HIS CORRECT CONDUCT

refuse any honours they may ask for. I trust the eyes of the nation will soon be opened, as my sorrow may prove fatal to my health if I remain long in this thraldom. I trust you will be steady in your attachment to me, and ready to join other honest men in watching the conduct of this unnatural combination, and I hope many months will not elapse before the Grenvilles, the Pitts, and other men of abilities and character will relieve me from a situation that nothing could have compelled me to submit to but the supposition that no other means remained of preventing the public finances from being materially affected."1

A Ministry forced in such a manner upon the King was even then doomed to be of brief duration. George's demeanour towards Fox and Portland was most gracious; to North, one of cold disdain. The Coalition was not more acceptable to the public than to the sovereign. "The King," wrote Fox on the 10th April," continues to behave with every sign of civility, and sometimes even with cordiality."

Many years afterwards the King admitted that Fox had at last behaved to him like a gentleman. "The King's conduct towards the Coalition Ministry," writes Sir Walter Scott, "was equally candid, open, and manly. He used no arts to circumvent or deceive the Councillors whom he unwillingly received into his Cabinet; nor did he, on the other hand, impede their measures by petty opposition. While they were Ministers he gave them the full power 1 Buckingham Papers, vol. i. p. 219.

of their situation; not affecting, at the same time, to conceal that they were not those whose assistance he would voluntarily have chosen."1

The Treaty of Versailles was concluded on the 3rd September. A week before the King wrote to Fox, "I cannot say that I am so surprised at France not putting the last strokes to the definitive treaty so soon as we may wish; as our having totally disarmed, in addition to the extreme anxiety shown for peace during the whole period that has ensued since the end of February 1782, certainly makes her feel that she can have no reason to apprehend any evil from so slighting a proceeding."

1 Prose Works, iv. 338.

2 Memorials of Fox, ii. 141.

CHAPTER XVII

YOUNG PITT IN POWER

To George's cares as a sovereign were now added the anxieties of a parent. From his earliest years his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, had given promise of being as intelligent and amiable as he was undeniably handsome in person. No son had ever been loved more affectionately, or nurtured with a greater solicitude. But as the But as the young Prince waxed in years, ere indeed he had crossed the border which separates youth from manhood, the constant adulation of which he was the object, the temptation by which he was surrounded, completely subverted his early moral training, and from this onward he became, and so continued to the end of his life, a spoilt and vulgar voluptuary, and an ungrateful and undutiful son. By nature the Prince was a man of parts. Throughout his career there escaped from him many evidences of tact, judgment, and acumen, which make us regret the sickening wastefulness and indecent profligacy of his life.

At the age of eighteen the Prince of Wales, who had been born in 1762, attained his royal majority. "I have therefore, in this view," wrote the King to his Minister, "formed an honourable establishment, and given my son for Robes and Privy Purse the exact sum I had. His stables will be more expensive

in point of saddle horses, I keeping at that time but four-he will have sixteen; but by appointing a Groom of the Stole instead of a Master of the Horse, a set of horses and two footmen are diminished, which alone attended that officer in the first establishment of my late father. As my son will live in my house, he cannot have any occasion for those servants, necessary only if he kept house. I have also wished to keep his number of attendants as moderate as the different natures will admit of to the first establishment of my late father. The difficulty I find of having persons whose private conduct I think may with safety be placed about a young person is not surprising, as, I thank Heaven, my morals and course of life have but little resembled those too prevalent in the present age; and certainly, of all objects in this life, the one I have most at heart is to form my children that they may be useful examples and worthy of imitation.'

The Prince's undutifulness to his royal father had long before this manifested itself in a hundred ways. There is only too much reason to believe that his conduct was advised and abetted by his shallow and unprincipled uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. In vain the King sought to maintain his influence. The Prince was fond of hunting, and his father was assiduous in his attendance in the hunting field. "When we hunt together," the King said to the Duke of Gloucester, "neither my son nor my brother speak to me; and lately, when the chase ended at a little village where there was but a single postchaise to be hired, my son and brother got into

THE PRINCE'S MISCONDUCT

it and drove to London, leaving me to go home in a cart if I could find one."

" 1

The royal dinner hour at Windsor was three o'clock-the Prince never appeared till four. In London the dinner hour was four o'clock-the Prince studiously exposed his father to the derisive comments of the equerries and servants of the household by turning up at five. He had only to know his father's wishes in order to disobey them. The Prince's apartments at Buckingham House were visited by money-lenders, pimps and jockeys, and loose women. At a time when George was filled with distress at the threatened dismemberment of the Empire and the defection of Lord North, this behaviour of his eldest son smote him sorely. What would you have me do in my present distress?" he asked his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, who had marvelled at his patient submission to these unfilial affronts. "If I did not bear it, it would only drive my son into Opposition, which would increase my distress."

66

To crown all, the Prince went into Opposition, becoming one of Fox's personal friends. At Brooks's Club, where the Prince was enrolled a member, both joined in scenes of debauchery. "The Prince of Wales," wrote Walpole, "has thrown himself into the arms of Charles, and this in the most indecent and undisguised manner. Fox lodged in St. James's Street, and as soon as he rose, which was very late, had a levée of his followers and of the members of the Gaming Club at Brooks's, all his

1 Walpole's Last Journals, vol. ii. pp. 480-1.