Our readers, at this distance of time, will reflect with amazement and indignation, that on the 8th of February, 1794, the four first-named citizens, without a moment's previous notice, were surprised in their beds by the Newgate ruffians, chained and handcuffed like the vilest felons, and thus conveyed to

[[103]]Woolwich, where they were sent on board a transport ready to receive them. A few hours afterwards, the vessel dropped down the river; but, during the short interval it remained at Woolwich, all communication was cut off between them and their friends! Even the wife of Margarot was denied admission to him! Such were the positive orders of that illiberal and corrupt minister,—Mr. Henry Dundas.

Let us hope that the day is for ever past when men can be thus treated for merely giving vent to their complaints and sufferings. It is the prerogative of affliction to complain, more sacred and natural than any titles or immunities which privileged persons enjoy! And whenever force is employed against argument and reason, though the contest may be unequal, depend upon it that the cause of TRUTH will ULTIMATELY PREVAIL!

At this period, the Prince of Wales was involved in more than SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS, beside bonds and bills, signed by him, to a very enormous amount; and, finding himself unable to procure any further sums, he applied to the queen for assistance in this extremity. Her majesty referred him to his father, and pressed him to yield to any advice which the king might suggest, or any plan he might recommend.

A time was appointed for an interview, and the father and son entered upon these very distressing and dishonorable transactions. After much deliberation, the king observed, "that it was utterly impossible to ask parliament for any relief, as it was

[[104]]all the minister could now do to keep the wheels of state in motion; and, even to do that, it required immense loans to be raised, to make up the deficiency of the year's current expenses." As a last resource, the king proposed that the prince should MARRY, and that a lady of royal birth be selected, as agreeable to the inclinations of the prince as possible. Upon such an event, the minister would, no doubt, furnish means for his liberation, and a sufficient income for the additional expenses attendant upon such an alliance. The prince received the opinion of his father with varied sensations, and requested time to think upon the proposition, when he would announce the result of his cogitations.

Alas! how much are kings to be pitied! If their principles and intentions be virtuous, what difficulties have they to surmount, what sorrows to endure! This was a trying period for George the Third: on the one hand, he saw the impropriety and cruelty of marriage merely for state policy, and more particularly so in the present instance, as he considered the prince's marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert solemn and binding in the sight of heaven, though certainly in direct opposition to the law of the country, which was in operation at the time it was solemnized. On the other hand, it appeared that a royal marriage was an event that would give great satisfaction to the people, and might, perhaps, reclaim the prince from those considerable errors and obnoxious pursuits in which he was so deeply entangled; for he associated with some of the most unprincipled characters, of

[[105]]whom any person of morality or common decency would certainly have been ashamed.

Here again the gewgaw of royal parade was intended to entrap the admiration of the ignorant. The vain pomp and pageantries of courts and the splendour of fortune have ever been an ignis fatuus to seduce the people to their ruin. They have, alas! too often served as an useful shelter to every excess of folly, every enormity of crime; while the deepest distresses and the most urgent wants have not been allowed as an extenuation for the slightest transgression, though committed to satisfy the craving exigencies of famished nature! Had a private individual acted as this prince was about to do, would he not have become an outcast from his family, and would not the whole world have abandoned him? Yet, although the prince's example was ten thousand times more contagious, all the breaches of faith of which he had been guilty scarcely received the slightest animadversion! But so it was; common interest united even those who were disunited by particular discordances, and the seeming harmony of the royal family may undoubtedly be inferred to have arisen from their equal interest in the success of the piece. Their private differences were apparently lost in the immensity of the SECRETS by which the state chain was rivetted, as if it were by adamant.

We must not suppose his majesty was all this time ignorant of the situation of his nephew, the only child of his brother Edward; so far from that being the case, he had caused him to be brought up