beyond the hope of public honours, and the still stronger offence of being charged with sharing the plunder of the prince's income, eclipsed himself. The house was kept in a state of unwearied admiration by the brilliant variety of powers which this extraordinary man displayed night after night; in the midst of a life of that alternate embarrassment and excess, dreamy indolence and exhausting luxury,that ague of the mind, which most rapidly exhausts and emasculates the intellectual frame.

The fragments of those speeches which still remain can only do injury to the reputation of the great orator. Yet, shattered as they are, they now and then exhibit some trace of the master hand.

"I disdain," said he, "all this trifling and quibbling with the common sense of the nation. Let the people not be deceived by our taking the money out of their pockets as a royal income, and paying it back as a royal debt. To-night it is not my intention to vote either way. This seems to surprise some gentlemen opposite; but, to those who make up their minds on all questions before they come into the house! some surprise may be natural at my not making up my mind after I am in it.

"The debt must be paid immediately, for the dignity of the country and the situation of the prince. He must not be seen rolling about the streets as an insolvent prodigal. But the public must not be burdened with the pressure of a hair, in affording him that relief.

"In the course of these discussions, gentlemen have applied strong language to the conduct of an illustrious prince. But there are other high and illustrious characters, who, in future discussions, must be told as plainly what the public have a right to expect from them, and what their conduct ought to have been on the present occasion, however ungracious the task may be."

The plan in Sheridan's contemplation was, that an

advance should be made from the privy purses of the king and queen, and that the incomes of the sinecure places should be thrown in.

"The king's privy purse was 60,000l., the queen's 50,000l.; and all their houses and paraphernalia were now finished and furnished. The first and most natural feeling of a parent would be to make some sacrifice to retrieve the imprudence of a son." He then pounced upon the sinecures;-" places which add to neither the dignity of the crown nor its strength. Let a committee of trustees be appointed, in whom might be placed the sinecure revenues after the death of their present holders. Posterity would look back with gratitude to the arrangement, and with wonder that such places ever existed. This would be the way to make our constitution stable, and to prevent the wild system of Jacobinism from undermining or overturning it. While we were spilling our blood and wasting our money in support of continental monarchy, this would be a rational resource; and prove that monarchy, or those employed under it, could show examples of self-denial, and do something for the benefit of the people. This would add lustre to the crown; unless, indeed, ministers might think that it shone with lustre in proportion to the gloom that surrounded it, and that a king is magnificent as his subjects become miserable!

"There is one class who love the constitution, but do not love its abuses. There is another who love it, with all its abuses. But there is a third, a large and interested party, among whom I do not hesitate to place his majesty's ministers, who love it, for nothing but its abuses! But let the house, the best part of our constitution, consider its own honour. Let us destroy the sinecures. Let us build the dignity of the prince on the ruins of idleness and corruption, and not on the toils of the industrious poor, who must see their loaf decreased by the discharge of his encumbrances."

To the charge of sharing in the prince's expenditure he gave the most distinct denial. "He had never accepted any thing, not so much as a present of a horse. He scorned the imputation, and would leave it to defeat itself." He repulsed with quick sarcasm the attacks made on him in the course of the debates by the minor antagonists, who had rashly volunteered this proof of their ministerial devotion. Colonel Fullarton had said, in a long and desultory speech, that the prince's councils were secretly guided by Sheridan. After contemptuously retorting the charge," I, the secret counsellor of the prince! I have never given his royal highness a syllable of advice, in which I did not wish it were possible to have the king standing on one side, and the people of England on the other;" he proceeded to repay the colonel :

"As to certain portions of the honourable gentleman's speech, some of the sentences, I actually believe, no gentleman in this house understood, nor could understand; and the only solution of the problem is, that somebody must have advised him to prepare a speech against what he conjectured might be said to-night. He had rifled the English language to find out proverbs and trite sayings; and had so richly enveloped his meaning in metaphor, and embellished it with such colouring, as to render it totally unintelligible to meaner capacities."

Rolle had called him to order. He did not escape. Sheridan told him, "that he was not at all surprised to hear himself called to order by that honourable gentleman; but he should have been very much surprised to hear any reason for the call from that honourable gentleman." Even to Pitt, who had, on one occasion, made no other reply to his speech than moving to adjourn, he flung down the glove.-"I make no comment on the indecency of moving_to adjourn, when the public relief is the topic. To desire the gentlemen on the opposite side to make

provision for the prince by a reduction of useless places, would be to amerce themselves. For my part, I never thought them capable of any folly of the kind."

The prince at length interposed, and by Anstruther, his solicitor-general, sent a message to the house, declaring "his acquiescence in any arrangements which it might deem proper with respect to his income, and its appropriation to the payment of his debts. He was perfectly disposed to make any abatement in his personal establishment that was considered necessary." The princess coincided in the message; and the proceedings were closed by three bills.* The 1st. For preventing future Princes of Wales from incurring debts. The 2d. For granting an establishment to the prince. And the 3d. For the princess's jointure. Commissioners were next appointed for the examination of the debts. The creditors were paid by debentures, with interest on their claims; and the term of nine years was fixed for the final payment. Many of the claims were rejected as groundless, many were largely reduced as exorbitant, and a per centage was taken off the whole. Thus ended a proceeding in which the minister's sagacity had failed of satisfying the nation, the creditors, or the prince. Sheridan's advice would have led to a course more generous and more popu lar. The debt ought not to have been brought before the nation.

* June 24th, 1795.

CHAPTER X.

The Royal Separation.

IN the period of the prince's retirement, before and after his marriage, several incidents occurred which brought him, from time to time, into the presence of the public. Some of them exhibited that want of caution which was the source of his chief vexations through life; but all bore the redeeming character of his original good-nature.

Prize-fighting had become a popular, and even a fashionable amusement, by the patronage of the nobility and the Duke of Cumberland. Brutal as the habit is, and inevitably tending to barbarize the people, it was for a while considered a peculiar feature of British manliness. The prince adopted this patriotic exhibition, and was honoured accordingly; but one display, at which a wretched man was beaten to death before his face, gave him so effectual an impression of championship, that, with honest indignation, he declared "he would never be present at such a scene of murder again."

The Lennox duel not less exhibited his good feeling. The offence received by the irritable colonel was of the most trivial nature. The attempt on the life of the son of his king, and who might himself yet be his king, was a public crime; and if Colonel Lennox had killed the Duke of Yoık, nothing but the mercy of that duke's grieved parent could have saved him from an ignominious death. But the result was fortunately bloodless, and the king seemed to think it a matter of etiquette to overlook the crime. But the Prince of Wales was unable to