"The crisis was of the most vital importance to England; the danger most imminent; the talents of the Prime Minister of a superior kind. He was, therefore, necessary. Presuming on the omnipotence of this circumstance over the King’s mind, Mr. Pitt ruled him tyrannically, and without the least delicacy; he scarcely allowed him the disposal of the most trifling place. If there was a vacancy, and the King wished to reward a private servant of his own, he was always too late; Mr. Pitt had already disposed of it, and for the good of the state, he would say—for the sake of parliamentary services. If the King shewed too much dissatisfaction, Mr. Pitt had one invariable answer constantly ready—he would resign and give up his place to another. At length a circumstance occurred of the most delicate kind, as it concerned the King’s conscience, who was very religious; that is to say, the question of the emancipation of the Catholics of Ireland, to which he obstinately refused to consent. Mr. Pitt insisted with equal perseverance; he was pledged to this measure, he said, and resorted to his usual threat. But the King this time took him at his word, and, overjoyed at his deliverance, repeated the same day, to several persons, that he had now got rid of a man who had for twenty years been kicking at him. And it may not, perhaps, be useless to observe here, as a remarkable singularity, in contrast to Mr. Pitt’s ill usage of the King, that George III. has been heard to say that, of all his ministers, Mr. Fox (so much accused of republicanism, and perhaps not without foundation) was the person who, when at the head of affairs, had constantly shewn him the greatest delicacy, deference, respect, and attention.
"Nevertheless, such was the influence of the public interest over the King’s mind that, notwithstanding all his aversion, he reinstated Mr. Pitt a year afterwards. It was thought, at the time, that when Mr. Pitt retired he had had the address to fix Mr. Addington, a creature of his own, in the ministry, in order to be able to replace himself there in a short time without difficulty: but it has since been proved that Mr. Pitt himself was obliged to have recourse to intrigues to overthrow his successor and obtain his second administration, which, however, was by no means worthy of him: it was filled with disasters which he himself had occasioned. The ball that decided the victory of Austerlitz killed him in London.
"Time daily undermines the great reputation of Mr. Pitt, not with respect to his eminent talents, but their fatal employment. England groans under the calamities with which he overwhelmed her, the most fatal of which are the school and the doctrines he bequeathed to her. He introduced the police into England, accustomed the nation to an armed force, and commenced that system of informations, snares, and demoralization of every kind so completely perfected by his successors.
“His great system of tactics was constantly to excite our excesses on the Continent, and then to hold them up as a scarecrow to England, which immediately granted him all he wanted.” “But what did you all say to that?” asked the Emperor: “What was the opinion of the emigrants?”—"Sire," I replied, “we all constantly saw through the same glass; what we said the first day of our emigration we still repeated on the last day of our exile. We had not advanced one step; we had become and remained a people by ourselves. Mr. Pitt was our oracle; whatever was said by him, by Burke, Windham, or any of the most violent on that side of the question, appeared to us to be delicious; all that their adversaries objected, abominable. Fox, Sheridan, and Grey, were in our eyes nothing but infamous Jacobins; we never called them by any other name.” “Very well,” said the Emperor; “now return to George III.”
"This virtuous prince was excessively partial to private life and rural occupations; he devoted all the time he could spare from the business of the state to the cultivation of a farm a few miles from London; he never returned to the capital except for his regular levées, or extraordinary councils required by circumstances; and he immediately returned to his fields, where he lived without pomp, and like an honest farmer, as he said himself. All intrigues were left in town, about the ministers, and amongst them.
"George III. had many domestic troubles. His sister was Matilda Queen of Denmark, whose story forms so melancholy a romance; his two brothers caused him many vexations by their marriages; and he had not reason to be perfectly satisfied with his eldest son.
“The two brothers of George III. were the Duke of Cumberland and the Duke of Gloucester. I often saw the latter in private society; he was the worthiest, most polite, and honourable gentleman in England. Both these illustrious individuals, according to the spirit of the British constitution, were entirely strangers to public business. The King heard that one of them had married or was about to marry a private individual. This was a great crime in his estimation; he had himself made a great sacrifice to avoid committing it. He was extremely angry; and whilst he was sending a message to Parliament against the brother who had thus given offence, he was informed that the other had eloped to Calais for a similar purpose. It was like a fatality, an absolute epidemic, for it was at the same time reported on all sides, that the heir-apparent himself was also secretly married.”—"What," said the Emperor, “the Prince of Wales!”—"Yes, Sire, himself: his marriage was every where talked of, but with circumstances not sufficiently certain for me to venture to repeat them; the fact, however, seemed generally acknowledged. But, as the Prince afterwards caused it to be contradicted in Parliament, through the medium of the opposition, we are bound after that to believe him.
"I have it, however, from the mouth of a very near relation of his pretended wife, that the matter was positively so. I heard this person give way to the most violent rage on the solemn marriage of the prince, and threaten to resort to personal violence. It might, therefore, be considered a contested point, which was unavoidably represented according to party-spirit; some obstinately maintaining the reality of the marriage, whilst others denied it in the most violent manner. Perhaps this contradiction might be reconciled by the consideration that the person he was said to have married, Mrs. Fitzherbert, was a Catholic. This circumstance rendered the marriage impossible in the eyes of the law, and perfectly void with respect to the heir to the throne. However this may be, I have often met Mrs. Fitzherbert in company: her carriage bore the Prince’s arms, and her servants wore his livery. This lady was much older than himself; but beautiful, agreeable, of a powerful mind, and haughty, impatient temper, which often involved her in disputes with the Prince, and gave rise, it was said, to scenes of violence not very becoming such elevated rank. It was during one of the last quarrels of this kind, when, they say, Mrs. Fitzherbert had obstinately kept the door shut against the Prince, that Mr. Pitt dexterously took the opportunity of persuading him to consent to a marriage with the Princess of Brunswick."—"But stay," said the Emperor, “you go too fast; you pass over what chiefly interests me. Under what auspices did the Prince of Wales enter into life? What was there peculiar in his political conduct, his situation with regard to the Opposition, and so forth?”—"This Prince, Sire, came before the public with all the advantages of face, person, and mind. He was greeted with universal enthusiasm; but he soon evinced those inclinations, and began to act that part, which seemed necessarily imposed on great personages in the middle of the last century. Such were the infatuation of gaming, and its consequent embarrassments; table and other excesses; and, above all, a set of companions disapproved of by the public. Then it was that all generous hearts were grieved; hope was blighted, and the middling class, which in every country really constitutes the nation, and which, it must be confessed, is in England the most moral population of all Europe, despaired of the future. It was a received adage in England, amongst the lower classes in particular, that the Prince of Wales would never reign; the fortune-tellers and conjurors, it was said, had foretold it to himself.
“The opposition, into whose arms he had thrown himself, as heirs presumptive too frequently do; the opposition, whose stay and hope he was, perhaps trying to deceive themselves, when this misconduct was mentioned to them, used to get over it by saying that he would be another Henry V.; that Henry V. had been extremely dissipated when Prince of Wales; but that he became the greatest King the monarchy had produced; and thence they concluded that the Prince of Wales would make one of their greatest kings.”—"But did he adopt the revolutionary party and defend our modern ideas?" said the Emperor. "No, Sire; as the fever of revolutionary principles increased, decency compelled him to withdraw by degrees from the opposition which defended them. He relinquished all ostensible alliance, and filled up the void of his life by giving himself up to pleasure and its attendant difficulties. He was constantly overwhelmed with debts, although parliament had already paid them several times. By these encumbrances he was greatly embarrassed, and his character and popularity were endangered. It was whilst thus involved, and during a quarrel with Mrs. Fitzherbert, that Mr. Pitt got hold of him, offering to pay his debts again, if he would adopt his father’s views and consent to marry. He was obliged to submit to all that was prescribed, and the hand of the Princess of Brunswick was asked and obtained. But, during the short interval of the negotiation, a celebrated woman who had long aspired to govern the prince, finding the place vacant, took possession of it herself. It is pretended that she has said she had sought this connection for twenty years; for she was much older than himself, a circumstance which seemed to indicate a peculiar taste in this family, having also been remarked in several of his brothers. This person was immediately appointed Lady of the Bed-chamber to the future Princess of Wales; she even went to meet her and bring her to England. It was under such auspices, such malignant influence, that the bride landed on the British shore. Accordingly, it is positively asserted that this unhappy princess had not even so much as twenty-four hours’ enjoyment, out of that privileged period emphatically called by the English the honey-moon. From the very day after her marriage, ridicule, neglect, and contempt were her portion.
"All who possessed the least spark of generosity or morality in England took her part, and loudly exclaimed against the manner in which she was treated. The greater share of the odium, however, fell on Lady Jersey, who was accused of having bewitched the prince. She became the object of public execration; yet the Prince, it was declared could not plead the excuse of illusion or blindness; for it is said that, after a very gay entertainment amongst his jovial companions, one of them was led, in the course of conversation, to say that he knew the Madame de Merteuil of the Liaisons Dangereuses. Many of the others immediately cried out that they also knew one: upon this, it is said, the Prince proposed, for a frolic, that each should write his secret separately. All the notes were thrown into a vase; and the name of Lady Jersey was found written on every one of them: the Prince himself, not having looked for such unanimity, or expected to be discovered, had written this name as well as the rest.