10 George Hie Fourth. [JULY, 



But unhappily the connexion with Whig politics implied that intimate 

 connexion with the leaders of the party, which involved the prince in their 

 private habits. No result could be more unfortunate. Fox and his chief 

 associates were notorious for indulgence in all the dissipations of fashion- 

 able life. The prince plunged into those dissipations with the reckless 

 ardour of passions unrestrained, of rank without a superior, and of for- 

 tune that, by youth, might be deemed inexhaustible. Actresses, wine, the 

 turf, building, a boundless establishment, all the shapes in which income 

 could be expended, dissipation indulged, or public anxiety and re- 

 pugnance excited, were the habitual indulgences of a prince scarcely 

 emerged from boyhood but nothing could be more disastrous than this 

 commencement of his career. The public morality was hurt by the ex- 

 ample of the prince's private life. The public burthens were unpopularly 

 increased by his expenditure, at a time of national pressure ; and the 

 rising spirit of disgust against all royal privileges, just and unjust, which 

 had been first excited in America, then propagated in France, and was 

 rapidly becoming familiar to England, took singular advantage of princely 

 irregularity as an argument against royal rule.* 



In 1783 the prince terminated his nonage, was introduced into the 

 House of Peers, appointed colonel of the 10th dragoons, and received 

 an increased allowance of 50,000/. a-year. This allowance was speedily 

 found unequal to the expenditure of the prince's various establish- 

 ments ; and his debts, within three years, compelled an application to 

 parliament. There could have been no more unpopular application, 

 for the sum was enormous, nearly 300,000. But the public dis- 

 trust was still augmented by another instance of the rash and undi- 

 rected passions of the prince. Mrs. Fitzherbert, a woman of fa- 

 shion, and of striking beauty, had attracted his attentions. She was 

 a widow, and it began to be rumoured, that the prince had actually 

 married her. The grievance was increased in the public and royal eye 

 by her being a Roman Catholic, a marriage with whom would, by law, 

 extinguish the prince's succession to the throne. The king was indig- 

 nant, the public were offended, and the ministry felt themselves em- 

 powered to impose the harshest terms on the prince, and to heap on the 

 opposition the whole obloquy of having encouraged him to an act little 

 short of treason to the Protestant throne. There was but one way to 

 evade the crisis, and Fox took upon himself the extraordinary expedient. 

 In the face of the House and the country, he pledged himself that the 

 prince was not married. But even this expedient succeeded but imper- 

 fectly Fox's pledge was dubiously received ; the public believed that 

 he had sacrificed his honour, and a compromise was finally made, scarcely 

 less galling than a total refusal. A part of the encumbrances was paid 

 off, leaving the prince liable to the most pressing debts his debts of 

 honour, and concluding with equal irritation on the side of the king, 

 the prince and the people. 



The prince was now for some years abstracted from politics. The 

 titter hopelessness of the Whigs, while Pitt continued to be supported 

 by the king, had sickened them all of public life ; and the party reserved 

 their strength for some of those contingencies which so frequently change 

 the aspect of affairs in England. The contingency at length came. In 

 1788 the king was suddenly afflicted with insanity. The Whig party 

 now awoke in its strength, and Pitt was assailed in the absence of his 

 powerful protector. The grand object was to place the prince at the 

 head of the nation as Regent. But the singular genius of Pitt, never 

 more splendidly exercised than at that moment, established his supremacy. 

 The Whigs, urged by eagerness for power, rashly suffered themselve? 



