habitual religious feeling-the feeling that makes men quail and bow before a present divinity. But no people, no rational set of men, ever displayed to an admiring world the fondness for kings and queens, the desire to find favour in the royal sight, the entire absorption in loyal contemplations, which has generally distinguished the manly, reflecting, freeborn English

nation.

It is commonly said that the Irish far exceed us in yielding to mere impulses; and certainly the scenes at Dublin in 1821 are well calculated to keep alive this impression. But the excess on that memorable occasion was not great over what had been witnessed in this country; and extraordinary pains were undoubtedly taken to make it believed that George IV. was favourably disposed towards his Irish subjects, nay, that he could be talked, and hurraed, and addressed over, as it were, and deluded by fine honeyed phrases and promises of subscription, into abandoning his new opinions, as he had before given up his old. The balance, therefore, between the two nations being struck, it can hardly be said that the sister kingdom materially excels our own country in the zealous affection for mere royalty.

It is very manifest, therefore, that the notion is wholly groundless which represents the cause of Royalty to be more unfavourably regarded in these kingdoms than elsewhere. A broad and a deep foundation exists in all the feelings, tastes, and habits of the people for building up a solid monarchical structure. Principles of policy, opinions upon the relative merits of different systems, are the result of reason and reflection: they may be propagated, may be acquired; they may be strengthened, may be impaired; nay, they may give place to other views taken up after experience and on deliberate consideration; and the formation or the change of such sentiments is never within the power of the rulers or the instructors of the

community. But these sentiments, also, are much less to be relied upon for support in any crisis, and they are far less to be dreaded in any alteration which they may undergo, than the strong feelings born with men, and constituting a part of their very nature-feelings which they have not learned at the school of state affairs, or had inculcated by their instructors, or dictated by their leaders, but which form about as much a portion of their mental constitution, and almost influence it as much, as the blood that fills their veins does the structure and the functions of the body. This invaluable security the monarchical principle has in England, and it must, therefore, be the fault of the monarch, and his family, and his servants, if it should ever prove ineffectual to save the Crown.

But there is no greater danger besetting that Crown than will arise from a disposition to rely too much upon the strong national love of monarchy which has just been feebly pourtrayed. That its strength and elasticity is great, no man can doubt; that it possesses a singularly restorative virtue, a wonderful power of recovering the kingly authority after the rudest shocks which it can sustain, is certain; but it may be stretched till it cracks, and it may be relaxed by too frequent A wise and a prudent foresight, too, will teach the sovereign and his servants that the antagonist principle, ever at work, may both conjure up a storm which cannot be weathered, and may gradually undermine, and, as it were, eat into, that habitual devotion to royalty which, if the monarchy have but fair play, seems powerful enough to carry it through all ordinary trials.

use.

E

LORD ELDON.

DURING the whole of the Regency and the greater part of his reign, George IV.'s councils were directed by Lord Liverpool, but the power which kept his ministry together was in reality the Chancellor, Lord Eldon; nor did it exist for a day when that powerful aid was withdrawn. For, although this eminent person did not greatly excel in debate, although he personally had no followers that could be termed a party, and although he certainly was of little service in deliberation upon state affairs from the turn of his mind, fertile rather in objections than expedients, he yet possessed a consummate power of managing men, an admirable address in smoothing difficulties with princes, of whom he had large experience, and a degree of political boldness where real peril approached, or obstacles seemingly insurmountable were to be got over, that contrasted strongly with his habits of doubting about nothing, and conjuring up shadowy embarrassments, and involving things of little moment in imaginary puzzles, the creation of an inventive and subtle brain.

This remarkable person had been one of Mr. Pitt's followers from early life, had filled under him the office of Attorney-General during the troublous period of the Revolutionary war, and had thus been the principal instrument in those persecutions of his reforming associates which darken the memory of that illustrious minister. But when the Addington ministry was formed, and Lord Loughborough resigned the Great Seal, Lord Eldon, who had for a year presided over the Common Pleas with great ability and acceptance in

Westminster Hall, became Chancellor, and formed one of the main supports of that useful though feeble administration. After first giving peace to the country because the burthen of the war could no longer be borne, and then breaking it because they had not the firmness to remain quiet, or the resolution to resist a popular clamour chiefly excited by the newspapers, those ministers, having once more plunged the country into serious embarrassments, were assaulted by a factious league of Pittites, Foxites, Grenvilles, and Windhams, and only defended by two lawyers, Mr. Perceval in the Commons, Lord Eldon in the Lords. But neither of these useful supporters were thoroughly attached to the colours under which they fought; both had a strong leaning towards the leader of the allies, Mr. Pitt, under whom the Whig friends and partizans of Lord St. Vincent, the great ornament of the cabinet, were combined, from factious motives, to overthrow it upon the ground of attacking that great man's reforming administration; and, although nothing could exceed the zeal or spirit of the battle which both, especially Mr. Perceval, made in defence of the citadel, yet, as neither were averse, especially Lord Eldon, to rejoin their ancient Pitt standard, it is more than suspected that the gates of the garrison were opened by the scheming and politic Chancellor, who on this occasion displayed his unscrupulous and undaunted political courage, by carrying on the communication on state affairs with the monarch, while his faculties were as yet but half restored after their total alienation.

It is best that we pause upon this remarkable passage of both their lives-remarkable for the light it throws upon Lord Eldon's real character; perhaps yet more remarkable for the reflections to which it unavoidably gives rise upon the Monarchical form of government. There is not the least doubt whatever of the extraordinary fact that, after the King had been in a state of complete derangement for some weeks, and after the

government had during those weeks been carried on by the ministers without any monarch, important measures were proposed to him, and his pleasure taken upon them after Mr. Pitt resumed his office, when the Sovereign was so little fit to perform the functions of his high station, that Dr. Willis was obliged to attend in the closet the whole time of his Majesty's interview with his Chancellor. Hence we see that the exigencies of this form of government not only imply the Monarch exercising his discretion upon subjects wholly above the reach of his understanding on many occasions; not only involve the necessity of the most difficult questions being considered and determined by one wholly incapable by nature, or unfitted by education, to comprehend any portion of them; not only expose the destinies of a great people to the risk of being swayed by a person of the meanest capacity, or by an ignorant and inexperienced child; but occasionally lead to the still more revolting absurdity of a sovereign directing the affairs of the realm-conferring with the keeper of his conscience circa ardua regni,— while a mad-doctor stands by and has his assistants and the apparatus of his art ready in the adjoining chamber, to keep, by the operation of wholesome fear and needful restraint, the royal patient in order, and prevent the consultations of politic men from being checkered with the paroxysms of insanity.*

But should it be said that this was an accident, or that it was an offence for which Lord Eldon and Mr. Pitt alone were answerable, and not the Constitution, it is to be further observed that the inevitable necessity entailed by that Constitution of the state affairs being conducted in the name and by the authority of a lunatic prince, whose pleasure is, in the eye of the constitutional law, taken at each step, though he is as unconscious of it all the while as the Grand Lama is of Thibet

*The late publication of Lord Eldon's 'Life,' by his family, places this beyond all doubt.