appoint a Prince Regent, and passed a vote of censure on the representative of the Crown! Lord Mornington, who, as a Privy Councillor, and one of the Lords of the English Treasury, exercised much influence in the counsels of the Lord-Lieutenant, vigorously supported the Marquess of Buckingham. His Lordship, together with twenty-four other peers, entered protests against the resolutions of the majority. The protest against the resolutions, voted February 1789, asserting the right of both Irish Houses to declare a Prince Regent, was as follows:

"Because the undoubted right, and the indispensable duty, declared in the said resolution to have been exercised and discharged by the Lords and Commons of Ireland, and to which it is alleged they alone are competent, do not, in any legal or sound sense, appear to us to have any existence. And because the assum

as his Majesty should appoint: he accordingly in virtue of those enactments, entrusted his son Edward VI. to his sixteen executors, who elected the Earl of Hertford Protector. The statute 24 Geo. II. c. 24, in case the Crown should descend to any of the children of Frederick, late Prince of Wales, under the age of eighteen, appointed the Princess Dowager Regent; and that, 5 Geo. III. c. 27, in case of a like descent to any of his Majesty's children, empowered the King to appoint a guardian and Regent to be assisted by a Council of Regency; the powers of them all being expressly defined by several acts. By 1 Wm. IV. c. 2, her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent was appointed the guardian of her daughter (her present most gracious Majesty) until she attained the age of eighteen years; and it was also provided that the Duchess should be Regent in case of the descent of the Crown during the Queen's minority-an event which, it need scarcely be remarked, did not take place. By 3 and 4 Vict. c. 52, his Royal Highness Prince Albert the Queen's august consort, is constituted guardian of any issue of Queen Victoria becoming King or Queen of these realms under the age of eighteen years, subject to various provisos. Vide Chitty's Blackstone's Com. by Hargrave.

ing a right in the Lords and Commons alone to confer upon his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales the Government of this kingdom, under the style and title of Prince Regent of Ireland, in the name and on behalf of his Majesty, to exercise and administer according to the laws and constitution of this kingdom all regal powers and prerogatives to the Crown and Government thereof belonging, or the addressing his Royal Highness to take upon himself such government in manner aforesaid, before he be enabled by law to do so, seems altogether unwarrantable, and to be highly dangerous in its tendency to disturb and break the constitutional Union whereby this realm of Ireland is for ever knit and united to the Imperial Crown of England; on which connection the happiness of both kingdoms essentially depends;* and we are the more apprehensive of the danger, lest the doing so should be considered as tending to the prejudice, disturbance, or derogation of the King's Majesty, in, of, or for the Crown of this realm of Ireland."

The happy recovery of King George III. solved the question, and averted the dangers of the threatened collision. From this time the Earl of Mornington was admitted more closely into the confidence of the King, who expressed his warm approbation of the young statesman's conduct in the painful emergency which gave rise to these discussions; intimating his Majesty's displeasure against those who had supported the anta

* The King of England, de facto, being the King of Ireland de jure— Ireland necessarily appending and rightfully belonging to the English Crown-the local legislature of Ireland was clearly incompetent to invest a Regent with powers which the Parliament of Great Britain had withheld from him.

gonist pretensions of the Prince of Wales by the dismissal of the Duke of Queensberry, the Marquess of Lothian, and Lords Carteret and Malmesbury. In the year following Lord Mornington was re-elected as representative in Parliament for the borough of Windsor.

* Before the year A. D. 1690, the chartered corporation of Windsor usurped the exclusive right of voting in the election of members of Parliament; but it was afterwards extended to all inhabitants paying scot and lot. The greatest number of electors polled at any election in Windsor, during the thirty years before the passing of the Reform Act, was 363 in the years 1839-40, the number of parliamentary electors was 667.

CHAPTER III.

Supports Mr. Wilberforce on the Slave Trade.-Opposes Mr. Dundas's Resolution for gradual Abolition.—Moves an Amendment for its immediate Suppression-is defeated.—Moves a second Amendment.— Denounces the traffic as infamous, bloody, and disgraceful to human nature. The Amendment supported by Mr. Pitt-defeated.-Clarkson's Labours-Vote of the House of Commons against the Slave Trade.—Lord Mornington opposes Mr. Grey's motion for Reform in Parliament, both in Spirit and Substance.-Examination of his Arguments.-Fallacy that Reform was synonymous with American Democracy or French Republicanism.-Eulogies on the general Spirit of the British Constitution.—Mr. Fox replies-ridicules Lord Mornington's Positions.-Boroughs and great Towns then unrepresented.—Saltash, Beeralston, &c. compared with them.-Changes since effected by Parliament.-Marquess Wellesley Member of the Reform Government.—1793, sworn a Member of the English Privy Council.—Appointed Commissioner for Affairs of India.-Devotes his attention to the posture of the British Government and native Powers in India. -Confidence reposed in him by Mr. Pitt.

MR. WILBERFORCE was strenuously supported, in · 1792, by the Earl of Mornington, in his noble efforts to extinguish the Slave Trade. His Lordship vigorously opposed the resolutions of Mr. Dundas for the gradual abolition of the inhuman traffic. He contended that the British Parliament had an undoubted right to abolish the trade, notwithstanding any previous sanc

"That from Oct. 10, 1797,

* One of Mr. Dundas's resolutions was, duties be laid on every male negro [imported] according to his stature, from five pounds to fifteen pounds."

tion* which it might be supposed to have given.† The utility of a continuation of this inhuman commerce to the real welfare of our islands he positively denied : and conceiving the point at issue to be, in fact, a question of principle and feeling, he disdained to reason on the policy of the measure. On the 25th of April Lord Mornington moved an amendment, that the Slave Trade should end on the 1st of January 1793; the amendment was lost by a majority of 49; the numbers on the division having been, yeas 109; noes 158. On the 27th of April, the House having again resolved itself into committee on Mr. Dundas's resolution, "That it is the opinion of this committee, that it shall not be lawful to import any African Negroes into any of the British colonies or plantations in ships owned or navigated by British subjects, at any time after the 1st day of January 1800," Lord Mornington then moved another amendment with a view to å more immediate abolition of the Slave Trade.

The noble Lord "lamented the fate of his former motion for a speedy termination of the trade which had been already condemned as criminal, inasmuch as it was repugnant to the principles of justice and humanity. Had he followed his feelings, he should have proposed for the total abolition of this hateful traffic

"It has the authority of Acts of Parliament passed in this country, as well as colonial laws, which recognise, if they do not confirm it, and the sanction of ancient and universal custom."- Apology for Negro Slavery, 1786.

+ According to the law in this country even during the permitted existence of the Slave Trade, a negro slave became, on the moment of touching the British soil, a free man.--Vide Salkend, 666; and the case of the negro Somerset; State Trials, xx. 79.