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brother , Jack Smythe , Lord Onslow , Lord Southampton , Mr . Edward Bouyerie , and Mr Keit , were present . Two witnesses signed there names to the certificate of marriage . The following , in relation to this matter , must be quoted in extenso : —• "In the spring of 1787 it was announced in the House of Commons by Alderman Newenham that application would be made to Parliament for the payment of the Prince of Wales ' s debts . Mr . Rolle ( the hero of the Rolliad' ) rose and declared that , if such a motion were made , he would move the previous question , as the proposal ' involved matter by which the Constitutionboth in 'Church and
On the whole , there are traces of more careful authorship in the present than in the former volume , but we could haye desired a larger proportion of biographical interest .
, State , might be injuriously affected . ' These words were supposed to allude to a report of the private marriage of the Prince , which had appeared in the newspapers . On a succeeding day . Mr . Fox , who had not been in the house when Mr . Rolle spoke , took an opportunity of noticing the report in question , the truth of which he denied in toto , ' in point of fact as well as law . The fact not only never could have happened legally , but never did happen in any way whatsoever , and had from the beginning been a base and malicious falsehood . ' On being further questioned , he declared that'he had direct authority for what he said /
" When we reflect that Mr . Rolle had made his allusion some days before , his speech being on the 24 th , and Mr . Fox ' s on the 30 th of April—when we ; consider Mr . Fox ' s strict veracity and singular caution regarding all matters of fact , —we cannot but arrive at the conclusion " that between the 24 th and the 30 th of April Mr . Eox had received from the Prince the direct authority he asserted himself tohare received . We have already seen the terms in which the Prince had contradicted by letter the report of his intended marriage just before its celebratipn , and he could have little scruple in repeating his falsehood by word of mouth , when the marriage had Already taken place .
"On the morning after the denial of the marriage hy Mr . Fox , the Prjnce called at the house where Mis . Fitzherbert was living with a relation . He went up to her , and taking hold of both her hands , and caressing her , he said , ' Only conceive , Maria , what Fox did yesterday : he went down to the House , and denied that you and I were man arid wife . ' Mrs . Fitzherbert made no reply , but changed countenance and turned pale . * .. . . "On the same day the Prince saw Mr . Grey , and endeavoured to persuade him to say something in
Parliament to satisfy Mrs . Fitzherbert , and take off tfa . e edge of Fox ' s declaration . This Mr . Grey positively refused , saying no denial could be given without calling in question Mr , Fox ' s veracity , which no one , he presumed , was prepared to do . After some time , the Prince , with prodigious agitation , owned the marriage . He at length put an end to the conversation by saying abruptly , ' Well , if nobody else will , Sheridan must . ' Sheridan accordingly wen * to the House of Commons , and paid some vapid compliments to Mrs . Fitzherbert , which took away nothing from the weight of Mr . Fox ' s denial .
" Qn the day after Mr . Fox ' s declaration ,, a gentleman of his acquaintance went up to him at Brooke ' s , and said , * I see by the papers , Mr . Fox , you have denied the fact of the marriage of the Prince with Mrs , Fitzherbert ; You have been misinformed . I was present at that marriage . - . " fcfcr . Fox now perceived how completely he had been duped . Ho immediately renounced the acquaintance of the Prince , and did not speak to him for more than a year . "
This , it must be owned , is an important statement . Lord John properly denounces these transactions as heartless , and says that the Princess Caroline of Brunswick was their Victim . Fortunately for the nation , he adds , the marriage of the Prince of Wales and Mrs . Fitzherbert was not curaed with issue . Had a son been born from thia marriage , a disputed , or at least a doubtful succession must have beep the result ; for the Roman Catholic subjoofcs of the Crown were bound to believe in the validity of the marriage , and they might have disputed the binding nature of an Aot of Parliament which set aside the legitimate issue of a reigning king .
The remaining portion of this volume deals with more public transactions , such as the regency foreign affairs—the invasion of Holland by Prussia and . armament against Russia—the Frehoh Revolution , in its connexion both with the Continent and Great Britain ^ the war with France , the Reign of Terror , and the author ' s opinion on the comwwaoemont , thoprogreas and theoonduot of the war . In nil theao transactions , Mr . Fox bore his part .
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laws , againstrwhich the peasantry rose in arms in the fburteenthcentury , and like our defunct corn laws , to oppress and plunder some for the advantage of others . Under : the influence of such institutions even the Duke of Wellington became a sentimental supporter of corn laws in England , and where their influence was noty and where the interest of his party was not at stake , he was a free trader . Freedom of * all kinds is naturall y the g-if t of God , and institutions which limitit , while they fetter the limbs , pervert the mind , and are grievous injuries
THE REVIEWS . The Edinburgh : ^ Review . No . CCXXIII . —• This venerable periodical rather assumes the jaunty airs of youth than has received a new life . In the present number , a sentimentalist for squires and bishops , writing in the style of a young Puseyite parson , attacks Douglas Jerrold because he was a sentimentalist for poachers and Dissenters . " He wrote , " says the reviewer , " elaborate essays on subjects on which he had not done his best to form a clear and impartial judgment "^ -a sentence which would stop an immense quantity of writing , and which should have stopped the pen of the
reviewer rather than of Jerrold . His sympathies and sentiments were on the side of suffering , the sentiments and sympathies of the reviewer are on the side of well-dressed , sleek oppression , though it be . not so much designed as arising from customs and institutions , investigation into which is cut short by the classes with , which the reviewer sympathises , wrapped up in a mantle of thoroughly satisfied sentimental reverence . Jerrold's sentimentalism was healthy , like all unperverted sensibility , which is always on the side of truth and justice ; the reviewer ' s sentimentalism is an example of the ease b y which sentimentalism can be arrayed by education on the side of injustice . Accordingly , he condemns Jerrold for directing his caustic writing against the brutalities of naval
discipline and war . The other writers in the old Review are less offensively youthful , and the author of a useful paper on the State of the Navy is as plodding and care-taking as an . official drawing up a document for publication . He"does not mean to make out a case against his . friends in successive Admiralties , but his description of the deplorable condition of our navy , in contrast with the vast sum of money spent on it , demonstrates that this money has been taken . from the people on false pretences . They have not got the navy they have been so enormously charged for , and are safe rather from the sufferance of France , as he shows , than their own guns . Those who wish to know the present helpless condition to which the spendthrift aristocracy has reduced us , should study the pages of this aristocratic review .
In an article on Brialmont ' s " Life of the Duke of Wellington , " which treats the subject fairly , there is this passage :- — " Between the foresight of the Date of Wellington ' s Indian and his English policy we may trace a marked contrast . Throughout his ! parliamentary life he cannot be said to have done more than accept facts and principles already forced on him ; but in India , near a quarter of a century before the commercial monopoly of the Company had expired , he clearly t fets forth the advantages of an entire system of free trade , then one of the most startling of conceivable innovations in the east . The cause of
this contrast probably is , that in new countries men instinctivel y free themselves from the trammels of usage , and that where there are no fixed political principles , which , wh . en originally founded in the interest of parties , are more likely to be false than true , they are freer to form just . as well as bold conclusions . Albuquerque certainly had nojpretensions to the scientific political economy of Mr . Ricardo , But more than three centuries elapsed between the rise of political economy in Europe and the astute principles of commercial interchange which Albuquerque in the fifteenth age laid down in the Eastern
HVUH . This is an illustration of an important princi p le , and it is the more valuable because the writer seems rather a man of the world than a mere UteraUw . Before Albuquerque or Wellington in the East , the followers or Wat T yler in England stipulated for the *• right of bu 7 ing and selling openly and freely in the towns and out of the towns . " They had the same notions of free trade as Albuquerque , the Duke of Wellington , Ricardo , and Cobden . Such notions are , in truth , the natural' and inevitable consequence of man ' s constitution , and are his natural guides to welfare , but they nro everywhere thwarted or perverted , and man is made miserable by fixed political principles or institutions , " founded in the interest of parties , " and certain , to be false and injurious , Ibooause tuey are always intended , like the Norman
to mankind . Besides the three articles alluded to , one on " Adam Bede , " one on Tennyson ' s four " Idylls of the King , " one on the " Memoirs of George III ., " and one on Marie Antoinette , are ) worth reading . Articles on the Acropolis of Athens , on Ichnology , and . on a Syriac version of the Gospels , are learned but not amusing . In the biographical articles there are many pleasing anecdotes , and if the venerable ancestress of all the quarterlies would not assume the flirtation of youth , she would still be respectable .
Bentj-et ' s QuaktebI / T Review . No . 2 . — This new review evidently means mischief .- There is , for instance , an article on Popular Preaching , in which the Rev . I . C . M . Beflew is " savagely slaughtered , " Mr . Spurgeon , exhibited in chains , and the Rev . J . J . West , the rector of Winchelsea , burned in effigy . We half suspect that mOre is meant than meets the ear in this tremendous and elaborate attack . The real objection of the writer , we suspect , is to " the foolishness of preacbino" itself . He would have the minister content nimself with leading the Prayer-book ;
and we fear that he belongs to that sect in the Church , that regards rather the priest than the preacher . We may note , also , a tolerably good article on the drama , which contains some timely reflections . The critic condemns burlesque altogether , and considers it highly disgraceful to the modern stage . " In such performances as travesties of Shakespeare , and in Mazeppa and Massaniello , " says the writer , " the actor himself is called on to degrade his own profession and to profane his own powers of humour and passion . Perhaps , however ( he continues ) , burlesque—on all occasions mischievous- —was never more absurd than in the
summer of 1856 . A great tragic actress , the greatest , perhaps whom , the present generation will behold , was at the moment rivalling in the Italian drama the performances of Mrs , Siddona , Miss O'Neil and Miss Fanny K ' emble , in days gone by . A manager , than whom no one wa 3 better qualified to appreciate the genius of Madame Ristori , employs an actor of equal genius with himself to burlesque her impersonation of" Medea . " This was the tribute paid by Englishmen to consummate histrionic powers ! Nor was this outrage on good feeling and good taste—we can afford it it no gentler name—perpetrated at a theatre where the spectators are mostly rude mechanicals , and where
illiterate appetites may be pardoned for relishing coarse faro . * But it was deliberately committed at a theatre where refined and intellectual people congregate * and where the performances and the performers are worthy of such audience . All thia is undeniably true . While inferior trnah has been adapted from the French boards , and found actors on the English , " Medea" has only received the equivocal honours of burlesque ; and Ristori excited no emulator at the west-end theatres . It
was , reserved for Sadler ' s Wells , and the Standard in Shoroditch , to produce an Englisli version of "Medea , " and engage Miss Edith Heraud for the impersonation of the weird heroine . There , indeed , the drama in question was received with especial enthusiasm , and the actress encouraged b y repeated plaudits , Previously , at the more fashionable theatres , the proper thing to do was thought to be an attempt to throw tlie whole affair into ridiculous lights ; not by an honourable ambition , to compote with foreign talent , and show the world that the English stage had also a Ristori .
Besides the papers we have noticed , there are elaborate artioles on other subjects , viz : —Morcll's Modern German Philosophy , the Royal Academy , and the novels of the season , including " Adam Bode , " and " the Bertrams , " and " the Italian Campaign . " Those ore treated with various degrees of merit , but all meritoriously , and with an effort to attain , originality or novelty . There is life in the present number , and a promise of more , if laudable endeavour be not slackened . We wish Mr . Bontley success .
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ImngiB ? ° " Mwi tftolwwlwV by tUo Hon . Charles
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870 THE LEASER . fNo . 487 . July 23 , 1859
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Leader (1850-1860), July 23, 1859, page 870, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2304/page/18/
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