284 WIIITBREAD. [1815. 



enced by the extremes of injustice, cruelty, and fraud 

 of which we considered the Princess to be the victim ; 

 and we considered it to be a case calling for the sup- 

 port of all who had the power of protecting her, and 

 who hated oppression. It is in vain to say that other 

 cases of oppression occur every day, were known to us, 

 and yet we did not interfere. No doubt the high 

 position of the parties influenced us, though neither of 

 us had been slow to act in many obscurer cases. But 

 we only devoted ourselves more to these high parties 

 in the same way, and for the same reason, that the 

 whole country took a lively interest in them. A young 

 woman dying in childbed, and a man maltreating his 

 wife and daughter, are daily occurrences ; but the 

 whole people were in real mourning at the Princess 

 Charlotte' s death, and were roused to exasperation at 

 the persecution of the Queen. However, it is not to 

 be denied that both Whitbread and I took a peculiar 

 interest in the case of the Princess of Wales, from the 

 strong sense which we both had of the bad public con- 

 duct of her husband, his abandonment of his prin- 

 ciples, his desertion of his friends, and his giving him- 

 self up to his and their political enemies. All our 

 most cherished principles were involved in an opposi- 

 tion to him which had become personal. In cases of 

 disputed succession, no one can imagine the preference 

 of large parties for one sovereign or one family to be 

 founded on principle, to say nothing of older times, 

 when the wars of the two Koscs, which divided the 

 whole people of all ranks, rested upon nothing like a 

 preference of the one family to the other for any rea- 

 son of policy or national advantage, but purely and 

 simply on the controversy about hereditary title. At 



