indignant murmurs of German students, be heard from Paris to Berlin ;but let Napoleon abstract the comforting ingredients of modern civilization from the cup of life-he raises a personal enemy on every hearth, and excites an execration from every tea-drinking frau or tobacco-smoking burgher. The popularizers of political philosophy-the most barren of sciences apart from its moral relations—the indiscriminating eulogists of laissez-faire commerce, are accustomed to dwell on this fact with exulting emphasis. Napoleon-they exclaim-ran a career of conquest while he opposed squadron to squadron, and impelled columns of valiant Frenchmen upon the too-disciplined defenders of effete absolutisms; but when he laid his hand upon the springs of trade, he touched the ethereal laws of social organization, and they crushed him in their resistless, retributory recoil. Stripped of this rhetorical disguise, only the mortifying fact remains, that self-interest, in its vulgarest, most material forms, is more powerful in the economy of human action than those nobler motives-the love of country and liberty, hatred of cruelty and oppression-which draw half their force from the heart, and half from the imagination; as trees and flowers are nourished both by soil and sun. The true moral of the chapter seems to be —that every assault on man's higher nature necessitates, ultimately, direct attack on his lower interests, which will instantly return the blow; trade and commerce avenging the violation of such nobler principles as liberty and justice; the earth, in the beautiful imagery of the apocalyptic seer helping the woman, absorbing in its dull bosom the floods thrown forth by her dragon foe.

CHAPTER VII.

A SCANDALOUS EPISODE; THE DUKE OF YORK AND MRS. CLARK-PARLIAMENTARY REFORMPERSONAL HOSTILITIES, AND DISSOLUTION OF THE MINISTRY - SIR FRANCIS BURDETT COMMITTED TO THE TOWER-THE PRINCE OF WALES PRINCE REGENT-PERCEVAL'S ASSASSINATION -LORD SIDMOUTH AND DISSENT.

PARLIAMENTARY and public attention was absorbed, through the session of 1809, by personalities of the most disgraceful character. The Duke of York, Commander-in-Chief, and second son of the King, had for a mistress one Mary Anne Clarke, a woman of low origin, but of remarkable personal attractions and cleverness. She transferred her intimacy from the Duke to a Colonel Wardle, who had become of late a hot Opposition partizan, and to whom she communicated particulars of the utmost promise to his political allies. On the 27th of January, the Colonel affirmed in the House that the Duke had permitted Mrs. Clarke to carry on a traffic in commissions and

promotions, and demanded a public inquiry; which the Duke's friends deemed it expedient to grant. Orators, newsmongers, and ballad-singers, made the most of the scandalous scenes which followed. Mrs. Clarke was examined at the bar of the House for several successive weeks-despite the efforts of Wilberforce, and other decorous senators, to get the matter referred to a select committee-displaying a shameless, witty impudence and theatrical grace, that drew continual applause and laughter from a mob of gentlemen, many of whom knew her too well. The defence set up was, that the Duke had weakly suffered his discreditable acquaintance to enrich herself and oblige her friends by the influence she exercised over him; but that he was far above the meanness of profiting by these transactions, and that, indeed, the promotions made were usually so meritorious that this Pompadour administration at the Horse Guards had been rather beneficial to the service than otherwise-which representation the House accepted by a majority of eighty-two. But the Duke resigned; and the disclosures made-Doctors of Divinity suing for bishoprics, and priests for preferment, at the feet of a courtezan; kissing her palm with coin-were felt by the party that had always religion, conscience, and morality, upon its lips, to be exceedingly damaging.

Hoping to profit by these exposures, the friends of parliamentary purification and reform brought forward several motions. Mr. Curwen, an old Whig member, introduced a bill for discouraging bribery, and imposing an oath of legitimate election on taking one's seat in the House. Aided by a charge against the ministry of compelling a member for a treasury borough to vote in favour of the Duke of York or to resign his seat, Mr. Curwen got his bill through its first stages unopposed, and had it virtually taken from him by the Tories, and passed in a mutilated form. Sir Francis Burdett determined to reproduce the whole question of reform; and submitted to the House a plan including the extension of the suffrage coequally with direct taxation, the distribution of representatives according to population, the restriction of voting to one day, and a return to the old constitutional practice of annual elections. After one or two abortive attempts, he got a House" and a hearing on the 15th of June; and advocated his propositions in his best style. The lateness of the session served moderate reformers with an excuse for absence in the country; Ministers replied with disdainful brevity; and the House divided-fifteen for to seventy-four against.

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The disastrous Walcheren expedition-the record of which belongs to another chapter-occasioned two events, in each of which the ludicrous and the painful mingle. Canning was Foreign Secretary-Castlereagh, Secretary at War; the unwise division of one function aggravated by the characteristic differences of the men. Canning threw all the blame of naval and

military failures on his colleague, and at length insisted to the premier on his dismissal; with which the poor old Duke promised to comply. Castlereagh, learning the particulars of his disgrace, corresponded with and challenged Canning. Duelling was not then abandoned to fools and cowards, or brainless bravadoes. The two statesmen met at Putney-heath, and fired twice. Canning was preparing for a third exchange of shots, when Castlereagh interposed with, "I believe the right honourable gentleman is wounded"—as indeed he was, in the thigh. This forcible rupture, with the secession of Huskisson, dissolved the Ministry; they all resigned, the Duke of Portland dying a few days after. The Duke's loss to his party was only that of a titled do-nothing; but Castlereagh could not well be spared, and Canning's trenchant tongue was worse than irreparable. Lord Liverpool and Mr. Perceval were reduced to the disagreeable necessity of inviting the Whig Lords, Grenville and Grey, into the cabinet, which invitation they at once refused. The fracas had taken place in September, and it was not till December that the Marquis of Wellesley was induced to take the Foreign Office, Perceval combining the offices of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer: Lord Palmerston commenced his high career on a stool in the War Office of the new ministry—

"Lowliness is young ambition's ladder."

In the next session, an inquiry into the Walcheren expedition was demanded; but when the Ministers could no longer resist, they determined to clear the strangers' gallery of the House during the investigation. Whigs and Radicals alike protested against this, and Sheridan moved a modification of the standing order, indulging at the same time in a panegyric on the press, to which the eccentric Windham replied in a tirade against journals and journalists which outdid anything that the hottest Tory would have dared. There were in existence then, as now, numerous "little parliaments," debating clubs, in which the proceedings of the greater body were pretty freely discussed. In one of these, the British Forum, the president, Citizen Gale Jones, proposed as questions, whether the exclusion of the public from the Commons during the Walcheren inquiry was not an attack on the liberties of the people and of the press; and whether Mr. Yorke's motion for closing the gallery or Mr. Windham's speech was the greater outrage upon public feeling. This being placarded about the city, Mr. Yorke complained to the House of the breach of privilege involved, and the printer of the placards was called to the bar of the House, censured, and dismissed, on giving up the name of his employer. Mr. Gale Jones was himself brought to the bar the next day, and committed to Newgate. Of this on the 12th of March [1810], Sir F. Burdett complained, denying the right of the House and the legality of the commitment. His motion was rejected

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by one hundred and fifty-three to fourteen. He printed his speech in "Cobbett's Weekly Register," using even bolder language than in the House, and prefixing a letter to his constituents of Westminster, in which he spoke of the Commons as "a part of our fellow-subjects collected together by means which it is not necessary to describe." So bold a libel the House could not overlook, and its author was ordered into the custody of the Sergeant-atarms and confinement in the Tower. Sir Francis maintained his denial of the power of Parliament by refusing to surrender to its warrant, barricaded his house in Piccadilly, and actually held the messengers of the House at bay for some days. He wrote to the Sheriffs of Middlesex, appealing to them to protect his person and property from violence by a military force; to which Mr. Matthew Wood, who happened to be sheriff that year, responded, passing a night in the beleaguered dwelling, and threatening the magistrates with prosecution if any lives were lost by the weapons of the soldiers, with whom they had lined Piccadilly; a great crowd blocking up the thoroughfare, and raising shouts of "Burdett for ever when, as frequently happened, the baronet appeared at the window. The Government, perplexed by this course, instructed the Serjeant to take the opinion of Sir Vicary Gibbs, the Attorney-General, which, when given, was worthless from its ambiguity and indecision; and so increased the embarrassment. Thus Friday and Saturday passed. On Sunday, great commotion and alarm prevailed, rumours spreading in the country that Piccadilly was ankle-deep in blood. On Monday morning, it was resolved to force an entrance, which was at length effected through a kitchen window. The baronet was found in the drawing-room, surrounded by a number of political and private friends, his son reading to them Magna Charta in the original! Yielding to force, he was conyeyed to the Tower, by a detachment of Guards, who took him round the New-road, rather than fight a way through the City. As they returned, unhappily, they came in contact with the populace, fired, and wounded eight persons, two of them mortally. Sir Francis, from the Tower, served the Speaker with notice of action; and great meetings were held of the electors of Westminster and Middlesex in his support, who, with the livery of London, sent up petitions, that were rejected as libellous. The trial came on in the Court of King's Bench in the following February, and established the supreme authority of the Commons. Sir Francis had to remain in his fortress-prison till the prorogation of Parliament-when a great procession was formed to fetch him out; which honour he wisely avoided by boating it up the river.

A motion for Parliamentary reform, introduced by Mr. Brand, a Whig member-of so moderate a character as to gain a hundred and fifteen votes -and another, by Mr. Grattan, for Catholic emancipation, which had now become an annual subject of debate, are all that demand notice in this

session; which closed on the 21st of June. The Houses were prorogued to the 1st of November, on which day they met, and though not summoned for the despatch of business in the usual form, sat down with more than usual seriousness. For on the 25th of the preceding month, it had been announced that one of the three estates of the realm had suspended its functions. The poor old King-now groping in the gloom of almost total blindness-was again smitten with that worse malady which obscures the light of the soul, and deprives the senses at once of their highest uses and their master faculty. In the summer of 1809, the fiftieth anniversary of his accession to the throne had been celebrated throughout the kingdom with a unanimity and heartiness which showed that the homely virtues of the man were kindly suffered to shade the grievous and notorious faults of the monarch, but which contrasted painfully with the sadness and apprehension that were regnant in the palace. Besides the perennial grief of estranged and licentious sons, there was the approaching shadow of a calamity very differently complexioned-the King's youngest and best-beloved child, the Princess Amelia, was evidently adying. An affecting incident of her last days completed the derangement of the father's faculties. It could no longer be concealed that he was quite incompetent to even the perfunctory offices required of him. Parliament first betook itself to ascertaining the exact condition of the monarch, and the absolute necessity of superseding his functions and guarding his person. The Court physician predicted his Majesty's speedy recovery, and the Houses adjourned for a fortnight, nem. con. When they re-assembled, the physicians were still of the same opinion, and Ministers proposed another adjournment for the same period; to which the Lords assented, with some remarks from the Opposition, and the Commons upon a division. A third time, these predictions were confidently uttered, in a report by the Privy Council, and a third adjournment proposed. Lords Spencer, Holland, and Grenville, demanded a select committee to examine the physicians; but the amendment was negatived, the royal Dukes, York and Cambridge, voting with the Ministers, Clarence and Sussex with the Opposition. In the Commons, a similar amendment on the proposition for delay was rejected; and the Houses adjourned to the 15th of December. By that time, Ministers found themselves obliged to give way, and the committees were appointed. Their reports, presented in two or three days, confirmed that of the Privy Council, as to the opinion of medical authorities; but the Premier announced, at the same time, that he should move in a committee of the whole House a series of resolutions on the appointment of a regent. On the 20th, the resolutions were submitted, and the subject was fully gone into. The same relations were sustained by Ministers and Opposition as in 1788when a regency was appointed, and the King suddenly recovered-but