the tyrannies of ancient or modern days were never able to make corruption free; more than the loudest professions of principle ever made a profligate the fit trustee and champion of national freedom. The personal vice nullifies and contaminates the public profession. No revolution ever succeeded, nor ever deserved to succeed, which was not demanded by the same natural and righteous necessity which demands the defence of our fireside; and which was not conducted by men unstained by the crime of individual ambition, or the deeper crime of bartering the national blood for their own avarice, licentiousness, or revenge; men who felt themselves periling their lives for an object that dignifies death; and in the impulse of holiness and faith offering up their existence a willing and solemn sacrifice to their fellow men and their God.

The success of the first French revolution is no answer to this principle; for France had shewed only the frightful rapidity with which the name of freedom can be vitiated; and the incalculable means of public explosion and misery which may exist under the surface of the most ostentatious patriotism. The second revolution is yet to display its results; but auspicious and justifiable as has been its commencement, its only security will be found in purifying the habits of the people.

If Italy, with her magnificent powers, her vivid susceptibility of character, her living genius,

and her imperishable fame - Italy, where every foot of ground was the foundation of some monument of the most illustrious supremacy of the human mind, is now a prison; the crime and the folly are her own; her own vices have rivetted the chain round her neck, her own hand has barred the dungeon; and in that dungeon she will remain for ever, if she wait until vice shall give vigour to her limbs, or superstition throw back the gates of her living sepulchre. A purer influence must descend upon her. A deliverer, not of the earth, earthy — but an immortal visitant, shedding the light of holiness and religion from its vesture, must come upon her darkness; and, like the angel that came to Peter, bid her awake and follow.

If Spain and Portugal are still convulsed with civil discord; who can hope to see rational freedom ever existing in those lands, while the corruption of the people feeds the license of the throne; while, if the king imprisons, the peasant stabs; while, if the crown violates the privileges of the subject, the subject habitually violates the honour of the holiest ties of our nature; while, if government is tyranny, private life is rapine, promiscuous passion, and merciless revenge? Let the changes be as specious as they may, the political suffering will only deepen, until the personal reform comes to redeem the land; until faith is more than an intolerant superstition,

courage than assassination, and virtue than confession to a monk. Till then, freedom will be but a name; and the fall of a Spanish or Portuguese tyrant but a signal for his assailants to bury their poniards in each other's bosoms ; constitution will be but an upbreaking of the elements of society; and the plunging of despotism into the gulf, but a summons to every gloomy and furious shape of evil below, to rise upon the wing, and darken and poison the moral atmosphere of mankind.

The India bill gave the final blow to the existence of the Old Whigs. The name had long survived the reality; but now even the name perished. When the fragments of the party were collected, in the course of years, after their almost desperate dispersion; they were known by another name; and the New Whigs, however they might claim the honours of the Old, were never recognised as successors to the estate. From this period, Pitt and Toryism were paramount. Fox, defeated in his ambition of being a monarch, was henceforth limited to such glories as were to be found in perpetual discomfiture. Unequalled in debate, he talked for twenty years, and delighted the senate; was the idol of Westminster, the clubs, and the conversations at Devonshire-house; but saw himself in an inexorable minority in the only place where triumph was worthy of his abilities or dear to his ambition. Perhaps, too, if Fox had

never existed, his rival might never have risen to eminence; for even great powers require great opportunities, and the struggle with the colossal frame and muscle of Fox's genius might be essential to mature the vigour of his young antagonist and conqueror. Still, when all hope of wresting the supremacy out of Pitt's hand was past, the exercise was useful; and Fox, for the rest of his days, had the infelicitous honour of keeping those powers in practice, whose inaction might have dropped the sceptre. He was the noblest captive linked to Pitt's chariot-wheel, but to that chariot-wheel he was linked for life; and no other arm could have so powerfully dragged his rival's triumphal car up the steeps of fame.

The prince unhappily soon created a new grievance, that came home more directly to the royal bosom than even his politics. Rolle's allusion to his marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert * was believed by the king to be true, and no act could be calculated to give deeper offence to the

* Mrs. Fitzherbert was the daughter of Wm. Smythe, Esq. of Tonge Castle, and niece of Sir E. Smythe, Bart. of Acton Burnel, Salop. Her sister was married to Sir Carnaby Haggerstone, Bart. At an early age she married Weld, of Lulworth Castle, Dorset. On his death she married Fitzherbert, of Swinnerton, Leicestershire, a remarkably striking person, who died of either over exertion in a walk from Bath to town, or some imprudence at the burning of Lord Mansfield's house, in the riots of 1780. The lady was a Roman Catholic.

monarch, as a parent, a Protestant, or a man of virtue. The lady was high-bred and handsome; and, though by seven years the prince's elder, and with the formidable drawback of having been twice a widow, her attractions might justify the civilities of fashion. But her rank and her religion were barriers, which she must have known to be impassable.

The king was peculiarly sensitive to mésalliances in the blood royal. The Marriage Act of 1772, had originated in the royal displeasure at the marriages of his brothers, the Dukes of Cumberland and Gloucester, with subjects;* and the determination with which the bill was urged through the legislature against the strongest resistance, shewed the interest which his majesty took in preserving the succession clear.

But the prince's error had gone further than the passionate violation of an unpopular law; for the marriage of the heir apparent with a Roman Catholic must have defeated his claim to the throne.

*The Duke of Cumberland had married Mrs. Horton, Lord Irnham's daughter; the Duke of Gloucester the Countess Dowager of Waldegrave, but this marriage was not acknowledged for some time after. The bill passed rapidly through parliament, yet was debated with unusual perseverance in all its stages. With the public it was highly unpopular, and was assailed by every weapon of seriousness and ridicule. It was described as intolerably aristocratical; as insulting to English birth and beauty; as violating one of the first laws of our being; and even as giving a direct encouragement to crime. Epigrams