808
58,390,255
1809
61,538,207
1810
63,405,294
1811
66,681,366
29,244,711
1812
64,763,870
40,743,031
1818
63,160,845
54,780,324
1814
66,925,835
63,645,930
1815
69,684,192
70,888,402
Total
£981,929,853
£768,858,934
After making some deductions on account of the operations of the loyalty loan, and the transfer of annuities, the total debt contracted from 1793 to 1815 amounts to £762,537,445. If to this sum be added the increase in the unfunded debt during that period, and the additional sums raised by taxes in consequence of hostilities, we shall have the total expenditure, owing to the French war, as follows:—
Debt contracted from 1793 to 1815 £762,537,445 Increase in the Unfunded Debt 50,194,060 War Taxes 614,488,459 Total 1,427,219,964 Deduct "sum paid to the Commissioners for reduction of the National Debt" 173,309,383 Total cost of the French war £1,253,910,581
Lord Fife, in the House of Lords, said that "in this horrid war had he first witnessed the blood and treasure of the nation expended in the extravagant folly of secret expeditions, which had invariably proved either abortive or unsuccessful. Grievous and heavy taxes had been laid on the people, and wasted in expensive embassies, and in subsidizing proud, treacherous, and useless foreign princes."
In 1795 King George and his advisers tried by statute to put a stop forever in this country to all political or religious discussion. No meeting was to be held, except on five days' duly advertised notice, to be signed by householders; and if for lectures or debates, on special license by a magistrate. Power was given to any magistrate to put an end in his discretion ta any meeting, and to use military force in the event of twelve persons remaining one hour after notice. If a man lent books, newspapers, or pamphlets without license, he might be fined twenty pounds for every offence. If he permitted lectures or debates on any subject whatever, he might be fined one hundred pounds a day. And yet people dare to tell us that we owe our liberties to these Brunswicks!
On the 1st of June, 1795, Gillray, in a caricature entitled "John Bull Ground Down," had represented Pitt grinding John Bull into money, which was flowing out in an immense stream beneath the mill. The Prince of Wales is drawing off a large portion, to pay the debts incurred by his extravagance; while Dundas, Burke, and Loughborough, as the representatives of ministerial pensioners, are scrambling for the rest. King George encourages Pitt to grind without mercy. Another caricature by Gillray, published on the 4th of June, represents Pitt as Death on the White Horse (the horse of Hanover), riding over a drove of pigs, the representatives of what Burke had termed the "swinish multitude."
On the 7th of January, 1796, the Princess Charlotte of Wales was born, and on the 30th of April, George, Prince of Wales, wrote to the Princess Caroline, stating that he did not intend to live with her any more. The Prince had some time previously sent by Lord Cholmondeley a verbal message to the same effect, which, however, the Princess had refused to accept. The mistress reigning over the Prince of Wales at this time was Lady Jersey.
No impeachment of the House of Brunswick would be even tolerably supported which did not contain some reference to the terrible misgovernment of Ireland under the rule of this obstinate and vicious family; and yet these few pages afford but little space in which to show how beneficent the authority of King George III. has proved to our Irish brethren.
During the war, when there were no troops in Ireland, and when, under Flood and Grattan, the volunteers were in arms, some concessions had been made to the Irish people. A few obnoxious laws had been repealed, and promises had been held out of some relaxation of the fearfully oppressive laws against the Catholics. From the correspondence of Earl Temple, it is clear that in 1782 not only was the King against any further concession whatever, but that his Majesty and Lord Shelburne actually manoeuvred to render the steps already taken as fruitless as possible. We find W. W. Grenville admitting, on the 15th December, 1782, "that the [Irish] people are really miserable and oppressed to a degree I had not at all conceived." The Government acted dishonestly to Ireland. The consequence was, continued misery and disaffection; and I assert, without fear of contradiction, that this state of things is directly traceable to the King's wilfulness on Irish affairs. As an illustration of the character of the Government, it is worth notice that Lord Temple, when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, wrote to his brother in cipher, because his letters were opened in the Post Office by Lord Shelburne. The Parliament of Ireland was in great part owned by absentee peers, and each change of Lord-Lieutenancy was marked by heavy addition to the Pension List. The continuance of the Catholic disabilities rendered permanent quiet impossible. Three-fourths of the nation were legally and socially almost outlawed. The national discontent was excited by the arbitrary conduct of the authorities, and hopes of successful revolution were encouraged, after 1789, by the progress of the Revolution in France.
About 1790, the "United Irishmen" first began to be heard of. Their object was "a complete reform in the legislature, founded on the principles of civil, political and religious liberty." The clubs soon became secret associations, and were naturally soon betrayed. Prosecutions for sedition in 1793 were soon followed by military repression.
Lord Moira, in the House of Lords in 1797, in a powerful speech, which has remained without any refutation, described the Government of Ireland as "the most absurd, as well as the most disgusting, tyranny that any nation ever groaned under." He said: "If such a tyranny be persevered in, the consequence must inevitably be the deepest and most universal discontent, and even hatred to the English name. I have seen in that country a marked distinction made between the English and Irish. I have seen troops that have been sent full of this prejudice—that every inhabitant in that kingdom is a rebel to the British. Government. I have seen the most wanton insults practised upon men of all ranks and conditions. I have seen the most grievous oppressions exercised, in consequence of a presumption that the person who was the unfortunate object of such oppression was in hostility to the Government; and yet that has been done in a part of the country as quiet and as free from disturbance as the city of London." His lordship then observed that, "from education and early habits, the curfew was ever considered by Britons as a badge of slavery and oppression. It was then practised in Ireland with brutal rigor. He had known instances where the master of a house had in vain pleaded to be allowed the use of a candle, to enable the mother to administer relief to her daughter struggling in convulsive fits. In former times, it had been the custom for Englishmen to hold the infamous proceedings of the Inquisition in detestation. One of the greatest horrors with which it was attended was that the person, ignorant of the crime laid to his charge, or of his accuser, was torn from his family, immured in a prison, and kept in the most cruel uncertainty as to the period of his confinement, or the fate which awaited him. To this injustice, abhorred by Protestants in the practice of the Inquisition, were the people of Ireland exposed. All confidence, all security, were taken away. When a man was taken up on suspicion, he was put to the torture; nay, if he were merely accused of concealing the guilt of another. The rack, indeed, was not at hand; but the punishment of picqucting was in practice, which had been for some years abolished as too inhuman, even in the dragoon service. He had known a man, in order to extort a confession of a supposed crime, or of that of some of his neighbors, picqueted till he actually fainted—picqueted a second time till he fainted again, and as soon as he came to himself, picqueted a third time till he once more fainted; and all upon mere suspicion! Nor was this the only species of torture. Men had been taken and hung up till they were half dead, and then threatened with a repetition of the cruel treatment, unless they made confession of the imputed guilt. These were not particular acts of cruelty, exercised by men abusing the power committed to them, but they formed part of our system. They were notorious, and no person could say who would be the next victim of this oppression and cruelty, which he saw others endure. This, however, was not all: their lordships, no doubt, would recollect the famous proclamation issued by a military commander in Ireland, requiring the people to give up their arms. It never was denied that this proclamation was illegal, though defended on some supposed necessity; but it was not surprising that some reluctance had been shown to comply with it by men who conceived the Constitution gave them a right to keep arms in their houses for their own defence; and they could not but feel indignation in being called upon to give up their right, In the execution of the order the greatest cruelties had been committed. If any one was suspected to have concealed weapons of defence, his house, his furniture, and all his property were burnt; but this was not all. If it were supposed that any district had not surrendered all the arms which it contained, a party was sent out to collect the number at which it was rated; and, in execution of this order, thirty houses were sometimes burnt down in a single night. Officers took upon themselves to decide discretionally the quantity of arms; and upon their opinions the fatal consequences followed. These facts were well-known in Ireland, but they could not be made public through the channel of the newspapers, for fear of that summary mode of punishment which had been practised towards the Northern Star, when a party of troops in open day, and in a town where the General's head-quarters were, went and destroyed all the offices and property belonging to that paper. It was thus authenticated accounts were suppressed."
Can any one wonder that the ineffectual attempt at revolution of 1798 followed such a state of things? And when, in the London Chronicle and Cambridge Intelligencer, and other journals by no means favorable to Ireland or its people, we read the horrid stories of women ravished, men tortured, and farms pillaged, all in the name of law and order, and this by King George's soldiers, not more than seventy years ago, can we feel astonishment that the Wexford peasants have grown up to hate the Saxon oppressor? And this we owe to a family of kings who used their pretended Protestantism as a cloak for the ill-treatment of our Catholic brethren in Ireland. In impeaching the Brunswicks, we remind the people of proclamations officially issued in the King's name, threatening to burn and devastate whole parishes, and we allege that the disaffection in Ireland at the present moment is the natural fruit of the utter regardlessness, on the part of these Guelphs, for human liberty, or happiness, or life. The grossest excesses were perpetrated in Ireland by King George III.'s foreign auxiliaries. The troops from Hesse Cassel, from Hesse Darmstadt, and from Hanover, earned an unenviable notoriety by their cruelty, rapacity, and licentiousness. And these we owe entirely to the Brunswicks.
A letter from the War Office, dated April 11th, 1798, shows how foreigners were specially selected for the regiments sent over to Ireland. Sir Ralph Abercromby publicly rebuked the King's army, of which he was the Commander-in-Chief, for their disgraceful irregularities and licentiousness. Even Lieutenant-General Lake admits that "the determination of the troops to destroy every one they think a rebel is beyond description, and needs correction."
In 1801, it was announced that King George III. was suffering from severe cold and sore throat, and could not therefore go out in public. His disease, however, was more mental than bodily. Her present Majesty has also suffered from severe cold and sore throat, but no allegation is ventured that her mental condition is such as to unfit her for her Royal duties.
On March 29, 1802, the sum of £990,053 was voted for payment of the King's debts.
In 1803, the Prince of Wales being again in debt, a further vote was passed of £60,000 a year for three years and a half. Endeavors were made to increase this grant, but, marvellous to relate, the House of Commons actually acted as if it had some slight interest in the welfare of the people, and rejected a motion of Mr. Calcraft for a further vote of money to enable his Royal Highness to maintain his state and dignity. The real effect of the vote actually carried, was to provide for £800,649 of the Prince's debts, including the vote of 1794.
On July 21,1763, £60,000 cash, and a pension of £16,000 a year, were voted to the Prince of Orange.
In 1804, King George was very mad, but Mr. Addington explained to Parliament, that there was nothing in his Majesty's indisposition to prevent his discharging the Royal functions. Mr. Gladstone also recently explained to Parliament, that there would be no delay in the prorogation of Parliament in consequence of her gracious Majesty's indisposition and absence.
In 1805, the House of Commons directed the criminal prosecution of Lord Melville, for corrupt conduct and embezzlement of public money, as first Lord of the Admiralty. For this, however, impeachment was substituted, and, on his trial before the House of Peers, he was acquitted, as out of 136 peers, only 59 said that they thought him guilty, although he had admitted the misapplication of £10,000.
On the 29th of March, 1806, a warrant was signed by King George III., directed to Lord Chancellor Erskine, to Lord Grenville, the Prime Minister, to Lord Ellenborough, then Lord Chief Justice of England, and to Earl Spencer, commanding them to inquire into the conduct of Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales. Before these Lords, Charlotte Lady Douglas swore that she had visited the Princess, who confessed to having committed adultery, saying "that she got a bedfellow whenever she could, that nothing was more wholesome." Lady Douglas further swore to the Princess's pregnancy, and evidence was given to prove that she had been delivered of a male child. The whole of this evidence was found to be perjury, and Lady Douglas was recommended for prosecution. The only person to be benefited was George Prince of Wales, who desired to be divorced from his wife, and it is alleged that he suborned these witnesses to commit perjury against her. At this time the Prince of Wales himself had just added Lady Hertfort to the almost interminable muster-roll of his loves, and was mixed up in a still more strange and disgraceful transaction, in which he used his personal influence to canvass Peers—sitting as the highest law court in the realm—in order to induce them to vote the guardianship of Miss Seymour, a niece of Lady Hertfort, to Mrs. Fitz-herbert. Spencer Percival, who acted for the Princess of Wales, being about to publish the whole of the proceedings of the Royal Commissioners, with the evidence and their verdict, his book was quietly suppressed, and he received a reward—a post in the Cabinet. It is said that George III. directed the report of the Commissioners to be destroyed, and every trace of the whole affair to be buried in oblivion.
For some years rumors had been current of corruption in the administration of military promotion under the Duke of York, just as for some time past rumors have been current of abuse of patronage under his Royal Highness the present Duke of Cambridge, A Major Hogan, in 1808, published a declaration that he lost his promotion because he had refused to give the sum of £600 to the Duke of York's "Venus."
On the 27th January, 1809, Colonel Wardle—who is said to have been prompted to the course by his Royal Highness the Duke of Kent—rose in his place in the House of Commons, and formally charged his Royal Highness Frederick Duke of York with corruption in the administration of army patronage.
It is difficult to determine how far credit should be given to the statements of Mrs. Clarke, who positively alleges that she was bribed to betray the Duke of York by his brother, the Duke of Kent, the father of her present Majesty. It is quite certain that Major Dodd, the private secretary of the Duke of Kent, was most active in collecting and marshalling the evidence in support of the various charges made in the Commons against the Duke of York. The Duke of Kent, however, after the whole business was over, formally and officially denied that he was directly or indirectly mixed up in the business. It is clear that much bitter feeling had for some time existed between the Dukes of York and Kent. In a pamphlet published about that time, we find the following remarkable passages relating to the Duke of Kent's removal from his military command at Gibraltar:—"It is, however, certain that the creatures whom we could name, and who are most in his [the Duke of York's] confidence, were, to a man, instructed and industriously employed in traducing the character and well-merited fame of the Duke of Kent, by misrepresenting his conduct with all the baseness of well-trained sycophants. Moreover, we need not hesitate in saying that this efficient Commander-in-Chief, contrary to the real sentiments of his Majesty, made use of his truly dangerous and undue influence with the confidential servants of the Crown to got his brother recalled from the Government of Gibraltar, under a disingenuous pretext, and at a risk of promoting sedition in the army."
In another pamphlet, dated 1808, apparently printed on behalf of the Duke of Kent, we find it suggested that the Duke of York had used Sir Hew Dalrymple as a spy on his brother the Duke of Kent at Gibraltar. Whether the Duke of York slandered the Duke of Kent, and whether the Queen's father revenged himself by getting up the case for Colonel Wardle, others must decide. The following extracts from this gentleman's address to the House of Commons are sufficient to put the material points before our readers:—
"In the year 1803, his Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief took a handsome house, set up a full retinue of servants and horses, and also a lady of the name of Clarke. Captain Tonyn, of the 48th Regiment, was introduced by Captain Sandon, of the Royal Wagon Train, to this Mrs. Clarke, and it was agreed that, upon his being promoted to the majority of the 31st Regiment, he should pay her £500. The £500 lodged with Mr. Donovan by Captain Sandon, was paid by him to Mrs. Clarke. The difference between a company and a majority is £1,100; this lady received only £500, while the half-pay fund lost the whole sum, for the purpose of putting £500 into the pocket of Mrs. Clarke. This £500 was paid by Mrs. Clarke to Mr. Perkins, a silversmith, in part payment for a service of plate; that the Commander-in-Chief made good the remainder, and that the goods were sent to his house in Gloucester Place. From this I infer, first, that Mrs. Clarke possesses the power of military promotion; secondly, that she received a pecuniary consideration for such promotion; and thirdly, that the Commander-in-Chief was a partaker in the benefit arising from such transactions. In this case, there are no less than five different persons as witnesses, viz., Major Tonyn, Mrs. Clarke, Mr. Donovan, Captain Sandon, and the executor of Mr. Perkins, the silversmith.
"The next instance is of Lieutenant Colebrook, of the 56th Regiment. It was agreed that Mrs. Clarke should receive £200 upon Lieutenant Colebrook's name appearing in the Gazette, for promotion. At that moment, this lady was anxious to go on an excursion into the country, and she stated to his Royal Highness that she had an opportunity of getting £200 to defray the expenses of it, without applying to him. This was stated upon a Thursday, and on the Saturday following, this officer's name appeared in the Gazette, and he was accordingly promoted; upon which Mr. Tuck waited on the lady and paid her the money. To this transaction the witnesses are Lieutenant Colebrook, Mr. Tuck, and Mrs. Clarke."
After instancing further cases, Colonel Wardle stated that:—
"At this very hour there is a public office in the city where commissions are still offered at the reduced prices which Mrs. Clarke chooses to exact for them. The agents there have declared to me that they are now employed by the present favorite, Mrs. Carey. They have not only declared this as relative to military commissions, but they have carried it much farther; for, in addition to commissions in the army, places of all descriptions, both in Church and State, are transacted at their office; and these agents do not hesitate to give it under their own hands, that they are employed by many of the first officers in his Majesty's service."
On the examination of witnesses, and general inquiry, which lasted seven weeks, the evidence was overwhelming; but the Duke of York, having written a letter, pledged his honor as a Prince that he was innocent, was acquitted, although at least one hundred and twelve members of Parliament voted for a verdict of condemnation. In the course of the debate Lord Temple said that "he found the Duke of York deeply criminal in allowing this woman to interfere in his official duties. The evidence brought forward by accident furnished convincing proofs of this crime. It was evident in French's levy. It was evident in the case of Dr. O'Meara, this minister of purity, this mirror of virtue, who, professing a call from God, could so far debase himself, so far abuse his sacred vocation, as to solicit a recommendation from such a person as Mrs. Clarke, by which, with an eye to a bishopric, he obtained an opportunity of preaching before the King. What could be said in justification of his Royal Highness for allowing this hypocrite to come down to Weymouth under a patronage, unbecoming his duty, rank, and situation?"
Mr. Tierney—in reply to a taunt of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that Colonel Wardle had been tutored by "cooler heads"—said: "He would state that the Duke of York had got his letter drawn up by weaker heads; he would, indeed, add something worse, if it were not unparliamentary to express it. The Duke of York was, he was persuaded, too manly to subscribe that letter, if he were aware of the base, unworthy, and mean purposes to which it was to be applied. It was easy to conceive that his Royal Highness would have been prompt to declare his innocence upon a vital point; but why declare it upon the 'honor of a Prince,' for the thing had no meaning?"
Mr. Lyttleton declared that "if it were in the power of the House to send down to posterity the character of the Duke of York unsullied—if their proceedings did not extend beyond their journals, he should be almost inclined to concur in the vote of acquittal, even in opposition to his sense of duty. But though the House should acquit his Royal Highness, the proofs would still remain, and the public opinion would be guided by them, and not by the decision of the House. It was in the power of the House to save its own character, but not that of the Commander-in-Chief."
It is alleged that the Queen herself by no means stood with clean hands; that in connection with Lady Jersey and a Doctor Randolph, her Majesty realized an enormous sum by the sale of cadetships for the East Indies.
On the 31st May, 1810, London was startled by the narrative of a terrible tragedy. His Royal Highness Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, afterwards King of Hanover, and who, while King of Hanover, drew £24,000 a year from the pockets of English taxpayers, was wounded in his own room in the dead of night, by some man whom he did not see, although the room was lighted by a lamp, and although his Royal Highness saw "a letter" which lay on a night table, and which letter was "covered with blood." The wounds are said to have been sword wounds inflicted with an intent to assassinate, by Joseph Sellis, a valet of the Duke, who is also said to have immediately afterwards committed suicide by cutting his own throat. General Sir B. Stephenson, who saw the body of Sellis, but who was not examined at the inquest, swore that "the head was nearly severed from the body." Sellis's cravat had been cut through and taken off his neck. Sir Everard Home and Sir Henry Halford were the physicians present at St. James's Palace the day of this tragedy, and two surgeons were present at the inquest, but no medical or surgical evidence was taken as to whether or not the death of Sellis was the result of suicide or murder; but a cheesemonger was called to prove that twelve years before he had heard Sellis say, "Damn the King and the Royal Family;" and a maid servant was called to prove that fourteen years before Sellis had said, "Damn the Almighty." Despite this conclusive evidence, many horrible rumors were current, which, at the time, were left uncontradicted; but on the 17th April, 1832, his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland made an affidavit in which he swore that he had not murdered Sellis himself, and that "in case the said person named Sellis did not die by his own hands," then that he, the Duke, "was not any way, in any manner, privy or accessory to his death." His Royal Highness also swore that "he never did commit, nor had any intention of committing, the detestable crime," which it had pretended Sellis had discovered the Duke in the act of committing. This of course entirely clears the Queen's uncle from all suspicion. Daniel O'Connell, indeed, described him as "the mighty great liar;" but with the general character for truthfulness of the family, it would be in the highest degree improper to suggest even the semblance of a doubt. It was proved upon the inquest that Sellis was a sober, quiet man, in the habit of daily shaving the Duke, and that he had never exhibited any suicidal or homicidal tendencies. It therefore appears that he tried to wound or kill his Royal Highness without any motive, and under circumstances in which he knew discovery was inevitable, and that he then killed himself with a razor, cutting his head almost off his body, severing it to the bone. When Matthew Henry Graslin first saw the body, he "told them all that Sellis had been murdered," and although he was called on the inquest he does not say one word as to the condition of Sellis's body, or as to whether or not he believes it to have been a suicide. Of all the persons who saw the body of Sellis, and they appear to be many, only one, a sergeant in the Coldstreams, gave the slightest evidence as to the state in which the body was found, and no description whatever was given, on the inquest, of the nature of the fearful wound which had nearly severed Sellis's head from his body; nor, although it was afterwards proved by sworn evidence that Sellis's cravat "was cut through the whole of the folds, and the inside fold was tinged with blood," was any evidence offered as to this on the inquest, although it shows that Sellis must have first tried to cut his throat through his cravat and that having partially but ineffectively cut his throat, he then took off his cravat and gave himself with tremendous force the gash which caused his death. It is said that the razor with which Sellis killed himself was found two feet from the bed, and on the left-hand side; but although it was stated that Sellis was a left-handed man, no evidence was offered of this, and on the contrary, the bloody hand marks, said to have been made by Sellis on the doors, were all on the right hand. It is a great nuisance when people you are mixed up with commit suicide. Undoubtedly, Sellis must have killed himself. The journals tell us how Lord Graves killed himself long years afterward. The Duke of Cumberland and Lady Graves, the widow, rode out together very shortly after the suicide.
In the Rev. Erskine Neale's Life of the Duke of Kent it is stated that a surgeon of note, who saw Sellis after his death, declared that there were several wounds on the back of the neck which it was physically impossible Sellis could have self-inflicted. In a lecture to his pupils the surgeon repeated this in strong language, declaring that "no man can behead himself."
The madness of George III. having become too violent and too continual to permit it to be any longer hidden from the people, the Prince of Wales was, in 1811, declared Regent, with limited powers, and £70,000 a year additional was voted for the Regent's expenses, and a further £10,000 a year also granted to the Queen as custodian of her husband. The grant to the Queen was the more outrageous, as her great wealth and miserly conduct were well known. When the Regent was first appointed, he authorized the Chancellor of the Exchequer to declare officially to the House of Commons, that he would not add to the burdens of the nation; and yet, in 1812, the allowance voted was made retrospective, so as to include every hour of his office.
In the discussion in Parliament on the proposed Regency, it appeared that the people had been for a considerable period utterly deceived on the subject of the King's illness; and that, although his Majesty had been for some time blind, deaf, and delirious, the Ministry, representing the King to be competent, had dared to carry on the Government whilst Greorge III. was in every sense incapacitated. It is worthy of notice that the Right Honorable Benjamin Disraeli, the leader of the great Conservative party in this country, publicly declared on September 26th, 1871, that her present Majesty, Queen Victoria, was both "physically and morally" incapable of performing her regal functions. One advantage of having the telegraph wires in the hands of Government is shown by the fact that all the telegraphic summaries omitted the most momentous words of Mr. Disraeli's speech. During the debate in the session of 1811, it was shown that when the King was mad in the month of March, 1804, he had on the 4th been represented by Lord Eldon as if he had given his assent to a bill granting certain lands to the Duke of York, and on the 9th as if he had signed a commission.
Earl Grey stated that it was notorious that on two occasions the Great Seal had been employed as if by his Majesty's command, while he was insane. The noble earl also declared that, in 1801, the King was mad for some weeks, and yet during that time councils were held, members sworn to it, and acts done requiring the King's sanction. Sir Francis Burdett said, "that to have a person at the head of affairs who had long been incapable of signing his name to a document without some one to guide his hand; a person long incapable of receiving petitions, of even holding a levee, or discharging the most ordinary functions of his office, and now afflicted with this mental malady, was a most mischievous example to the people of this country, while it had a tendency to expose the Government to the contempt of foreign nations."
One of the earliest acts of the Prince Regent was to reappoint his brother, the Duke of York, to the office of Commander-in-Chief. A motion was proposed by Lord Milton, in the House of Commons, declaring this appointment to be "highly improper and indecorous." The Ministry were, however, sufficiently powerful to negative this resolution by a large majority. Though His Royal Highness had resigned his high office when assailed with charges of the grossest corruption, he was permitted to resume the command of the army without even a protest, save from a minority of the House of Commons, and from a few of the unrepresented masses. The chief mistress of the Prince Regent at this time was the Marchioness of Hertford; and the Courier, then the ministerial journal, had the cool impudence to speak of her as 'Britain's guardian angel,' because her influence had been used to hinder the carrying any measure for the relief of the Irish Catholics. Amongst the early measures under the Regency, was the issue in Ireland of a circular letter addressed to the Sheriffs and Lord Lieutenants of the counties, forbidding the meetings of Catholics, and threatening all Catholic committees with arrest and imprisonment. This, however, was so grossly illegal, that it had shortly after to be abandoned, a Protestant jury having refused to convict the first prisoners brought to trial. It is curious to read the arguments against Catholic Emancipation pleaded in the Courier, one being that during the whole of his reign, George III. "is known to have felt the most conscientious and irrevocable objections" to any such measure of justice to his unfortunate Irish subjects.
In 1812 we had much poverty in England; and though this was not dealt with by Parliament, £100,000 was granted to Lord Wellington, and £200,000 voted for Russian sufferers by the French war. We had a few months previously voted £100,000 for the relief of the Portuguese against the French. On a message from the Prince Regent, annuities of £9,000 each were also granted to the four Princesses, exclusive of £4,000 from the Civil List. The message from the Prince Regent for the relief of the "Russian sufferers" was brought down on the 17th of December; and it is a curious fact that while Lord Castlereagh and Lord Liverpool were eulogizing the Russians for their "heroic patriotism" in burning Moscow, the Russians themselves were declaring in the St. Petersburgk Gazette that the deed was actually committed by "the impious French," on whose heads the Gazette invoked the vengeance of God.
In 1812, the Prince Regent gave a sinecure office, that of Paymaster of Widows' Pensions, to his "confidential servant," Colonel Macmahon. The nature of the sort of private services which had been for some years performed by this gallant colonel for this virtuous Prince may be better guessed than described. Mr. Henry Brougham declared the appointment to be an insult to Parliament. It was vigorously attacked indoors and out of doors, and, in obedience to the voice of popular opinion, the Commons voted the immediate abolition of the office. To recompense Colonel Macmahon for the loss of his place, he was immediately appointed Keeper of the Privy Purse and Private Secretary to the Prince Regent. This appointment was also severely criticised; and although the Government were sufficiently powerful to defeat the attack in the Commons, they were yet compelled, by the strong protest made by the public against such an improper appointment, to nominally transfer the salary to the Regent's privy purse. The transfer was not real, as, the Civil List being always in debt, the nation had in fact ultimately to pay the money.
In 1813, foreign subsidies to the amount of £11,000,000, and 100,000 stand of arms, were voted by the English Parliament. Out of the above, Portugal received £2,000,000, Sicily, £400,000, Spain, £2,000,000, Sweden, £1,000,000, Russia and Prussia, £3,000,000, Austria, £1,000,000, besides stores sent to Germany to the amount of £2,000,000 more.
This year his Royal Highness the Prince Regent went to Ascot races, where he was publicly dunned by a Mr. Vaux-hall Clarke for a betting debt incurred some years before, and left unpaid.
Great excitement was created in and out of Parliament by the complaint of the Princess of Wales that she was not allowed to see her daughter, the Princess Charlotte. The Prince Regent formally declared, through the Speaker of the House of Commons, that he would not meet, on any occasion, public or private, the Princess of Wales (whom it was urged that "he had been forced to marry "); while the Princess of Wales wrote a formal letter to Parliament complaining that her character had been "traduced by suborned perjury." Princess Charlotte refused to be presented at Court except by her mother, who was not allowed to go there. In the House of Commons, Mr. Whitbread charged the Lords Commissioners with unduly straining the evidence by leading questions; and Lord Ellenborough, in his place in the House of Peers, declared that the accusation was "as false as hell." Ultimately, it was admitted that the grave charges against the Princess of Wales were groundless, and £35,000 a year was voted to her, she agreeing to travel abroad. Mr. Bathurst, a sinecurist pensioner, pleading on behalf of the Prince Regent that the House of Commons ought not to interfere, urged that it was no unusual thing to have dissensions in the Royal Family, and that they had been frequent in the reigns of George I. and George II. Mr. Stuart Wortley, in the course of a severe speech in reply to Lord Castlereagh, declared that "we had a Royal Family which took no warning from what was said or thought about them, and seemed to be the only persons in the country who were wholly regardless of their own welfare and respectability."
The Princess Charlotte of Wales was at this time residing in Warwick House, and some curiosity was aroused by the dismissal, by order of the Prince Regent, of all her servants. This was immediately followed by the flight of the Princess from the custody of her father to the residence of her mother, the Princess of Wales. Persuaded to return to the Prince Regent by her mother, Lord Eldon, and others, she appears to have been really detained as a sort of prisoner, for we find the Duke of Sussex soon after complaining in the House of Lords that he was unable to obtain access to the Princess, and asking by whose authority she was kept in durance. Happy family, these Bruns-wicks!
In 1814, £100,000 further was devoted to the Duke of Wellington, together with an annuity of £10,000 a year, to be at any time commuted for £300,000. The income of the Duke of Wellington, from places, pensions, and grants, amounted to an enormous sum. At present we pay his heir £4,000 a year for having inherited his father's riches.
During the year 1814, £118,857 was voted for payment of the Civil List debts.
The Emperor of Russia and King of Prussia, after the restoration of Louis XVIII., visited the Prince Regent in this country, when the following squib was published:—
"There be princes three,
Two of them come from a far countrie,
And for valor and prudence their names shall be
Enrolled in the annals of glorie.
The third is said at a bottle to be
More than a match for his whole armie,
And fonder of fur caps and fripperie
Than any recorded in storie.
Those, from the North great warriors be,
And warriors have in their companie,
But he of the South must stare to see
Himself in such goodly companie.
For to say what his usual consorts be,
Would make but a pitiful storie."
On the 12th of August, 1814, the Princess of Wales quitted England, and it is alleged that, on the evening prior to her departure, the Prince Regent, having as usual drank much wine, proposed a toast, "To the Princess of Wales' damnation, and may she never return to England." Whether this story, which Dr. Doran repeats, be true or false, it is certain that the Prince Regent hated his wife with a thoroughly merciless hatred. When the death of Napoleon was known in England, a gentleman, thinking to gain favor with George IV. said, "Your Majesty's bitterest enemy is dead." The "first gentleman of Europe" thought only of his wife, and replied, "Is she, by God!"
The highly esteemed and virtuous Duke of Cumberland was married at Berlin to the Princess of Salms, a widow who had been twice married, once betrothed, and once divorced. The lady was niece to the Queen of England, who refused to receive her publicly or privately. On this refusal being known, a letter was published in the newspapers, written and signed by the Queen herself, to her brother the Duke of Mecklenburgh-Strelitz, the father of the bride, in which letter the Queen gave assurances of a kind reception to the bride on her arrival in England. The Queen's friends replied that the Queen's letter was only written to be shown to the German Courts on the condition that the Duchess should not come to England. Curious notions of truth and honor seem current among these Brunswicks!
On the 27th of June, the Lords, on a message from the Prince Regent, voted an additional allowance of £6,000 a year to the Duke of Cumberland in consequence of the marriage. In the House of Commons, after a series of very warm debates, in which Lord Castlereagh objected to answer "any interrogatories tending to vilify the Royal Family," the House ultimately refused to grant the allowance by 126 votes against 125.
One historian says: "The demeanor of the Duchess of Cumberland in this country has been, to say the least, unobtrusive and unimpeached; but it must be confessed that a disastrous fatality—something inauspicious and indescribable—attaches to the Prince, her husband."
This year £200,000 further was voted to the Duke of Wellington, for the purchase of an estate, although it appeared from one Member of Parliament's speech that the vote should rather have been to the Prince Regent. "Who," he asked, "had rendered the army efficient? The Prince Regent—by restoring the Duke of York to the Horse Guards. Who had gained the Battle of Waterloo? The Prince Regent—by giving the command of the army to the Duke of Wellington!!" The Prince Regent himself had even a stronger opinion on the matter. Thackeray says: "I believe it is certain about George IV. that he had heard so much of the war, knighted so many people, and worn, such a prodigious quantity of marshal's uniforms, cocked hats, cocks' feathers, scarlet and bullion in general, that he actually fancied he had been present at some campaigns, and under the name of General Brock led a tremendous charge of the German legion at Waterloo."
In 1816, Prince Leopold of Coburg Saalfeld, a very petty German Prince, without estate or position, married the Princess Charlotte of Wales, as if he were a Protestant, although he most certainly on other occasions acted as if he belonged to the Catholic Church. A grant of £60,000 a year was made to the royal couple; £60,000 was given for the wedding outfit, and £50,000 secured to Prince Leopold for life, in the event of his surviving the Princess. And although this was done, it was well known to the Prince Regent and the members of the Government, that on the 2d January of the previous year, a marriage ceremony, according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church, had been performed, by which the Prince Leopold was united to the Countess of Cohaky. Bigamy appears to be a fashionable vice, and one to which these Brunswicks never raise any objection.
On the 9th December, the City of London presented an address to the Prince Regent, in which they complained of "immense subsidies to foreign powers to defend their own territories, or to commit aggressions on those of their neighbors, of an unconstitutional and unprecedented military force in time of peace, of the unexampled and increasing magnitude of the Civil List, of the enormous sums paid for unmerited pensions and sinecures, and of a long course of the most lavish and improvident expenditure of the public money throughout every branch of the Government." This address appears to have deeply wounded the Regent, and the expressions of stern rebuke he used in replying, coupled with a rude sulkiness of manner, were ungracious and unwarrantable. He emphasized his answer with pauses and frowns, and turned on his heel as soon as he had delivered it. And yet at this moment hundreds of thousands in England were starving. Kind monarchs these Brunswicks!
Early in 1817, the general distress experienced in all parts of England, and which had been for some time on the increase, was of a most severe character. Meetings in London and the provinces grew frequent, and were most numerously attended, and on February 3d, in consequence of a message from the Prince Regent, Committees of Secrecy were appointed by the Lords and Commons, to inquire into the character of the various movements. The Government was weak and corrupt, but the people lacked large-minded leaders, and the wide-spread discontent of the masses of the population rendered some of their number easy victims to the police spies who manufactured political plots.
On the 6th of November, 1817, Princess Charlotte of Wales died. Complaints were raised that the Princess had not been fairly treated, and some excitement was created by the fact that Sir Richard Croft, the doctor who attended her, soon after committed suicide, and that the public and the reporters were not allowed to be present at the inquest. No notice whatever of the Princess's death was forwarded to her mother, the Princess of Wales. In a letter to the Duke of Buckingham, Mr. Wynn speaks of this as "the most brutal omission I ever remember, and one which would attach disgrace in private life." At this very time a large sum of money was being wasted in the employment of persons to watch the Princess of Wales on her foreign travels. In her correspondence we find the Princess complaining that her letters were opened and read, and that she was surrounded with spies. From the moment that George III. was declared incurable, and his death approaching, there seems little doubt that desperate means were resorted to to manufacture evidence against the Princess to warrant a divorce.
On July 13th, 1818, his Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence married Adelaide, Princess of Saxe Meiningen, and his Royal Highness the Duke of Kent married her Serene Highness Victoria, Princess of Leiningen. The Duke of Clarence, of course, had voted to him an additional allowance of £6,000 a year on entering the married state, although he was already receiving from the country more than £21,000 a year in cash, and a house rent free. It is highly edifying to read that during the debates in Parliament, and when some objection was raised to the extra sums proposed to be voted to one of the Royal Dukes, Mr. Canning pleaded, as a reason for the payment, that his Royal Highness was not marrying "for his own private gratification, but because he had been advised to do so for the political purposes of providing succession to the throne." Pleasant this for the lady, and glorious for the country—Royal breeding machines! The Duke of Kent, who had the same additional vote, had about £25,000 a year, besides a grant of £20,000 towards the payment of his debts, and a loan of £6,000 advanced in 1806, of which up to the time of his marriage only £1,000 had been repaid.
Of Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent, father of her present Majesty, it is only necessary to say a few words. The fourth son of George III. was somewhat better than his brothers, and perhaps for this very reason he seems always to have been disliked, and kept at a distance by his father, mother, and brothers. Nor was the Duke of Kent less disliked amongst the army, which he afterwards commanded. Very few of the officers loved him, and the bulk of the privates seem to have regarded him with the most hostile feelings. Kept very short of money by his miserly father and mother, he had, even before his majority, incurred considerable debts; and coming to England in 1790, in order to try and induce the King to make him some sufficient allowance, he was ordered to quit England in ten days. While allowances were made to all the other sons of George, the Duke of Kent had no Parlimentary vote until he was thirty-three years of age. In 1802 he was appointed Governor of Gibraltar, where a mutiny took place, and the Duke had a narrow escape of his life. The Duke of Kent's friends allege that this mutiny was encouraged by officers of the highest rank, secretly sustained by the Duke of York. The Duke of York's friends, on the contrary, maintain that the overbearing conduct of the Duke of Kent, his severity in details, and general harshness in command, alone produced the result. The Duke of Kent was recalled from the Government of Gibraltar, and for some months the pamphleteers were busy on behalf of the two Dukes, each seeking to prove that the royal brother of his royal client was a dishonorable man. Pleasant people, these Brunswicks! If either side wrote the truth, one of the Dukes was a rascal. If neither side wrote the truth, both were. The following extract from a pamphlet by Mary Anne Clarke, mistress of the Duke of York, will serve to show the nature of the publications I refer to: "I believe there is scarcely a military man in the kingdom who was at Gibraltar during the Duke of Kent's command of that fortress but is satisfied that the Duke of York's refusal of a court martial to his royal brother afforded an incontestible proof of his regard for the military character and honor of the Duke of Kent; for if a court martial had been granted to the Governor of Gibraltar, I always understood there was but one opinion as to what would have been the result; and then the Duke of Kent would have lost several thousands a year, and incurred such public reflections that would, most probably, have been painful to his honorable and acute feelings. It was, however, this act of affection for the Duke of Kent that laid the foundation of that hatred which has followed the Commander-in-Chief up to the present moment; and to this unnatural feeling he is solely indebted for all the misfortunes and disgrace to which he has been introduced. In one of the many conversations which I had with Majors Dodd and Glennie, upon the meditated ruin of the Duke of York, they informed me that their royal friend had made every endeavor in his power to poison the King's ear against the Commander-in-Chief, but as Colonel Taylor was so much about the person of his Majesty, all his efforts had proved ineffectual; and to have spoken his sentiments before Colonel Taylor would have been very injudicious, as he would immediately have communicated them to the Commander-in-Chief, who, though he knew this time ( said these confidential and worthy patriots) that the Duke of Kent was supporting persons to write against him, and that some parliamentary proceedings were upon the eve of bursting upon the public attention, yet deported himself towards his royal brother as if they lived but for each other's honor and happiness; and the Duke of Kent, to keep up appearances, was more particular in his attentions to the Duke of York than he had ever been before."
Despite the Duke of Kent's recall, he continued to receive salary and allowances as Governor. After the celebration of the marriage, he resided abroad, and was on such unfriendly terms with his family that when he returned from Amorbach to England, it was against the express orders of the Prince Regent, who, shortly after meeting his brother at the Spanish Ambassador's, took not the slightest notice of him.
On the 17th November, 1818, the Queen died, and the custody of the body of the mad, deaf, and blind monarch of England was nominally transferred to the Duke of York, who was voted an extra £10,000 a year for performing the duty of visiting his royal father twice a week. Objection was ineffectually raised that his Royal Highness had also his income as Commander-in-Chief and General Officer, and it might have also been added, his pensions and his income as Prince Bishop of Osnaburg. Mr. Curwen said: "Considering how complete the revenue of his Royal Highness was from public emoluments, he could not consent to grant him one shilling upon the present occasion."
In 1819, the Duke of Kent tried to get up a lottery for the sale of his Castlebar estate, in order to pay his debts, which were then about £70,000, but the project, being opposed by the Prince Regent, fell to the ground.
On the 24th of May, 1819, her present Majesty was born; and on the 23d of January, 1820, the Duke of Kent, her father, died.
On the 29th of January, 1820, after a sixty years' reign—in which debt, dishonor, and disgrace accrued to the nation he reigned over—George III. died. The National Debt at the date of his accession to the throne was about £150,000,000; at his death it was about £900,000,000.
Phillimore asks: "Had it not been for the unlimited power of borrowing, how many unjust and capricious wars would have been avoided! How different would be our condition, and the condition of our posterity! If half the sum lavished to prevent any one bearing the name of Napoleon from residing in France, for replacing the Bourbons on the thrones of France and Naples, for giving Belgium to Holland, Norway to Sweden, Finland to Russia, Venice and Lombardy to Austria, had been employed by individual enterprise, what would now be the resources of England?"
An extract, giving Lord Brougham's summary of George III's life and character, may, we think, fairly serve to close this chapter: "Of a narrow understanding, which no culture had enlarged; of an obstinate disposition, which no education perhaps could have humanized; of strong feelings in ordinary things, and a resolute attachment to all his own opinions and predilections, George III. possessed much of the firmness of purpose which, being exhibited by men of contracted mind without any discrimination, and as pertinaciously when they are in the wrong as when they are in the right, lends to their characters an appearance of inflexible consistency, which is often mistaken for greatness of mind, and not seldom received as a substitute for honesty. In all that related to his kingly office he was the slave of deep-rooted selfishness; and no feeling of a kindly nature ever was allowed access to his bosom whenever his power was concerned."
The wretched reign of George IV. commenced on the 30th January, 1820. Mr. Buckle speaks of "the incredible baseness of that ignoble voluptuary who succeeded George III. on the throne." The coronation was delayed for a considerable period, partly in consequence of the hostility between the King and his unfortunate wife, and partly because of the cost. We find the Right Hon. Thomas Grenville writing of the coronation: "I think it probable that it will be put off, because the King will not like it unless it be expensive, and Vansittart knows not how to pay for it if it is." Generous monarchs, these Brunswicks! Thousands at that moment were in a state of starvation in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Lord Cassilis writes: "There seems nothing but chaos and desolation whatever way a man may turn himself.... the lower orders existing only from the circumstance of the produce of the land being unmarketable.... The weavers are certainly employed, but they cannot earn more than from six to eight shillings a week. Such is our state." When the coronation did ultimately take place, some strange expenses crept in. Diamonds were charged for to the extent, it is said, of £80,000, which found their way to one of the King's favored mistresses. The crown itself was made up with hired jewels, which were kept for twenty-one months after the coronation, and for the hire of which alone the country paid £11,000. The charge for coronation robes was £24,000. It was in consequence of Sir Benjamin Bloom-field having to account for some of the diamonds purchased that he resigned his position in the King's household. Rather than be suspected of dishonesty, he preferred revealing that they had reached the hands of Lady Conyngham. Sir George Naylor, in an infamously servile publication, for which book alone the country paid £3,000, describes "the superb habiliments which his Majesty, not less regardful of the prosperity of the people than of the splendor of his throne, was pleased to enjoin should be worn upon the occasion of his Majesty's sacred coronation."
Sir William Knighton declares that on the news of the King's death reaching the Prince Regent, "the fatal tidings were received with a burst of grief that was very affecting." The King had been mad and blind and deaf for ten years, and the Queen, years before, had complained of the Prince's conduct as unfilial, if not inhuman. With the Prince Regent's known character, this sudden burst of grief is really "very affecting."
On the 23d of February, London was startled with the news of what since has been described as the Cato Street Conspiracy. The trial of Arthur Thistlewood and his misguided associates is valuable for one lesson. The man who found money for the secret conspirators, and who incited them to treason and murder, was one George Edwards. This Edwards was well described by one of the journals of the period, "as neither more nor less than the confidential agent of the original conspirators, to hire for them the treasons they have a purpose in detecting." By original conspirators were meant Lord Castlereagh and Lord Sidmouth. In the House of Commons, Mr. Alderman Wood moved formally, "That George Edwards be brought to the bar of the House on a breach of privilege. He pledged himself, if he had this incendiary in his hands, to convict him of the crimes imputed; he hoped he had not been suffered to escape beyond seas; otherwise there were honorable gentlemen who were in possession of him, so that he might be produced"—meaning by this that he was kept out of the way by the Government. "He regarded him as the sole author and contriver of the Cato Street plot. It was strange how such a man should be going about from public house to public house, nay, from one private house to another, boldly and openly instigating to such plots; and, in the midst of this, should become, from abject poverty, suddenly flush with money, providing arms, and supplying all conspirators." Mr. Hume seconded the motion. "It appeared by the depositions, not of one person only, but of a great many persons, that the individual in question had gone about from house to house with hand-grenades, and, up to twenty-four hours only preceding the 23d of February, had been unceasingly urging persons to join with him in the atrocious plot to assassinate his Majesty's Ministers. All of a sudden he became quite rich, and was buying arms in every quarter, at every price, and of every description; still urging a variety of persons to unite with him. Now, it was very fitting for the interest of the country, that the country should know who the individuals were who supplied him with the money."
As a fair specimen of the disposition of the King in dealing with his Ministry, I give the following extract from a memorandum of Lord Chancellor Eldon, dated April 26th, 1820: "Our royal master seems to have got into temper again, so far as I could judge from his conversation with me this morning. He has been pretty well disposed to part with us all, because we would not make additions to his revenue. This we thought conscientiously we could not do in the present state of the country, and of the distresses of the middle and lower orders of the people—to which we might add, too, that of the higher orders. My own individual opinion was such that I could not bring myself to oppress the country at present by additional taxation for that purpose."
On the 23d of March, Henry Hunt, John Knight, Joseph Johnson, Joseph Healey, and Samuel Bamford were, after six days' trial at York, found guilty of unlawfully assembling. Lord Grenville feared that, if acquitted, Peterloe might form a terrible bill of indictment against the Ministry. His Lordship writes on March 29th, to the Marquis of Buckingham: "It would have been a dreadful thing if it had been established by the result of that trial that the Manchester meeting was under all its circumstances a legal assembly." His Lordship knew that the magistrates and yeomanry cavalry might have been indicted for murder had the meeting been declared legal. Sir C. Wolseley and the Rev, J. Harrison were at this time being prosecuted for seditious speaking, and were ultimately found guilty on April 10th. In May the state of the country was terrible; even Baring, the Conservative banker, on May 7th, described the "state of England" to a full House of Commons, "in the most lamentable terms." On the 8th we find Mr. W. H. Fremantle saying of the King, "His language is only about the Coronation and Lady Conyngham [his then favorite sultana]; very little of the state of the country." Early in June, it being known that Queen Caroline was about to return to England, and that she intended to be present at the Coronation, the King offered her £50,000 a year for life to remain on the Continent, and forbear from claiming the title of Queen of England. This Caroline indignantly refused. The Queen's name had, by an order in Council, and on the King's direction, been omitted from the Liturgy as that of a person unfit to be prayed for, and on the 6th of July a bill of pains and penalties was introduced by Lord Liverpool, alleging adultery between the Queen and one Bartolomeo Bergami. To wade through the mass of disgusting evidence offered by the advisers of the King in support of the bill is terrible work. It seems clear that many of the witnesses committed perjury. It is certain that the diplomatic force of England was used to prevent the Queen from obtaining witnesses on her behalf. Large sums of the taxpayers' money were shown to have been spent in surrounding the Princess of Wales with spies in Italy and Switzerland. Naturally the people took sides with the Queen. To use the language of William Cobbett: "The joy of the people, of all ranks, except nobility, clergy, and the army and the navy, who in fact were theirs, was boundless; and they expressed it in every possible way that people can express their joy. They had heard rumors about a lewd life, and about an adulterous intercourse. They could not but believe that there was some foundation for something of this kind; but they, in their justice, went back to the time when she was in fact turned out of her husband's house, with a child in her arms, without blame of any sort ever having been imputed to her. They compared what they had heard of the wife with what they had seen of the husband, and they came to their determination accordingly. As far as related to the question of guilt or innocence they cared not a straw; they took a large view of the matter; they went over her whole history; they determined that she had been wronged, and they resolved to uphold her."
On the 6th of August, the Duchess of York died. Dr. Doran thus writes her epitaph: "Her married life had been unhappy, and every day of it was a disgrace to her profligate, unprincipled, and good-tempered husband."
In the month of September Lord Castlereagh was compelled to admit that the expenses incurred in obtaining evidence from abroad, against the Queen, had been defrayed out of the Secret Service money. The trial of Queen Caroline lasted from the 17th of August until the 10th of November, when, in a house of two hundred and seven peers, the Queen was found guilty by a majority of nine votes. On this, Lord Liverpool said that "as the public sentiment had been expressed so decidedly against the measure," he would withdraw the bill. Amongst those who voted against the Queen, the names appear of Frederick Duke of York and William Henry Duke of Clarence. They had been most active in attacking the Queen, and now were shameless enough to vote as her judges. While the trial was proceeding, the Duke of York's private conversation "was violent against the Queen." He ought surely, for very shame's sake, this Prince-Bishop, to have remembered the diamonds sent by the King his father to Princess Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, of Brunswick. Being the bearer of the jewels, his Royal Highness the Duke of York and Prince-Bishop of Osnaburg, stole them, and presented them to Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke. Mr. Denman, the Queen's Solicitor-General, was grandly audacious in his indictment of the King's brothers for their cowardly conduct. In the presence of the assembled Lords, he, without actually referring to him by name, denounced the Duke of Clarence as a calumniator. He called on the Duke to come forward openly, saying, "Come forth, thou slanderer!" And this slanderer was afterwards our King! The Queen, in a protest against the bill, declared that "those who avowed themselves her prosecutors have presumed to sit in judgment upon the question between the Queen and themselves. Peers have given their voices against her, who had heard the whole evidence for the charge, and absented themselves during her defence. Others have come to the discussion from the Secret Committee with minds biased by a mass of slander, which her enemies have not dared to bring forward in the light." Lord Dacre, in presenting the protest to the assembled peers, added: "Her Majesty complained that the individuals who formed her prosecutors in this odious measure, sat in judgment against her. My Lords, I need not express an opinion upon this complaint; delicacy alone ought to have, in my opinion, prevented their becoming her accusers, and also her judges."
George IV. was guilty of the vindictive folly of stripping Brougham of his King's Counsel gown, as a punishment for his brilliant defence of the Queen.
While the trial of the Queen was going on, it might have been thought that the King would at any rate affect a decency of conduct. But these Brunswicks are shameless. Speaking of the cottage at Windsor, on August 11th, Mr. Fremantle says: "The principal object is of course the Lady Conyngham, who is here. The King and her always together, separated from the rest, they ride every day or go on the water, and in the evening sitting alone.... The excess of his attentions and enjouement is beyond all belief." On December 17th, Mr. Fremantle finds the King ill and says: "The impression of my mind is that the complaint is in the head." Most of the Brunswicks have been affected in the head. Either George I. was insane, or George II. was not his son. George II. himself had certainly one or two delusions, if not more. George III.'s sanity is not affirmed by any one. It may be a question whether or not any allegation of hereditary affection is enough, however, to justify an appeal to Parliament for a rearrangement of the succession to the throne.
On the 9th of January, 1821, King George IV. wrote a private letter to Lord Chancellor Eldon, in the "double capacity as a friend and as a minister," in order to influence the proceedings then pending in the law courts "against vendors of treason and libellers."
On the 8th of June, on the motion of Lord Londonderry, and after an ineffectual opposition by Mr. Hume, £6,000 a year additional was voted to the Duke of Clarence. The vote was made retrospective, and thus gave the Duke £18,000 extra in cash. Besides this, we find a charge of £9,166 for fitting up the Duke's apartments.
On the 5th of July, Mr. Scarlett moved the court on behalf of Olivia Wilmot Serres, claiming to be the legitimate daughter of the Duke of Cumberland, who was brother of George III. Mr. Scarlett submitted that he had documents proving the accuracy of the statement, but on a technical point the matter was not gone into.
In August, 1821, King George IV. visited Ireland. Knowing his habits, and the customs of some other members of the family, it excites little surprise to read that, on the voyage to Dublin, "his Majesty partook most abundantly of goose pie and whiskey," and landed in Ireland "in the last stage of intoxication." And this was a king! This journey to Ireland cost the country £58,261. In a speech publicly made by the King in Ireland, within a few hours after receiving the news of Queen Caroline's death, the monarch said: "This is one of the happiest days of my life."
On the 7th of August Queen Caroline died. In Thelwall's Champion there is a full account of the disgraceful conduct of the King's Government with reference to the funeral. On the morning of the 14th, after a disgusting contest between her executors and the King's Government for the possession of her remains, they were removed from Brandenburgh House towards Harwich, on their way to interment at Brunswick. The ministers, to gratify personal feelings of unworthy rancor beyond the grave, gave orders that the funeral should take a circuit, to avoid manifestations of sympathy from the Corporation and the people along the direct route through London. At Kensington, the procession found every road but that of London barricaded by the people, and was constrained to take the forbidden route, with the intention of passing through Hyde Park into the northern road. The Park gate was closed and barricaded, but was forced by the military. The upper gate was also barricaded. Here a conflict took place between the military and the people, and two persons were shot by the soldiers. The procession moved on, the conflict was renewed, the people triumphed, and the corpse was borne through the city. Sir Robert Wilson remonstrated with some soldiers and an officer on duty; but his humane interference caused his removal from the army. In return, a large sum was subscribed by the public to compensate Sir Robert Wilson for his loss. The directing civil magistrate present, for having consulted his humanity in preference to his orders, and to prevent bloodshed yielded to the wishes of the multitude, was also deprived of his commission. On the inquest on the body of one of the men shot, the coroner's jury, vindicating the rights of the people, returned a verdict of "Wilful murder" against the Life Guardsman who fired.
While the King was in Ireland he paraded his connection with the Marchioness of Conyngham in the most glaring manner. Fremantle says: "I never in my life heard of anything to equal the King's infatuation and conduct towards Lady Conyngham. She lived exclusively with him during the whole time he was in Ireland, at the Phoenix Park. When he went to Slane, she received him dressed out as for a drawing-room. He saluted her, and they then retired alone to her apartments."
If it be objected that I am making too great a feature of the Marchioness of Conyngham's connection with the King, I plead my justification in Henry W. Wynn's declaration of "her folly and rapacity," affirming that this folly and rapacity have left their clear traces on the conduct of affairs, and in the increase of the national burdens. Her husband, as a reward for her virtue, was made an English peer in 1821. Lord Mount Charles, his eldest son, was made Master of the Robes, Groom of his Majesty's Bedchamber, and ultimately became a member of the Government. On this, Bulwer said: "He may prove himself an admirable statesman, but there is no reason to suppose it."
In order that the student of history may fairly judge the account of the rapturous reception given to the King in Ireland, it is needful to add that political discontent was manifest on all sides. Poverty and misery prevailed in Limerick, Mayo, Cavan, and Tipperary, which counties were proclaimed, and occupied by a large military force. Executions, imprisonments, and tumults filled the pages of the daily journals.
In the autumn of 1821, King George IV. visited Hanover, and if the Duke of Buckingham's correspondence be reliable, "Lord Liverpool put a final stop to the visit by declaring that no more drafts could be honored, except for the direct return home."
On the 12th of August, 1822, Castlereagh, the most noble the Marquis of Londonderry, sent himself to heaven, from North Cray Farm, Bexley, at the age of fifty-three. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Meaner clay would have been got rid of at some cross roads.
"The death," says Wallace, "of a public man in England—especially a death so sudden and lamentable—greatly assuages the political resentments against him in his life; and there was a reaction in aristocratic circles in favor of Lord Londonderry when he ceased to live. His servile complaisance to despots abroad, his predilection for the worst engines of government at home, were for a moment forgotten. But the honest hatred of the populace, deep-rooted, sincere, and savage, remained untouched, and spoke in a fearful yell of triumphant execration over his remains whilst his coffin was descending into the grave in Westminster Abbey."
No language could do fitting justice to Robert Stewart, Marquis of Londonderry. Words would be too weak to describe Castlereagh's cruelty and baseness towards his own countrymen, or his infernal conduct in connection with the Government of England. All that can be fittingly said is, that he was pre-eminently suited to be Minister of State under a Brunswick.
In 1828 the thanks of Parliament were presented to George IV. for "having munificently presented to the nation a library formed by George III." Unfortunately, the thanks were undeserved. George IV. was discreditable enough to accept thanks for a donation he had never made. The truth is, says the Daily News, "that the King being, as was his wont, in urgent need of money, entertained a proposal to sell his father's library to the Emperor of Russia for a good round sum. The books were actually packed up, and the cases directed in due form, when representations were made to Lord Sidmouth, then Home Secretary, on the subject. The minister resolved, if possible, to hinder the iniquity from being perpetrated. Accordingly, he represented his view of the matter to the King. George IV. graciously consented, after a good deal of solicitation, to present the library to the nation, conditionally on his receiving in return the same sum as he would have received had the sale of it to the Emperor of Russia been completed. What the nation did was, firstly, to pay the money; secondly, to erect a room for the library at the cost of £140,000; and thirdly, to return fulsome thanks to the sovereign for his unparalleled munificence.".
On the 25th of April, 1825, the Duke of York spoke in the House of Lords against Catholic Emancipation. His speech was made, if not by the direction, most certainly with the consent, of the King. George IV.'s reluctance to Catholic Emancipation was deep-rooted and violent. The bare mention of the subject exasperated him. He was known to say, and only in his milder mood, "I wish those Catholics were damned or emancipated." The angered despotism of this alternative still afforded the hope that his intolerance might be overcome by his selfish love of ease. The Duke of York's address to his brother peers closed with the declaration that he would, to the last moment of his life, whatever his situation, resist the emancipation of the Catholics, "so help him God!" All tyrants think themselves immortal; the Catholics and their cause outlived the Duke of York, and triumphed. His speech, however, coming from the presumptive heir to the Crown, had a great share in deciding the majority of the Lords against the measure; and acted with great effect upon the congenial mass of brute ignorance and bigotry which is found ready to deny civil rights to all outside the pale of their own church.
On the 5th of January, 1827, the Duke of York died. Wallace, in his "Life of George IV.," says: "Standing in the relation of heir-presumptive to the throne; obstinately and obtusely fortified against all concession to the Catholics; serving as a ready and authorative medium of Toryism and intolerance to reach, unobserved, the royal ear—his death had a great influence upon the state of parties, and was especially favorable to the ascendancy of Mr. Canning. He, some weeks only before he died, and when his illness had commenced, strenuously urged the King to render the Government uniform and anti-Catholic; in other words, to dismiss Mr. Canning; and, had he recovered, Mr. Canning must have ceased to be Foreign Minister, or the Duke to be Commander-in-chief. The Duke of York was not without personal good qualities, which scarcely deserved the name of private virtues, and were overclouded by his private vices. He was constant in his friendships: but who were his friends and associates? Were they persons distinguished in the State, in literature, in science, in arts, or even in his own profession of arms? Were they not the companions and sharers of his dissipations and prodigalities? He did not exact from his associates subserviency or form; but it was notorious that, from the meanness of his capacity, or the vulgarity of his tastes, he descended very low before he found himself at his own social level. His services to the army as Commander-in-chief were beyond all measure overrated. Easy access, diligence, a mechanical regularity of system, which seldom yielded to solicitation, and never discerned merit; an un-envying, perhaps unscrupulous, willingness to act upon the advice and appropriate the measures of others more able and informed than himself,—these were his chief merits at the Horse Guards. But, it will be said, he had un uncompromising, conscientious fidelity to his public principles; this amounts to no more than that his bigotry was honest and unenlightened. His death, perhaps, was opportune; his non-accession fortunate for the peace of the country and the stability of his family on the Throne. Alike incapable of fear and foresight, he would have risked the integrity of the United Kingdom rather than concede the Catholic claims; and the whole Monarchy rather than sanction Reform. It would be easy to suggest a parallel, and not always to his advantage, between the constitution of his mind and that of James, Duke of York, afterwards James II., whose obstinate bigotry forced the nation to choose between their liberties and his deposition from the Throne."
In 1827, the Duke of Clarence obtained, after much opposition, a further vote of £8,000 a year to himself, besides £6,000 a year to the Duchess. The Duke of Clarence also had £3,000 a year further, consequent on the death of the Duke of York, making his allowance £43,000 a year.
In April, 1829, the infamous Duke of Cumberland had stated, that if the King gave his assent to the Catholic Emancipation Bill, he (the Duke) would quit England never to return to it. The Right Honorable Thomas Grenville says, in a letter dated April 9th: "There is some fear that a declaration to that effect may produce a very general cheer even in the dignified assembly of the House of Lords." How loved these Brunswicks have been even by their fellow-peers!
On the 10th of April, the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill passed the House of Lords, the Duke of Wellington confessing that civil war was imminent, if the relief afforded by the measure was longer delayed.
On June 26th, 1830, the royal physicians issued a bulletin, stating that "t has pleased Almighty God to take from this world the King's most excellent majesty." Most excellent majesty!! A son who threatened his mother to make public the invalidity of her marriage; a lover utterly regardless of the well-being of any of his mistresses; a bigamous husband, who behaved most basely to his first wife, and acted the part of a dishonorable scoundrel to the second; a brother at utter enmity with the Duke of Kent; a son who sought to aggravate the madness of his royal father; a cheat in gaming and racing. He dies because lust and luxury have, through his lazy life, done their work on his bloated carcass, and England sorrows for the King's "most excellent majesty!"
George IV. was a great King. Mrs. J. R. Greer, in her work on "Quakerism," says that he once went to a woman's meeting in Quaker dress. "His dress was all right; a gray silk gown, a brown cloth shawl, a little white silk handkerchief with hemmed edge round his neck, and a very well-poked Friend's bonnet, with the neatly-crimped border of his clear muslin cap tied under the chin, completed his disguise." Royal George was detected, but we are told that the Quakers, who recognized their visitor, were careful to treat him with courtesy and deference!
In the ten years' reign, the official expenditure for George IV. and his Royal Family was at the very least £16,000,000 sterling. Windsor Castle cost £894,500, the Pavilion at Brighton is said to have cost a million, and another half-million is alleged to have been expended on the famous "Cottage." After the King's death his old clothes realized £15,000.
Thackeray says of him that he "never resisted any temptation; never had a desire but he coddled it and pampered it; if he ever had any nerve, he frittered it away among cooks, and tailors, and barbers, and furniture-mongers, and opera-dancers.... all fiddling, and flowers, and feasting, and flattery, and folly.... a monstrous image of pride, vanity, and weakness."
Wallace says: "Monarchy, doubtless, has its advantages; but it is a matter of serious reflection that under a government called free, among a people called civilized, the claims of millions, and the contingent horrors of a civil war, should be thus dependent upon the distempered humors and paramount will of a single unit of the species."
William Henry, Duke of Clarence, Admiral of the Fleet, and third son of George III, born August 21st, 1765, succeeded his brother George IV. as King of England, on the 26th of June, 1830. The new King was then 65 years of age, and had been married, July 11th, 1818, to Adelaide Amelia Louisa Teresa Caroline, Princess of Saxe-Meiningen. Mrs. Dorothy Jordan, with whom William had lived, and who had borne him ten children, had fled to France to avoid her creditors, and had there died, neglected by the world, deserted by William, and in the greatest poverty. This Mrs. Jordan was sold to William by one Richard Ford, her former lover, who, amongst other rewards of virtue, was created a Knight, and made Police Magistrate at Bow Street. Mrs. Jordan's children bore the name of "Fitzclarence," and great dissatisfaction was expressed against the King, who, too mean to maintain them out of his large income, contrived to find them all posts at the public cost. At the date of William IV.'s accession, the imperial taxation was about £47,000,000; to-day it has increased at least £25,000,000.
The annual allowances to the junior branches of the Royal Family in 1830, formerly included in the Civil List, and now paid separately, were as follows:—
The Duke of Cumberland £21,000. He had no increase on his marriage; the House of Commons rejected a motion to that effect; but an allowance of £6,000 a year for his son, Prince George, had been issued to him since he became a resident in this country. This is the Duke of Cumberland, who so loved his brother, William IV., that he intrigued with the Orangemen to force William's abdication, and to get made King in his stead.
The Duke of Sussex received £21,000.
The Duke of Cambridge, father of the present Duke, had £27,000. He obtained an increase on his marriage of £6,000 a year. This Prince was charged with the government of the family territory, the kingdom of Hanover, and consequently resided but little in England.
Princess Augusta, £13,000.
The Princess Elizabeth of Hesse Homburg, £10,000.
Princess Sophia, £13,000.
The Duchess of Kent, including the allowance granted in 1831, for her daughter, the Princess Victoria, heir-presumptive to the Throne, £22,000.
The Duke of Gloucester, including £13,000 which he received as the husband of the Princess Mary*, £27,000.
The Princess Sophia of Gloucester, his sister, £7,000.
Queen Adelaide had £100,000 a year, and the residence at Bushey granted to her for life.
Mrs. Fitzherbert, as the widow of George IV., was in receipt of £6,000 a year, and the ten Fitzclarences also enjoyed places and pensions.
The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel were the King's Ministers; and, although there was some personal hostility between William and the Iron Duke, they were at first his willing coadjutors in opposing either reduction of expenditure, or any kind of political or social reform. The quarrel between William as Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Wellington had arisen when William was Lord High Admiral. William had given improper orders to a military officer, named Cockburn, which the latter had refused to obey. The Duke of Wellington refused to sacrifice Cockburn, and ultimately the Duke of Clarence resigned his office as Lord High Admiral, for which, says the Rev. Mr. Molesworth, "he was ill-qualified, and in which he was doing great mischief."
In November, 1830, Earl Grey, Lord Brougham, Lord Melbourne, and Lord Althorp came into office as leaders of the Whig party. With slight exception, in 1806, the Whigs had not been before in office during the present century, and very little indeed since 1762. The Whigs encouraged the Radical Reformers so far as to insure their own accession to power; but it is evident that the Whig Cabinet only considered how little they could grant, and yet retain office. In finance, as well as reform, they were disloyal to the mass of the people who pushed them into power.
The Duke of Wellington and his Ministry resigned office in November, 1830, because the House of Commons wished to appoint a Select Committee to examine the Civil List. King William IV., according to the words of a letter written by him to Earl Grey, on December 1st, 1830, felt considerable "alarm and uneasiness" because Joseph Hume and other Radical members wished to put some check on the growing and already extravagant royal expenditure. He objects "most strenuously," and says, referring in this especially to the Duchy of Lancaster: "Earl Grey cannot be surprised that the King should view with jealousy any idea of Parliamentary interference with the only remaining pittance of an independent possession, which has been enjoyed by his ancestors, during many centuries, as their private and independent estate, and has now, as such, lawfully devolved upon him in right of succession. That he should feel that any successful attempt to deprive the Sovereign of this independent possession will be to lower and degrade him into the state and condition of absolute and entire dependence, as a pensioner of the House of Commons; to place him in the condition of an individual violating or surrendering a trust which had been held sacred by his ancestors, and which he is bound to transmit to his successors. The King cannot indeed conceive upon what plea such a national invasion of the private rights, and such a seizure of the private estates, of the Sovereign could be justified."
William IV. reminds Earl Grey, that the Chancellor of the Duchy is sworn to do all things "for the weal and profit of the King's Highness. And his Majesty has fair reason to expect that a pledge so solemnly taken will be fulfilled, and that he will be supported in his assertion of these private rights, not only of himself, but of his heirs and successors, as they have devolved upon him, separate from all other of his possessions jure coronę, and consequently, as his separate personal and private estate, vested in his Majesty, by descent from Henry VII. in his body natural, and not in his body politic as King."
Earl Grey naturally promised to prevent Radical financial reformers from becoming too annoying to Royalty. The Whigs love to talk of economy out of office, and to avoid it when in place.
Daniel O'Connell appears to have much troubled the King. Directly after the Dublin meeting in December, 1830, Sir Henry Taylor says: "The King observed, that he would have been better pleased if this assembly of people had not dispersed quietly at his bidding, as the control which he has successfully exercised upon various occasions in this way, appears to his Majesty the most striking proof of the influence he has acquired over a portion of the lower classes in Ireland."
It is pretended in the Cabinet Register for 1831, and was stated by Lord Althorp in Parliament, "that his Majesty most nobly and patriotically declined to add to the burdens of his people by accepting an outfit for his royal consort, though £54,000 had been granted by Parliament to the Queen of George III., as an outfit to purchase jewels, etc." This is so little true, that it appears from the correspondence between the King and Earl Grey, that a grant for the Queen's outfit had been agreed to by the outgoing Tories, and would have been proposed by the new Whig Government, had not one of the Cabinet (probably Lord Brougham) decidedly objected, on the ground "that proposing a grant for this purpose would have a bad effect on the House of Commons, and on public opinion;" and by a letter dated February 4th, 1831, from the King, it is clear that he only abandoned the claim when he found he could not get it. There is not a word about "the burdens of the people," although many at that time were in a starving condition. On the contrary, the secretary of the King says on the 6th of February, that "the disinclination shown in the House of Commons" to grant the outfit had "produced a very painful impression on his Majesty."
The King, afraid of the spread of Reform opinions, says that he "trusts that the Lord-Lieutenants and Deputy-Lieutenants of counties will be cautioned to scrutinize the ballots for the militia as far as possible, so as to endeavor to exclude from its ranks men of dangerous and designing character, whose influence might prove very pernicious upon newly-established corps, and before they shall have acquired habits of discipline and subordination." And to show his desire for Reform, he urges the Ministers to check the public gatherings, saying, "I am ignorant to what extent it may be in contemplation to increase the military means, either by calling out the militia partially, or by any addition to the regular force; but I am convinced that the latter would be not only the most efficient, but the cheapest; and it would have the advantage of being applicable to all purposes."
The Reformer King—for this pretence has been made—in another letter says: "His Majesty is satisfied that he may rely upon Earl Grey's strenuous support in his determination to resist all attempts which may be made to sap the established rights of the Crown, and to destroy those institutions under which this country has so long prospered, while others have been suffering so severely from the effects of revolutionary projects, and from the admission of what are called Radical remedies... He is induced thus pointedly to notice the proposal of introducing Election by Ballot, in order to declare that nothing should ever induce him to yield to it, or to sanction a practice which would, in his opinion, be a protection to concealment, would abolish the influence of fear and shame, and would be inconsistent with the manly spirit and the free avowal of opinion which distinguish the people of England. His Majesty need scarcely add that his opposition to the introduction of another, yet more objectionable, proposal, the adoption of Universal Suffrage, one of the wild projects which have sprung from revolutionary speculation, would have been still more decided."
How William IV. could ever have been suspected of being favorable to Reform is difficult to comprehend. As Duke of Clarence he had spoken in favor of the Slave Trade, and had declared that "its abolition should meet with his most serious and most unqualified opposition." When the Reform Bill actually became law, although William IV. did not dare to veto it, he refused to give the royal assent in person.
In this chapter there is not space enough to go through the history of the Reform agitation of 1832. In Moles-worth's "History of the Reform Bill," and Roebuck's account of the "Whig Ministry," the reader will find the story fully told. It is not enough to say here that the King not only hindered Reform until Revolution was imminent, and the flames of burning castles and mansions were rising in different parts of England, but it may be stated that he condescended to deceive his Ministers; that he allowed his children to canvass peers against the bill, and would have resorted to force to crush the Birmingham Political Union, if he could have thrown the responsibility of this tyranny upon the Cabinet. In the King's eyes the people were "the rabble." We find him "impatient" for the return of the Tories to power, and bitterly discontented when the orderly character of popular demonstrations rendered the employment of the military impossible.
The Earl of Munster, one of the King's ten children by Mrs. Jordan, and who was Governor of Windsor Castle, Colonel in the Army, Aide-de-Camp to the King, Lieutenant of the Tower, Tory and State prisoner, being charged with having "unhandsomely intrigued against Earl Grey's Government," made the curious defence "that for six months before and for twenty-four hours after the resignation" of the Grey Government, "it was from certain circumstances out of his power to act in the matter imputed to him."
It is worthy of notice, as against Mr. Frederic Harrison's opinion, that no English monarch could now really interfere with the course of government in Great Britain, that in April, 1832, William IV. gave written directions to Earl Grey, "that no instructions should be sent" to foreign ambassadors until they had "obtained his previous concurrence." And it is clear, from a letter of the King's private secretary, that William gave these orders because he was afraid there was a "disposition... to unite with France in support of the introduction of liberal opinions and measures agreeably to the spirit of the times." Although the newspapers praised William, he does not seem to have been very grateful in private. In 1832, he declared to his confidential secretary that he had "long ceased to consider the press (the newspaper family) in any other light than as the vehicle of all that is false and infamous."
In January, 1833, in a speech, not written for him, but made extemporaneously after dinner, William IV. said, to compliment the American Ambassador, "that it had always been a matter of serious regret to him that he had not been born a free, independent American." We regret that the whole family have not long since naturalized themselves as American citizens. But such a sentiment from the son of George III., from one who in his youth had used the most extravagant phraseology in denunciation of the American rebels!!
The family insanity, shown in the case of George II. by his persistence in wearing his Dettingen old clothes; more notorious and less possible of concealment in that of George III.; well known to all but the people as to George IV., who actually tried to persuade the Duke of Wellington that he (George) had led a regiment at Waterloo, was also marked in William IV. In April, 1832, the King's own secretary admits "distressing symptoms" and "nervous excitement," but says that the attack "is now subsiding." Raikes, a Tory, and also a king-worshipper, in his, "Diary," under date May the 27th, 1834, says, after speaking of the King's "excitement" and "rather extraordinary" conduct, that "at the levee a considerable sensation was created the other day by his insisting that an unfortunate wooden-legged lieutenant should kneel down." On June 11th, visiting the Royal Academy, the President showed the King, amongst others, the portrait of Admiral Napier, and was astonished to hear his Majesty at once cry out: "Captain Napier may be damned, sir, and you may be damned, sir; and if the Queen was not here, sir, I would kick you downstairs, sir." The King's brother, his Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, died November 20th, 1834. Raikes says of him: "He was not a man of talent, as may be inferred from his nickname of Silly Billy." This is the Royal Family, the head of which, according to Mr. Disraeli, was "physically and mentally incapable of performing the regal functions," and which yet, according to the brilliant statesman, so fitly represents the intelligence and honor of Great Britain!
In 1836, Sir William Knighton died. He had been made private secretary to the late King, and had made his fortune by means of some papers which Colonel Macmahon, confidant of George IV., had when dying, and which came into Knighton's hands as medical attendant of the dying man. Sir W. Knighton was made a "Grand Cross," not for his bravery in war, or intelligence in the State, but for his adroit manipulation of secrets relating to Lady Jersey, Mrs. Fitzherbert, and the Marchioness of Conyngham. Sir William Knighton and the latter lady were supposed to have made free with £300,000; but great larcenies win honor, and Sir W. Knighton died respected.
In August, 1836, William—hearing that the Duke of Bedford had helped O'Connell with money—ordered the Duke's bust, then in the Gallery at Windsor, to be taken down, and thrown in the lime-kilns.
On June 20th, 1837, William IV. died. Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, by William's death, became King of Hanover, and was on the same day publicly hissed in the Green Park. Naturally, in this loving family there was considerable disagreement for some time previous to the King's death between his Majesty and the Duchess of Kent.
The Edinburgh Review, soon after the King's death, while admitting that "his understanding may not have been of as high an order as his good nature," says: "We have learned to forget the faults of the Duke of Clarence in the merits of William IV." Where were these merits shown? Was it in "brooding"—(to use the expression of his own private secretary)—over questions of whether he could, during the commencement of his reign, personally appropriate sums of money outside the Civil List votes? Was it in desiring that Colonel Napier might be "struck off the half-pay list," for having made a speech at Devizes in favor of Parliamentary Reform? Was it when he tried to persuade Earl Grey to make Parliament pay Rundell and Bridge's bill for plate—and this when the masses were in a starving condition? Was it when he declared that he was by "no means dissatisfied" that a proposed meeting was likely to be so "violent, and in other respects so objectionable," as it would afford the excuse for suppressing by force the orderly meetings which, says his secretary, "the King orders me to say he cannot too often describe as being, in his opinion, far more mischievous and dangerous" than those of "a more avowed and violent character"?
Her present Majesty, Alexandrina Victoria, was born May 24th, 1819, and ascended the throne June 20th, 1837, as representing her father, the Duke of Kent, fourth son of George HI. On February 10th, 1840, it being the general etiquette for the Brunswick family to intermarry amongst themselves, she was married to her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg, who received an allowance from the nation of £30,000, to compensate him for becoming the husband of his wife. The Queen, more sensible than others of the arduous position of a Prince Consort, wished her loyal husband to have £100,000 a year. The Government reduced this to £50,000; Joseph Hume and the Radicals reduced it still further to £30,000. For this annual payment the Prince undertook to submit to naturalization, to be the first subject in England, to reside rent free in the Royal Palaces repaired at the cost of the nation. He also, on his own account, and for his own profit, attended to various building speculations at the West End of London, and died very rich. He is known as Prince Albert the Good. His goodness is marked—not by parks given to the people, as in the case of Sir Francis Crossley; not by improved dwellings for the people, as in the case of George Peabody; not by a large and costly market place, freely given, as in the case of Miss Burdett Coutts—Peeress without her patent of Baroness;—but by statues erected in his honor in many cities and boroughs by a loyal people. As an employer of labor, the Prince's reputation for generosity is marked solely by these statues. As a Prince, he felt in his lifetime how much and how truly he was loved by his people; and at a dinner given to the Guards, Prince Albert, in a speech probably not revised beforehand, told the household troops how he relied on them to protect the throne against any assaults. The memory of the Prince is dear to the people; he has left us nine children to keep out of the taxpayers' pockets, his own large private accumulations of wealth being inapplicable to their maintenance.
When her Majesty ascended the throne, poor rates averaged 5s. 4£d. per head per annum; to-day they exceed 7s. During the last fifteen years alone there has been an increase of more than 250,000 paupers in England and Wales, and one person out of every twenty-two is in receipt of workhouse relief. Everybody, however, agrees that the country is prosperous and happy. In Scotland there has been an increase of 9,048 paupers in the last ten years. Two out of every fifty-three Scotchmen are at this moment paupers. In Ireland in the last ten years the out-door paupers have increased 19,504. As, however, we have, during the reign of her present most gracious Majesty, driven away the bulk of the Irish population, there are considerably fewer paupers in Ireland than there are in Scotland. The average Imperial taxation during the first ten years of her Majesty's reign was under £50,000,000 a year. The average taxation at the present day is over £72,000,000 a year. Pauperism and local and Imperial taxation are all on the increase, and, despite agricultural laborers' outcries and workmen's strikes, it is agreed that her Majesty's reign has brought us many blessings.
On March 20th, 1842, the Earl of Munster, eldest son of William IV., and who had been made Constable of Windsor Castle by her Majesty, committed suicide. Although the eldest son of the late King, his position as a natural child excluded him from heaven, according to the Bible, and from all right to the Throne, according to our law.
Her Majesty's eldest daughter, the Princess Royal, Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa, is married to the Prince Imperial, Frederick William, of Germany, and, as it would have been manifestly unreasonable to expect either the Queen or the Prince Consort, out of their large private fortunes, to provide a dowry for their daughter, the English nation pays £8,000 a year to the Princess.
Her Majesty's eldest son, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, Duke of Saxony, Cornwall, and Rothesay, and Earl of Dublin, has earned already so wide a fame that notice here is almost needless. As a writer, his letters—a few of which have been published by the kind permission of Sir Charles Mordaunt—illustrate the grasp of mind peculiar to the family, and mark in strong relief the nobility of character of the Royal author. As a military chieftain, the Autumn Manoeuvres of 1871 demonstrated the tact and speed he could display in a strategic movement of masterly retreat. As an investigator of social problems, he has surpassed the Lords Townshend and Shaftesbury, and at Mabille and in London has, by experience, entitled himself to speak with authority. As a pigeon-shooter, he can only be judged by comparison with the respectable ex-bushranger now claiming the Tichborne estates. Here, it is true, the latter is a man of more weight. The Prince of Wales receives £40,000 a year, and we give his wife £10,000 a year as a slight acknowledgment for the position she has to occupy as Princess of Wales. With the history of the wives of the two last Princes of Wales to guide them, it is almost wonderful that the advisers of the Princess did not insist on a much higher premium against the risks of the position. When his Royal Highness came of age, he found accumulations of the Duchy of Cornwall approaching a million sterling, which, invested in Consols, would bring him in at least a further £40,000 per annum. His Royal Highness also has the income of the Duchy of Cornwall, amounting net to about £75,000 a year. In addition to this, the Prince of Wales is entitled to military salary as Colonel of the Rifle Brigade and 10th Hussars. Last year—conscious that it is unfair to expect a Prince to live upon £153,000 a year—£7,600 were voted by Parliament for the repair of the house in which he sometimes resides when in London.
A few years ago his Royal Highness was in Paris, and certain scurrilous foreign prints pretended that on the Boulevard des Italiens, in the face of France, he had forgotten that one day he would seek to be King of England. It is written, "In vino Veritas." and if the proverb hold, the Prince is more than half his time a man remarkable for his truthfulness. Some time later, the Royal Leamington Chronicle, which, in his mercy, the Prince of Wales never prosecuted, coupled his reputation with infamy. Later, his Royal Highness was ill, and the nation wept. Then came recovery and Thanksgiving at St. Paul's.
"So when the devil was sick,
The devil a saint would be;
When the devil got well again,
The devil a saint was he."
The Prince of Wales has since been to Paris, and, according to La Liberte, has honored Mabille with his Royal presence.
Her Majesty's second son is Alfred Ernest, Duke of Edinburgh. His Royal Highness, when serving on board the Galatea, had leave to go on shore at Marseilles. Journeying to Paris, he overstayed his leave, refused to return when summoned, and stayed there, so Paris journals said, till his debts were thousands. Any other officer in the navy would have been cashiered; his Royal Highness has since been promoted. The Duke of Edinburgh visited our Colonies, and the nation voted about £3,500 for presents made by the Prince. The presents the Prince received were, of course, his own, and the vote enabled the Duke to do justice to the generous sentiments of his family. The Colonists pretended at the time that some of the presents were not paid for by the Duke of Edinburgh; nay, they went so far as to allege that some of the Duke's debts had to be discharged by the Colonist Reception Committee. Representing the honor of England, his Royal Highness earned himself a fame and a name by the associates he chose. In visiting India, a special sum of, we believe, £10,000 was taken from the Indian revenues and handed to the Duke, so that an English Prince might be liberal in his gifts to Indians at their own cost. The Duke of Edinburgh has £25,000 a year. Five years ago he borrowed £450 from the pay-chest of the Galatea. I have no means of knowing whether it has since been paid back; all I can affirm is, that the country made up the deficient sum in the pay-chest without a word from any M. P. Had the borrower been a pay-sergeant, he would have been sent to a District Military Prison; if a commissioned officer, other than a Royal one, he would have been dismissed the service. The difference between the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh is this: in the first case, the virtues of the Prince equal his intelligence; in the second case, the intelligence of the Duke is more developed than are his virtues.
In the case of Broadwood vs. the Duke of St. Albans, both the Royal brothers were permitted to guard a pleasant incognito. The Judge who allowed this concealment was soon afterwards created a Peer of the Realm.
Our army and navy, without reckoning the Indian Establishment, cost more to-day, by about £9,000,000 a year, than when her Majesty ascended the throne. Her Majesty's cousin, George William Frederick, Duke of Cambridge, is Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and for this service receives £4,432 per annum. His Royal Highness also receives the sum of £12,000 in consequence of his being a cousin of the Queen. His Royal Highness is also Field-Marshal, and Colonel of four distinct regiments, for which he gets more than £5,000 annually. Naturally, in the Duke is found embodied the whole military talent of the Royal Family. His great-uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, carved "Klosterseven" on the Brunswick monuments. Frederick Duke of York, the uncle of the Duke of Cambridge, recalled from the field of battle, that he might wear in peace at home the laurels he had won abroad, added "Clarke" and "Tonyn" as names to vie with Cressy or Waterloo. The present Duke of Cambridge was, when Prince George, stationed in Yorkshire, in the famous "plug plot" times, and his valiancy then threatened most lustily what he would do against the factory "turnouts," poor starved wretches clamoring for bread. In the army, the normal schoolmasters can tell how this brave Brunswicker rendered education difficult, and drove out, one by one, many of the best teachers. Soldiers who think too much, make bad machines. It was the father of the present Duke of Cambridge who publicly expressed his disbelief, in 1844—5, of the failure of the potato crop in Ireland, "because he had always found the potatoes at his own table very good!"
For many years her Majesty's most constant attendant has been a Scotsman, John Brown. This person so seldom leaves her Majesty that it is said that some years since the Queen insisted on his presence when diplomatic communications were made to her Majesty; and that, when escorting the Queen to Camden House, on a visit to the ex-Emperor Napoleon, Mr. Brown offered her his arm from the carriage to the door. Afterwards, when an idiotic small boy—Armed with a broken pistol, loaded with red flannel, and without gunpowder—made a sham attack on her Majesty, Mr. Brown courageously rushed to the Queen's aid, and has since received a medal to mark his valor.
For many years her Majesty has taken but little part in the show ceremonials of State. Parliament is usually opened and closed by commission—a robe on an empty throne, and a speech read by deputy, satisfying the Sovereign's loyal subjects. It is, however, the fact that in real State policy her interference has been most mischievous, and this especially where it affected her Prusso-German relatives.' In the case of Denmark attacked by Prussia and Austria, and in the case of the Franco-Prussian War, English Court influences have most indecently affected our foreign relations.
Her Majesty is now enormously rich, and—as she is like her Royal grandmother—grows richer daily. She is also generous, Parliament annually voting her moneys to enable her to be so without touching her own purse.
It is charged against me that I have unfairly touched private character. In no instance have I done so, except as I have found the conduct of the individuals attacked affecting the honor and welfare of the nation. My sayings and writings are denounced in many of the journals, and in the House of Lords, as seditious, and even treasonable. My answer is, that, fortunately, Hardy, Tooke, and Thelwall heard "Not Guilty" given as the shield against a criticism which dared to experiment on persecution. In case of need, I rely on a like deliverance. I do not pretend hereto have pleaded for Republicanism; I have only pleaded against the White Horse of Hanover. I admire the German intellect, training the world to think. I loathe these small German breast-bestarred wanderers, whose only merit is their loving hatred of one another. In their own land they vegetate and wither unnoticed; here we pay them highly to marry and perpetuate a pauper prince-race. If they do nothing, they are "good." If they do ill, loyalty gilds the vice till it looks like virtue.
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