even disgusted with her. No sooner was the
marriage solemnized, than she was treated on every occasion with studied
contumely, and scarcely had she recovered from illness incident to the
birth of the Princess Charlotte, when the "first gentleman of the age"
was pleased to intimate that it suited his disposition that they should
hereafter live apart. Never allowed to be crowned as queen, driven from
the shelter of her husband's roof, surrounded with spies, accused of
crimes of which there was no proof, even excluded from the public
prayers, and finally forced into exile, she sank under her accumulated
wrongs, and was carried off by a fatal illness at the age of
fifty-three.

On the death of the old king in 1820, the Prince of Wales became George
IV., after having been regent for nine years. As he was inflexibly
opposed to all reforms, no great measures had been carried through
Parliament except from urgent necessity and fear of revolution. But the
State was being prepared for reforms in the next reign. In 1820 the
agitation, which finally ended in the Reform Bill, set in with great
earnestness. Henry Brougham had become a great power in the House of
Commons, and poured out the vials of his wrath on the Tory government.
Lord John Russell busily employed himself in forging the weapons by
which he, more than any other man, afterward broke the power of the
Tories. The voice of Wilberforce was also heard in demanding the
abolition of negro slavery. Romilly was advocating a reform in criminal
law. Macaulay was making those brilliant speeches which would have
elevated him to the highest rank among debaters had he not cherished
other ambitions.

The only things which stand out as memorable and of political importance
in this reign were a change in the foreign policy of England, the
discontents and agitations of the people, the removal of Catholic
disabilities, and the repeal of the Test Acts.

On the first I shall not dwell, since I have already alluded to it as
the great work of Canning. As foreign minister he divorced England from
the Holy Alliance, and insisted on maintaining non-intervention in the
internal affairs of other nations, and a peace policy which raised his
country to the highest pinnacle of power she ever attained, and brought
about a development of wealth and industry entirely unprecedented. Had
he lived he would have carried out those reforms that later were the
glory of Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel