[[51]]unfortunately succeed in persuading her to do it, you will be her ruin!"

Thus it will be seen, that "all is not gold that glitters;" but Mr. Wood ought hardly to find fault with us for stripping him of his borrowed plumes, considering the length of time he has been allowed to wear them! If the public had known these particulars at the time they occurred, it is doubtful whether the alderman would have ever received his plate; therefore, he owes us a little gratitude for not mentioning them before that (to him) golden opportunity!

Alderman Wood, however, we are sorry to say, was not the only false friend her majesty had to lament. Many others "held with the hare in one house, and ran with the hounds in another." Some of these even attended public meetings in the quality of friends, and then wrote as enemies in the public journals. Some inveighed against her in public, and wrote, spoke, and acted for her cause in private. One of her judges, to our positive knowledge, spoke admirably for her in parliament, and yet privately, in more places than one, impugned the character of her majesty! Even while the queen was abroad, her presumed friends were extremely negligent at home. They permitted insidious paragraphs to appear in the newspapers, day after day, month after month, and year after year, without either contradiction or explanation; by which shameful neglect, the public mind became so impregnated with falsehood and insinuation, that, had

[[52]]not the queen returned to this country as she did, her name would have been recorded in history as infamous! Sure never woman was so shamefully treated, both by friends and foes; indeed, her majesty might well have exclaimed, with Gay,

"An open foe may prove a curse,
But a pretended friend is worse!"

On the 12th of August, while his majesty was absent on a visit to Scotland, an extraordinary excitement prevailed by the reported "sudden death" of the Marquis of Londonderry. It is hardly necessary to enter into the various causes assigned for so unexpected an event; it is sufficient to know, that his lordship committed suicide, by cutting his throat with a small knife, at his seat, Foot's Cray, and that a coroner's inquest (either from conviction, or in kindness to his surviving friends) returned a verdict, that his lordship inflicted the wound while "delirious and of insane mind."

It is an obligation imposed upon every independent historian to lend his assistance to a just and honest estimate of the character of public men. It leads to useful, though not always to gratifying, reflections, to examine the causes which pointed them out as objects worthy of being entrusted with political command. By what strange union of circumstances, then, or by what unlucky direction of power, did the Marquis of Londonderry attain to the high and important offices which he successively

[[53]]held for so long a period?—a period the most momentous and ominous, the most fertile in change, the most wicked in court intrigue, and the most fraught with terror, of any in our annals! We have heard his lordship described as having been amiable in private life; but who has denied the manifest mediocrity of his genius for the situations he was allowed to fill? Some of his public proceedings, however, prove him not to have possessed much of "the milk of human kindness," as we shall presently shew. He was, indeed, only qualified to act as a mere associate, to be put forward in the face of Europe, not as himself a high and original power, but as a passive organ for the expression of sentiments, or for the execution of measures, hereafter traceable only as the opinions and actions of the "united cabinet" of a wicked chief magistrate. The panegyrists of his lordship have also trumpetted forth eulogiums on his "personal bravery." And if bravery consists in fighting duels, proposing the most unconstitutional acts, fearlessly oppressing the innocent, and in defying the power of a justly-enraged people, Lord Londonderry assuredly possessed "personal bravery" in an eminent degree!

His lordship was born on the 18th of June, 1769, and consequently died in the 53rd year of his age. He commenced his career, like his patron, Mr. Pitt, as the advocate of parliamentary reform; and, also like that apostate minister, Lord Londonderry abandoned his early patriotic pledges and principles for the emoluments of office, which he first entered

[[54]]in 1797, as keeper of the privy seal, and, shortly after, one of the lords of the treasury, of Ireland. In the following year, he became secretary to the lord lieutenant. Honours and places were now lavishly heaped upon him. In 1802, his lordship received the appointment of the Board of Controul, and, in 1805, was raised to the high and responsible office of minister of war! On the death of Mr. Pitt in 1806, his lordship was obliged to resign, with all the other "clerks in office," as the débris of Mr. Pitt's cabinet were called. On the resignation of the Grey and Grenville administration, in 1807, he resumed his former situation of minister of war, in which he continued till the ill-starred Walcheren expedition and his duel with Mr. Canning drove him from office, scorned and ridiculed by the whole of Europe. The year 1809 gave his lordship an opportunity of shewing how much he admired the existing abuses in church and state; for, on an investigation taking place into the Duke of York's shameful neglect of duty, as commander-in-chief, this year, the noble marquis was peculiarly active in his defence, and circulated a considerable sum of money in bribing those who were likely to appear as witnesses against the royal libertine. On the assassination of Mr. Perceval, in 1811, his lordship was made foreign minister, in which situation he continued till his death. Holding so high an office at a time when our foreign exertions were the most extensive and important, and acting as our negotiator when Europe might have been composed