A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV | Page 2

gone through the State ceremonials which asserted his royal
position when he was seized by a sudden illness so severe that, for a
while, the nerves of the country were strained by the alarm which
seemed to tell that a grave would have to be dug for the new King
before the body of the late sovereign had grown quite cold in the royal
vault. It would be idle, at this time of day, to affect any serious belief
that the grief of the British people at this sudden taking off, had it come
to pass, would have exceeded any possibility of consolation. George
the Fourth was an elderly personage when he came to the throne, he
had been known to his subjects as a deputy King for many years, his

mode of living had long been a familiar subject of scandal among all
classes of his people, and no one could have supposed that the
prosperity of the country {2} depended to any measurable extent on the
continuance of his life.
[Sidenote: 1820--Lord Liverpool's Administration]
George, however, recovered. His illness proved therefore to be only
one among the unpropitious conditions which accompanied the dawn
of his reign. Almost the next thing that was heard of him by the outer
world was that he had inaugurated his work of government by calling
on his ministers to assist him in obtaining a divorce from his wife. Not
often, it must be admitted, has a sovereign just succeeding to a throne
thus celebrated his attainment of regal rank. Then, again, the beginning
of George the Fourth's reign was immediately followed by the
explosion of a conspiracy belonging to an order uncommon indeed in
the England of those days, almost wholly unknown to the England of
our own time, and resembling in its principal characteristics some of
the Nihilist or Anarchist enterprises common even still in certain parts
of the European continent. Thus opened the first chapter of the reign of
King George the Fourth. We shall have to go more fully into details,
and we only print these few lines as what used to be called in former
days the argument of our first chapters.
George was too unwell to stand by his father's bedside when the poor
old King was passing, at last, out of that life which had so long been
one of utter darkness to him. George, the son, had taken cold in his
beloved pavilion at Brighton, and the cold soon developed into an
illness so serious that for some days it was believed the now King was
destined to succeed his father in the grave almost as soon as he had
succeeded him in the sovereignty. George's life of excesses had not,
however, completely worn out the fine constitution with which nature
had originally endowed him, and despite the kind of medical treatment
favored at that time, the old familiar panacea, which consisted mainly
in incessant bleeding, the King recovered. He was soon able to receive
the official addresses of loyalty, to despatch to Louis the Eighteenth
and other European sovereigns his formal announcement of the fact

that he had succeeded to the throne, his formal expressions of grief at
{3} the loss of his beloved father, and his formal assurances of his
resolve to do all he could to maintain harmonious relations with the
rulers of foreign States. He retained the ministers whom he had found
in office, and who were, of course, his own ministers. Lord Liverpool
was Prime Minister, Lord Eldon was Lord Chancellor, Lord Palmerston
was one of the younger members of the administration.
The times were troublous. Lord Liverpool's long tenure of office had
been marked, so far as foreign affairs were concerned, by a resolute
hostility to every policy and all movements which tended in a
revolutionary direction, and to Lord Liverpool and his closest
colleagues the whole principle of popular liberty was merely the
principle of revolution. In home affairs Lord Liverpool had always
identified himself with systems of political repression, systems which
were established on the theory that whenever there was any talk of
popular grievance the only wise and just course was to put in prison the
men from whose mouths such talk came forth. On financial questions
Lord Liverpool appears to have entertained some enlightened views,
views that were certainly in advance of the political economy professed
by most of his colleagues, but where distinctly political controversy
came up he may be taken as a fair illustration of the old-fashioned Tory
statesmanship. Eldon, the Lord Chancellor, had a great deal of
shrewdness in his mental constitution, a shrewdness which very often
took the form of selfishness; and although he exhibited himself for the
most part as a genuine Tory, one is inclined to doubt whether he did not
now