ers and the
frequenters of clubs or taverns, the rivalry of party leaders or the
incidents of court life excite a much keener interest than painful
efforts for the good of the humbler classes. During the closing years of
George III.'s reign there were no party conflicts of special intensity.
The whigs acquiesced in their self-imposed exclusion from office, and
contented themselves with damaging criticism; the radicals had not yet
acquired the confidence or respect of the electors. Liverpool remained
prime minister; Castlereagh, foreign secretary; Sidmouth, home
secretary; Vansittart, chancellor of the exchequer. Meanwhile there were
startling vicissitudes in the fortunes of the royal family. The king,
indeed, remained under the cloud of mental derangement which darkened
the last ten years of his life, and the Princess of Wales, who had been
the object of so much scandal, was now out of sight and residing abroad.
The Princess Charlotte, however, the only daughter of the regent, had
centred in herself the loyalty and hopes of the nation in a remarkable
degree, and was credited, not unjustly, with private virtues and public
sympathies contrasting strongly with the disposition of her father. Her
marriage with Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who bore a high character,
had been hailed with national enthusiasm, for it was known that, like
Queen Victoria, she had been carefully trained and had disciplined
herself, physically and morally, for the duties of a throne. It has been
truly said that her death in childbirth, on November 6, was the great
historical event of 1817. The prince regent, with his constitution
weakened by dissipation, was not expected to survive her long, and so
long as his wife lived there was no prospect of other legitimate issue,
unless he could procure a divorce. There was no grandchild of George
III. who could lawfully inherit the crown, and the apprehension of a
collateral succession became more and more generally felt.[66]

In the following year four royal marriages were announced. The Princess
Elizabeth espoused the Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg; the Duke of Clarence,
the Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen; the Duke of Cambridge, the
Princess Augusta of Hesse; the Duke of Kent, the Princess Victoria Mary
of Saxe-Coburg. The Duke of Sussex was already married, but not with the
necessary consent of the crown, and the Duke of Cumberland was
childless, having married three years earlier a divorced widow whom t