thought of an eternity of suffering, even as the lot of the deliberate murderer; but if the thought were to be endured, it would be as applicable to that awful sentence awarded to hypocrisy like this.

87. However, it answered its purpose for the time; the rage of the people from one end of England to the other, was excited against the Whig ministry; and in this state of things, on the 27th of April, 1807, the parliament was dissolved. It was done by commission, in a speech which contained the following passage: "We are further commanded to state to you, "that his majesty is anxious to recur to the 66 sense of his people, while the events which have "recently taken place are yet fresh in their re"collection. His majesty feels, that in resorting to this measure, under the present circumstances, he at once demonstrates, in the most unequivocal manner, his own conscientious persuasion of the rectitude of those motives upon which he has acted; and affords to his people the best opportunity of testifying their determination to support him in every exercise "of the prerogatives of his crown, which is con"formable to the sacred obligations under which they are held, and conducive to the welfare of "his kingdom, and to the security of the con"stitution. His majesty directs us to express "his entire conviction that, after so long a

"reign, marked by a series of indulgences to "his Roman Catholic subjects, they, in common "with every other class of his people, must feel "assured of his attachment to the principles of "a just and enlightened toleration; and of his "anxious desire to protect equally, and promote "impartially, the happiness of all descriptions "of his subjects."

88. Away went the delusion all over the country! The ministerial members got turned out of their seats, as a set of delinquent servants are driven out of their places. Many of them did not dare to show their faces in the boroughs and counties where they before had been elected; and, in short, as Mr. WINDHAM told PERCEVAL in the House of Commons, the new ministry sent the majority of the parliament back to the people to be torn to pieces. And all this on a pretext as false as perjury itself! There were the people putting up prayers for the prolongation of the life of the "good old king," as their sole protector against the horrors of popery, and exclaiming against those ministers who had wanted to force him to break his coronation oath, when he had actually consented to the measure after all its details had been explained to him; and he had had no objection to it, and no thought of changing the ministry, till the princess threatened him with the publication of the BOOK! 89. These transactions, however, disgraceful

as they were to the factions, and little creditable as the temporary delusion might be to the understandings of the people, did a great deal of good in the end, by opening the eyes of the people with regard to the true character of the factions, and of the House of Commons. The people saw ministers bring in a bill; they saw the house approve of it; they saw the same ministers mithdraw the bill without a word from the house against this step; they heard the ministers declare that they held it to be their duty to have the king's previous consent to every bill that they brought in; they heard them declare that the bill had been withdrawn because the king had changed his mind relative to it; they saw one parliament dissolved, at four years old, to suit one ministry; they saw another dissolved at four months, to suit another ministry. They could not see all this without great disgust being excited in their minds with regard to the factions and the house also. Great disgust was excited; and from the period of these striking transactions the factions date their fall. From this time the main body of the people began to see that there was no difference in the factions; that both sought the public money; that all their professions and promises were false; and that, of every quarrel between them, the people became the only sufferers. So that from this affair of the poor ill-treated princess, arose this great good to

the nation, that it, never since that time, has been the sport of any faction; but, as we shall see in the sequel, this was only a small part of the good which ought to endear her memory to the people of England.

90. But, alas! while she was laying the foundation of the ruin of the factions, and of the monopoly of the aristocracy, she was, in consequence of the bad advice under which she acted, laying the foundation of all those persecutions and calamities that finally overtook her. Her interest, her honour, her personal safety, demanded a publication of the BOOK; and, as was stated before, the book, under the direction of PERCE VEL, was, at the time when she wrote her last latter, as before cited (par. 75), actually printed and bound up for publication. But the king having consented to turn out the ministry, PERCEVAL, who had lodged the books with a bookseller, to be ready for sale on the day appointed, took them all (or, as he thought all) home to his country-house, and there burnt them, not leaving one in the possession of even the princess herself. He had now obtained what he wanted: he had made use of the princess for his own immediate elevation, and, as we have to see by and by, for the duration of his power over her husband as well as over her father-in-law; she had thus fully answered his ends, and that of his party; and she was now, therefore, left to

her fate; left to drawl along a sort of half-disgraceful life, until fifteen years afterwards, that very party found an occasion for destroying her.

91. She had, indeed, apartments allotted her in Kensington Palace; she was received at court; but the king, her only friend, was daily growing older; he was stone blind; his mind had had a severe shock in 1804, which was the second of the kind that he had experienced; the courtiers of both factions were looking up to her husband; the people, generally speaking, thought her innocent; nobody pretended that the charges against her were not false; but, still, every one said, Why does she not publish the proofs of her innocence? And this very argument was urged as corroborative of the charges against her, in 1820; and that, too, by the very faction, whose advice had prevented her from publishing in 1807! Perceval and his co-operators, who wished to keep THE BOOK from the eyes of the world, in order to have it to hold up in the face of the husband in case of a Regency-question arising, prevailed, in an evil hour prevailed, on the princess to be silent on the subject of the book, persuading her, that her appearance at court and her residence in a palace would satisfy the people of her perfect innocence, and that whenever the prince came into power, either as king or regent, she would take her proper station as princessregent or queen, and that the circumstance of

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