"You will make it your business to promote that perfect harmony and confidence between me and my people, which I most earnestly desire, and on which our mutual happiness entirely depends."

The dignified language in which George I. addressed his people in 1722, when in expectation of a rebellion, has been properly remarked by one of our historians.

"Had I, since my accession to the throne, ever attempted any innovation on our established religion, had I in any one instance invaded the liberty and property of my subjects, I should less wonder at any endeavours to alienate the affections of my people, and draw them into measures that can end in nothing but their own destruction."

"But to hope to persuade a free people, in full enjoyment of all that is dear and valuable to them, to exchange freedom for slavery, the Protestant religion for Popery, and to sacrifice at once the price of so much blood and treasure as have been spent in defence of our present establishment, seems an infatuation not to be accounted for."

One of the most singular circumstances that occurred during the reign of George I. was the introduction of the Peerage Bill by the ministers of the crown. This project originated in motives not the most creditable either to the favourite Sunderland or the monarch-inordinate ambition in the one, and mean jealousy of his son and successor in the other; but it produced some noble passages in two of the king's speeches, which would have been indeed precious if they had obtained a place there on any better occasion.

"I have always looked upon the glory of a sovereign and the liberty of a subject as inseparable, and think it is the peculiar happiness of a British king to reign over a free people. As the civil rights, therefore, and privileges of all my subjects, and especially of my two houses of parliament, do justly claim my most tender concern, if any provision designed to perpetuate these blessings to your posterity remains imperfect, I promise myself you will take the first opportunity," &c.

And again:

"If the necessities of my government have sometimes engaged your duty and affection to trust me with powers of which you have always with good reason been jealous, the whole world must acknowledge they have been so used as to justify the confidence you have reposed in me. And as I can truly affirm that no prince was ever more zealous to increase his own authority than I am to perpetuate the liberty of my people, I hope you will think of all proper methods to establish and transmit to your posterity the freedom of our happy constitution, and peculiarly to secure that part which is most liable to abuse."

This last extract is given by Coxe.

In the speeches of George II. expressions are always found on every proper occasion that intimate the desirableness of confidence and harmony between the people and the executive power, and that the interests of the two are inseparable. They should be looked at even on this account, if on no other.

"I heartily wish," said the king in his first speech," that this first solemn declaration of my mind in parliament could sufficiently express the sentiments of my heart, and give you a perfect and just sense of my fixed resolution by all possible means to merit the love and affection of my people, which I shall always look upon as the best support and security of my crown.

"And as the religion, liberty, property, and a due execution of the laws, are the most valuable blessings of a free people, and the peculiar privileges of

this nation, it shall be my constant care to preserve the constitution of this kingdom as it is now happily established in church and state, inviolable in all its parts, and to secure to all my subjects the full enjoyment of their religious and civil rights."

The speech of the year 1734, preparatory to the dissolution of the parliament, has been noticed by Mr. Coxe. If it was intended to do away any impressions that might have been made on the public by the speeches and writings of the adversaries of the minister, representing him as having planned a regular system of oppression, it was certainly well fitted for its purpose, for no speech could be more worthy of an intelligent monarch and an upright minister, addressed to a free people.

"The prosperity and glory of my reign," says his majesty, "depend upon the affections and happiness of my people, and the happiness of my people upon my preserving to them all their legal rights and privileges, as established under the present settlement of the crown in the Protestant line. A due execution and strict observance of the laws are the best and only security both to sovereign and subject; their interest is mutual and inseparable, and therefore their endeavours for the support of each other ought to be equal and reciprocal; any infringement or encroachment upon the rights of either is a diminution of the strength of both, which, kept within due bounds and limits, make that just balance which is necessary for the honour and dignity of the crown, and for the protection and prosperity of the people. What depends on me shall, on my part, be religiously kept and observed, and I make no doubt of receiving the just returns of duty and gratitude from them. I must in a particular manner recommend it to you, and, from your known affection, do expect, that you will use your best endeavours to heal the unhappy divisions of the nation, and to reconcile the minds of all, who truly and sincerely wish the safety and welfare of the kingdom.

"It would be the greatest satisfaction to me to see a perfect harmony restored among them, that have one and the same principle at heart, that there might be no distinction, but of such as mean the support of our present happy constitution in church and state, and such as wish to subvert both. This is the only distinction that ought to prevail in this country, where the interest of king and people is one and the same, and where they cannot subsist but by being so.

"If religion, liberty, and property were never at any time more fully enjoyed, without not only any attempt, but even the shadow of a design, to alter and invade them, let not those sacred names be made use of, as artful and plausible pretences to undermine the present establishment, under which alone they can be safe.

"I have nothing to wish but that my people may not be misguided: I appeal to their own consciences for my conduct, and hope the Providence of God will direct them in the choice of such representatives as are most fit to be trusted with the care and preservation of the Protestant religion, the present establishment, and all the civil and religious rights of Great Britain."

Even in the king's speech of 1737, after the murder of Captain Porteous at Edinburgh, and other circumstances of very great and just offence to the minister and the executive power, the expressions made use of were only the following; perfectly reasonable and dignified, and worthy of the minister, and of the sovereign of a free people.

"My Lords and Gentlemen,

"You cannot be insensible, what just scandal and offence the licentiousness

of the present times, under the colour and disguise of liberty, gives all honest and sober men, and how absolutely necessary it is to restrain this excessive abuse, by a due and vigorous execution of the laws: defiance of all authority, contempt of magistracy, and even resistance of the laws, are become too general, although equally prejudicial to the prerogative of the crown and the liberties of the people, the support of the one being inseparable from the protection of the other. I have made the laws of the land the constant rule of my actions, and I do with reason expect in return all that submission to my authority and government, which the same laws have made the duty, and shall always be the interest, of my subjects."

LECTURE XXVII.

1810.

LAW MISSISSIPPI SCHEME.

SOUTH SEA BUBBLE, ETC.

DURING the period which we have been lately considering, a remarkable connection of amity and good offices took place between the two rival countries of England and France.

On the death of Louis XIV. the Duke of Orleans became, or rather made himself regent; the Duke of Bourbon succeeded; then came Cardinal Fleury. It is the era which comprehends the administration of the three that must engage our attention.

The writers that we must read or consult are the following; the Memoirs of the Duke de St. Simon; the concluding volume of D'Anquetil's Louis XIV., sa Cour, et le Régent; Memoirs of Duclos; l'Histoire of Lacretelle.

All these works may be read with ease and advantage; but any one of them may be sufficient for the era which it embraces. The topics are in all the same. St. Simon is the groundwork of all the rest, and Duclos' book is in its manner the most agreeable and the most generally read; but the truth is, that the whole, in whatever author read, presents to the view little to occupy the philosophical reader of history.

We have the intrigues of ministers and courtiers at home and abroad; a scene displayed lively and striking, and even necessary to the comprehension of the history of Europe at that time.

But we have no alterations in the constitution of France,

and indeed little concern expressed on the subject. Even in those instances which are fitted to convey instruction to a statesman, the historians may be said to desert us: they write memoirs; they please and entertain us; but are either unable or unwilling to do more; and they enter into no minuteness of explanation, or criticism, on subjects that to posterity must surely appear of far more importance than those which they discuss.

Our own Charles II. is made to revive in our memory in the person of the regent, the Duke of Orleans, and Clarendon in the virtuous and faithful St. Simon; but the regent is more outrageously debauched than Charles, and St. Simon, brought up in an arbitrary court, cannot have the views and feelings of Clarendon.

It may be observed, however, that the ill success of St. Simon, in his very laudable efforts to reform his master, are well fitted, in a moral point of view, to offer edifying lessons, if any were wanting, of the danger of self-indulgence, the fascination of bad habits, and, whatever we may think of the celebrated doctrines of free-will and necessity, of the impossibility which every man will find of altering his character at his pleasure; that is, the absurdity, in the first place, of indulging himself in courses of folly and vice, and of then supposing that, whenever he thinks proper, he may begin to be virtuous and wise.

Very different was the fate of the regent; favoured by nature with superior gifts of fancy and of understanding, with no malignity in his disposition, and well calculated to receive the love and approbation of mankind, it was in vain that he often resolved to make some reasonable efforts to deserve both; to exercise some self-control; in a word to be virtuous. He was bound down to the earth by the chains of his long-established associations; that is, in common language, by his bad habits. Dubois and his mistresses always prevailed over his better reason; and the kind and honourable counsels of St. Simon were sounds that were no sooner heard