FORE:

FORE:On the 23rd of June the king sent down a message to the Commons, recommending them to[301] take into consideration a separate establishment for the Prince of Wales, who had arrived at the age of twenty-one. This young man, whose whole career proved to be one of reckless extravagance and dissipation, was already notorious for his debauched habits, and for his fast accumulating debts. He was a great companion of Fox, and the gambling rou��s amongst whom that grand orator but spendthrift man was accustomed to spend his time and money, and therefore, as a pet of this Coalition Ministry, the Duke of Portland proposed to grant him one hundred thousand pounds a year. The king, alarmed at the torrent of extravagance and vice which such an income was certain to produce in the prince's career, declared that he could not consent to burden his people, and encourage the prince's habits of expense, by such an allowance. He therefore requested that the grant should amount only to fifty thousand pounds a year, paid out of the Civil List, and fifty thousand pounds as an outfit from Parliamentary funds. The Ministers were compelled to limit themselves to this, though the saving was merely nominal, for the debts on the Civil List were again fast accumulating, and the prince was not at all likely to hesitate to apply to Parliament to wipe off his debts, as well as his father's when they became troublesome to him. Resenting, however, the restraint attempted to be put upon him by his father, the prince the more closely connected himself with Fox and his party, and the country was again scandalised by the repetition of the scenes enacted when Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of George III., was the opponent of his own father, George II., and the associate of his opponents. Such, indeed, had been the family divisions in every reign since the Hanoverian succession. On the 16th of July Parliament was prorogued.

FORE:The Liberals seem to have been strongly inclined to the opinion that the Duke of Wellington, having won the great victory of Emancipation, should retire from the field��that he was not fit to lead the van of progress in Parliament. "The Prime Minister of England," exclaimed Sir Francis Burdett, "is shamefully insensible to the suffering and distress which are painfully apparent throughout the land. When, instead of meeting such an overwhelming pressure of necessity with some measure of relief, or some attempt at relief, he seeks to stifle every important inquiry��when he calls that a partial and temporary evil which is both long-lived and universal,��I cannot look on such a mournful crisis, in which the public misfortune is insulted by Ministerial apathy, without hailing any prospect of change in the system which has produced it. What shall we say to the ignorance which can attribute our distress to the introduction of machinery and the application of steam, that noble improvement in the inventions of man to which men of science and intelligence mainly ascribe our prosperity? I feel a high and unfeigned respect for that illustrious person's abilities in the field, but I cannot help thinking that he did himself no less than justice when he said, a few months before he accepted office, that he should be a fit inmate for an asylum of a peculiar nature if he ever were induced to take such a burden upon his shoulders." On the other hand the Opposition was nearly as disorganised as the Government, until Lord Althorp was selected to lead it in the Commons.

FORE:

FORE:Meanwhile, the first municipal election under the Manchester Charter of Incorporation had been held, at which Mr. Cobden, and a number of other gentlemen professing Free Trade views, had been chosen aldermen, not without formidable opposition. At a meeting held at Leeds, and attended by seven or eight thousand persons, the Chartists, under Mr. Feargus O'Connor, resisted the resolutions of the Free Traders, on the ground that the movement was one only intended to give the manufacturers power to lower the wages of their workmen��a mistaken doctrine, but one not altogether without support in the writings of the Free Trade party, some of whom, with the common propensity of zealous advocates for adopting doubtful arguments as well as good ones in support of their objects, had put forth the statement that the British manufacturer required cheap food in order to get cheap labour, and thus to compete the better with foreign producers. The opposition of the Chartists created great confusion at almost every meeting held under the auspices of the Manchester Association. Bread, however, continued to rise, and the task of the Association in rousing the country became easier.