back at the regular records, how much paper agui nea was worth, at the time the lease was granted; he then examined into the fact of how much paper a guinea was worth at the time of the payment of the rent; and, according to that standard, he demanded payment; or, if that were refused, he demanded payment in gold in full tale, and of full weight and fineness. This, the law, as it then stood, enabled him to do; because, though the law sanctioned, in effect, the payment of debts, in general, in bank notes, it did not, as yet, go the length of compelling a creditor to accept of payment in that way. It prevented him from proceeding to recover the debt by mesne process, and gave other indulgences to the debtor; but it had not yet taken from the landlord the power of distraint, in case of non-payment of rent.

122. It was easy to perceive that the example of Lord KING would be speedily and generally followed by the land-owners; for they were greatly suffering in their incomes from the depreciation of the paper-money. The minister saw, on the other hand, that a demand of gold payments on the part of the landlords would soon produce two prices openly in all the pecuniary transactions of life; they saw that gold would become the medium of those transactions between man and man; that the taxes would be paid in papermoney, according to the law, as it then stood;

and that, as the paper would then continue to depreciate at a still greater rate, the government must go to pieces for want of means to carry it on, and this, too, at a time when the expenditure was perfectly enormous on account of the war. Nothing could prevent these consequences but the passing of a new law; and, therefore, in the month of June, a law was brought in, and it was passed on the 11th of July of this same year, 1811. This law set out with making it a misdemeanor, punishable by fine and imprisonment, and, if in Scotland, by transportation, for any person to exchange the current gold coin for more than its nominal value in bank notes, or to exchange bank notes for less than their nominal value in the current gold coin; and it then enabled tenants to refuse to pay their landlords in gold; and, in case of distraint, to replevy the goods taken in distress, after tendering the landlord payment in bank notes! Thus, on the 3d of May, 1811, these 658 representatives of the people passed a resolution declaring that bank notes were at that time in public estimation to be equivalent, or equal in value, to the current coin of the realm; and, on the 24th of July, in that same year, 1811; that is to say, in sixty-two days after the passing of the resolution, that very same 658 representatives passed a law to fine, imprison, and, in some cases, transport, any man who, in any pecuniary transaction, should give a

the nation, that it, never since that time, has · been the sport of any faction; but, as we shall see in the sequel, this was only a small part of the good which ought to endear her memory to the people of England.

90. But, alas! while she was laying the foundation of the ruin of the factions, and of the monopoly of the aristocracy, she was, in consequence of the bad advice under which she acted, laying the foundation of all those persecutions and calamities that finally overtook her. Her interest, her honour, her personal safety, demanded a publication of the BOOK; and, as was stated before, the book, under the direction of PERCE VEL, was, at the time when she wrote her last latter, as before cited (par. 75), actually printed and bound up for publication. But the king having consented to turn out the ministry, PERCEVAL, who had lodged the books with a bookseller, to be ready for sale on the day appointed, took them all (or, as he thought all) home to his country-house, and there burnt them, not leaving one in the possession of even the princess herself. He had now obtained what he wanted: he had made use of the princess for his own immediate elevation, and, as we have to see by and by, for the duration of his power over her husband as well as over her father-in-law; she had thus fully answered his ends, and that of his party; and she was now, therefore, left to

her fate; left to drawl along a sort of half-disgraceful life, until fifteen years afterwards, that very party found an occasion for destroying her.

91. She had, indeed, apartments allotted her in Kensington Palace; she was received at court; but the king, her only friend, was daily growing older; he was stone blind; his mind had had a severe shock in 1804, which was the second of the kind that he had experienced; the courtiers of both factions were looking up to her husband; the people, generally speaking, thought her innocent; nobody pretended that the charges against. her were not false; but, still, every one said, Why does she not publish the proofs of her innocence? And this very argument was urged as corroborative of the charges against her, in 1820; and that, too, by the very faction, whose advice had prevented her from publishing in 1807! Perceval and his co-operators, who wished to keep THE BOOK from the eyes of the world, in order to have it to hold up in the face of the husband in case of a Regency-question arising, prevailed, in an evil hour prevailed, on the princess to be silent on the subject of the book, persuading her, that her appearance at court and her residence in a palace would satisfy the people of her perfect innocence, and that whenever the prince came into power, either as king or regent, she would take her proper station as princessregent or queen, and that the circumstance of

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her daughter being the heiress-apparent would of necessity give her great weight and

power. Thus they prevented her from making, while her husband was weak, that attack, which, when he became strong, it was too late for her to think of making.

92. Thus, then, she had to live in this state of neglect until the year 1811, when the derangement of mind of the king rendered a regency necessary. And now, strictly speaking, begins the history of the Regency and Reign of George IV., during which we shall find, that greater innovations were made in the governing of the kingdom, greater inroads on the rights and liberties of the people, greater severities exercised on them, and a greater mass of misery endured by them, than during any former, or any ten former, reigns, the reign of George III. not excepted, though that reign, has been justly called a reign of taxation and of terror.