tried to call attention to what he considered the true course, by proposing resolutions in favour of Parliamentary reform, which, however, were not carried.

Death of George III.

It was in the midst of these difficulties that George III., who had long been quite incapable of even understanding what was going on around him, passed away in January, 1820, at the great age of eighty-one. He was succeeded by the regent, under the title of George IV.

CHIEF BATTLES, SIEGES, AND TREATIES (1789-1820)

CHAPTER V.

GEORGE IV., 1820-1830 (10 years).

Born 1762; married, 1795, Caroline of Brunswick.

Chief Characters of the Reign.-Lord Liverpool; the Duke of Wellington; Lord Castlereagh; Peel; Canning; Huskisson; Lord Goderich; O'Connell.

Chief Contemporary Sovereigns.

France.

Louis XVIII., d. 1824.

Charles X., expelled 1830.

Cato Street
Conspiracy.

HARDLY had the new king ascended the throne, than the last of the conspiracies, which are to be classed with the outbreaks of Spa Fields and Derby, was discovered. This was the Cato Street Plot, which was arranged by Thistlewooda man who had formerly held a commission in the army, but had become filled with the sentiments of French republicanism. His associates were butchers and draymen. The notion of these deluded men was to murder all the ministers while they were dining at Lord Harrowby's house, and then set up a provisional government. The scheme of the plot was as cruel as it was absurd. The plan was made known to the government, and the conspirators having been arrested at the last moment, Thistlewood and four others were executed, and the rest transported. The Cato Street Conspiracy was the last flicker of disaffection. Changes in the ministry brought about hopes of reform. The resumption of cash payments for bank-notes on demand, which had been arranged for by Peel's Act of 1819, came into operation soon afterwards. Trade was thus placed on a healthier basis, and in a short time the country was again prosperous.

Hopes of better days.

The accession of George IV. brought about a difficulty in regard to the queen. When quite a young man, George had married Mrs. Fitzherbert, a Roman Catholic lady, a legal marriage with

Marriage

Herbert.

whom would by the Bill of Rights have forfeited the crown. As it was, by the Royal Marriage Act (see p. 373), with Mrs. Fitz- the marriage was illegal. Presently the king wished the prince to make a legal marriage, and arranged for him an alliance with Caroline of Brunswick, whom he married in 1795. This marriage naturally turned out unhappily, and after the birth of the Princess Charlotte the pair separated, and the princess lived away from the court, and in 1814 went to the Continent.

Marriage with
Caroline of
Brunswick.

death of the

Meanwhile the Princess Charlotte was growing up, and was Marriage and married to Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg; but a Princess Char- year afterwards, in 1817, she died, after giving birth lotte. to a dead child. The whole country was thrown into consternation, for neither the prince regent nor his three brothers, the Dukes of York, Clarence, or Kent, had any legitimate children. The Duke of York was already married, but had no family; so now the Dukes of Clarence and Kent also married, and the daughter of the Duke of Kent, Princess Victoria, born in 1819, became, after her uncles and father, heir to the throne.

Queen's name omitted from the Liturgy.

Bill of Pains

While the Princess-of Wales had been abroad, stories had reached England of improprieties in her conduct, and many thought she was unfit to be recognized as Queen of England. Accordingly, when her husband became king, her name was omitted from the Liturgy, and an attempt was made to prevent her from leaving the Continent. With great courage, however, she insisted on coming to England; and the ministers upon that, by the king's wish, brought in a and Penalties. Bill of Pains and Penalties, to divorce her from her husband and deprive her of the title of queen. The introduction of this bill was most unpopular; for the great mass of the people looked upon her as an injured woman. The bill, however, never got further than the House of Lords, which it passed by a small majority; it was not brought into the Commons, where the queen's friends were the strongest. The evidence, however, which was brought forward Death of the in support of the bill was so strong, that the queen's queen. popularity sank, and shortly afterwards, broken-hearted at being refused admission to Westminster Abbey on the occasion of the king's coronation, she died.

Soon after the death of George III. it became clear that the panic caused by the French Revolution was beginning to pass away, and that the country wished again to enter upon the Symptoms of path of progress, from which Pitt had been diverted new progress. by the outbreak of the war. Various signs showed this. In 1821 a bill for the relief of the Catholics was passed by the Commons, but thrown out by the Lords. Grampound, a corrupt borough, was disfranchised, and its two seats were given to the county of York. In the ministry itself changes were made; several members of the Grenville party were admitted, and Peel, the son of a cottonspinner, whose sympathies were with the middle classes rather than with the aristocracy, succeeded Lord Sidmouth as Home Secretary; but the greatest change that was made in the Cabinet was caused by the suicide of Lord Londonderry, formerly Castlereagh,

in 1822.

Castlereagh's character.

Castlereagh, who was a man of the most amiable character in private life, had little sympathy with public opinion or with progress. He had passed most of his life in fighting the cause of the minority against the majority, and his iron will had been the most powerful instrument in bringing to a successful conclusion the coalition against Napoleon. In England he was a strong upholder of repression, and abroad, though he refused to entangle England in the policy of the Holy Alliance, his sympathies were against any extension of the principles of liberty and equality. Though an excellent man for the work he had done, he was probably a bar to the coming in of a new era, and the joy which hailed his death, though it was bitterly cruel to the memory of a kindly and well-meaning man, expressed clearly the feeling of the public on the matter.

Canning's policy.

His successor at the Foreign Office was a very different man. George Canning was full of generous sentiments, and though he never for a moment lost sight of English interests, it was understood that his sympathies were with the people, and that where possible he would give them a helping hand. He soon showed that this was the case. During the war with France, the Spanish colonies of South America had thrown off their dependence on the mother country. This was a great advantage to England, as it opened the trade with them, and

Canning declared that no European power should help Spain to reconquer them, and fully recognized their independence. In 1826, when Spanish and French troops proposed to enter Portugal in order to overthrow the constitution which the Portuguese had set up, Canning forbade the step, and despatched English troops to the Tagus with such promptitude that the threat was withdrawn. When the Greeks broke out into revolt against Turkey, Canning's skill prevented Russia from taking the opportunity to seize Constantinople, and on the other hand secured the Greeks fair play in their struggle with their oppressors.

Progress at

While Canning was thus introducing new methods into English foreign policy, progress was being made at home. We saw that in the early part of Pitt's administration four queshome. tions had been to the front-Parliamentary reform, the rearrangement of thè customs duties, the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and the removal of the disabilities of the Roman Catholics. Each of these questions had become more complicated during the years which had since passed.

The reform question.

In the days of Pitt the central idea of Parliamentary reform had been to give the seats of the rotten boroughs to the counties, but within the last forty years the whole problem had changed by the rise of the great manufacturing towns. The introduction of spinning and weaving by machinery, and the use of steam as a new motive power, had altered the character of the country. Up to 1790, England, we may say roughly, had been an agricultural country; it had since been rapidly changing into a manufacturing one. This was a great revolution, and the massing together of great bodies of operatives and manufacturers in such places as Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds, brought into being a new and powerful public opinion which was as yet wholly unrepresented in Parliament. It was becoming plain that the old system of representation, which gave all the power to the counties and ancient boroughs, was out of date, and would have to be modified in some way.

The next question, that of the rearrangement of the customs and of the laws regulating industry, had also been complicated by the The free trade introduction of the corn laws, which had made agriculture by far the most powerful of the protected

question.