THE DEATH OF WILLIAM IV.
There were, indeed, other reasons for declining to provoke a grave contest at this juncture. The king's health was known to be failing, his death under the law then in force would involve a general election, and no one could desire his successor, a girl of eighteen, to begin her reign in the midst of a political crisis. In May his illness assumed an alarming aspect, early in June the medical reports satisfied the country that his case was hopeless, on June 19 he received the last sacrament, and on the 20th he died at Windsor Castle. Something more than justice was done to his character by the leaders of both parties in parliament, but something less than justice has been done to it by later historians. He was inferior in strength of will to his father, in ability to his eldest brother, and in the higher virtues of a constitutional sovereign to his niece, who succeeded him. But he was not only a kindly and well-meaning man, a good husband to Queen Adelaide and a good father to his natural children, faithful to his old friends, and bountiful in his charities; he was also a loyal servant of the state, with a genuine sense of public duty, a natural love of justice, an independent judgment, and a noble indifference to personal or selfish objects. His lot was cast in almost revolutionary times, and he was called upon to reign at an age when few men are capable of shaking off old prejudices, yet he deserved well of his people in supporting the ministry of Grey through all the stages of the reform movement, in spite of his own declared sympathies, but in deference to his own conviction of paramount obligation under the laws of the land. He was quite as liberal in opinions as Peel, whose hearty interest in the poorer classes he fully shared, and far more liberal than the tory majority in the house of lords. Great he certainly was not, and he never affected the royal dignity which partially concealed the littleness of his predecessor. But in honesty and simplicity he was no unworthy son of George III., and the greater pliability of his nature contributed, at least, to make the seven years of his reign more fruitful in reforms than all the sixty years during which the old king occupied the throne of England.
FOOTNOTES:
[130] The king to Peel (Feb. 22, 1835), Parker, Sir Robert Peel, ii., 287-89.
[131] See Melbourne's letters to Brougham, Melbourne Papers, pp. 257-64.
[132] The abuses in the Scottish municipalities had, however, been already removed by an act conferring the municipal franchise on £10 householders. Not the least important result of this act was the increased strength which it gave to the "evangelical" party in the general assembly of the Church of Scotland, which was partly elected by the municipalities.
[133] Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors, viii., 470.
[134] Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors, viii., 476.
[135] Annual Register, lxxviii. (1836), p. 244