boy arbitrary principles of government), and of his wellmeaning but ill-informed mother. The "princess-dowager of Wales," says Lord Waldegrave, was reputed a woman of excellent sense by those who knew her very imperfectly; but, in fact, was one of those moderate geniuses who, with much natural dissimulation, a civil address, an assenting conversation, and a few ideas of their own, can act with tolerable propriety so long as they are conducted by wise and prudent counsellors. Her secretary, Cresset, had been hitherto her principal adviser—a cautious man, uncommonly skilful in the politics of the back stairs, trusted by Lady Yarmouth," &c.* A plan of regency was drawn up by the Pelhams, who seemed determined to exclude the dreaded Duke of Cumberland; and on the 7th of May the Duke of Newcastle brought the bill into the House of Lords. This bill proposed, simply, that the princess-dowager of Wales should be guardian of the heir-apparent and regent of Great Britain, in the event of the reigning sovereign's dying before his successor had attained the age of eighteen. The second reading was appointed for the 8th (the very next day); but, previously to that reading, Newcastle appeared with a message from his majesty, recommending the settlemer.t of a council of regency to co-operate with the princess-regent, and to be headed by Cumberland. The cabinet had disagreed among themselves, and had not been unanimous on any one clause of the bill; the hatred and fear of the duke seem to have been balanced by the consideration that all the great officers of the crown were appointed to have seats in this council of regency; and though there was some declamation—little,

* Memoirs of James Earl Waldegrave (one of the best of authorities), a book in which every syllable seems as if it had been written upon oath, or upon the honour of a truly honourable and upright man. The Princess of Wales's secretary, Cresset, was related to the royal family by a Duchess of Zell, who was daughter of a private French gentleman, and mother to Sophia Dorothea, the unhappy wife of George I.

but loud-against the danger of placing an ambitiou uncle, with the army at his command, in such a tempting situation, and against the complications and delays which must arise from a division of authority, the suggestions of the king were adopted, and the Regency Bill was passed in that form in the House of Lords by a majority of 106 to 12, and in the Commons by about 270 to 90.* There were several objectionable clauses and provisions in the bill; but, as George II. did not die till his successor had attained the age of royal majority, and as it was consequently never acted upon, they may be passed over in silence.

In other directions death was busy with the royal family this year. The Prince of Orange, who had so recently got the stadtholdership made hereditary in his family, and who was married to George's eldest daughter, died of a fever, after five days' illness, in the month of October; and his death was the more felt by his father-in-law, as it was likely to embarrass some of his foreign negotiations. The Queen of Denmark, his majesty's youngest daughter (who resembled her mother, Queen Caroline, in many circumstances of life and fortune, and in the malady which caused her death), expired in the month of December; and in addition to these losses George was well nigh losing his grandson, Prince Edward, and his son Cumberland.

Another death to be noticed was that of the Proteus Bolingbroke, who died at Battersea, of a cancer in the heart, on the 15th of December, having employed some of his last hours in blackening the memory of his late friend Pope. Between the demise of the Prince of Wales and the departure of Bolingbroke the voice of faction was almost hushed, and opposition in parliament all but extinguished. The only battle that was fought was fought in the cabinet; and there the victory remained with the Pelhams, for early in June the king dismissed Lord Sandwich, and the Duke of Bedford resigned the

*The majorities varied upon different clauses of the bill, but the average may be taken as about 270 to 90

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next day. The two posts of master of the horse and president of the council, which had both been kept open for the acceptance of Bedford, if he could have been induced to give up his seals of secretary of state, were now filled-Lord Harrington got the first, and Lord Granville the second. This ex-premier had lost none of his fire or confidence-his hard drinking had apparently affected neither his health nor his intellect. "Lord Granville," says Horace Walpole, comes into power as boisterously as ever, and dashes at everything." Lord Holderness got the Duke of Bedford's place, and Lord Halifax, at the head of the Board of Trade, endeavoured to get the colonies subjected to that Board, and to be nominated a third secretary of state for the West Indies and America; but George would not consent to part with any of his authority in that quarter. In delivering the seals to Holderness, he charged him to mind only the business of his province, telling him that of late the secretary's office had been turned into a mere office of faction.* The Leicester House party, headed by Bubb Dodington, made overtures to the Pelhams, offering, upon what Bubb calls " proper conditions,' to join them with all their force, and to increase their majorities to such an extent that the displaced Bedford party would be absolutely crushed; but the Pelhams did not consider them worth buying. Some new subsidising treaties were recognised by both Houses with little difficulty. The avowed object of these burdensome engagements was to secure the election of Maria Theresa's eldest son, the Archduke Joseph, as King of the Romans! It would, with the most microscopic eye, be difficult to detect what interest or concern England had in this mighty matter; but it is evident that George took the greatest interest in it, and his eagerness is accounted for at least in good part-by his jealousy of his nephew of Prussia, who had taken several recent opportunities of insulting his uncle. "Indeed," says Walpole, "it was a constant war of piques and affronts between the

* Walpole, Memoirs of George II.-Letters to H. Mann.

king and his nephew of Prussia. The latter had insisted upon the recall of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, who had sacrificed to the ruling passion of the uncle by treating the character of the King of Prussia, in his public despatches and private letters, in the strongest terms of satire."* Williams had his revenge; for, returning to Dresden, he concluded a subsidiary treaty with the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (one and the same potentate), who engaged with George to traverse the designs of Frederick and to give his vote for the Archduke Joseph. Frederick lost no time in reviling his uncle, whom he called the last and youngest of the electors.

In the course of the present year (1751) the calendar was changed, upon the motion of Lord Chesterfield, and the Gregorian was adopted, in order to make our computation of time harmonise with that of the rest of civilised Europe. The Duke of Newcastle said he was averse to disturb that which was at rest, and did not love new-fangled things; but his grace was laughed at.

A.D. 1752.—The displaced Duke of Bedford seemed so far from meditating opposition, that he came up from Woburn on the re-opening of parliament to ask the king for a pension for Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, his wife's sister. It was understood that the Pelhams would have pressed the king to grant this trifling boon, were it only to silence Bedford's murmurs, and to keep him, by the weight of an obligation, quiet in the House of Lords. But the feeble opposition corps wished to fix Bedford against the court, and to engage him to speak against the Saxon treaty; and they succeeded in inflaming the duke, "whose warmth was most impetuous." The House had met after the Christmas recess on the 7th of

* Memoirs. The letters of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams from Berlin, which Walpole gives in the Appendix to his Memoirs, contain nothing about Frederick but what has been related in bitterer terms by many others. The iron rod with which this nephew of George ruled is no invention, no satire, but simple truth.

January; on the 16th Mr. Pelham produced the treaty with Saxony; and on the 28th the Duke of Bedford opened the opposition to it with much spirit and considerable ability. The duke concluded by moving for an address to represent that subsidiary treaties ought never to be concluded in time of peace, especially after a long and costly war, and that they were neither necessary at present, nor likely to procure any real advantage. The Duke of Newcastle, Lord Halifax, and the Duke of Argyll defended the treaty; and Lord Granville put an end to the debate by saying that, as our army was limited at home, we ought to have the faculty of making in one day 18,000 men 50,000; that, if we no longer took German princes into our pay, we had a bridge without complete arches; and that we must count upon our power of subsidising as the best means of checking France, &c. The motion was rejected in the Lords without a division. The subject was renewed in the Commons, where Lord Harley made a motion against subsidies in time of peace. Several strong things were said, and some of them in a good manner; but they were all said purely for party purposes and without any real patriotic feeling. Old Horace Walpole spoke on one side and voted on the other-a kind of parliamentary behaviour not without recent precedent. But in the end the motion was rejected by 180 to 52. The Duke of Newcastle was "flustered" by the Duke of Bedford's unexpected activity:-his brother Pelham tried to provide against it, and met Bubb Dodington by appointment. Without a blush, and with very little periphrasis, the opulent boroughmonger asked the premier how much he would give in titles and places. Pelham acknowledged Bubb's great weight in boroughs, and assured him that he had already attempted to remove his majesty's prejudices. Bubb's members, he said, would be of the more importance, as he and his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, had made up their minds to have a new parliament a parliament that should be all of a piece -such a parliament as might serve the king if he lived, and be steady to put the young king in the right way,

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