y his illness assumed an
alarming aspect, early in June the medical reports satisfied the country
that his case was hopeless, on June 19 he received the last sacrament,
and on the 20th he died at Windsor Castle. Something more than justice
was done to his character by the leaders of both parties in parliament,
but something less than justice has been done to it by later historians.
He was inferior in strength of will to his father, in ability to his
eldest brother, and in the higher virtues of a constitutional sovereign
to his niece, who succeeded him. But he was not only a kindly and
well-meaning man, a good husband to Queen Adelaide and a good father to
his natural children, faithful to his old friends, and bountiful in his
charities; he was also a loyal servant of the state, with a genuine
sense of public duty, a natural love of justice, an independent
judgment, and a noble indifference to personal or selfish objects. His
lot was cast in almost revolutionary times, and he was called upon to
reign at an age when few men are capable of shaking off old prejudices,
yet he deserved well of his people in supporting the ministry of Grey
through all the stages of the reform movement, in spite of his own
declared sympathies, but in deference to his own conviction of paramount
obligation under the laws of the land. He was quite as liberal in
opinions as Peel, whose hearty interest in the poorer classes he fully
shared, and far more liberal than the tory majority in the house of
lords. Great he certainly was not, and he never affected the royal
dignity which partially concealed the littleness of his predecessor. But
in honesty and simplicity he was no unworthy son of George III., and the
greater pliability of his nature contributed, at least, to make the
seven years of his reign more fruitful in reforms than all the sixty
years during which the old king occupied the throne of England.

FOOTNOTES:

[130] The king to Peel (Feb. 22, 1835), Parker, _Sir Robert Peel_, ii.,
287-89.

[131] See Melbourne's letters to Brougham, _Melbourne Papers_, pp.
257-64.

[132] The abuses in the Scottish municipalities had, however, been
already removed by an act conferring the municipal franchise on L10
householders. Not the least important result of this act was the
increased strength which it gave to the "evangelical" party in the
general assembly of the Church of Scotland, which was partly elected by
the municipalities.

[133] Campbell,