easily in the asseverations of the Prince. Unfortunately, his declaration in the House of Commons could not be retracted without exposing the Prince to the risk of losing his succession to the Crown. Although the marriage was void, the penalty might still attach. Thus Mr. Fox became unknowingly the organ of an injury to Mrs. Fitzherbert, which he could not afterwards repair.

Mr. Pitt behaved with his usual coolness during these transactions. When Mr. Fox made his declaration, he repeated to his neighbour on the Treasury Bench a wellknown line of "Othello."* Mr. Pitt afterwards was a party to the payment of the Prince's debts on condition of his marriage. The Princess Caroline of Brunswick was the victim of these heartless transactions.+

Fortunately for the nation, the marriage of the Prince of Wales and Mrs. Fitzherbert was not cursed with issue. Had a son been born from this marriage, a disputed, or at least a doubtful succession must have been the result; for the Roman Catholic subjects of the Crown were bound to believe in the validity of the marriage, and they might have disputed the binding nature of an Act of Parliament which set aside the legitimate issue of a reigning king. Mr. Fox had done no more than his duty in pointing out these perils to the Prince of Wales; but he did it at the risk of losing the favour of the Prince, and of incurring the lasting resentment of his victim.

* Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore."

See "Memoirs of the Whig Party," vol. ii.; and the "Malmesbury Correspondence," for the origin of this marriage.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE REGENCY.

1788.

IN 1788 Mr. Fox made a tour in Switzerland and Italy. Mr. Gibbon notices his visit to Lausanne in these terms: "In his tour to Switzerland (September, 1788), Mr. Fox gave me two days of free and private society. He seemed to feel and even to envy the happiness of my situation, while I admired the powers of a superior man, as they are blended in his attractive character with the softness and simplicity of a child. Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempt from the taint of malevolence, vanity, or falsehood."*

Mr. Gibbon, like Dr. Johnson and Mr. Burke, retained his admiration of Mr. Fox in spite of the most serious differences of opinion; thus, in 1783 he wrote: "I am not sorry to hear of the splendour of Fox; I am proud, in a foreign country, of his fame and abilities, and our little animosities are extinguished by my retreat from the English stage."+

Thus, again, during the storm of the French Revolution, while he dreaded and abhorred the principles professed by Mr. Fox, he writes to Lord Sheffield: "I hope that * "Miscellaneous Works," vol. i. p. 252. Ibid. vol. ii. p. 338.

your abjuration of all future connexion with Fox was not quite so peremptory as it is stated in the French papers. Let him do what he will, I must love the dog."*

On this occasion, after leaving Switzerland, Mr. Fox made a tour in Italy. It appears, from letters written some years afterwards, that he studied the great works of the Italian painters with intense but discriminate admiration.

It was said by his friends, that while on this tour he only once took up a newspaper, and that was to see which horse had won at Newmarket, in a race in which he took an interest.

While engaged in the delights of his Italian journey, and in admiration of Italian pictures and poetry, an express reached him, requiring his immediate presence in England. The occasion was one of pressing and unusual importance.

At the end of the session of Parliament it had been observed that the King's health was visibly impaired. Quiet, abstinence from business, and the medicinal waters. of Cheltenham, were prescribed, but without success. His disorder increased, and was perceived to affect his intellects; his public receptions at St. James's were interrupted, and when on the 24th of October he appeared at a levee, his conversation and demeanour left no doubt of the nature of his malady. A violent fever supervened, and for several days his life was in imminent danger. Letters of Mr. Grenville to Mr. Addington, of the 7th, 10th, and 13th of November, represented the state of the King as “most alarming, and giving room for the utmost apprehensions of incurable disorder." "These particulars," Mr. Grenville

* "Miscellaneous Works," vol. i. p. 392.

added, "have been as much as possible concealed from the public."* However, the time was at hand when they could no longer be concealed. Parliament had been prorogued only till the 20th of November, and there was no authority competent to postpone the meeting. When the two Houses met, an adjournment for a fortnight was agreed to, and in the mean time a Privy Council was summoned, at which men of all parties were present, and the physicians who had attended his Majesty were examined upon oath. The physicians all agreed that the King's indisposition rendered him incapable of attending to public affairs. They attributed his illness to a scrofulous habit, which he had driven from his feet to his head by the mode of life he had pursued-too violent exercise, too rigid abstinence, and too little repose. Dr. Addington, Sir Lucas Pepys, and Dr. Willis all expressed a strong expectation of his recovery, on the ground that his illness had not been preceded by melancholy, but declined to fix the time when the cure might be expected. Six weeks was the shortest, two years the longest duration of similar maladies, in cases within their experience.

The course which Parliament ought to pursue in such a case seemed sufficiently clear. The Prince of Wales was now more than twenty-five years of age, and fully competent to exercise the powers of the Regency. The care of the King's person ought evidently to be confided to the Queen, with such a retinue as became his royal state, and such attendance as his melancholy condition required. Instead, however, of making the simple and natural provisions which the inability of the Executive power and the respect due to the Sovereign still on the throne appeared "Life of Lord Sidmouth." "Court and Cabinets," &c.

urgently to require, the able men who led the two Houses of Parliament prolonged for three months, while they debated on restrictions, the vacancy of the Executive.

Mr. Pitt's first step was to appoint a committee to search for precedents. It was well known that there was no precedent applicable; various cases had occurred in the disturbed reign of Henry VI., in which each side, as it triumphed in the field, disposed of the royal authority by the law of the strongest. The only case which bore any analogy to the present was that of the Revolution of 1688; and the policy pursued at that time was, as Mr. Grenville justly argued, no guide for the present emergency, it being then the object of Parliament to exclude the former occupant of the throne, and the object of the present time being to secure the resumption of the throne by its acknowledged and lawful possessor.

Mr. Fox, who had now arrived from Italy, at once pointed out that the search for precedents "would prove a loss of time, for there existed no precedent whatever that would bear upon the present case." There was then a person in the kingdom different from any person that any precedents could refer to-an heir-apparent of full age and capacity to exercise the royal power. He went on to

declare his opinion in these precise terms :—

"In his firm opinion, his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales had as clear, as express a right to assume the reins of government, and exercise the power of sovereignty during the continuance of the illness and incapacity with which it had pleased God to afflict his Majesty, as in the case of his Majesty's having undergone a natural demise. And as to this right, which he conceived the Prince of Wales had, he was not himself to judge when he was