untruthful, but fortunately, fearful of losing his crown, gave way to progress with a bad grace when chicanery was no longer possible, and continued resistance became dangerous.

7th. That, under the Brunswick family, the national expenditure has increased to a frightful extent, while our best possessions in America have been lost, and our home possession, Ireland, rendered chronic in its discontent by the terrible misgovernment under the four Georges.

And, 8th. That the ever increasing burden of the national taxation has been shifted from the land on to the shoulders of the middle and lower classes, the landed aristocracy having, until very lately, enjoyed the practical monopoly of tax-levying power.

CHAPTER II.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE I.

On August 1st, 1714, George Lewis, Elector of Hanover, and great-grandson of James I of England, succeeded to the throne; but apparently doubtful as to the reception he would meet in this country he delayed visiting his new dominions until the month of October. In April, 1714, there was so little disposition in favor of the newly-chosen dynasty, that the Earl of Oxford entreated George not to bring any of his family into England without Queen Anne's express consent. Madame Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans, expresses her hesitation "to rejoice at the accession of our Prince George, for she had no confidence in the English "; and her fears "that the inconstancy of the English will in the end produce some scheme which may be injurious to the French monarchy". She adds: "If the English were to be trusted, I should say that it is fortunate the Parliaments are in favor of George, but the more one reads of the history of English revolutions the more one is compelled to remark the eternal hatred which the people of that nation have had towards their kings, as well as their fickleness". To-day it is the English who charge the French with fickleness. Thackeray says that George I "showed an uncommon prudence and coolness of behavior when he came into his kingdom, exhibiting no elation; reasonably doubtful whether he should not be turned out some day; looking upon himself only as a lodger, and making the most of his brief tenure of St. James's and Hampton Court, plundering, it is true, somewhat, and dividing amongst his German followers; but what could be expected of a sovereign who at home could sell his subjects at so many ducats per head, and make no scruple in so disposing of them?" Molloy quotes the French ambassador as writing to the King of France that George I "rather

considers England a temporary possession, to be made the most of while it lasts, than as a perpetual inheritance to himself and family. To this statement the King's acts during his reign bear strong testimony". At the accession of George I the national debt of this country, exclusive of annuities, was about £36,000,000; and after five Brunswicks have left us it is £738,000,000 for Great Britain and Ireland, and much more than £130,000,000 for India. The annual national expenditure under the rule of George I was about £6,000,000; for 1887 it was about £89,996,000. During the reign of George I land paid very nearly one-fourth the whole of the taxes; to-day it pays less than one-eightieth part; and yet, while land's proportion of the burden is so much lighter,. its exaction from labor in rent is many times heavier.

George I came to England without his wife, whom, years before, he had arrested and placed in close confinement in Ahlden Castle, on account of her intrigue with Philip, Count Konigsmark, whom some say George I suspected of being the actual father of the Electoral Prince George, afterwards George II. To use the language of a writer patronised by George, Prince of Wales, in 1808: "The coldness between George I, and his son and successor, George II, may be said to have been almost coeval with the existence of the latter." Our king, George I,-described by Thackeray as a "cold, selfish libertine "--had Konigsmark murdered in the palace of Heranhausen; confined his wife, at twenty-eight years of age, in a dungeon, where she remained until she was sixty; and when George Augustus, Electoral Prince. of Hanover, tried to get access to his mother, George Lewis, then Elector of Hanover, arrested Prince George also, and, it is said, would have put him to death if the Emperor of Germany had not protected him as a Prince of the German Empire. During the reign of George II, Frederick, Prince of Wales, whom his father denounced as "a changeling ", published an account of how George I had turned Frederick's father out of the palace. These Guelphs have been ever a loving family. The Edinburgh Review declares that "the terms on which the eldest sons of this family have always lived with their fathers have

been those of distrust, cpposition, and hostility". Even after George Lewis had ascended the throne of England, his hatred to George Augustus was so bitter that there was some proposition that James, Earl Berkeley and Lord High Admiral, should carry off the Prince to America, and keep him there.

Thackeray says: "When George I made his first visit to Hanover, his son was appointed regent during the Royal absence. But this honor was never again conferred on the Prince of Wales; he and his father fell out presently. On the occasion of the christening of his second son, a Royal row took place, and the Prince, shaking his fist in the Duke of Newcastle's face, called him a rogue, and provoked his august father. He and his wife were turned out of St. James's, and their princely children taken from them, by order of the Royal head of the family. Father and mother wept piteously at parting from their little ones. The young ones sent some cherries, with their love to papa and mamma : the parents watered the fruit with their tears. They had no tears thirty-five years afterwards when Prince Frederick died, their eldest son, their heir, their enemy."

Mahon, despite all his desire to make out the best for the Whig revolution and its consequences, occasionally makes some pregnant admissions: "The jealousy which George I entertained for his son was no new feeling. It had existed even at Hanover, and had since been inflamed by an insidious motion of the Tories that out of the Civil List £100,000 should be allotted as a separate revenue for the Prince of Wales. This motion was over-ruled by the Ministerial party, and its rejection offended the Prince as much as its proposal had the King. In fact it is remarkable ... that since that family has reigned the heirs apparent have always been on ill terms with the sovereign. There have been four Princes of Wales since the death of Anne, and all four have gone into bitter opposition." "That family," said Lord Carteret one day in full Council, "always has quarrelled, and always will quarrel, from generation to generation."

"Through the whole of the reign of George I, and through nearly half the reign of George II," says Lord Macaulay, "a

Tory was regarded as the enemy of the reigning house, and was excluded from all the favors of the Crown. Though most of the country gentlemen were Tories, none but Whigs were appointed deans and bishops. In every county opulent and well-descended Tory Squires complained that their names were left out of the Commission of the Peace, while men of small estate and of mean birth, who were for toleration and excise, septennial Parliaments and standing armies, presided at Quarter Sessions, and became deputy-lieutenants."

In attacking the Whigs my object is certainly not to favor the Tories, but to rectify the delusion that the Whigs have always been friends to liberty and progress.

Although George I brought with him no wife to England, he was accompanied by at least two of his mistresses, and our peerage roll was enriched by the addition of Madame Kielmansegge as Countess of Darlington, and Mademoiselle Erangard Melosine de Schulenberg as Duchess of Kendal and Munster, Baroness of Glastonbury, and Countess of Faversham. These peeresses were received with high favor by the Whig aristocracy, although the Tories refused to countenance them, and "they were often hooted by the mob as they passed through the streets". The Edinburgh Review described them as "two big blowsy German women". Here I have no room to deal fairly with Charlotte Sophia, Baroness of Brentford and Countess of Darlington; her title is extinct, and I can write nothing of any good or useful act to revive

her memory. Lord Chesterfield says of George I: "No

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woman came amiss to him, if she were only very willing and very fat." John Heneage Jesse, in his "Memoirs of the Court of England,"-speaking of the Duchess of Kendal, the Countess Platen, (the co-partner in the murder of Konigsmark), and many others less known to infamy-declares that George I "had the folly and wickedness to encumber himself with a seraglio of hideous German prostitutes". The Duchess of Kendal was for many years the chief mistress of George, and being tall and lean, was caricatured as the Maypole or the Giraffe. She had a pension of £7,500 a year, the profits of the place of Master of the Horse, besides much other plunder from