about the court might have formed a sufficient protection for the honour of his wife; but when the influence of the Marchioness: took a political turn, the power superinduced on the supposed attachment of the King excited surmises in respect to the attachment subsisting between them, which the closest con→→ nexion, in the ordinary opinion of mankind, could alone give birth to and promote. It was natural for the Marchioness of Conyngham to provide for her family; and had she confined her influence to the promotion and advancement of her sons and daughters, some of whom might have been worthy of the royal favour, no fault would perhaps have been found in the moderate course adopted, in disciplining them for public employments. She stood at the fountain of emolument and prefer ment; and where is the individual, so placed as she was, who would not have taken every advantage of that situation to promote the aggrandizement of her family? There, however, she should have stopped: the King, in the case of the Duke of York, had received a very salutary lesson, if he had been an apt scholar, of the danger of royalty. overstepping the bounds of propriety and justice in the exercise of its patronage, influenced by the Circean charms of .some favourite Messalina, but the King in this respect exhibited himself as a simple abecedarian; still the country would, perhaps, not have murmured, had not in some instances the very laws of the constitution been infringed, and the domestic policy of the country endangered, by the effects of some unknown influence, which, as it was secret, was fraught with the greater injury. Had it been confined to merely family connexions, no voice would perhaps have been raised against it; but when the highest offices in the church were bestowed on persons scarcely previously heard of-when political parties rose and fell, and ministers were created and deposed, to gratify the ambition of a female-then the palace of the King appeared as if surrounded by some pestilential air-the old hereditary counsellors of the King avoided the court, as alike fatal to private property and public honour. Another course of policy would have been wiser and less questionable for the character of both parties, and the seclusion of the King, at once dignified and social, would have

excited to a greater degree the respect and sympathy of his subjects; but the entrance to Windsor Castle was, as it were, hermetically sealed by the enchantress within to all but the favoured few. The privilege of the entrée was curtailed to the very old friends of the King, and even the commonest domestics in the Castle were constrained to submit to the control of the Marchioness. The court of George IV. certainly differed widely from that of Charles II., although the number and reputation of their several mistresses were nearly the same in favour and character; but George IV. had no confiscations to confer on the instruments of his pleasures. It is not our wish to make any personal allusions, nor to institute any comparisons, which might wound the feelings of certain illustrious personages; but the reigns of Charles II. and George IV., dissimilar as they might be in some respects, possessed, however, this similarity—that a spurious and illegitimate progeny were in neither case thrust forward to the contempt of all decency, and a heavy tax on the courtesy and forbearance of virtuous society. But if it be true that the late King left to the Marchioness more than half a million of money, the outrage is morally the same as if estates had been alienated, or titles bestowed, to gratify her ambition; and the memory of the King will survive for the lavishment of sums raised on a people already borne down by the weight of taxation, and for whose sufferings, if a little more sympathy had been shown, it would have mitigated the weight of those burdens which prostrate their energies, aggravate their censures, and, in the paroxysm of resentment, shut their eyes to any other good qualities which the King might possess, who, adopting a different system, might have acquired the character of a wise, generous, and magnificent monarch, and the father of his people, to the latest posterity.

In the opening speech to the Parliament on the 5th of February, 1822, the King alluded to the gratification afforded him by Irish loyalty, and to the deep concern caused by the altered state of things in that unfortunate country.

Notwithstanding this serious interruption to public tranquillity,' said the King, I have the satisfaction of believing that my presence in Ireland has been productive of very bene