.

[Sidenote: 1820--Lord Liverpool's Administration]

George, however, recovered. His illness proved therefore to be only
one among the unpropitious conditions which accompanied the dawn of his
reign. Almost the next thing that was heard of him by the outer world
was that he had inaugurated his work of government by calling on his
ministers to assist him in obtaining a divorce from his wife. Not
often, it must be admitted, has a sovereign just succeeding to a throne
thus celebrated his attainment of regal rank. Then, again, the
beginning of George the Fourth's reign was immediately followed by the
explosion of a conspiracy belonging to an order uncommon indeed in the
England of those days, almost wholly unknown to the England of our own
time, and resembling in its principal characteristics some of the
Nihilist or Anarchist enterprises common even still in certain parts of
the European continent. Thus opened the first chapter of the reign of
King George the Fourth. We shall have to go more fully into details,
and we only print these few lines as what used to be called in former
days the argument of our first chapters.

George was too unwell to stand by his father's bedside when the poor
old King was passing, at last, out of that life which had so long been
one of utter darkness to him. George, the son, had taken cold in his
beloved pavilion at Brighton, and the cold soon developed into an
illness so serious that for some days it was believed the now King was
destined to succeed his father in the grave almost as soon as he had
succeeded him in the sovereignty. George's life of excesses had not,
however, completely worn out the fine constitution with which nature
had originally endowed him, and despite the kind of medical treatment
favored at that time, the old familiar panacea, which consisted mainly
in incessant bleeding, the King recovered. He was soon able to receive
the official addresses of loyalty, to despatch to Louis the Eighteenth
and other European sovereigns his formal announcement of the fact that
he had succeeded to the throne, his formal expressions of grief at {3}
the loss of his beloved father, and his formal assurances of his
resolve to do all he could to maintain harmonious relations with the
rulers of foreign States. He retained the ministers whom he had found
in office, and who were, of course, his own ministers. Lord Liverpool
was Prime Minister, Lord Eldon was Lord Chancellor, Lord Palme