an end. Since then
he had spent his life regulating his domestic arrangements with great
exactitude, busying himself with the affairs of his numerous dependents,
designing clocks, and struggling to restore order to his finances, for,
in spite of his being, as someone said who knew him well "regle comme du
papier a musique," and in spite of an income of L24,000 a year, he
was hopelessly in debt. He had quarrelled with most of his brothers,
particularly with the Prince Regent, and it was only natural that he
should have joined the political Opposition and become a pillar of the
Whigs.

What his political opinions may actually have been is open to doubt; it
has often been asserted that he was a Liberal, or even a Radical; and,
if we are to believe Robert Owen, he was a necessitarian Socialist. His
relations with Owen--the shrewd, gullible, high-minded, wrong-headed,
illustrious and preposterous father of Socialism and Co-operation--were
curious and characteristic. He talked of visiting the Mills at New
Lanark, he did, in fact, preside at one of Owen's public meetings;
he corresponded with him on confidential terms, and he even (so Owen
assures us) returned, after his death, from "the sphere of spirits" to
give encouragement to the Owenites on earth. "In an especial manner,"
says Owen, "I have to name the very anxious feelings of the spirit of
his Royal Highness the Late Duke of Kent (who early informed me
that there were no titles in the spititual spheres into which he had
entered), to benefit, not a class, a sect, a party, or any particular
country, but the whole of the human race, through futurity." "His whole
spirit-proceeding with me has been most beautiful," Owen adds, "making
his own appointments; and never in one instance has this spirit not
been punctual to the minute he had named." But Owen was of a sanguine
temperament. He also numbered among his proselytes President Jefferson,
Prince Metternich, and Napoleon; so that some uncertainty must still
linger over the Duke of Kent's views. But there is no uncertainty about
another circumstance: his Royal Highness borrowed from Robert Owen, on
various occasions, various sums of money which were never repaid and
amounted in all to several hundred pounds.

After the death of the Princess Charlotte it was clearly important, for
more than one reason, that the Duke of Kent should marry. From the point
of view of the nation, the lack of heirs in the reigning family seemed
t