tended on a former similar occasion; and that whatever ministers your royal highness might think proper to employ, would find in that full support and countenance which, as long as they were honoured with your royal highness's commands, they would feel confident they would continue to enjoy, ample and sufficient means to enable your royal highness effec tually to maintain the great and important interest of the United Kingdom.-And Mr. Perceval humbly trusts, that, whatever doubts your royal highness may entertain with respect to the constitutional propriety of the measures which have been adopted, your royal highness will feel assured that they could not have been recommended by his majesty's ser vants, nor sanctioned by parliament, but upon the sincere, though possibly erroneous, conviction, that they in no degree trenched upon the true principles and spirit of the constitution. Mr. Perceval feels it his duty to add, that he holds himself in readiness, at any moment, to wait upon your royal highness, and to receive any commands with which your royal highness may be graciously pleased to honour him.

99. It would be a bold thing to say that dissimulation equal to this never was before witnessed in the world; but, it is not being at all bold to say, that dissimulation to surpass it never was witnessed, since the use of words was in practice amongst men. The prince's letter to PERCEVAL was clearly intended to make the Whigs believe that he would call them to power as soon as the restrictions on his authority should cease. The expression of the rescuing him from a situation of unexampled embarrassment; and the expression of state of affairs, ill calculated to sustain the interests of the kingdom, and not reconcileable to the principles of the British con

stitution, and his telling PERCEVAL that the fear of retarding the progress of the king's recovery, by turning out his chosen servants, was the "consideration which alone dictated his deter"mination not to remove them from the places "in which he found them" left by his father: these expressions, together with the protestations of truth and sincerity; and PERCEVAL'S thanks for the frankness with which the communication had been made to him: these were taken by the public as certain signs that the prince only kept Perceval in for the present; but that he would certainly get rid of him as soon as the year of restraint had expired.

100. So completely successful was this dissimulation, that it appears to have imposed upon the Whig place-hunters themselves. Besides these written communications, however, there were certain overt acts which seemed to forbid every human being to believe that the PRINCE was not eager to get rid of the old ministers; he actually sent for Lords GRENVILLE and GREY, who were the two surviving leaders of the party that had been in power in 1807, and proposed to them to form a ministry to them. The other party were actually preparing to quit their offices; and had made the arrangements necessary in the several departments, for delivering the buup to successors. the announcement, all at

siness

After all this, out came once, that the ministry

was not to be changed! The real cause unques tionably was this; that PERCEVAL and ELDON had the PRINCESS of WALES in their hands; that they were in possession of the book, and of all its secrets; that they could have brought out the letter, that never-to-be-forgotten letter, which the reader will find in paragraph 58 of this History; that they were in possession of the warrant issued by the recommendation of the Whigs, and which will be found in paragraph 66 of this History; that they were in possession of the report on the conduct of the PRINCESS, to be found in the same paragraph; that they were in possession of the whole of the documents mentioned in this paragraph from 67 to 79 inclusive; and that the publication of these documents, the publication of the proof of all the conspiracy, as the PRINCESS of WALES had called it in her letters to the king; that the publication of the proof of all this, would have filled the English people, with what I will not, what I dare not, describe; but which, I may safely say, would have inspired feelings with regard to the regent which, according to every principle of human nature, he must have been desirous to prevent the existence of, at the expense of any-thing, no matter what, short of life itself.

101. If he pacified PERCEVAL and ELDON, then this terrible history remained unknown; and

the PRINCESS would, of course, be kept quietly to vegetate at Kensington Palace and at Blackheath alternately. PERCEVAL and ELDON would have brought her out; they would have contended that she should be called the PRINCESS REGENT; they would have contended that she had not only always been innocent, but that she had been cruelly oppressed and conspired against; they would have contended that she should hold drawing-rooms and have a court; and, let it be observed, they would have had the whole nation with them as with the voice of one man. There was not a woman in the kingdom who would not have reproached her husband, her son, or her brothers, if he had not espoused the cause of PERCEVAL and ELDON in such a case as this. So that the PRINCE was compelled to keep the ministers in their places, or to encounter all the dreadful hostility that they were thus enabled to raise up against him. Whether he really at first intended to change the ministry, one may doubt. The sending for Lords GRENVILLE and GREY to form a ministry might be a mere blind arranged before-hand with PERCEVAL; and the preparations for quitting office on the part of the old ministers might be the same. And, indeed, the very regency bill itself, though protested against so vehemently, might have been a matter arranged beforehand. But, at any rate, if these matters were not all previous arrangement, we

must conclude that PERCEVAL went, at the last moment, with the book in his hand, and that that produced the decision which filled the whole country with surprise.

power

102. The decision having been taken, and the communication made to the world, the Whig faction put the best face upon the matter that they could. They said, and they published in all sorts of shapes, that the PRINCE had, in keeping in PERCEVAL and his set, been actuated solely by filial affection for his revered father, whose recovery, he was afraid, might have been retarded, if, upon return to the use of his reason, he found his old and faithful servants turned out of his offices; but that if he found at the end of the year that the derangement of the king still continued, then he would put an end to the of these men, and put his own friends in their places; and that this was the true meaning of his letter to PERCEVAL. To this it was answered, that supposing the KING to return to his reason before the termination of the year, must not his recovery be retarded as effectually, by learning that his son had intended to turn out his servants at the end of the year, as by finding that he had actually turned them out? and supposing the king to return to his reason after the expiration of the year; must not his complete recovery be retarded, must he not be replunged into his dismal situation, upon finding his servants turned out