hitherto given him; and his majesty has the satisfaction to inform the house, that the Prince of Wales has given his majesty the fullest assurances of his determination to confine his future expenses within the income, and has also settled a plan for arranging those expenses in the several departments, and for fixing an order for payment, under such regulations as his majesty trusts will effectually secure the due execution of the prince's intentions.

"His majesty will direct an estimate to be laid before this house of the sum wanting to complete, in a proper manner, the work which has been undertaken at Carlton House, as soon as the same can be prepared with sufficient accuracy, and recommends it to his faithful commons to consider of making some provision for this purpose.

This account was shortly after laid on the table,

Expenditure from July, 1783, to July, 1786.

On the day following the presentation of this paper, the commons carried up an address to the throne, humbly desiring that his majesty would order 161,000l. to be issued out of the civil list for the payment of the debt, and a sum of 20,000l. for the completion of Carlton House.

This proceeding had the usual fate of half measures, it palliated the evil only to make it return in double force. It showed the king's displeasure, without ensuring the prince's retrenchment. The public clamoured at the necessity for giving away so large a sum of the national money; while the creditors, whom the sum, large as it was, would but inadequately pay, boldly pronounced themselves defrauded. Whether the leaders of the legislature were rejoiced or discontented, remained in their own bosoms. But Pitt had accomplished the important purpose of suppressing for the time a topic which might have deeply involved his administration; and Fox's sagacity must have seen in this imperfect measure the very foundation on which a popular leader would love to erect a grievance. It gave him the full use of the prince's injuries for all the purposes of opposition. Hopeless of future appeal, stung by public rebuke, and committed before the empire in hostility to the court and the minister, the prince was now thrown completely into his hands.

CHAPTER VI.

The Prince's Friends.

THERE seems to be a law of politics, by which the heir of the crown is inevitably opposed to the crown. This grew into a proverb in Holland, when the stadtholderate had become hereditary; and may have found its examples in all countries where the constitution retains a vestige of freedom. The line of the Georges has furnished them for three generations. Frederic, Prince of Wales, son of George the Second, was in constant opposition to the court, was the centre of a powerful party, and was even in

volved in personal dispute with the king. There is a curious similitude in his life to that of his late majesty. The origin of the alienation was, the old "root of all evil," money. The opposition headed by Pulteney (the Fox of his day) adopted the prince's cause, and moved in parliament for the increase of his income to 100,000l. The king resented equally the demand and the connexion; and the dispute was carried on with the natural implacability of a family quarrel.-The prince collected the wits round him; the king closeted himself with a few antiquated and formal nobles.—The prince's residence, at Cliefden, in Buckinghamshire, was enlivened by perpetual festivity, balls, banquets, and plays; among which was the mask of Alfred, by Thompson and Mallet, written in honour of the Hanover accession, with Quin in the part of Alfred. St. James's was a royal fortress, in which the king sat guarded from the approach of all public gayety.-Frederic, too, pushed the minister so closely, that he had no refuge but in a reconciliation between the illustrious belligerants; and Walpole, perplexed by perpetual debate, and feeling the ground giving way under him, proposed to the prince an addition of 50,000l. to his income, and 200,000l. for the discharge of his debts. But Walpole's hour was come; opposition, conscious of his weakness, determined to give him no respite. The prince haughtily refused any accommodation while the obnoxious minister was suffered to remain in power. Walpole was crushed. The prince led opposition into the royal presence; and the spoils of office rewarded them for a struggle carried on in utter scorn alike of the king's feelings and the national interests, but distinguished by great talent, dexterity, and determination. Yet victory was fatal to them; they quarrelled for the spoils. and Walpole had his revenge in the disgrace of Pulteney for ever.

On the death of Prince Frederic, the next heir,

Prince George, became the prize of opposition headed by Pitt (Lord Chatham), Lord Temple, and the Grenvilles. Leicester House, the residence of his mother, again eclipsed St. James's, and the Newcastle administration trembled at the popularity of this rival court. To withdraw his heir from party, the king offered him a residence in St. James's. But before the hostility could be matured into open resistance, a stroke of apoplexy put an end to the royal life, placed the prince on the throne, and turned the eloquence of opposition into sarcasms on Scotch influence, and burlesques on the princessmother's presumed passion for the handsome minister.

In other lands the king is a despot, and the heir. apparent a rebel; in England the relation is softened, and the king is a tory, and the heir-apparent a whig. Without uncovering the grave, to bring up things for dispute which have lain till their shape and substance are half dissolved away in that great receptacle of the follies and arts of mankind, it is obvious that there was enough in the contrast of men and parties to have allured the young Prince of Wales to the side of opposition.

Almost prohibited, by the rules of the English court from bearing any important part in the government; almost condemned to silence in the legislature by the custom of the constitution; almost restricted, by the etiquette of his birth, from exerting himself in any of those pursuits which cheer and elevate a manly mind, by the noble consciousness that it is of value to its country; the life of the eldest born of the throne appears condemned to be a splendid sinecure. The valley of Rasselas, with its impassable boundary, and its luxurious and spiritsubduing bowers, was but an emblem of princely existence; and the moralist is unfit to decide on human nature, who, in estimating the career, forgets the temptation.

It is neither for the purpose of undue praise to those who are now gone beyond human opinion, nor with the idle zeal of hazarding new conjectures, that the long exclusion of the Prince of Wales from public activity is pronounced to have been a signal injury to his fair fame. The same mental and bodily gifts which were lavished on the listless course of fashionable life, might have assisted the councils, or thrown new lustre on the arms, of his country; the royal tree, exposed to the free blasts of heaven, might have tossed away those parasite plants and weeds which encumbered its growth, and the nation might have been proud of its stateliness, and loved to shelter in its shade.

The education of the royal family had been conducted with so regular and minute an attention, that the lapses of the prince's youth excited peculiar displeasure in the king. The family discipline was almost that of a public school: their majesties generally rose at six, breakfasted at eight with the two elder princes, and then summoned the younger children: the several teachers next appeared, and the time till dinner was spent in diligent application to languages and the severer kinds of literature, varied by lessons in music, drawing, and the other accomplishments. The king was frequently present; the queen superintended the younger children, like an English mother. The two elder princes laboured at Greek and Latin with their tutors, and were by no means spared in consequence of their rank. "How would your majesty wish to have the princes treated?" was said to be Markham's inquiry of the king. "Like the sons of any private English gen. tleman," was the manly and sensible answer. "If they deserve it, let them be flogged; do as you used to do at Westminster."

The command was adhered to, and the royal culprits acquired their learning by the plebeian mode.