[[382]]such they may be called) to my notes of interrogation upon these unhandsome and unfair delays, as if I were an object of inferior grade to himself. I think I have sufficient perception to convince me what the point is to which the ministers are now lending their ready aid, which is nothing less than to FORCE ME TO RETURN ABROAD! This they never shall accomplish, so long as my life is at all safe; and in vain does Mr. Wilde press upon my notice the propriety of such a step."

Illuminations and other rejoicings were manifested by the people at the queen's acquittal; but the state of her majesty's affairs, as explained in the above extract, were such as to preclude her receiving that pleasure which her majesty had otherwise experienced at such testimonies of the affectionate loyalty of the British people.

We must now proceed to the year

1821,

in which pains and penalties supplied the place of kindness, and the sword upheld the law! while men who opposed every liberal opinion hovered around the throne of this mighty empire. In the hardness of their hearts, they justified inhumanity, and delighted to hear the clank of the chains of slavery. They flattered but to deceive, and hid from their master the miseries of his subjects! This was base

[[383]]grovelling submission to the royal will, and not REAL LOYALTY; for loyalty does not consist in a slavish obedience to the will of a tyrannical chief magistrate, but in a firm and faithful adherence to the law and constitution of the community of which we are members. The disingenuity of Lord Liverpool and his coadjutors, however, who were impelled by high church and high tory principles, wished to limit this comprehensive principle, which takes in the whole of the constitution, and therefore tends to the conservation of it all in its full integrity, to the person of the king, because they knew he would favour their own purposes as well as the extension of power and prerogative,—the largesses of which they hoped to share in reward for their sycophantic zeal, and their mean, selfish, perfidious adulation. With such views, the king's ministers represented every spirited effort in favour of the people's rights as originating in disloyalty. The best friends to the English constitution, in its purity, were held up to the detestation of his majesty, as being disaffected to his person. Every stratagem was used to delude the unthinking part of the people into a belief that their only way of displaying loyalty was to display a most servile obsequiousness to the caprices of the reigning prince, and to oppose every popular measure. The ministers themselves approached him in the most unmanly language of submission, worthier to have been received by the Great Mogul or the Chinese emperor than the chief magistrate of a professedly free people. In short, George the Fourth only wished to be

[[384]]feared, not loved. The servile ministry fed this passion, though they would have done the same for a Stuart, had one been in power. It was not the man they worshipped, but the power he possessed to add to their own dignity and wealth! Let us not here be misunderstood. We are willing to award honour to the person of a man invested with kingly power, provided his deeds are in accordance with his duty, though not otherwise. A good king should be regarded with true and sincere affection; but we ought not to pay any man, reigning over a free country, so ill a compliment as to treat him like a despot, ruling over a land of slaves. We must, therefore, reprobate that false, selfish, adulatory loyalty, which, seeking nothing but its own base ends, and feeling no real attachment either to the person or the office of the king, contributes nevertheless, by its example, to diffuse a servile, abject temper, highly injurious to the spirit of freedom.

Though "the bill" was now ingloriously abandoned by Lord Liverpool, the queen received but little benefit. Her majesty was even refused means to discharge debts unavoidably contracted for the bare support of her table and her household. As a proof of the economical style of her living, we witnessed one evening a party of friends sitting down to supper with her majesty, when a chicken at the top and another at the bottom of the table were the only dishes set before the company. What a contrast this would have presented to the loaded tables, groaning under the luxurious display of provisions for

[[385]]gluttony, in the king's several residences, where variety succeeded variety, and where even the veriest menial lived more sumptuously than his master's consort!

On the 5th of May, the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte expired at St. Helena, having endured captivity, under the most unfavourable circumstances, and with a constitutional disease, more than six years and a half. As we shall have occasion, in our second volume, to speak of this illustrious man and his cruel treatment by our government, it would be unnecessary to say more in this place than merely give an outline of his extraordinary career. Napoleon was born at Ajaccio, the capital of Corsica, August 15, 1769; and was, consequently, fifty-two years of age, wanting three months, when he died. He was the eldest son of a lawyer, of Italian descent, and his family had pretensions to ancestry of high birth and station in Italy. He was educated in the royal military school; and first attracted notice when, as an officer of engineers, he assisted in the bombardment of Toulon in 1793; next signalized himself by repressing an infuriated mob of Parisians in 1795, which caused his promotion to the command of the army of Italy; was made first consul in 1799; elected emperor in 1804; "exchanged" the sceptre of France and Italy for that of Elba (so it was expressed in the treaty of Fontainbleau) on the 11th of April, 1814; landed at Cannes, in Provence, on the 1st of March, 1815; entered Paris triumphantly, at the head of the French army, a few days afterwards; fought the last fatal battle of