series of transactions or system of policy with which it is identified. So long as it is impossible to enter upon the investigation with the same coolness of judgement as we should examine the records of the sixteenth century, so long as we are forbidden to speak of George the Third and his ministers, with the same unshackled freedom as we should speak of Charles the Second and Clarendon, or as posterity will speak alike of both, we are obviously placed in a predicament which disqualifies us for receiving the lessons to be derived from a comprehensive and philosophical review of the period in the shape of history. We are far from being disposed to attach to Bishop Watson's opinions any other weight than belongs to the sentiments of any man of shrewd observation and sound sense, placed in his circumstances; but his testimony as to facts we regard as unimpeachable, and the value of this, no charge of arrogance, or want of delicacy, or ambitious motive that may be brought against his character by those who are hostile to his opinions, can in any wise diminish.

With regard to the Regency question, it was obviously a struggle of parties, yet the opponents on each side might be sincerely persuaded of the justice of the arguments on which they respectively took their stand. It was not a little remarkable, that the minister of the Crown should be the party to assert the constitutional rights of the Parliament, and the Opposition to contend for the prerogative: the reason, however, was not equivocal; a change in the administration would at that period, inevitably have followed the establishment of the Regency in the person of the Heir Apparent. Pitt, in the policy he adopted, acted with his characteristic intrepidity and foresight. In consulting the private interests and individual feelings of his Master, rather than the prerogatives of the Crown, he secured to himself an ample indemnity in the case of the King's recovery; while in thus directly challenging the claims of the Prince, he risked no loss of favour, and therefore might think, that where he could scarcely hope to conciliate, it only remained to awe. Little was it then conjectured as probable, that a Regency would twenty years after quietly take place under similar circumstances, without involving any change of counsels, or any sensible alteration in the current of public affairs; but the men whose voices were then heard in the thunders of debate, who were the life and soul of their respective parties, are, with all their hopes and fears, laid in silence.

The Bishop of Landaff, in common with many of his friends, augured, at that time, very sanguinely respecting His Royal Highness's future conduct. On the occasion of the letters which passed in 1803 between the King, the Prince of Wales, and Mr. Addington, he writes thus to the Duke of Queensberry:

The Bishop has been particularly gratified by those of the Prince of Wales, as they confirm the judgment which he had long ago formed, and always maintained, of his Royal Highness's public character,That he was a man occupied in trifles, because he had no opportunity of displaying his talents in the conduct of great con

cerns.

And he adverts, in the same note, to the filial piety, discretion and magnanimity shewn in the business of the regency,' as well as on that occasion, as justifying this favourable judgement. In the same page we meet with the following passage in reference to an address which he presented to the King in the name of the clergy of his diocese, under the alarm of invasion. • Did it become me, at such a time, to write such an address? It' certainly did, for I should have been ashamed of the littleness of my own mind, if I had suffered private discontent to generate in me either indifference to the public safety or disaffection to the King. If kings form wrong judgments of the characters of any of their subjects, they are rather to be pitied than condemned for their error; they can have no interest in thinking of any man either better or worse than he deserves; but they are usually surrounded with men who may have both interest and malignant pleasure in misleading them; and it would be an excess of candour to say, that neither churchmen nor laymen of that description surrounded the throne of George the Third.'

Some of the most interesting paragraphs in the volume, are those relating to the circumstances which led to the decline and almost extinction of the Whig interest in the present reign. The following is the Bishop's account of the origin of the Coalition between Lord North and Mr. Fox.

Towards the end of February, 1783, Lord Shelburne resigned the office of First Lord of the Treasury, and in April following, a new ministry, usually called the Coalition Ministry, was formed; a great cry was every where raised against Lord Shelburne, whether justly or not may be doubted; I will mention, however, one anecdote to his honour as a man of integrity; his ability was never questioned :-On the day on which the peace was to be debated in the two Houses of Parliament, I happened to stand next him in the House of Lords, and asked him, whether he was to be turned out by the disapprobation of the Commons; he replied, that he could not certainly tell what would be the temper of that House, but he could say that he had not expended a shilling of the public money to procure its approbation, though he well knew that above sixty thousand pounds had been expended in procuring an approbation of the peace in 1763.

After the death of Lord Rockingham, the King had appointed Lord Shelburne to the Treasury, without the knowledge, at least without waiting for the recommendation of the Cabinet. This exertion of the prerogative being contrary to the manner in which gos vernment had been carried on during the reigns of George the First and Second by the great Whig families of the country, and differences

also having happened between Lord Shelburne and some of the prin cipal members of the Cabinet, even during the life-time of Lord Rockingham, many of them resigned their situations on his being made prime minister, and united with Lord North and his friends to force him from his office. From the moment this coalition was formed betwen Lord North and the men who had for many years reprobated, in the strongest terms, his political principles, I lost all confidence in public men. I had, through life, been a strenuous supporter of the principles of the Revolution, and had attached myself, in some degree, to that party which professed to act upon them: but in their coalescing with the Tories to turn out Lord Shelburne, they destroyed my opinion of their disinterestedness and integrity. I clearly saw that they sacrificed their public principles to private pique, and their honour to their ambition. The badness of the peace, and the supposed danger of trusting power in the hands of Lord Shelburne, were the reasons publicly given for the necessity of forming the coalition: personal dislike of him, and a desire to be in power themselves, were, in my judgment, the real ones. This dissension of the Whigs has done more injury to the constitution, than all the violent attacks on the liberty of the subject which were subsequently made during Mr. Pitt's administration. The restriction of the liberty of the press, the longcontinued suspension of the habeas corpus act, the sedition bills, and other infringements of the Bill of Rights, were, from the turbulent circumstances of the times, esteemed by many quite salutary measures; but the apostacy from principle in the coalition-ministry ruined the confidence of the country, and left it without hope of soon seeing another respectable opposition on constitutional grounds; and it stamped on the hearts of millions an impression which will never be effaced, that Patriotism is a scandalous game played by public men for private ends, and frequently little better than a selfish struggle for power.

The Whig part of the coalition ministry, which was formed in April, 1783, forced themselves into the King's service. His Majesty had shewn the greatest reluctance to treating with them. Their enemies said, and their adherents suspected, that if poverty had not pressed hard upon some of them, they would not, for the good of their country, have overlooked the indignities which had been shown them by the court; they would have declined accepting places, when they perfectly knew that their services were unacceptable to the King, They did, however, accept; and on the day they kissed hands, I told Lord John Cavendish (who reluctantly joined the coalition) that they had two things against them, the Closet and the Country; that the King hated them, and would take the first opportunity of turning them out; and that the coalition would make the country hate them. Lord John was aware of the opposition they would have from the closet, but he entertained no suspicion of the country being disgusted at the coalition. The event, however, of the general election, in which the Whig interest was almost every where unsuccessful, and Lord John himself turned out at York, proved that my foresight was well founded. It is a great happiness in our constitution, that when the aristocratic parties in the Houses of Parlia

ment flagrantly deviate from principles of honour, in order to support their respective interests, there is integrity enough still remaining in the mass of the people, to counteract the mischief of such selfishness or ambition.'

It has not been without some reason, then, according to the statement of one of their own friends, that 6 a hatred of the Whigs has shewn itself during the whole of the present reign.' Whatsoever may have been the predisposing cause, the leading men among them have taken ample pains to justify, as well as to confirm the jealousy of their ascendancy which has been so unequivocally manifested. The haughty and turbulent temper in which they attempted to exert a control over the prerogative, was sufficient to rouse the spirit and even to alarm the fears of the monarch, who, it is suspected, had among his secret advisers, persons well disposed to take advantage of this conduct in their adversaries, for the purpose both of breaking down their power, and of exciting a prejudice against their political principles. The part which they took in opposing the American war, tended, no doubt, to strengthen the reluctance manifested to confide to their hands the reins of government; but the business of the India Bill, must have heightened this reluctance to absolute disgust, while it seemed to leave no other alternative than some decided step, which should at once terminate the contest between the hostile interests, and obviate all danger of further attack upon the prerogative. We must look to other causes, however, to account for the Whig party losing their hold at the same time upon the feelings of the country. Had they had the sense of the nation on their side, they would have been formidable in opposition still; but the coalition was not the only circumstance which contributed to destroy their popularity. It was not, we suspect, all along, the men thenselves, so much as their principles, to which the great body of the nation were attached. The overbearing pride of the aristocracy, which rendered them obnoxious to the sovereign, was not adapted to conciliate the favour of the people; they had, however, been successful when in power, and success is sure to render a ministry popular in opposition, too, they had the advantage of standing on the right ground; on the question of the American war, they had the best part of the national feeling on their side. But they were not aware how much they stood indebted for their support, to a good cause.

That com-.

mon object attained, there seemed to remain no bond of sympa thy between them and the people, and the attachment of principle subsided into the mere preference of party. Their dissen-. sions, and their ambition, opened the eyes of the public, and those who afterwards, when the constitution seemed to be suspended on the will of the Minister, clung to the hope of seeVOL. IX. N. S. 2 H

ing the Opposition again rally in the strength of talent and principle, could not but distrust the patriotism and the integrity of the men in whose abilities they were driven to confide. It is in vain to attempt to detach public integrity from the private virtues. The common sense and common feeling of the nation reject the distinction. What an inconceivable advantage was placed in the hands of men, whose political opponents were many of them chargeable with an utter dereliction of social honesty and moral feeling! How were the noblest pleadings for freedom and the best rights of human nature weakened at every period, by the remembrance that all that eloquence came from the polluted lips of a libertine ! That the patriot was fresh from the gambling house, the tavern, or the brothel! How far circumstances like these might conspire to perpetuate a distinction between the King's friends, and the Prince's friends, and to strengthen distrust and antipathy in a certain quarter, against men of the latter party, must remain matter of conjecture; but with regard to the nation at large, it deserves to be borne in mind as a fact, which we do not regard as questionable, that the irreligion and profligacy which have marked the private characters of several prominent individuals, whose public principles were in alliance both with the constitution and the best interests of human kind, have been one great cause of that passive acquiescence in a contrary policy into which the nation has fallen, and of the opprobrinm which is now become attached, to the principles of Whiggism.

We have no regrets to spare for the rise and fall of parties, considered merely in reference to the petty interests of the actors themselves in the political drama; but unfortunately, with the larger portion of society, who have not formed the habit of thinking for themselves, it is too customary, instead of trying men by their avowed principles, to judge of the principles from the characters of the men. Instead of reasoning, they associate; and this sort of instinct, though often salutary, is sometimes deiusive. The unworthy character of an individual becomes through a premature generalization of the object of fear or obloquy, imputed to a class, and virtue and religion are held responsible for the actions of all who assume their name. Hence, also, the talismanic properties which a word acquires in the mouths of a party, so as to act, without exciting any distinct ideas, directly upon the imagination; and the same word shall, at successive periods, be invested with the property of exciting associations of a directly opposite kind. Take for instance, the word Revolution, from which, at a no very remote era in our history, the epithet Glorious, seemed in no danger of divorce. "The Revolution' called up to the mind of the Englishman, all