n, go home: you have
no business here; you are too honest to be leagued with the Austrians and
Prussians. They will soon leave you in the lurch; and as to the Hessians,
the Landgrave will turn them all over to us to-morrow, if the Convention
offers him a ducat a-day more than you now pay him!" Yet Austria is not
chargeable with deceit--who will dare hereafter to say the like for
Prussia?

Lord Malmesbury did not return immediately to England. At Hanover he
received another mark of the confidence of his royal master, in a
commission to demand the Princess Caroline of Brunswick in marriage for
the Prince of Wales. This mission was conferred upon him directly by the
king, and no discretionary power was given to offer information or advice
either to the court or the government. It does not appear that the subject
was ever mentioned to Lord Malmesbury before his credentials arrived;
certain it is that he had no communication with the person most deeply
interested in the alliance, and therefore no means of ascertaining his
wishes or his motives. The Prince of Wales had never seen his cousin.
Probably, beyond the false impression conveyed by a portrait, he knew
nothing of her; for the little court of Brunswick was rarely visited by
the English, and the military occupations of the Duke kept him almost
constantly from home. It must ever be matter of deep regret that more
prudence was not employed in the conduct of this unhappy business. Royal
marriages are at best precarious; for there is too often a larger
ingredient of policy than of affection in the alliance. This one needed
not to have been a matter of policy. Neither the illustrious bridegroom,
nor the kingdoms over which he was afterwards to rule, could derive any
advantage from a more intimate connexion with the diminutive state of
Brunswick. It is, therefore, almost incomprehensible that no precautions
were taken, and no investigations made, before the prince was finally
committed. Surely some one might have been found worthy to play the part
of a Buckingham to the successor of Charles--some intimate of the prince,
who, acquainted with his tastes and inclinations, might have visited
Brunswick as a stranger, and, without betraying the actual nature of his
mission, might have acquired a sufficient knowledge of the manners and
character of the princess to frame an adequate report. Common prudence
should have suggested this; but there is too much reason to fear that the
matc