George III is the party referred to in the Declaration of Independence the present king of Great Britain, and of whom many bitter personal remarks were made by American patriots. On this side of the water George was not highly esteemed. If he had come over here to spend the summer with friends in Boston, during the days of the stamp act excitement, he could have gone home packed in ice, no doubt, and with a Swiss sunset under each eye.
George's mind was always a little on the bias, and in 1810 he went crazy for the fifth time. Always before that he had gone right ahead with his reign, whether he was crazy or not, but with the fifth attack of insanity, coupled with suggestion of the brain and blind staggers, it was decided to tie him up in the barn and let someone else reign awhile. The historian says that blindness succeeded this attack, and in 1811 the Prince of Wales became regent.
George III died at Windsor in 1820, with the consent of a joint committee of both houses of congress, at the age of 82 years. He made the longest run as king, without stopping for feed or water, of any monarch in English history. Sixty years is a long time to be a monarch and look under the bed every night for a Nihilist loaded with a cut-glass bomb and Paris green. Sixty years is a long while to jerk a sceptre over a nation and keep on the right side, politically, all the time.
George was of an inventive turn of mind, and used to be monkeying with some kind of a patent, evenings, after he had peeled his royal robes. Most of his patents related to land, however, and some of the most successful soil in Massachusetts was patented by George.
He was always trying some scheme to make a pile of money easy, so that he wouldn't have to work; but he died poor and crazy at last, in England. He was not very smart, but he attended to business all the time, and did not get up much of a reputation as a moral leper. He said that as king of Great Britain and general superintendent of Cork he did not aim to make much noise, but he desired to attract universal attention by being so moral that he would be regarded as eccentric by other crowned heads.
The Cell Nest.
To the Members of the Academy of Science, at Wrin Prairie, Wisconsin: