"enjoyed the blessings of peace; and he believed "that much of the benefits we have derived from "the mild and beneficent administration of the "laws during that period were owing to the "mild and generous character of his majesty "himself; that we have lived too near the pe "riod of these occurrences, to be able to esti"mate in their full force all the benefits we have "derived from the mild and beneficent govern "ment of the late king; and that, whether in

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peace or in war, during the whole course of "his delegated power, whether as regent or as king, he never exercised, or expressed any "wish to exercise, the prerogatives of the king, "except for the relief and the advantage of his "people.

496. This speech being ex officio, and coming from a man of spotless private character, may be excused, on the same principle that we excuse falsehoods uttered by advocates at the bar, in the cause of their clients; but the cases are not in point, for SIR ROBERT PEEL had a duty to per form towards the people as well as towards the king; and a due sense of that duty would have restrained him from uttering this eulogium. However, not thinking it prudent to say what ought to be said in answer to SIR ROBERT PEEL, I shall say nothing at all about the CHARACTER of this king; I shall leave the assertions about the "blessings" of his reign; about his "mild

and beneficent government; about his "mild and generous character;" to be confirmed or negatived by the facts which I have already related, and to be contained in the next and last chapter; in which I shall describe the state in which he left the nation: 1, with regard to foreign nations; 2, with regard to the burdens which he entailed on his people; 3, with regard to the privations and sufferings of that people; and 4, with regard to the new and severe laws, and the many innovations on the constitution made during his regency and reign.

Foreign Affairs during this Regency and Reign. -Taxes and Expenses during the Twenty Years.-Abuses in the Church.-Privations and Sufferings of the People.-New and severe Laws, and daring Innovations on the Constitution.

497. WITH regard to FOREIGN AFFAIRS, it may truly be said that England never appeared little in the eyes of the world, till the time of this Big Sovereign. All the boastings about the battle of Waterloo, and about the victories in what the English officers, call the "Peninsula;" all the hectoring and all the bullying blinded men of sense but for a very short time: the peace with France; the stripping of the French museums; the making of Hanover into a kingdom; the innumerable orders of knighthood created by the Big Sovereign; the swarms of "Sirs and of Ladies" to whom he gave life; all these, after the drunken fit of the nation was over, were made to appear perfectly ridiculous, by the progress and the result of the American

he nation

tly ri

the Ame

war, which exhibited the British navy in a state of disgraceful defeat, against America singlehanded, and showed her signing a treaty of

peace, in which she expressly abandoned every item in a sine qua non, which she had pompously laid down; and in which she mutually abandoned her great maritime right, which she had exercised for five hundred years; namely, the right of searching neutral vessels at sea.

498. The Americans, without our daring to utter a word, acquired the two FLORIDAS from Spain, after the peace; though the possession of these provinces necessarily gave them the command of the gulf of Mexico, and brought their dominions into dangerous contact with our West India colonies. In the breaking-up of the Spanish power in South America, we had an eye upon CUBA. The Americans declared, in the face of the world, that they would suffer no European power to acquire CUBA, or any of the dominions. of Spain in South America; and all this while our miserable ministers held the most tame and fawning language towards the United States.

499. In 1823 the French invaded Spain, with the openly-avowed purpose of upsetting the government of the Cortes, which we had established there. Previous to this declaration there was a Congress of the Ministers of the European Sovereigns held at CREMONA. CANNING was our secretary of state for foreign affairs, and WEL

LINGTON the ambassador to this Congress. To this Congress WELLINGTON was instructed to declare, on the part of England, that, let other powers determine on what they might, for herself England was determined to have peace; which was just the same thing as declaring, that she had no longer the power nor the spirit to make war, though invaded on her own soil. With this declaration in her ears, the French, of course, lost no time in marching into Spain. They succeeded in their object; they put down the CORTES; they re-established FERDINAND in his kingly office, to the great loss of the English usurers, who had taken the convents of Spain in pawn; and to the great delight of every man who detests tyranny under the names and forms of freedom; who detests that which we have had reason to think about and talk about so long. Upon this occasion the English ministers, like FALSTAFF in his last illness, "called a' God!" that is to say, LIVERPOOL, in the House of Lords, and CANNING in the House of Commons, expressly, and in the most pious manner possible, ""prayed to God that the French might not succeed!" God did not hear them, and he certainly remembered their invasion of defenceless nations; and their works on the museums and the frontier towns of France. The French gave us every possible provocation to take part in this quarrel; they rum