similar to that which had carried off the duke of Kent; and an apprehension prevailed of the immediate succession of another new reign. His constitution, however, naturally strong, and for some time back watched with great care, soon rallied; and public curiosity in the metropolis was chiefly turned to the lying in state and funeral obsequies of the late king. The remains of George III. were deposited in that last abode of royalty in England, the vault in St. George's chapel at Windsor, on the 16th of February. Parliament had adjourned from the 2d to the 17th of February. On that day lord Castlereagh presented a message from the crown, announcing a speedy dissolution, and recommending an immediate provision for the indispensable exigencies of the state, in the interval between the dissolution of the present, and the return of a new parliament. A similar message was delivered by lord Liverpool to the house of lords. After addresses of condolence had been voted to the king and the duchess of Kent, some strictures had been passed by the opposition on the singularity of making parliament formally acquainted with the period of its duration beforehand, and the supplies had been brought under discussion, a topic by far the most marked, not alone of the year, but of the age, in England, was incidentally touched on. The late princess of Wales, now queen of George the Fourth, was no longer prayed for in the liturgy. Mr. Hume condemned this omission. Lord Castlereagh deprecated the discussion of so delicate a matter. The members of the opposition who were in the confidence and interest of the queen, either from want of communication with her, or the fear of acting prematurely, maintained a guarded reserve. Mr. Tierney, indeed, said that the queen was the object of ambiguous expressions within, and injurious degrading rumours without, the house, and called upon ministers to give parliament the means of judging whether the king was betrayed or the queen scandalously outraged. Mr. Brougham, who had long been the law-adviser of the princess of Wales, was more studiously reserved. He said that the omission of her name in the liturgy, and lord Castlereagh's affected designation of her as "a high personage," could not affect the legal rights of the queen; and as to injurious charges, when such were tangibly made, he should know how to deal with them. Parliament was prorogued by commission on the 28th of February, and dissolved the same day. The prorogation speech concluded with the following words: "If any doubt had remained as to the nature of those principles by which the peace and happiness of the nation were so seriously menaced, or of the excesses to which they were likely to lead, the flagrant and sanguinary conspiracy which has lately been detected must open the eyes of the most incredulous, and must vindicate to the whole world the justice and expediency of those measures to which you judged it necessary to resort, in defence of the laws and constitution of the kingdom." The conspiracy referred to was that of Thistlewood and his accomplices, a band of about a dozen murderous deperadoes, who were captured by the police and military, on the 23d of February, in an obscure street called Cato-street, near the Edgware Road. Their plot was at once a horrible atrocity and a frantic chimera. It was to murder the ministers of the crown whilst sitting at a cabinet dinner at the house of lord Harrowby, then rush out drenched with blood, raise the standard of insurrection, and constitute themselves the heads of a provisional government. The plot was disclosed to the ministers, who made arrangements for surprising the savage criminals in their den, at the moment when they were to issue from it for the perpetration of their crime. Thistlewood, whose life and guilt appeared tinged with mania; Ings, a butcher; Tidd and Brunt, shoemakers, three persons of the lowest and poorest class; and Davidson, a wretched man of colour, the chiefs of this atrocious band, were convicted and executed, avowing and vindicating their design. So odious were the measures of government to the populace, and so especially execrated was the melancholy proceeding called the "Manchester massacre," which the criminals on their trials professed to avenge, that strong expressions of sympathy were indulged in by the multitude which witnessed the executions. This was a horrible but isolated crime. To connect it in the speech of the commissioners with the political agitations of the preceding year was grossly if not wickedly disingenious. A horrid stigma was placed on the national character, when the vast masses of distressed, discontented, and, it may be conceded, seditious workmen, in the metropolitan, midland, and northern districts, were thus associated with a small murderous band, in the hope of justifying ex post facto, by this accidental atrocity, bad measures and a weak cause. The chief disclosures were made by an accomplice named Edwards, who, however, was not examined on the trial. He was denounced by the convicts on the scaffold as having instigated and entrapped them into the commission of their crime; some depositions on oath were made by others to the same effect; and ministers were called upon, particularly by alderman Wood, to bring him also to justice. It is assuredly monstrous that a wretch who seduces or instigates to the commission of guilt which would not otherwise have existed, and then denounces his duped accomplices, should receive not only impunity but reward; but still such desperate wretches as Thistlewood and his band needed no instigation. Ministers in this instance were the most competent judges, and a proper discretion was probably exercised in screening the informer. The elections on the whole were favourable to ministers. Mr. Hobhouse was returned with sir Francis Burdett for Westmister, but it was to the exclusion of the whig candidate Mr. George Lamb; and two aldermen in the popular interest, Thorpe and Waithman, were rejected in the city of London. The new parliament met on the 21st of April. Mr. Manners Sutton was once more re-elected without opposition to the chair. The intervening days having been employed in swearing in the members, the session was opened on the 27th by the king. His speech was studiously and judiciously vague at the opening of a new reign; and the addresses proposed on the part of ministers were unanimously agreed to in both houses. Mr. Grattan died during the preceding recess. Sir James Mackintosh, on moving a new writ for Dublin, pronounced upon him a high and eloquent eulogy, which was responded to from both sides of the house. Mr. Grattan was one of the intelligences of the first order which distinguished in these countries the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. He had a fearless philosophic virtue, indulgent to the weaknesses, uncompromising to the base passions of men. Pampered corporate intolerance could not disturb his peace by its peculiar and envenomed weapons of defamation and scurrility. Ascendant faction could not alarm him by its menaces or intimidate him by its power. He carried the palm of oratory in a provincial, and disputed it in an imperial parliament. Without resorting to that diversity of personage by which the arrogance of the man avenges itself for the condescensions of the politician, he was never, for an instant, vulgarised by his communion with the people. There was much of the sublime and simple in his eloquence as well as in his patriotism, yet was there also much of artifice, vanity, and affectation in both. A great deal of what he has said in his well-known character of Chatham might be applied to himself, perhaps because he drew, not from Chatham, but from his own interior ideal standard of a patriot statesman. He yet committed some errors, and, in reference to Ireland, which might be seriously urged. - one or two The commencement of the session was occupied |