self-denying courage, of which the previous history of the world had furnished no similar example; and it is one of which, in one point of view, the nation may be more justly proud than of the achievements of its wisest statesmen, or the exploits of its most invincible warriors. For it was the act of the nation itself. No previous sentiment of the people paved the way for Pitt's triumphs in finance, for Nelson's or Wellington's victories by sea and land; but the slave-trade could never have been abolished by any parliamentary leader, had not the nation as a whole become convinced of its wickedness, and, when once so convinced, resolved to brave everything rather than persist in it. The merit of having impressed it with this conviction belongs to Mr. Wilberforce, whose untiring, unswerving devotion of brilliant eloquence and practical ability to the one holy object, and whose ultimate success, give him a just claim to be reckoned among the great men of a generation than which the world has seen none more prolific of every kind of greatness. But the nation itself is also entitled to no slight credit for having so rapidly appreciated the force of his teaching, and for having encouraged its representatives to listen to his voice, by the knowledge that by adopting his measures they would be carrying out the wish and determination of the whole people.
A measure for the strengthening of the army, introduced by the Secretary of State for War, Mr. Windham, though not one of perpetual force, since it required to be renewed every year, claims a brief mention, from the extent to which one of its clauses trenched on the freedom of the subject, by making every man of military age (from sixteen years old[164] to forty) liable to be compelled to submit to military training for a certain period of each year. 'Nothing,' to quote the Secretary's words, 'was to exempt any man from the general training but his becoming a volunteer at his own expense, the advantage of which would be that he could train himself if he chose, and fight, if occasion required it, in the corps to which he should belong, instead of being liable to fall in among the regulars.... As out of the immense mass of the population some selection must be made, those called on to be trained were to be selected by lot, and he would have the people divided into three classes, between the ages of sixteen and forty: the first class to comprehend all from sixteen to twenty-four; the second, those between twenty- four and thirty-two; and the third, all from thirty-two to forty. The number of days for training he proposed to limit to twenty-six, with an allowance of a shilling a day for each man.' The result aimed at by this part of his measure was the creation of a force different from and unconnected with the militia; and he did not conceal his hope that the military habits which it would implant in a large portion of the population would lead many of those thus about to be trained to enlist in the regular army. To the militia itself he paid a high but not undeserved compliment, declaring it 'for home service certainly equal to any part of our regular forces, with the single exception that it had never seen actual service.' But the militia could not be called on to serve out of the kingdom; and his object was to increase the force available for foreign service-'to see the great mass of the population of the country so far trained as to be able to recruit immediately whatever losses the regular army might sustain in action.' As yet, the number of men yearly obtained by recruiting fell far short of the requirements of the service. Wellington had not yet begun that career of victory which created a national enthusiasm for war, and filled our ranks with willing soldiers. And another clause of the same bill was framed in the hope of making the service more acceptable to the peasantry, by limiting the time for which recruits were to be enlisted, and entering men, at first, in the infantry for seven years, or in the cavalry (as that branch of the service required a longer apprenticeship) for ten; then allowing them the option of renewing their engagement for two periods-in the infantry of seven years each, in the cavalry of six and five, with increased pay during each of the two periods, and a small pension for life, if the soldier retired after the second period; and 'the full allowance of Chelsea,' which was to be farther raised to a shilling a day, for those who elected to serve the whole twenty-one years. This principle the present reign has seen carried to a much greater extent, but the change is too recent for even the most experienced officers to be agreed on its effects. And it is only because of this recent extension of it that this clause is mentioned here. But the enactment of a law of compulsory service was clearly an inroad on the great constitutional right of every man to choose his own employment. At the same time, it is equally clear that it was only such an inroad as under the circumstances, was fully justifiable. It is true that all danger of French invasion had passed away with Trafalgar; but the kingdom was still engaged in a gigantic war, and the necessity of the case-always the supreme law-was so little denied by the Opposition, that their objections to the bill were directed entirely against the clause for limited enlistment, and not against that which abridged the subject's liberty, by compelling him to learn to serve his country in war.
The reign of George III., which had now lasted fifty years, was drawing practically to a close. The excitement caused by the ministerial changes in 1801 had already brought on one relapse, though fortunately a very brief one, of the King's malady of 1788; and in the autumn of 1810 the death of the daughter who was supposed to be his especial favorite, the Princess Amelia, produced a recurrence of it, which, though at first the physicians entertained more sanguine hopes of his speedy recovery than on any former occasion, he never shook off. More than one change of ministry had recently taken place. In 1807 Lord Grenville had been compelled, as Pitt had been in 1801, to choose between yielding his opinions on the Catholic question or resigning his office, and had chosen the latter alternative. He had been succeeded for two years by the Duke of Portland; but in 1809 that nobleman had also retired, and had been succeeded by his Attorney-general, Mr. Perceval, the only practising barrister who had ever been so promoted. And he now being Prime-minister, and, as such, forced to make arrangements for carrying on the government during the illness of his sovereign, naturally regarded the course pursued in 1789 as the precedent to be followed. Accordingly, on the 20th of December he proposed for the adoption of the House of Commons the same resolutions which Pitt had carried twenty-two years before-that the King was prevented by indisposition from attending to public business; that it was the duty of Parliament to provide means for supplying the defect of the personal exercise of the royal authority, and its duty also to determine the mode in which the royal assent to the measures necessary could be signified. And he also followed Pitt's example in expressing by letter to the Prince of Wales his conviction that his Royal Highness was a person most proper to be appointed Regent, and explaining at the same time the restrictions which seemed proper to be imposed on his immediate exercise of the complete sovereign authority; though the advanced age at which the King had now arrived made it reasonable that those restrictions should now be limited to a single year. The Prince, on his part, showed that time had in no degree abated his repugnance to those restrictions, and he answered the minister's letter by referring him to that which he had addressed to Pitt on the same subject in 1788. And he induced all his brothers to address to Perceval a formal protest against 'the establishment of a restricted Regency,' which they proceeded to describe as perfectly unconstitutional, as being contrary to and subversive of the principles which seated their family upon the throne of this realm.[165]
Perceval, however, with Pitt's example before him, had no doubt of the course which it was his duty to pursue; and the Opposition also, for the most part, followed the tactics of 1789; the line of argument now adopted by each party being so nearly identical with that employed on the former occasion, that it is needless to recapitulate the topics on which the different speakers insisted; though it is worth remarking that Lord Holland, who, as the nephew of Fox, thought it incumbent on him to follow his uncle's guidance, did on one point practically depart from it. As his uncle had done, he denied the right of the Houses to impose any restrictions on the Prince's exercise of the royal authority; but, at the same time, he consented to put what may be called a moral limitation on that exercise, by adding to an amendment which he proposed to the resolution proposed by the minister an expression of 'the farther opinion of the House that it will be expedient to abstain from the exercise of all such powers as the immediate exigencies of the state shall not call into action, until Parliament shall have passed a bill or bills for the future care of his Majesty's royal person during his Majesty's present indisposition.'
It is remarkable that the leaders of the Opposition were in a great degree stimulated in the line they took by the very same hopes which had animated Fox and his followers in 1789-the expectation that the Regent's first act would be to discard the existing ministry, and to place them in office. But again they were disappointed in their anticipations, of the realization of which they had made so sure that they had taken no pains to keep them secret. They even betrayed their mortification to the world when the Prince's intentions on the subject of the administration became known by the violence of their language in Parliament, some of their party denouncing the employment of the Great Seal to give the royal assent to the bill as 'fraud and forgery.' Nor, indeed, could the Regent himself, even while expressing his intention to make no change in the administration, lest 'any act of his might in the smallest degree have the effect of interfering with the progress of his sovereign's recovery,' suppress an expression of dissatisfaction at the recent arrangements, which he considered had placed him in 'a situation of unexampled embarrassment,' and had created 'a state of affairs ill calculated, as he feared, to sustain the interests of the United Kingdom in this awful and perilous crisis, and most difficult to be reconciled to the general principles of the British constitution.'[166] There were at this time general and apparently well-founded hopes of the King's recovery. For at intervals during the whole of January the Prime-minister had interviews with his Majesty; and, on the very day on which the bill became law, the King himself mentioned it to Lord Eldon, the Chancellor, and said
