ONE:The Marquis Wellesley was sent over to Ireland by Lord Liverpool in order to govern Ireland upon this principle; and he might have succeeded better if he had not been checked by Mr. Goulburn, the Chief Secretary, distinguished by his hostility to Catholic Emancipation, who was appointed "viceroy over him." In a letter which the Marquis wrote to the Duke of Buckingham (June 14th, 1824) he refers to some of the difficulties with which he had to contend in carrying out an impartial policy between the extreme parties, which were then very violent. His labours, however, in enforcing respect for the law and effecting improvements were not altogether in vain. "The situation of Ireland," he writes, "although very unsatisfactory, is certainly much improved, and foundations of greater improvement have been firmly laid. The committees of Parliament have done much good; and, if vigorously and fairly pursued, may effect a permanent settlement of this distracted country. The present violent collision of the two ultra parties, or rather factions, Orange and Papist, is a crisis of the disorder which was necessary to their mutual dissolution, an event which I think is fast approaching, and which must be the preliminary of any settlement of peace."The marriage of the Prince of Wales with Mrs. Fitzherbert was notorious; but as it was not openly avowed by the Prince, no steps were taken to dissolve it. But in 1794 the Prince had got a new favourite, the Lady Jersey, already a grandmother, but a young one. For her Mrs. Fitzherbert was dismissed, showing how little the Prince thought of the reality of the marriage with[442] that fair lady, and he now lived openly and ostentatiously with Lady Jersey, Lord Jersey being well contented with the arrangement for the sake of the good things he hoped to gain by it, being at once appointed Master of the Horse to the Prince. But the Prince's extravagance and gambling, by the practice of which, notwithstanding his own losses, he reduced his friends, one after the other, as the Earl of Moira, Sir Wallace Porter, and others, to beggary, had now brought him into extreme difficulties. His debts, after having been more than once paid off by Parliament, now again amounted to six hundred and thirty thousand pounds! Another appeal to Parliament was absolutely necessary, for his creditors were grown excessively clamorous. The king seized the opportunity to induce the Prince to marry a foreign princess, representing it as the only plan by which they could apply to Parliament for such an increase of means as would enable him to liquidate his debts. But instead of allowing the Prince to go abroad and make his own selection, so that there might be possibly some degree of freedom of choice in the matter, the queen was anxious to have her own niece, the Princess Louisa Augusta Amelia of Mecklenburg, selected for him. This Princess, afterwards the popular Queen of Prussia, was a good creature, and might possibly have wrought some favourable change even in so depraved a nature as that of the Prince of Wales. But the king was equally determined to secure the unenviable post for his own niece, Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, the second daughter of the Duke of Brunswick, who was one of the petty princes of Germany. To effect this arrangement, an attachment between the Crown Prince of Prussia and this Princess Caroline had to be rent asunder. The Prince was ready to fall in with any such bargain, on condition that he was liberated from his debts. It was certain that he would please himself as to the lady or ladies with whom he would really live. All obstacles of nature, or of nearness of consanguinity, or of private attachments were overborne by diplomacy, and by the promise of the discharge of the Prince's debts. The Princess Caroline of Brunswick was selecteda young lady of not unpleasing person in her youth, according to the descriptions of the time, but of defective education, and coming to this country with the repugnance of a prior and rudely-sundered attachment. She landed at Greenwich on Sunday, the 5th of April, 1795, and the marriage ceremony was performed at St. James's, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the 8th. The Princess had not been ignorant of the dissolute character of her appointed husband, and his mode of receiving her was not calculated to inspire any brilliant hopes of his improvement. He had sent his mistress, the Lady Jersey, to meet her on landing, and he made no disguise of his connection with her before or after the marriage. The Memoirs of the time assert that Lady Jersey omitted no arts to render the Princess ridiculous and even disgusting to the Prince; but what chagrined him far more deeply was the breach of the promises held out to him of the discharge of his debts by a parliamentary grant or grants.
TWO:The Parliament was punctually opened on the 16th of February, 1714, by the queen, as she had promised at Windsor, though she was obliged to be carried there; for during last autumn she had been obliged, by her gout and obesity, to be raised into her chamber by pulleys, and so let down again, like Henry VIII. After congratulating the two Houses on the peace with Spain, she turned to the subject of the Press, and the rumours spread by it regarding the danger of the Protestant succession. Bolingbroke had been active enough in prosecuting the Press because it was dangerous to the designs which he was cherishing, notwithstanding the affected warmth which he and Oxford had put into the queen's mouth. They had taxed the penny sheets and pamphlets which agitated these questions; but this, according to Swift, had only done their own side mischief. Bolingbroke had, further, arrested eleven printers and publishers in one day. But now the war was opened in Parliament, Lord Wharton, in the House of Peers, called for the prosecution of "The Public Spirit of the Whigs," and the printer and publisher were brought to the bar. These were John Morphew, the publisher, and one John Bache, the printer. But Lord Wharton, who was aiming at higher quarry, said, "We have nothing to do with the printer and publisher, but it highly concerns the honour of this august assembly to find out the villain who is the author of that false and scandalous libel." Oxford denied all knowledge of the author, yet, on retiring from the debate, he sent one hundred pounds to Swift, and promised to do more. Lord Wharton then turned upon the printer, whom he had first affected to disregard, and demanded that he should be closely examined; but the next day the Earl of Mar, one of the secretaries of State, declared that her Majesty had ordered his prosecution. This was to shield him from the Parliamentary inquiry. Here the matter dropped, for Swift was too well screened by his patrons, who had lately rewarded him by Church preferment, and shortly afterwards made him Dean of St. Patrick's, in Dublin.
