CHAP. IV.]

CHANGES IN THE CABINET.

323

reason. This was done, as regarded the United States, in June, 1812, too late to prevent war with America, but with the immediate effect of raising the spirits of a population whose sufferings had passed the limit of endurance. Before that time, the Queen had once more held a Court, after an interval of nearly two years; and the thronging of ladies to St. James's was a signal that the recovery of the King was no longer to be hoped for. Another such signal was the provision made for the Princesses by parliament in April, 1812. They were endowed with 36,000l. a year by the nation,1 as their father could no longer take care of them. The King had been empowered to grant 30,000l. a year to the four daughters living with him. In a time of excessive distress, Mr. Perceval asked for 36,000l. for three who survived. He obtained it; but at a cost of strong popular displeasure. And, while he was thus recklessly profuse to royal ladies, the cause of liberty and security throughout the world was perilled by the withholding of support from the army in Spain; as we shall hereafter see.

66

2

As the year 1811 drew towards its close, the nation looked anxiously for the disclosure of what the Regent meant More overto do about a Ministry, on occasion of the prolonga- tures. tion of his power. The Regent himself regarded "the present extraordinary crisis as a new era" in his life. He said so in a letter to the Duke of York, which he empowered the Duke to show to Lord Grey, and which immediately became public. In this letter, he largely praised his present Ministers, but expressed his desire that some of those persons among whom the early habits of his public life were formed, would strengthen his hands, and constitute a part of his government. Lords Grenville and Grey replied, that their opinions remained unchanged, as to the absolute necessity of conciliating Ireland by the repeal of the Catholic disabilities; and that their first duty in office would be to propose a measure to that effect. As the existing Ministry were all of the opposite mode of thinking, no union was possible; and the Regent looked elsewhere for strength to his Cabinet. Marquess Wellesley now resigned his office of Foreign Secretary, in which he was succeeded by Lord Cas- Lords Castlereagh. Lord Sidmouth became President of the tlereagh and Council; and Mr. Perceval was in the highest spirits the governat the dreaded period being so well got over -the ment. period of the entrance of the Regent upon the possession of full kingly power without any material change of councils. He and his comrades had escaped the disgrace of dismissal, and of a reversal of their policy. It was true that the nation was unhappy -the working classes starving and rebellious; the Corporation

1 Hansard, xxii. p. 450.

Sidmouth in

2 Annual Register, 1812, p. 329.

324

:

VIRTUAL CLOSE OF THE REIGN.

[Book II.

of London discontented and indignant; Ireland threatening a violent secession from the Union; and Napoleon yet unchecked abroad it was true that our armies in the Peninsula were so ill supported that the best man in the Cabinet had resigned, in disgust at the treatment our best general was receiving from government; and that, out of the Cabinet, scarcely any one saw a gleam of hope within the whole compass of the political horizon : still, Perceval was as obtuse and sanguine as ever, and in higher spirits than ever, on ascertaining that the new monarch was of his party, and ready to renew his lease of power. The political blindness here was obvious to all clear-sighted men at the moment. A few weeks changed their natural indignation into a respectful compassion for his innocent human blindness.

Virtual

reign.

This must be considered the close of the reign of George III. Instead of the funeral pomp of kings, there was the close of the gay pageantry of opening parliament. Instead of the unsealing of the tomb where the weary one might rest, there was the intimation that he was imprisoned in a living grave. Instead of the solemnity of a Proclamation and Coronation, there was a mere striking off of fetters from the new ruler, who had no fresh style and title for heralds to shout abroad. But not the less was the reign of George III. closed; and, though silently, it was effectually put away among the records of history. It was, in fact, a reign of the last century, and subject only to the judgment appropriate to the deeds of a by-gone age; for, during the few years of the present century, his habits of mind had merely become confirmed, while his intellect was weakening. It had not been a good reign; neither honorable to himself, nor glorious, in any sense, for the national reputation, nor promotive of the happiness of his people. But few were disposed, at the time of its virtual close, to deal strictly with him for it. His position was an appeal for forbearance. The time might come when he would be angrily represented as gone to that place where bad kings congregate, and suffer their retribution; but at present he was regarded as an outcast from both worlds of judgment, and wandering comfortlessly between them. If he had passed beyond the reach of remonstrance and censure, he had not arrived at the region of retribution; and those who had suffered under his rule strained their eyes to see, in his environment, cause for compassion, if not forgiveness. Now and then, but rarely, a glimpse was caught of his state. He was, very properly, kept in total seclusion, within a range of apartments at Windsor. As he was soon totally blind, such seclusion was no penalty to him. Room for exercise was all that he could enjoy; and that he had. see him, after a time, through the eyes of a casual witness, walking in the corridor, dressed in a warm wrapping-gown, with long

We

CHAP. IV.] PREVALENCE OF WANT AND CRIME.

325

white beard, and his sightless eyes rolling restlessly; and again, at the piano, striking some chords, or playing some melody of his beloved Handel. We hear of him as being within sound of the funeral train which was about to lay in the grave, that still refused to open for him, the body of his grand-daughter the heiress of his crown; yet unconscious of the calamity which touched every heart in the empire but his own - unmoved even to inquire the meaning of the trumpets, and the solemn music, and the tread of horses and of human feet. He lived thus for eight years after the assumption of full power by the Regent; and not till his funeral torches had burned out, did men feel disposed to pass judgment on his life and reign: and when they did, it was in the softened tone which men would naturally use in the presence of a ghostly image of a helpless old man, with sightless eyes, and a snowy beard upon his breast.

Mr. Perceval's high spirits continued. The war with America was on the point of breaking out. Dukes and earls Mr. Percewere forbidding the appearance of pastry at their val. tables, and ordering rice flour, on account of apprehended famine. Men were hanged in rows and detachments for rebellion. Whole families were murdered, by ruffian thieves, in a single quarter of an hour; and citizens, worn by anxiety through the day, gave up their nightly rest, and formed themselves into a patrol, to save their families. Yet Mr. Perceval's spirits did not sink in the least. At a dinner-party at his own house, in April, " 1 and his guests "never saw him in a more bantering humor his daughter told how he had promised his children to give a ball “when he had made a general peace which the whole nation should approve."

While these merry doings were going forward, there was a man dining, two or three times a week, at the coffee-room of the House of Commons, and hanging about the lobbies and galleries till his face became familiar to persons who had business there. The face was an interesting one; "strikingly composed and mild, though haggard," Wilberforce tells us. The man's appearance was that of a gentleman; and the people at whose house he lodged found him kind-hearted and considerate. On one of these days, a little child of his landlady's had strayed away; 2 and the lodger exerted himself to recover it. On the morning of the 11th of May, he took the family to the European Museum, and pointed out to them what they ought to observe. He had a wife and children himself, he told them, and they lived at Liverpool. He had been four months away from them, trying to get justice for some cruel wrongs. Those wrongs were inflicted in Russia, where he, a merchant connected with Archangel, had been 1 Ward's Memoirs, i. p. 476. 2 Annual Register, 1812. Chron. p. 72.

326

ASSASSINATION OF MR. PERCEVAL. [Book II.

calumniated and imprisoned. His hostess, while listening to his quiet narrative, with his pathetic countenance before her, never dreamed of his being insane, and of the Russian prison having been, in fact, a lunatic division of the establishment. But so it came out to be, after his death. He said that his own government ought to have righted him; but that it had offensively refused to aid him. After the visit to the European Museum, he went into the Court of Chancery for some time, and then, as usual, to the House; and there he placed himself in the recess of the doorway of the lobby, standing with his right hand in his breeches-pocket. Lord Eldon was wont to say that he was the person watched for 1 the stranger having hung about his Court just before; but the man himself said that he most wished to encounter Lord George Leveson Gower, our late Ambassador to Russia. It was Mr. Perceval, however, who first, of all his supposed enemies, appeared at the door. The hand, with a small pistol in it, was drawn from the pocket, and Perceval was shot through the heart. He staggered forward, muttered His death. the word "murder" or "murdered," and died in ten minutes. While some of the members present raised him, and carried him into an adjoining room, others looked round for the murderer, who had been unmarked, and, in the confusion, might easily have escaped. He walked to the fire, laid his Bellingham. pistol on a bench, and, on being asked whether he was the villain, replied, "I am the unhappy man." As soon as it was known that he was Mr. Bellingham, an unfortunate merchant and ship-broker of Liverpool, there were offers of evidence, to be brought from Liverpool, of his long-existing insanity. It is scarcely credible now that this should have been refused; and it appears sad that communication with Liverpool should have been too slow to save the poor man's life. If railroads and electric telegraphs had existed then, not all the indecent haste of the authorities could have taken away his life; for the evidences of his insanity were unquestionable. He knew, as he said, from the first what his fate would be. He assigned nothing like a reason for shooting Mr. Perceval: there was no connection pointed out by him between his wrongs and the act of murder; yet he spoke and felt as if the connection had been obviously close and logical. He was not proud or vain of what he had done; but calmly satisfied that it was not wrong. He shed tears when his victim's last moments were described, but still felt that all was as it should be. The authorities wondered extremely; but they did not pause. It seems as if their precipitation was caused by alarm at the reception of the news by a portion of the mob, whom they supposed to be a representation of the peo1 Life, ii. p. 203.

CHAP. IV.] HASTY EXECUTION OF A LUNATIC.

327

ple at large. The first crowd in Palace Yard was composed of respectable people whose feelings were evidently human, and not political. Horror and concern were in every countenance. But presently the pickpockets began to arrive, and to try to make confusion, for the sake of their own harvest. Then came flocking (on the news reaching the remoter parts of London) all who most intensely hated the government, and supposed that it must now be overthrown. Romilly relates that savage cries of exultation were heard,1 with lamentations that other members of the government had not been murdered also. Some of the ferocious rabble mounted the hackney-coach which was brought to convey Bellingham to Newgate; and others kept possession of the opposite door, as if for the purpose of rescue; so that he was sent away through another entrance. Romilly, sick at heart, said that the most lively alarms must be excited by such demonstrations in the minds of all thinking men; and that the English character seemed to have undergone some unaccountable and portentous change. If Romilly was so impressed, it is no wonder that the authorities were wholly dismayed, and full of the vindictiveness which attends dismay; and in this spirit they hurried on the trial.

It actually took place before an answer could be received by return of post to the earliest intimation to the family of what had happened.2 Mr. Perceval was shot soon after five in the afternoon of Monday; and the trial came on on the Friday, at the Old Bailey. Bellingham was hanged on the following Monday. His body was in the hands of the surgeons for dissection, "the heart still faintly beating," before a week was over from the moment in which he took his stand in the recess of the doorway. He was 42 years of age. Insanity had existed in his family before; and a son of his who, with the rest of the family, had changed his name, and who had successfully studied for the medical profession, became deranged as he approached his father's time of life, and was restrained as a lunatic. It is strange that the government did not see that their best policy was to receive every possible evidence that the act was that of a madman, instead of a political foe. But the madness was dangerous, and the man was extinguished.

3

The morning after the murder, measures were taken to secure from the nation a provision for Mr. Perceval's family. The family was a large one; but the provision made was out of all proportion to their needs, and fearfully vexatious to a suffering people, ill able now to brook such selfish profusion at their expense. One item after another was added by comrade or friend, 2 Ibid. p. 36.

1 Memoirs, iii. p. 35.

8 Pictorial History, viii. p. 500 (note).