Parliament was opened on the 5th of December with a speech from the throne, in which unfortunately there was more true meaning than is generally to be found in King's speeches, for the King deplored the dismemberment of the empire, which had become a matter both of policy and prudence, but he testified a hope as a remuneration for the loss of the most valuable appendage of the British Crown, that religion, language, interest, and affection would yet prove a permanent tie of union between the two countries. Addresses were in the usual style of sycophancy and falsehood, voted in both Houses without a division; but some severe remarks having been made in the House of Peers, on the inconsistency of the Minister, who had at a former period so strongly opposed the recognition of American independence, his lordship declared that he had exerted every effort to preserve America to this country, that he had not voluntarily yielded up their independency; he had merely submitted to the controlling power of necessity and fate. "It was not I," said he, that made this cession, it was the evil star of Britain: it was the blunders of a former administration, it was the power of revolted subjects, and the mighty arms of the house of Bourbon ;" and if he had added, it was the mulish obstinacy, and the love of war of the King of England, his picture of the truth would have been more complete.

This subject may on the first blush of it, be considered as having little or no bearing on the life and character of William IV., but the very reverse is the case. The American revolution was a school in which the Princes of the blood royal of England, who in the course of succession might be called to the throne of England, could read many an instructive lesson on the system of government. Young as Prince William was, he could not but perceive, that an American, drawing in with his first breath a just abhorrence of those aristocratic and ecclesiastic privileges, which had held Europe in perpetual warfare, oppression, and misery, and the American States having happily defeated the arts of Britain to introduce them under

any pretences, or in any forms, it might be expected that their Constitution would be a considerable improvement on that of England, and as such, be of great value to a Prince, who would in a short time be admitted into the upper House of Parliament, and who would enter it equipped with that knowledge of the foreign forms of government, which would enable him to improve that of his own country, and reform those abuses which a degenerated, and aristocratic ministry had not only perpetuated, but increased.

On the emancipation of America, she exhibited several extraordinary characters, some of whom fell under the immediate cognizance of Prince William, and his faculties must have been astute indeed, if he could not derive some advantage from the examples which daily passed under his observation. He was witness of the dangerous effects of favouritism in the selection of the commander of an army; he saw it exemplified in the selection of Sir William Howe, in America, on the same principle that he saw it so fully exposed in the choice of his own brother to the command of an army against such a general as Dumouriez. There is not an error more pernicious in the regions of credulity than to ascribe great events to reputed great men. The Americans became free by exercising a very moderate portion of passive prudence, and that prudence was the offspring of necessity. Washington acted the part of Fabius, because he had not the army of Fabius, for the Americans would often have fought, and by fighting have lost their country.

We will not so far assert that Prince William penetrated deeply into the causes of the American Revolution. His youth, his profession, his absence from the seat of the English Government, were considerable drawbacks in the scale of his attaining a correct knowledge of the disputes which had arisen between the American colonies and the mother country, but this much he had acquired, namely, the conviction that the oppression was on the part of England, and that the American revolution was in fact completely concocted in England, and that its principal authors were Lord Bute, Lord North, Lord

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 most 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

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