Monday morning, 2 o'clock, 14th Dec, 1785," that there is no specific statement in it, or even a word that would show without explanation the important affair it refers to. There has at the same time been preserved in Lord Malmesbury's Diary a scene in which he strongly urged the propriety of a suitable marriage on the prince, who answered with much vehemence that he had made up his mind—he never would marry—never. There is reason to suppose that this dialogue occurred after the ceremony.
Following the precedent set by previous generations of his family, the prince became the head of the opposition. These, arising at first out of mere ministerial rivalry and a contest for power against Pitt's ministry of 1783, from the broader distinctions created through the influence of the French revolution, became the great whig party and the representatives of popular claims. Not only was opposition to his father's government his natural position, but the prince personally liked Fox, Sheridan, and the other leaders of the party, who were also the leaders of fashionable dissipation—a function in which they were still more at variance with the principles of the court than in their political opinions. It thus happened that in his younger days George IV. was considered the head of the liberal party; and he was looked on by old conservatives and a large portion of the nation as the champion alike of lax politics and of lax morality.
In 1788 the despondency of the nation on account of the mental illness of George III. was increased by the anticipation, that under the government of the prince the orgies of Carlton house would be transferred to the palace. The ministry found it necessary to bring in a regency bill. It was the inauguration of one of the greatest constitutional discussions in British history, and brought into existence a library of party pamphlets and constitutional treatises. Fox and his party took up the position that their favourite prince stepped by the rules of the constitution into the regency, just as he would have stepped to the throne on the death of the king. The government, on the other hand, proposed to invest the prince with the regency, but to do so by the parliamentary title of a statute, and they thus were enabled on that occasion justly to taunt the whig party with abandoning the very principles on which the throne was vested in the house of Hanover, and adopting those theories of divine indefeasible right which had been promulgated by the partisans of the house of Stewart. The speedy recovery of the king deferred to a future time the government of the country by a regency.
There was an occurrence in the year 1791, the importance of which it is difficult to see in the present day, and it will be still more difficult hereafter. The prince retired from the turf, and sold his great stud of horses. That this should be deemed a historical event is characteristic of the period; it created far more sensation in the country than the Indian mutinies of 1857 occasioned in the present day. It called up many insinuations and charges against the prince. He was said to have been expelled from the jockey club; and so strong was the language used about the atrocities which the records of that aristocratic body could reveal, that a foreigner reading the pamphlets of the day might suppose that the prince had caused some of its members to be secretly assassinated.
On the 8th of April, 1795, the prince was married to his cousin, Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, second daughter of the duke of Brunswick. It was not so much a political marriage as a marriage of necessity, driven on by the debts in which the prince found himself involved, and the necessity of repeated appeals to parliament for their liquidation. The arrangements for a suitable marriage, with the prospects it held out of a quiet domestic life and a family from whom an heir to the crown would arise, were a good opportunity for asking a liberal allowance. This miserable union began even with a revolting scene. The duke of Bedford, writing to Lord Holland in 1836, says—"My brother was one of the two unmarried dukes who supported the prince at the ceremony, and he had need of his support; for my brother told me the prince was so drunk that he could scarcely support him from falling. He told my brother he had drunk several glasses of brandy to enable him to go through the ceremony."— (History of the Whig Party, ii., 122.) Lord Malmesbury gives a nearly similar account of their first interview—"She very properly, in consequence of my saying to her it was the right mode of proceeding, attempted to kneel to him. He raised her (gracefully enough) and embraced her, said barely one word, turned round, retired to a distant part of the apartment, and calling me to him, said, 'Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy.' I said, 'Sir, had you not better have a glass of water?' Upon which he, much out of humour, said, with an oath, 'No; I will go directly to the queen;' and away he went."—(Diary of Lord Malmesbury, iii., 218.)
On the other hand, the same observers noticed from the first in the conversation and demeanour of the princess a coarse indelicate levity, which they thought could only be attributed to an aberration of intellect. On the 7th of January, 1796, she bore a daughter, the Princess Charlotte; but even before this event and ever after, she lived separate from her husband.
In 1806 was formed Fox's short-lived whig ministry. It was considered at the time, that as the prince was the head of the party, the ministry were his instruments, and their resignation was his defeat. But it has since come to light that they were less his instruments than he wished; and that he then began to feel the dislike of the whigs which afterwards grew to open hostility. Lord Holland, who took the privy seal, says, "The king and his household were, from the beginning and throughout, hostile to the ministry. The prince of Wales, who had been active in the formation of it, was neglected, or thought himself so. Some symptoms of his ill-humour had transpired before I was in office. That circumstance was an additional motive with me for making his approbation a condition in my acceptance of the office. His letter to me on the occasion was more than gracious; it was kind and friendly. But though he approved my taking office, and expressed some good-will to the ministry, he distinctly disclaimed all connection with them, and repeated above once his total indifference to politics since the death of Mr. Fox." Lord Holland then proceeds to explain that the prince was deeply occupied with a new amour, and apparently in very bad health—his method of assailing hearts. "With this view he actually submitted to be bled two or three times in the arm in a night, when there was so little necessity for it that different surgeons were introduced for the purpose unknown to each other lest they should object to so unusual a loss of blood." And then, going into particulars about the cause of his coolness to the whigs, Lord Holland continues—"His petty jobs were not only refused, but neglected. Little discussion and no intrigue accompanied the rejection of his direct or indirect applications; and he had not only the mortification of finding his dependents unrewarded, but that which perhaps he deemed a yet greater one, of not talking over their merits with the ministers, or affecting a share in some of the public appointments."—(Hist. of the Whig Party, ii., 69-70.) Heavy charges were in the meantime raised against the princess, and the country was inundated with indecorous anecdotes, which gave much disgust and annoyance to the respectable portion of the community. The whig ministry, as the princess' friends, issued a commission of inquiry, the result of which was her acquittal from some of the heavier charges. Her husband becoming, however, at enmity with the whig party, it became their function to defend her, while the tories pursued her. On the renewal of the king's illness, in 1810, the arrangements so fully discussed at a previous time were put in effect, and the prince became regent. On the 29th of January, 1820, he succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, but the change was little more than nominal, as his reign virtually began with the regency. He no sooner found himself on the throne, than he was appalled by the intelligence that his wife, who had been some years abroad, was returning to occupy her place and exercise her rights as queen-consort. There were no means of defeating her claims except by the one all-powerful procedure of an act of parliament. A "bill of pains and penalties" was introduced in the lords, as the proper house for the discussion of a matter of personal status and dignity. "The Queen's trial," as it was called, was a contest on which the eyes of all Europe were centred. It gave an opportunity for her zealous advocate, Henry Brougham, exhibiting his marvellous powers; and the intense interest felt in the august tribunal, where it went on day by day, was responded to by a wild excitement throughout the country. The people, irritated by the long harassing attacks upon her thus brought to a climax, took up her cause with characteristic blind generosity; and as the goddess of their idolatry, she was invested with all the attributes of purity and magnanimity suited to such a character. Though of the nature of a judicial proceeding, the bill against the queen went through the forms of a legislative enactment. It obtained a considerable majority on the first reading, a smaller on the second, and on the third, taken on the 10th of November, 1820, the numbers were 108 to 99. This
