Chancellors of the Exchequer.| Secretaries (Foreign and Home).
Jan. 1812. Vansittart.| June 1812 { Castlereagh.
Jan. 1823. Robinson.| { Sidmouth.
April 1827. Canning.| Jan. 1822 { Castlereagh.
Aug. 1827. Herries.| { Peel.
Jan. 1828. Goulburn.| Sept. 1822 { Canning.
| { Peel.
| April 1827 { Dudley.
| { Sturges-Bourne.
| Aug. 1827 { Dudley.
| { Lansdowne.
| Jan. 1828 { Dudley.
| { Peel.
| May 1828 { Aberdeen.
|{ Peel.

It was no longer as Regent but as King that George, the new monarch, met the Parliament on its reassembling. He had so long acted virtually as sovereign that scarcely any visible effect was Precarious position of the ministry. produced by the change. Yet during the first days there was considerable probability that the change of reign would be marked by a change of ministry, for there were two questions on which the ministers felt it their duty to oppose the new King—the one an increase of his private revenue, the other the divorce of his unfortunate wife. On the latter point, unfortunately for themselves, they were induced to make a compromise, believing that they were acting safely. Extremely anxious to avoid a public scandal, they refused at first to move in the matter of the divorce as long as the Queen remained quietly abroad, but promised to gratify the King's wishes should she make her appearance in England. On these terms they remained in office.

Cato Street conspiracy. Feb. 23, 1820.

But, at the very time that their position as ministers was in danger, their lives were threatened by a conspiracy which in its atrocity and feebleness gives a fair measure of the power and intentions of the worst part of those engaged in the agitations of the day. As in the case of the Derby insurrection, it is impossible to acquit the authorities of the guilt of having employed spies who, though probably without Government authority, did in fact aggravate the crime of the conspirators. Information was given as early as November by a man named Edwards of a plot against the lives of the ministers, and from that time till the day of the explosion of the Cato Street conspiracy he continued to play the double part of conspirator and police agent. The form the plot ultimately assumed was the murder of all the ministers in a body at a Cabinet dinner, which Edwards informed the conspirators was to be held at Lord Harrowby's on the 23rd of February. The assassination was to be followed up by an attempt to fire the barracks, and to rouse the people to an assault upon the Bank and the Tower. As the ministry were well informed of the plot, the dinner was of course postponed. The guests arriving at the house of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was giving a dinner-party that day, and who lived next door to Lord Harrowby, prevented the conspirators from discovering the postponement of the ministerial meeting; and they were arming themselves in a stable in Cato Street, near Edgeware Road, when the police came upon them. The capture was badly managed; the first officer who entered the room was stabbed, and in the confusion Thistlewood (already mentioned as the confederate of the Watsons), who was the soul of the present conspiracy, with fourteen others, contrived to escape; the rest, nine in number, were apprehended when the soldiers, who should have accompanied the police, arrived. Early the next morning, however, Thistlewood was captured. He and four others were executed, and five more transported for life. The terror excited throughout England was strangely exaggerated; the design appears to have been confined entirely to a few desperate men, and to have been scouted by all the more earnest Radicals to whom it had been suggested. About the same time the other prisoners, Hunt and his friends from Manchester (April), Wolseley and Harrison from Stockport (July), were tried, and sentenced to various periods of imprisonment. One advantage at least came from the trials; the true character of Hunt was discovered, his friends and companions learnt the worthlessness and egregious vanity of the man, and his influence was entirely destroyed.

The Parliament had assembled, according to law, upon the demise of the King, and after going through the necessary business, was dissolved. In April the new Parliament met. But any interest which Importance of the Queen's trial. might otherwise have attended its labours disappeared before the absorbing interest of the year, the trial of the Queen. Though in itself wholly unconnected with politics, no event produced a stronger influence on the course of political growth. The loyalty of the country, and respect for authority and for the established powers, received a rude shock. It could not be otherwise when the people saw a ministry, many of whose severest and most unpopular measures had been based on the specious ground of the desire to maintain morality, forcing into public notice scandalous details, which the papers spread to every corner of the country for the satisfaction of prurient curiosity; when they saw the sovereign having recourse to all the foul and mean resources of the private inquiry office, which fill right-minded men with disgust even in the cases of private individuals, and the Government lending the whole weight of its authority to the vindictive prosecution of an unfortunate and ill-used woman. The effect was a complete severance between the Government and the more liberal-minded of the middle classes, whom fear of popular extravagances had hitherto united with it, and from the close of this trial may be dated the serious determination of the people at large to insist upon some great measure of reform.

Position of the Queen.

Whatever may have been her folly or her guilt, no one can question the misfortune of the Queen. Giddy by nature and badly educated, she had been forced (1795) against her will upon a man whose immoral and selfish character wholly unfitted him for the difficult position of a husband of a frivolous and unwise wife. His distaste had been exhibited at their very first meeting, and he could only force himself to assume a gracious demeanour by having recourse to wine or spirits. From the very first he seems to have designed to part from her; she was early sent into a sort of banishment at Blackheath, a watch was set upon her conduct, an investigation before the Lords was set on foot, and though declared innocent of any grave offence, disgusted at such treatment, she unwisely withdrew abroad in 1814. She was followed in her retirement, by the advice of Sir John Leach, by emissaries to collect evidence against her, unknown to herself. It would have been wise had she remained abroad, but the treatment she had received rendered her desperate; she had been excluded from foreign courts, and when her husband came to the throne her name was omitted from the Liturgy. It seems to have been this last insult which roused her to action. In June she came to England, and was received with enthusiasm by the people, who regarded her as a persecuted woman. She thus placed the ministers in the awkward position of being obliged to fulfil the compromise under which they had retained office and to proceed to extremities against her. On the 6th of June the King sent a message to the Lords, ordering them to institute an inquiry into the Queen's conduct, and proofs were laid on the table. On the following day, Mr. Brougham, who undertook the management of her case as her Attorney-General, read a letter to the Commons demanding a public inquiry. Some efforts were made to effect a compromise, but as the King refused to demand her reception abroad or to insert her name in the Liturgy, all negotiations failed. The secret committee of the Lords therefore proceeded to make its report, declaring Trial of the Queen. Aug. 17. that a solemn inquiry was necessary; and Lord Liverpool shocked public feeling by introducing, for the purpose of producing such an inquiry, a Bill of pains and penalties to deprive her Majesty of her position as Queen, and to dissolve the King's marriage. The trial in fact came on with the second reading of the Bill, when the charges against the Queen were stated before the Lords; and for nearly a month the House was occupied in hearing witness. By this time the feeling in England was strongly excited. The ministers were insulted whenever they appeared abroad, and every opportunity was taken by the crowd of showing their sympathy with the Queen. The question had become in fact a political one, and the Queen lent herself only too readily to a somewhat ostentatious display of her sufferings. In October the defence commenced, and at length, on the 6th of November, the second reading of the Bill was passed by a majority of twenty-eight. Two days afterwards, on the third reading, there was a majority of only nine. As this was in the House of Lords, where the ministers were strongest, they saw it was useless to persevere, and Lord Liverpool declared that the Bill was abandoned. A burst of joy was heard throughout the country, for three nights London was illuminated, even Prince Leopold joining in the rejoicings. Declining all offers from the Government, the Queen placed her cause in the hands of the Commons. An annuity of £50,000 was given her the following session. But she was determined upon some more public announcement of her innocence; she still tried, though in vain, to secure the introduction of her name in the Liturgy, and was foolish enough on the occasion of the coronation in July of the following year to attempt to force her way into the Abbey. She had already begun to lose the sympathy of the people when, in August, she died.

Consequent alienation between the ministry and people.

However right it may have been to raise the question of the Queen's guilt, there was a general feeling that the ministers had at all events mismanaged the question, and after exciting strongly the temper of the people, had dropped their Bill without excuse or apology. Advantage was taken of the popular anger, excited by what was thought an act of oppression, to give currency to all sorts of charges against the ministry, and to impute to them unconstitutional principles, and connivance or even approbation of scandalous conspiracies against the Queen's character, of which they were certainly guiltless. But, before all, the late events had given a popular rallying-point for all sections of the Opposition, and had demonstrated how deep was the alienation between the ministry and the body of the people. It is from this time that we find serious and sometimes successful efforts made to begin the work of reform, which it was believed would render such an alienation impossible. Although, as was to be expected in a House elected under the old system, any wide measure, such as that produced by Lambton (subsequently Lord Durham, April 1821), recommending equal electoral districts, was sure to be defeated by a large majority, Lord John Russell succeeded in procuring the disfranchisement of Grampound, a notoriously corrupt borough in Cornwall (May 30). He and his friends were wise enough to accept this small beginning, even though his Bill was changed in the Upper House, where the vacant seat was transferred, not to one of the great unrepresented cities, as would have been just, but to the county of York. In the same way the great question of Catholic disabilities was brought forward with renewed strength. Those who were in favour of their removal were successful in the Lower House, and the Bill was only lost after passing through most of its stages in the Lords.