George II by very sharply denouncing, and which payment was but a step in the system of continental subsidies which helped to swell our national debt.

In this reign the enclosure of waste lands was practically commenced, sixteen enclosure Acts being passed, and 17,660 acres of land enclosed. This example was followed in the next reign with increasing rapidity, 226 enclosure Acts being passed in the reign of George II, under which 318,778 acres of land were enclosed. As Mr. Fawcett states, up to 1845 more than 7,000,000 acres of land, over which the public possessed invaluable rights, have been gradually absorbed, and individuals wielding legislative influence have been enriched at the expense of the public and the poor.

Within six years from his accession the King was about £600,000 in debt, and this sum was the first of a long list of debts discharged by the nation for these Brunswicks. When our ministers to-day talk of obligations on the part of the people to endow each additional member of the Royal Family, the memory of these shameful extravagances should have some effect. George I had a civil list of £700,000 a year. He received £300,000 from the Royal Exchange Assurance Company, and £300,000 from the London assurance companies, and had one million voted to him in 1726 towards payment of his debts.

In 1724 there appeared in Dublin the first of the famous "Drapier Letters", written by Jonathan Swift against Wood's coinage patent. A patent had been granted to a man named Wood for coining half-pence in Ireland. This grant was made under the influence of the Duchess of Kendal, and on the stipulation that she should receive a large share of the profits. These "Drapier Letters" were prosecuted by the Government, but Swift followed them with others; the grand juries refused to find true bills, and ultimately the patent was cancelled. Wood, or the Duchess, got as compensation a grant of a pension of £3,000 a year for eight years.

George died at Osnabrück, on his journey Hanoverwards, in June, 1727, having made a will by which he disposed of his money in some fashion displeasing to his son George II; and,

as the Edinburgh Review tells us, the latter "evaded the old King's directions, and got his money by burning his will". In this George II only followed his Royal father's example. When Sophia Dorothea died she left a will bequeathing her property in a fashion displeasing to George I, who, without scruple, destroyed the testament and appropriated the estate. George I had also previously burned the will of his father-in-law, the Duke of Zelle. At this time the destruction of a will was a capital felony in England.

The accession of George I meant the triumph of the Protestant caste in Ireland, and under his rule much was done to render permanent the utter hatred manifested by the Irish people to their English conquerors, who had always preferred the policy of extermination to that of conciliation. Things were so sad in Ireland at the end of this reign that Dean Swift, in bitter mockery, "wrote and published his ' Modest Proposal for relieving the miseries of the people by cooking and eating the children of the poor "" a piece of the fiercest sarcasm," says Mitchell, "steeped in all the concentrated bitterness of his soul". Poor Ireland! she had, at any rate, nothing to endear to her the memory of George I.

CHAPTER III.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE II.

When George I died there was so little interest or affection exhibited by his son and successor that Sir Robert Walpole, on announcing to George II that by the demise of his father he had succeeded to regal honors, was saluted with a volley of oaths, and "Dat is one big lie". No pretence of sorrow was even made. George Augustus had hated George Lewis during life, and at the first council, when the will of the late King was produced by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the new monarch simply took it up and walked out of the room with the document, which was never seen again. Thackeray, who pictures George II as "a dull, little man, of low tastes," says that he “made away with his father's will under the astonished nose of the Archbishop of Canterbury". A duplicate of this will having been deposited with the Duke of Brunswick, a large sum of money was paid to that Prince nominally as a subsidy by the English Government for the maintenance of troops, but really as a bribe for surrendering the document. A legacy having been left by this will to Lady Walsingham, threats were held out in 1733, by her then husband, Lord Chesterfield, and £20,000 were paid in compromise.

The eldest son of George II was Frederick, born in 1706, and who up to 1728 resided permanently in Hanover. Lord Hervey tells us that the king hated his son Frederick, and that the Queen Caroline, his mother, abhorred him. To Lord Hervey the Queen says: "My dear Lord, I will give it you under my hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born is the greatest ass, and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world; and that I most heartily wish he were out of it." Allowing for a royal mother's love for her child, this is a tolerably strong

description of the father of George III, from the lips of his own mother. Along with this description of Frederick by the Queen, take Thackeray's character of George II, worthy father of worthy son : "Here was one who had neither dignity, learning, morals, nor wit-who tainted a great society by a bad example; who in youth, manhood, and old age, was gross, low, and sensual."

In 1705, when only Electoral Prince of Hanover, George had married Caroline, daughter of the Margrave of Anspach, a woman of more than average ability. Thackeray describes Caroline in high terms of praise, but Lord Chesterfield says that "she valued herself upon skill in simulation and dissimulation. .... Cunning and perfidy were the means · she made use of in business." The Prince of Anspach is alleged by the Whisperer to have raised some difficulties as to the marriage, on account of George I being disposed to deny the legitimacy of his son, and it is further pretended that George I had actually to make distinct acknowledgment of his son to King William III before the arrangements for the Act of Settlement were consented to by that king. It is quite clear from the diary of Lady Cowper, that the old King's feeling towards George II was always one of the most bitter hatred.

The influence exercised by Queen Caroline over George II was purely political; and Lord Hervey declares that "whereever the interest of Germany and the honor of the Empire were concerned, her thoughts and reasoning were as German and imperial as if England had been out of the question ".

A strange story is told of Sir Robert Walpole and Caroline. Sir Robert, when intriguing for office under George I, with Townshend, Devonshire, and others, objected to their plans being communicated to the Prince of Wales, saying, "The fat bh, his wife, would betray the secret and spoil the project ". This courtly speech being made known by some kind friend to the Princess Caroline, considerable hostility was naturally exhibited. Sir Robert Walpole, who held the doctrine that every person was purchasable, the only question being one of price, managed to purchase peace with Caroline when Queen. When the ministry suspended, "Walpole not fairly out,

Compton not fairly in," Sir Robert assured the Queen that he would secure her an annuity of £100,000 in the event of the King's death; Sir Spencer Compton, who was then looked on as likely to be in power, had only offered £60,000. The Queen sent back word, "Tell Sir Robert, the fat bh has forgiven him," and thenceforth they were political allies until the Queen's death in 1737.

The domestic relations of George II were marvellous. We pass with little notice Lady Suffolk, Lady-in-waiting to the Queen and mistress to the King, who was sold by her husband for a pension of £1,200 a year, paid by the British taxpayers, and who was coarsely insulted by both their majesties. It is needless to dwell on the confidential communications, in which "that stuttering little sultan George II," as Thackeray calls him, solicited favors from his wife for his mistress, the Countess of Walmoden; but to use the words of the cultured Edinburgh Review, the Queen's "actual intercession to secure for the King the favors of the Duchess of Modena, precludes the idea that these sentiments were as revolting to the royal Philamente as they would now-a-days be to a scavenger's daughter. Nor was the Queen the only lady of the Royal Family who talked openly on these matters. When Lady Suffolk was waning at court, the Princess Royal could find nothing better to say than this: 'I wish with all my heart that he (i.e. the King) would take somebody else, that mamma might be relieved from the ennui of seeing him for ever in her room.'"

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Lady Cowper actually tells us that George II, when Prince of Wales, intrigued with Lady Walpole, not only with the knowledge of the Princess Caroline, but also with connivance of the Prime Minister himself. Lord Hervey adds that Caroline used to sneer at Sir Robert Walpole, asking how the poor man avec ce gros corps, ces jambes enflées et ce vilain ventre"-could possibly believe that any woman could love him for himself, and that Sir Robert retaliated, when Caroline afterwards complained to him of the King's cross temper, by telling her very coolly that "it was impossible it could be otherwise, since the King had tasted better things," and ended by advising her to bring pretty Lady Tankerville en rapport with the King.