Sackville, and Mr. Jenkinson. The American war originated in parliamentary jobbing, and its great purpose was to transfer enormous masses of English property into loans, funds, and taxes, in order to form that corrupt ministerial phalanx, called the monied friends of government. While that faction, like a malignant disease, was draining the vital substance of Britain, and armies and navies were merely its ramifications, the Cabinet of France obeyed the sentiments of the French nation, without intending to gratify it, and America obtained its liberty.

There was however another very important question which the settlement of the American independence brought before the consideration of Prince William, and that was the establishment of a republic in opposition to a monarchial state, which was at total variance, with the acknowledged governments of Europe, with one exception only, and that was Switzerland. Personally speaking, Prince William had not an enemy, which in the opinion of some persons is tantamount to saying that he had no merit, but as one of those who had fought against the independance of America, he had many. It scarcely however amounts to a political problem whether William IV., when Prince William, and acting as a subordinate officer in a man of war, did not imbibe certain principles from his observations on the causes and effects of the American revolution, which ultimately exhibited themselves in the staunch reformer of the political evils, which threatened altogether to endanger the existence of the British Constitution, and place the people under the dominion of a detested oligarchy. In general the rust of education clings to an individual with all the tenacity of the most violent caustic compound, but fortunately for Prince William, and still more fortunately for the nation, over whom he was called to reign, he was thrown at an early period of his life into those relations of society, where he discovered the instability of the principles in which he had been educated under the high aristocratical regime of his parents, and their direct incompetency to promote or confirm the happiness of a people. It was therefore by no means improbable, that the seeds of that character were sown in him, which afterwards

displayed themselves in so luxuriant a manner, as the Reform Monarch of Great Britain.

At the close of the war, Prince William had acquired considerable knowledge not only in the practical, but theoretical principles of his profession, and he had also witnessed the inferiority of our navy to that of France, particularly in the construction of our ships. It may, however, be said, that the men, who were at that time at the head of the naval department, seemed more willing to exert their influence to keep all those at a distance from them, who had any improvement to make, rather than to encourage and patronize them. Even the interest that Prince William possessed, frequently failed of producing any change in the administration of naval affairs, or diverting those who were at the head of them from their deeplyrooted prejudices, or their antiquated system of government. On one occasion, Lieutenant Berkeley, who had served with Prince William as a midshipman on board the Prince George, applied to his Royal Highness to lay before the Board of Admiralty, an improvement in the building of ships, by which the rate of sailing could be increased. Prince William undertook the commission; but at the same time gave Lieutenant Berkeley very slender hopes of any good accruing from the application. Nor was his Royal Highness wrong in his conjecture. The plan was submitted to the Board, and the answer was, “That they had got from the arsenal at Toulon all the information which they wanted." The information might, indeed, have been obtained; but it lay in the chests of the Admiralty, useless and neglected.

During the time that Prince William was at Jamaica, he had frequent opportunities of conversing with Captain Maxwell, who then commanded the Arab sloop, respecting his new code of signals, which had been highly approved of by several of the moɛt eminent commanders of the British navy; and so pleased was his Royal Highness with the simplicity and excellence of the new system, that he promised Captain Maxwell on his return to England, to use his utmost influence in procuring their general adoption in the British navy. On the return of

Captain Maxwell and his Royal Highness to England, on the conclusion of the war, the latter was reminded of his promise, and his Royal Highness consistently with his general character, faithfully kept his word. At this time one of the most influential women at the British court, was the celebrated Duchess of Gordon, to whom Captain Maxwell was nearly related, and supported by a prince of the blood royal, and a beautiful and talented woman, who would have made a most skilful diplomatist at any of the European courts, Captain Maxwell doubted not of success. To his great surprise, however, and not less to his mortification, the Admiralty refused even to look at the invention, observing that they were satisfied with the code of signals which they had, although it may be added, that it is was well known to every officer in the British navy, that the French were in possession of the key to our signals, and had taken advantage of that knowledge in several instances in the late war.

At the beginning of the late war with France, Captain Maxwell renewed his application to the Board of Admiralty, to which he was stimulated by the Duke of Clarence; and there being men at that time at the head of the Admiralty, of a different calibre than those who presided over that department at the close of the American war, the invention met with the attention which it deserved, and with some alterations was adopted throughout the whole of the British fleet.

This supineness on the part of the Board of Admiralty in the admission of any improvements, was the cause of many serious complaints on the part of Prince William to his Royal Father, but the loss of the American colonies so rankled in the royal breast, that it was only a son, or some individual standing very high in his confidence, who dared to approach him with any complaint of the administration of the affairs of the country Independently, however, of the loss which his Crown had experienced of its most valuable jewel, his Majesty of England, after riding his hobby-horse for the recovery of the American colonies to death, had just mounted another, of a more peaceable and harmless nature, for he had become one of the first

farmers in the country, and the choice of his tups and his bulls engrossed his attention, more than the improvement of his navy in the times of peace, without which, he would not have a tup or a bull to graze upon his lands. He was also at this time, particularly and most royally employed in the art of button making, which obtained for him from the good people of Birmingham, the sounding title of a great and patriotic Monarch, for as George III. wore buttons on his coat, the result of his own mechanical powers, no one, who had any pretensions to be included in what is significantly styled "the fashionable world," could appear without buttons of a similar kind. The manufacturers of Birmingham took advantage of this servility of "the fashionable world," and, perhaps, in no era of the history of Birmingham, were such large and rapid fortunes made, originating from apparently so trifling a cause as the King of England falling in love with the art of button making. History, however, is not deficient in many instances in which the people of a country have prospered from the whims or weaknesses of their monarchs. Louis XIII. of France was deaf, and always appeared with a speaking trumpet suspended to his neck, and, therefore, out of compliment to so good a King, the whole tribe of courtiers wore speaking trumpets also, and the rage for speaking trumpets extended rapidly to those, who wished to be thought to belong to the Court, and as they are in general a very numerous body of persons, the manufacturers of speaking trumpets could not keep pace with the demand for the article, and many thousands had reason to bless the weakness of their King, when they had no ground whatever to bless him for his greatness. Nadin, the Schah of Persia was so afflicted with a natural defect in his neck, that his head nearly reclined on his right shoulder, it became, therefore, the fashion of the Persian Court, that every person should appear with his neck awry, and in proportion to the obliquity of the head, so was the claim of the individual to the height of his rank in the fashionable world." There are, however, other Courts than that of Persia in which an obliquity of the head prevails, and we have only to look at the present day, to

the hereditary legislators of this kingdom, to discover a greater obliquity of the head, than ever displayed itself at the Persian Court.

Considering therefore the patriotic pursuits of George III., at the period of which we are now writing, no wonder need be excited at the obliquity of the head, which he evinced in discarding from his attention the many appeals which were made to him for the improvement of his navy, a service on which the very safety and existence of his crown depended. It must however be remarked, that on certain subjects, George III. was one of the most inaccessible monarchs that ever sat upon the throne of England, with the exception perhaps of his son George IV, even with his children he could scarcely ever so unbend himself, as to lose the monarch in the father. Every thing was to be performed according to the rules of etiquette, and when Prince William returned from his naval campaign, he was obliged to go through the ceremonious ordeal of a presentation, before he could be said, to be legitimately entitled to be received at court. In the different plans, which Prince William had to propose to his royal father, either on his own suggestion, or the result of the skill or the invention of others, he had to undergo the ceremony of a formal introduction, as if he were a common subject presenting a petition. It was no wonder then, that Prince William declined in many instances to be the agent of others in laying before his father the merits of any particular improvement, for in the first place they met with the repulsive notice of an indifferent person, and in the second, Prince William despaired of ever meeting with that countenance and sanction from his royal father, which could even lead to a recommendation of a trial of the improvement, by persons competent to decide upon its merits. The head of George III. was at that time impregnated with the idea that England excelled all other nations in the mechanical arts, and in many branches of science, one of the consequences of which was, that according to his opinion the English stood in want of no further improvement. Geo. III. was an adept in the calculation of compound interest; a