had made the Princess acquainted with the most eminent of the Tory chiefs-Lord Eldon, Mr. Perceval, and Mr. Canning. These distinguished personages composed her familiar society, and they were her faithful counsellors through all her difficulties. Nor would it have been easy to find men on whom she could more safely rely for powerful assistance as advocates, or able advice as friends. They prepared an elaborate statement of the Princess's case, which accidental circumstances kept them from making public; but enough of the proceeding transpired to make the country aware of the extraordinary course which had been pursued by the Prince's political friends. It is difficult to describe the sensation which the Report of the Secret Tribunal made wherever a knowledge of its contents reached. That a wife, a Princess, and a stranger, should be subjected to treatment the most cruel and unmanly, should then be driven from the shelter of her husband's roof, should be surrounded by spies and false witnesses, and, having been charged with a capital offence-nay, with high treason-should be tried behind her back, with the most able counsel to attend on behalf of her persecutor and accuser, without a human being present on her behalf, so much as to cross-examine a witness, or even to take a note of the evidence-was a proceeding which struck all men's minds with astonishment and dismay, and seemed rather to approach the mockery of all justice presented in the accounts of eastern seraglios, than to resemble anything that is known among nations living under constitutional Governments. But if the investigation itself was thus an object of reprobation and disgust, its result gave, if possible, less satisfaction still. What could be said of a sentence which showed that, even when tried behind her back, and by an invisible tribunal formed wholly of her adversaries, not the shadow of guilt could be found in her whole conduct; and that even the mercenary fancies and foul perjuries of the spies had failed to present any probable matter of blame; and yet, instead of at once pronouncing her innocent and unjustly accused, begrudged her the poor satisfaction of an acquittal, and, fearful of affording her the triumph to which innocence is entitled, and offending the false accuser, both passed over all mention of her unparalleled wrongs, and left a stigma upon her name, by the vague recommendation that the King should advise her concerning certain levities or indiscretions of behaviour-an allusion so undefined, that any one might fill up the dark outline as his imagination should enable him, or his want of common charity prompt him to do? Every one knew that, had there been the least tangible impropriety, though falling far short of guilt, it would have been stated in the Report; but the purposes of the accuser, to which the secret judges lent themselves, were best served by a vague and mysterious generality, that meant everything, and anything, as well as nothing, and enabled him to propagate by his hireling favourites, all over society, any new slanders which he might choose to invent. The confirmed insanity of the King, three years afterwards, called to the Regency the chief actor in these unhappy scenes. No prince ever ascended the throne with so universal a feeling of distrust, and even aversion. Nor was this lessened when the first act of his reign proved him as faithless to his political friends as he had been to his wife; and as regardless of his professed public principles as he had been of his marriage vows. It added little respect to the disesteem in which he was universally held, that he was seen to discard all the Liberal party with whom he had so long acted; with whom, after an interval of separation, he had become again intimately united, and among them the very men who had stood by him in his domestic broils; whilst he took into full favour his determined enemies, and, worst of all, the very men who had prepared attacks upon him too outrageous to find a publisher! The accession of the Princess's friends to the Regent's favour was the period of their intercourse with their former client. Not the slightest communication could now be held with her whose just quarrel they had so warmly espoused while the Prince was their antagonist; and Mr. Canning* alone of them all, to his transcendent honour, refused to pay the tribute exacted by the Court of deserting a former friend, because an enemy had been found placable; and because he, setting too high a value upon his forgiveness, required his new favourites to be as perfidious as himself. It is impossible to separate from the history of George IV. that of his wife, for it is united with the most remarkable features of his character; his boundless caprice his arbitrary nature-his impatience of contradiction and restraint-his recklessness of consequences when resolved to attain a private end-qualities which, if guided by a desire of compassing greater ends and sustained by adequate courage, would have aroused a struggle for absolute power, fatal either to the liberties of the country or to the existence of the monarchy. The Princess of Wales, wearied out with unceasing persecution, had gone abroad, leaving behind her, as the only support on which she could rely, her only daughter, disease having deprived her of the steady favour and undeviating support of the King, her fatherin-law and uncle. The death of both that King and that daughter was the signal of new attempts against her peace. The history of the Milan Commission is fresh in the recollection of all. A board of three persons-a Chancery lawyer, who had never seen a witness examined, and whose practice was chiefly confined to cases in bankruptcy, on which he had written an excellent book-a colonel in the army, who knew but * Mr. Canning, however, was not now in office, nor for many years after. little more of the matter—an active and clever attorney-composed this select body, commissioned to hunt for evidence which might convict the future Queen, and be ready to overwhelm her if she asserted her right to share her consort's throne. Sir John Leach was an active adviser of all these nefarious proceedings; nor could all England, certainly not all its bar, have produced a more unsafe counsellor. With great quickness of parts, an extraordinary power of fixing his attention upon an argument, and following steadily its details, a rare faculty of neat and lucid statement, even of the most entangled and complicated facts, considerable knowledge of legal principles, and still greater acquaintance with equity practice, he was singularly ignorant of the world, and had no kind of familiarity with the rules or the practice of evidence in the courts of common or criminal law. Moderately learned in his own profession, beyond it he was one of the most ignorant men that ever appeared at the bar. Yet, by industry, and some art of gaining favour, by making himself useful to the powerful and the wealthy, little scrupulous how much he risked in any way to serve them, he had struggled with the defects of a mean birth and late adoption into the rank he afterwards so greatly affected; and he had arrived at extensive practice. "Nullum ille poetam noverat, nullum legerat oratorem, nullam memoriam antiquitatis collegerat non publicum jus, non privatum et civile* cognoverat.-Is omnibus exemplo debet esse quantum in hâc urbe polleat multorum obedire tempori, multorumque vel honori, vel periculo servire. His enim rebus, infimo loco natus, et honores, et pecuniam, et gratiam consecutus, etiam in patronorum sine doctrinâ, sine ingenio, aliquem numerum pervenerat." (Cic. Brutus.) The power of deciding causes, which he showed when raised to the bench, was favourably con * Equity, jus prætorium, is not very clearly here excluded. trasted with the dilatory and doubting habits of Lord Eldon; but there was much of what Lord Bacon calls "affected despatch" in his proceedings; and while he appeared to regard the number of judgments which he pronounced in a given time far more than their quality, he left it to his learned chief to complain that cases were decided at the Rolls, but heard when they came by appeal before the Chancellor: while the wits, calling one the court of oyer sans terminer, named the other that of terminer sans oyer; and a great and candid critic (Sir S. Romilly) professed himself, to Lord Eldon's extreme delight, better pleased with the tardy justice of the principal than with the swift injustice of the deputy. The ridicule which he threw around his conduct in society, by his childish devotion to the pursuits of fashionable life, in which neither his early habits nor his turn of mind fitted him to excel, was another result derived from the same want of sound judgment. But its worst fruit was that unhesitating and overweening confidence in his own opinion, which exceeded that of any other man, and perpetually led both himself and his clients astray. Uncontrolled conceit, a contracted understanding that saw quickly and correctly very near objects, and disbelieved in the existence of all beyond, conspired with a temper peculiarly irascible to give him this habit of forming his opinion instantaneously, and this pertinacity in adhering to it, excluding all the light that could afterwards be let in upon the subject under consideration. The same hasty and sanguine temperament made him exceedingly prone to see matters as he wished them to be; and when he had a client whom he desired to gratify, or for whom he felt a strong interest, his advice became doubly dangerous; because, in addition to his ordinary infirmities of judgment, he formed his opinion under all the bias of his wishes, while he gave it and adhered to it without running any hazard in his own person. His courage, both personal and political, was frequently |