sional. Indeed, he was often employed
as an adviser in affairs of peculiar delicacy and importance, and his
judgment and tact in their arrangement were invariably acknowledged and
appreciated.

[3] Knighton's "Memoirs," p. 86.

This conclusion of the Regency, though for some time anticipated as a
mere matter of course, was accompanied by events of so startling a
nature as to cause considerable disquietude in the minds of many good
citizens and earnest politicians. A feverish excitement existed among
the lower classes, that continually threatened to break out in violent
manifestations against the Government; but though the Ministers of the
Crown were the principal objects of this ill feeling, it was directed
with equal animosity against all wealth and influence; and there can be
no doubt that, had the designs of their more enterprizing leaders been
realized, a complete revolution little less violent than that which had
swept over France more than thirty years before, would have overturned
law, property, and order through the length and breadth of the land.

"The expectation and the fear of change" kept the public mind in a
state of violent agitation; and a great political party was on the
alert to take advantage of any popular movement this effervescence
might create. It was well known to various influential partizans that
events of unusual gravity were "looming in the distance,"[4] by which
they hoped to be able to raise themselves to power. Rumours of a
sinister import were in constant circulation; the more alarmed looked
hourly for some mischievous demonstration, and the more reckless
displayed increasing confidence and audacity. That reports should be
circulated of an immediate change of Government, must have been only
natural under such circumstances; the wide-spread discontent of the
masses of the population, swelling and surging like a storm-driven sea,
had nothing else sufficiently prominent to direct itself against, but
the authorities who appeared to them responsible for the evils under
which they laboured; and those persons who feared, or pretended to
fear, the threatened storm, caught at the idea of removing the
unpopular Ministers as affording the only chance of re-establishing the
public tranquillity. Such, however, had long before been the tactics of
opposition, and such, we are afraid, they are likely to remain.

[4] "The Government," writes a Cabinet Minister to the Lord
Lieutenant