counterparts of those already seized on De la Motte. He acknowledged his employment by the French ministry, at the rate of fifty guineas a month; and pointed out the inferior agents. Ryder, the clerk, who had furnished the principal intelligence, was next arrested: this was the blackest traitor of them all; for he was in the receipt of a pension of 2007. a year, a considerable sum at that period, for services rendered in sounding the enemy's coasts, and had been put into an office in the navy at Plymouth, where he was employed by the Admiralty in contriving signals, which signals, it appears, he immediately communicated to the enemy. The last link was detected in the conveyancers of the intelligence across the channel, Rougier, a Frenchman, and his mistress, by whom the letters were despatched by way of Margate and Ostend.

This affair derived a peculiar public interest from the rumour that high names were behind the curtain, which the attorney-general's speech was deemed to substantiate, by his dwelling strongly upon the " very great and dangerous lengths" to which De la Motte's money and connexions enabled him to go. The attorney and solicitorgenerals were employed by government, and the celebrated Dunning was counsel for the prisoner. The confession of Lutterloh certainly shewed an extraordinary command of information. He had been first employed by De la Motte, in 1778, to

furnish the French ministers with secret intelligence of matters relating to the navy. His first allowance for this was trivial, but eight guineas

a month. But his information had soon become so valuable, that his allowance was raised to fifty guineas a month, besides occasional presents of money. He had been in Paris, and held conferences with De Sartine, the French naval minister. There he had struck a bold bargain, not simply for the casual returns of ships and dock-yards, but for whole fleets, offering a plan for the capture of Commodore Johnson's squadron, on condition of his receiving eight thousand guineas, and a third of the value of the ships for himself and his associates. But the bargain was thrown up by the economy of the Frenchman, who hesitated at giving more than an eighth of the ships! Offended by this want of due liberality in his old employers, he sought out new, and had offered a plan to Sir Hugh Palliser for taking the French fleet. Dunning's cross-examination of this villain was carried on with an indignant causticity which was long reckoned among his finest efforts. He tore the approver's character in pieces, but he could not shake his evidence. At length Dunning himself gave way; he became exhausted with disgust and disdain: broke away from the court, and was taken home overpowered and seriously ill.

Lutterloh was one of those specimens of desperate principle, restless activity, and perpetual

adventure, which might have figured in romance. He had tried almost every situation of life, from the lowest; he had been in various trades, and roved between France, England, and America, wherever there was money to be made by cunning or personal hazard. From the book-keeper of a Portsmouth inn, he had started into a projector of war; had offered his agency to the revolted colonies; and as their chief want, in the early period of the struggle, was arms, he had gone to America with a plan for purchasing the arms in the magazines of the minor German states. The plan was discountenanced by Congress, and he returned to Europe, to engage in the secret agency of France, through the medium of De la Motte.

Radcliffe, a smuggler, who had a vessel constantly running to Boulogne, was the chief carrier of the correspondence. His pay was 20. a trip. Rougier, the carrier to Radcliffe, received eight guineas a month.

Yet it is a striking instance of the blind security in which the most crafty may be involved, and of the impossibility of relying on traitors, that De la Motte's whole correspondence had for a long time passed through the hands of the English secretary of state himself; the letters being handed by Radcliffe to a government clerk, who transmitted them to Lord Hillsborough, by whom again, after having taken copies of them, they were forwarded to their original destination; and,

thus anticipated, had undoubtedly the effect of seriously misleading the French ministry. De la Motte was executed.

As the prince was now to take his place in the legislature, arrangements were commenced for supplying him with an income. The times were hostile to royal expenditure, and the king, for the double reason of avoiding any unnecessary increase to the public burdens, and of discouraging those propensities which he probably conjectured in the prince, demanded but 50,000l. a year, to be paid out of the civil list. The proposition was strongly debated in the cabinet, long given down to scorn by the name of the Coalition Cabinet, and Fox insisted on making the grant 100,000l. a year. But his majesty was firm, and the ministry were forced to be content with adding 40,000l. and a complimentary message, to the 60,000/. for outfit proposed by the king.

The Duke of Portland, on the 23d of June, brought down the following message to the lords.

"G. R. His majesty having taken into consideration the propriety of making an immediate and separate establishment for his dearly beloved son, the Prince of Wales, relies on the experience, zeal, and affection of the house of lords, for their concurrence in and support of such measures as shall be most proper to assist his majesty in this design."

The question was carried without a dissenting

voice in the lords; and the commons voted the sums of 50,000l. for income, and 100,000/. for the outfit of the Prince's household. Now fully began his checkered career.

There are no faults that we discover with more proverbial rapidity than the faults of others; and none that generate a more vindictive spirit of virtue, and are softened down by fewer attempts at palliation, than the faults of princes in the grave. Yet, without justice, history is but a more solemn libel; and no justice can be done to the memory of any public personage without considering the peculiar circumstances of his

time.

The close of the American war was the commencement of the most extraordinary period of modern Europe: all England, all France, the whole continent, were in a state of the most powerful excitement: England rejoicing at the cessation of hostilities, long unpopular and galling to the pride of a country accustomed to conquer; yet with the stain of transatlantic defeat splendidly effaced by her triumph at Gibraltar, and the proof given in that memorable siege, of the unimpaired energies of her naval and military power, France, vain of her fatal success, and exulting in the twofold triumph of wresting America from England, and raising up a new rival for the sovereignty of the seas,-the continental states, habitually obeying the impulses of the two great