DEATH OF QUEEN CHARLOTTE.
During the last session of parliament, in consequence of the Queen’s declining health, two amendments had been made in the regency bill; the first empowering her majesty to add six new members, resident in Windsor to her council, in the event of her absence from that residence; and the second repealed the clause which rendered necessary the immediate assembling of a new parliament in the event of the queen’s death. These amendments were opportunely made, for her majesty, after a lingering illness of six months, expired at Kew Palace, on the 17th of November, in the 75th year of her age. Her remains were interred at Windsor on the 2nd of December, and the day was observed with every suitable mark of respect. Queen Charlotte possessed those accomplishments which add grace and dignity to an exalted station. As a wife and a mother she was a pattern to her sex; performing all the tender and maternal offices of a nurse to her offspring, which is so seldom performed by persons even in less exalted stations than that which she occupied. Her morality was, also, unquestionably of the highest order: during the period in which she presided over the British court, she preserved it from the contamination of vice, notwithstanding the dangers proceeding from the licentious examples of other European dynasties, as well as from that moral relaxation which our own prosperity was so well calculated to produce. During the reign of Geo-ge III., indeed, England presented from the throne the example of those virtues that form the great and binding link of the social chain. To this may be in part ascribed our happiness in having withstood the storm which visited the rest of Europe with all the horrors of invasion or anarchy. “The wicked are overthrown, and are not; but the house of the righteous shall stand.”
MEETING OF PARLIAMENT.
A.D. 1819
The new parliament met on the 14th of January when Mr. Manners Sutton was reelected speaker, and Chief Baron Richards took his seat on the woolsack pro tempore, in consequence of the lord chancellor’s indisposition. Both houses were occupied till the 21st in swearing in their respective members, on which day the session was opened by commission. The chief topics of the royal speech were the king’s health: the demise of the queen; the evacuation of France by the allied troops; the favourable state of the revenue; the improved aspect of trade, manufactures, and commerce; the favourable result of the war in India; and the extension of the commercial treaty now existing between this nation and the United States of America to a further term of eight years. In both houses the addresses were carried without a division, though ministers were severely censured by Lord Lansdowne in the lords, and Mr. Macdonald in the commons, for the want of truth in their statements concerning the state of the nation, and for their many political blunders.
THE DUKE OF YORK APPOINTED GUARDIAN TO HIS MAJESTY.
As the death of the queen rendered it necessary that a guardian of his majesty’s person should be appointed, Lord Liverpool named the Duke of York, and his nomination met with general approval. The duke was appointed guardian with a salary of £10,000 per annum out of the public purse for the performance of this filial duty. The grant met with severe opposition, and was only carried by a small majority; and subsequently several debates took place respecting the establishment at Windsor, the expenses of which excited much freedom of remark. It was represented as a mockery of the national distress, no less than of the melancholy visitation of the aged monarch, kept up for the purpose of ministering to the prodigality of the regent, and the rapacity of his courtiers. These sentiments were shared by the people at large.