of serious regard to him that he had not been born a free, independent American". We regret that the whole family have not long since naturalised themselves as American citizens. But such a sentiment from the son of George III, from one who in his youth had used most extravagant phraseology in denunciation of the American rebels!

The family insanity, shown in the case of George II by his persistence in wearing his Dettingen old clothes; more notorious and less possible of concealment in that of George III; well known to all but the people as to George IV, who actually tried to persuade the Duke of Wellington that he (George) had led a regiment at Waterloo, was also marked in William IV. In April, 1832, the King's own secretary admits "distressing symptoms " and " nervous excitement ", but says that the attack "is now subsiding". Raikes, a Tory, and also a king-worshipper, in his “Diary”, under date May the 27th, 1834, says, after speaking of the King's "excitement” and “rather extraordinary" conduct, that "at the levée a considerable sensation was created the other day by his insisting that an unfortunate wooden-legged lieutenant should kneel down”. On June 11th, visiting the Royal Academy, the President showed the King, amongst others, the portrait of Admiral Napier, and was astonished to hear his Majesty at once cry out: "Captain Napier may be damned, sir, and you may be damned, sir; and if the Queen was not here, sir, I would kick you down stairs, sir". The King's brother, his Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, died November 20th, 1834. Raikes says of him: "He was not a man of talent, as may be inferred from his nickname of Silly Billy". This is the Royal Family, the present head of which, according to Mr. Disraeli, is "physically and morally incapable of performing the regal functions", and which yet, according to that brilliant statesman, so fitly represents the intelligence and honor of Great Britain.

In 1836 Sir William Knighton died. He had been made private secretary to the late King, and had made. his fortune by means of some papers which Colonel Macmahon, confidant of George IV, had when dying, and which came into Knighton's hands as medical attendant of the dying man. Sir W. Knighton was made a "Grand Cross", not for his bravery

in war, or intelligence in the State, but for his adroit manipulation of secrets relating to Lady Jersey, Mrs. Fitzherbert, and the Marchioness of Conyngham. Sir William Knighton and the latter lady were supposed to have made free with £300,000; but great larcenies win honor, and Sir W. Knighton died respected.

In August, 1836, William-hearing that the Duke of Bedford had helped O'Connell with money ordered the Duke's bust, then in the gallery at Windsor, to be taken down and thrown into the lime kilns.

On June 20th, 1837, William IV died. Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, by William's death, became King of Hanover, and was on the same day publicly hissed in the Green Park. Naturally, in this loving family there was considerable disagreement for some time previous to the King's death between his Majesty and the Duchess of Kent.

The Edinburgh Review, soon after the King's death, while admitting that his understanding may not have been of as high an order as his good nature, says: "We have learned to forget the faults of the Duke of Clarence in the merits of William IV". Where were these merits shown? Was it in "brooding"-to use the expression of his own private secretary—over questions of whether he could, during the commencement of his reign, personally appropriate sums of money outside the Civil List votes? Was it in desiring that Colonel Napier might be "struck off the half-pay list" for having made a speech at Devizes in favor of Parliamentary Reform? Was it when he tried to persuade Earl Grey to make Parliament pay Rundell and Bridges' bill for plate—and this when the masses were in a starving condition? Was it when he declared that he was "by no means dissatisfied that a proposed meeting was likely to be so "violent and in other respects so objectionable" that it would afford the excuse for suppressing by force the orderly meetings which, says his secretary, "the King orders me to say he cannot too often describe as being, in his opinion, far more mischievous and dangerous" than those of "a more avowed and violent character"!

CHAPTER VII.

THE PRESENT REIGN.

HER present Majesty, Alexandrina Victoria, was born May 24th, 1819, and ascended the throne June 20th, 1837, as representing her father, the Duke of Kent, fourth son of George III. On February 10th, 1840, it being the general etiquette for the Brunswick family to intermarry amongst themselves, she was married to her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg, who received an allowance from the nation of £30,000 to compensate him for becoming the husband of his wife. The Queen, more sensible than others of the arduous position of a Prince Consort, wished her loyal husband to have £100,000 a year. The Government reduced this to £50,000. Joseph Hume and the Radicals reduced it still further to £30,000. For this annual payment the Prince, although expressing his dissatisfaction to Baron Stockmar, undertook to submit to naturalisation, to be the first subject in England, to reside rent free in the Royal Palaces, repaired at the cost of the nation. He also on his own account, and for his own profit, attended to various building speculations at the West-end of London and died very rich. He is known as Prince Albert the Good. His goodness is marked-not by parks given to the people as in the case of Sir Francis Crossley; not by improved dwellings for the people, as in the case of George Peabody; not by a large and costly market-place, freely given, as in the case of Miss Burdett Coutts-Peeress without her patent of Baroness;-but by statues erected in his honor in many cities and boroughs by a loyal people. As an employer of labor, the Prince's reputation is marked solely by these statues. As a Prince, he felt in his lifetime how much and how truly he was loved by his people and at a dinner given to the Guards, Prince Albert, in a speech probably not revised beforehand, told the Household

Troops how he relied on them to protect the Throne against any assaults. The memory of the Prince is dear to the people; he has left us nine children to keep out of the taxpayers' pockets, his own large private accumulations of wealth being inapplicable to their maintenance, and his will being kept secret, so that the amount of his private property cannot be known.

Prince Albert was not happy; he writes to Stockmar : "Peel cut down my income; Wellington refused me my rank; the Royal Family cried out against the foreign interloper ". In June, 1840, the Queen and Prince Albert, being desperately annoyed at the opposition offered to the Prince Albert Annuity Bill, employed or permitted Baron Stockmar to gain over some of the members of the House of Commons in a most irregular fashion. The attempt failed, but Baron Stockmar's orders were obeyed by the English Ministry then in power; as also in the appointment of the Royal Household in 1841.

The confidential and continuing adviser of Her Majesty from her succession to the throne was this German Baron Stockmar, whose influence was so great that the Westminster Review describes him as "this German adventurer ”, “the secret and irresponsible Minister" of the Queen. Baron Stockmar represented at the English Court solely the interests of Germany and Belgium. He had no sympathy with England, and often entirely neutralised the policy of the English Prime Minister of the day. There was at one time an intention of bringing "the unconstitutional position of the foreign Stockmar" before Parliament; but no member of Parliament was bold enough to encounter the united Whig and Tory influences, and the matter was suppressed.

It was the German Stockmar, on instructions from his German employers, who, by his intrigues, caused Prince Albert to be named sole Regent. Prince Albert says that Stockmar gained over the opposition Members of Parliament to consent to the Regency Bill, but he does not say what means the German Baron used to effect his object.

It is now certain that, during the Crimean War, much of our policy was secretly modified by Prince Albert and Baron

Stockmar. While it is pretended by Mr. Disraeli and others that to-day the Queen does not intermeddle in our politics, it is certain that from 1848 to 1854 Prince Albert and Baron Stockmar did claim and exercise for the Crown a right of secret supervision and interference. The Prince himself writes: "Victoria allows me to take an active part in foreign affairs”.

On March 20th, 1842, the Earl of Munster, eldest son of William IV, and who had been made Constable of Windsor Castle by Her Majesty, committed suicide. Although the eldest son of the late King, his position as a natural child excluded him from God's people, according to the Bible, and from all right to the Throne, according to our law.

Her Majesty's cousin, George William Frederick, Duke of Cambridge, is Commander-in-Chief of the Army. His Royal Highness is also Field-Marshal and Colonel. Naturally, in the Duke is found embodied the whole military talent of the Royal Family. His great-uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, carved "Klosterseven on the Brunswick monuments. Frederick Duke of York, the uncle of the Duke of Cambridge, recalled from the field of battle, that he might wear in peace at home the laurels he had won abroad, added “Clarke" and "Tonyn" as names to vie with Cressy or Waterloo. The present Duke of Cambridge was, when Prince George, stationed in Yorkshire, in the famous "plug-plot" times, and his valiancy then threatened most lustily what he would do against the factory "turn-outs", poor starved wretches clamoring for bread. In the army, the normal schoolmasters can tell how this brave Brunswicker rendered education difficult, and drove out, one by one, many of the best teachers. Soldiers who think too much make bad machines. It was the father of the present Duke of Cambridge who publicly expressed his disbelief in 1844-45, of the failure of the potato crop in Ireland, "because he had always found the potatoes at his own table very good!

For many years Her Majesty has taken but little part in the show ceremonials of State. Parliament is usually opened and closed by commission—a robe on an empty throne, and a speech read by deputy, satisfying the Sovereign's loyal subjects. It is, however, the fact that in real State policy her interference has