sate robed in scarlet, on the
benches of Golgotha, thought it great presumption in so young a man
to solicit so high a distinction. He was, however, at the request of a
hereditary friend, the Duke of Rutland, brought into Parliament by Sir
James Lowther for the borough of Appleby.

The dangers of the country were at that time such as might well have
disturbed even a constant mind. Army after army had been sent in vain
against the rebellious colonists of North America. On pitched fields of
battle the advantage had been with the disciplined troops of the mother
country. But it was not on pitched fields of battle that the event of
such a contest could be decided. An armed nation, with hunger and the
Atlantic for auxiliaries, was not to be subjugated. Meanwhile the House
of Bourbon, humbled to the dust a few years before by the genius and
vigour of Chatham, had seized the opportunity of revenge. France and
Spain were united against us, and had recently been joined by Holland.
The command of the Mediterranean had been for a time lost. The British
flag had been scarcely able to maintain itself in the British Channel.
The northern powers professed neutrality; but their neutrality had a
menacing aspect. In the East, Hyder had descended on the Carnatic, had
destroyed the little army of Baillie, and had spread terror even to the
ramparts of Fort Saint George. The discontents of Ireland threatened
nothing less than civil war. In England the authority of the government
had sunk to the lowest point. The King and the House of Commons were
alike unpopular. The cry for parliamentary reform was scarcely less
loud and vehement than in the autumn of 1830. Formidable associations,
headed, not by ordinary demagogues, but by men of high rank, stainless
character, and distinguished ability, demanded a revision of the
representative system. The populace, emboldened by the impotence and
irresolution of the government, had recently broken loose from all
restraint, besieged the chambers of the legislature, hustled peers,
hunted bishops, attacked the residences of ambassadors, opened prisons,
burned and pulled down houses. London had presented during some days
the aspect of a city taken by storm; and it had been necessary to form a
camp among the trees of Saint James's Park.

In spite of dangers and difficulties abroad and at home, George the
Third, with a firmness which had little affinity with virtue or with
wisdom, persisted in his determinat