lose by defeat? The highest places in your majesty's service are filled by the younger branches of the royal family; to me alone no place is assigned. I am not thought worthy to be the junior major-general of your army. If I could submit in silence to such indignities, I should indeed deserve such treatment, and prove to the satisfaction of your enemies, and my own, that I am entirely incapable of those exertions which my birth and the circumstances of the times peculiarly call for. Standing so near the throne, when I am debased, the cause of royalty is wounded; I cannot sink in public opinion, without the participation of your majesty in my degradation. Therefore every motive of private feeling and of public duty induce me to implore your majesty to review your decision, and to place me in that situation, which my birth, the duties of my station, the example of my predecessors, and the expectations of the people of England intitle me to claim.

Should I be disappointed in the hope which I have formed, should this last appeal to the justice of my sovereign, and the affection of my father, fail of success, I shall lament in silent submission his determination; but Europe, the world, and posterity, must judge between

us.

I have done my duty; my conscience acquits me; my reason tells me that I was perfectly justified in the request which I have made, because no reasonable arguments have ever been adduced in answer to my pretensions. The precedents in our history are in my favour; but if they were not, the times in which we live, and especially the exigencies of the present moment, require us to become an example to our posterity,

No other cause of refusal has or can be assigned, except that it was the will of your majesty. To that will and pleasure I bow with every degree of humility and resignation; but I can never cease to complain of the severity which has been exercised against me, and the injustice which I have suffered, till I cease to exist. I have the honour to subscribe myself, with all possible devotion,

Your Majesty's most dutiful and affectionate Son and Subject, Brighton, Aug. 6. (Signed) G. P.

FROM THE KING.

Windsor, 7th Aug. 1803. My Dear Son,

Though I applaud your zeal and spirit, of which, I trust, no one can suppose any of my family wanting, yet, considering the repeated declarations I have made of my determination on your former applications to the same purpose, I had flattered myself to have heard no further on the subject. Should the implacable enemy so far succeed as to land, you will have an opportunity of showing your zeal at the head of your regiment. It will be the duty of every man to stand forward on such an occasion; and I shall certainly think it mine to set an example in defence of every thing that is dear to me and to my people.

I ever remain, my dear Son, Your most affectionate Father, (Signed)

G. R.

FROM THE PRINCE TO THE KING,

Sir, Brighton, 23d Aug. 1803. I have delayed thus long an answer to the letter which your majesty did me the honour to write, from a wish to refer to a former correspondence which took place between us in the year 1798. Those (H 3) letters

letters were mislaid, and some days elapsed before I could discover them: they have since been found. Allow me then, sir, to recal to your recollection the expressions you were graciously pleased to use, and which I once before took the liberty of reminding you of, when I solicited foreign service, upon my first coming into the army. They were, sir, that your majesty did not then see the opportunity for it; but if any thing was to arise at home, I ought to be "first and foremost." There cannot be a stronger expression in the English language, or one more consonant to the feel ings which animate my heart. In this I agree most perfectly with your majesty-"I ought to be the first and foremost." It is the place which my birth assigns me-which Europe which the English nation expect me to fill-and which the former assurances of your majesty might naturally have led me to hope I should occupy. After such a declaration, I could hardly expect to be told that my place was at the head of a regiment of dragoons.

I understand from your majesty, that it is your intention, sir, in pursuance of that noble example which you have ever shown during the course of your reign, to place your self at the head of the people of England. My next brother, the duke of York, commands the army; the younger branches of my family are either generals or lieutetenant-generals; and I, who am the prince of Wales, am to remain a colonel of dragoons. There is something so humiliating in the contrast, that those who are at a distance would either doubt the reality, or suppose that to be my fault which is only my misfor

tune.

Who could imagine, that I, who

am the oldest colonel in the service, had asked for the rank of a general officer in the army of the king my father, and that it had been refused me!

I am sorry, much more than sorry, to be obliged to break in upon your leisure, and to trespass thus a second time on the attention of your majesty. But I have, sir, an interest in my character more valuable to me than the throne, and dearer, far dearer, to me than life. I am called upon by that interest to persevere, and I pledge myself never to desist till I receive that satisfaction which the justice of my claim leads me to expect.

In these unhappy times the world, sir, examines the conduct of princes with a jealous, a scrutinising, a malignant eye. No man is more aware than I am of the existence of such a disposition, and no man is therefore more determined to place himself above all suspicion.

In desiring to be placed in a forward situation, I have performed one duty to the people of England; I must now perform another, and humbly supplicate your majesty to assign those reasons which have induced you to refuse a request which appears to me and to the world so reasonable and so rational.

I must again repeat my concern that I am obliged to continue a correspondence which I fear is not so grateful to your majesty as I could wish. I have examined my own heart-I am convinced of the justice of my cause-of the purity of my motives. Reason and ho nour forbid me to yield: where no reason is alleged, I am justified in the conclusion that none can be given.

In this candid exposition of the feelings which have agitated and

depressed

depressed my wounded mind, I hope no expressions have escaped me which can be construed to mean the slightest disrespect to your majesty. I most solemnly disavow any such intention; but the circumstances of the times the danger of invasion-the appeal which has been made to all your subjects, oblige me to recollect what I owe. to mine own honour and to my own character, and to state to your majesty with plainness, truth, and candour, but with all the submission of a subject and the duty of an affectionate son, the injuries under which I labour, and which it is in the power of your majesty alone at one moment to redress.

It is with sentiments of the profoundest veneration and respect that I have the honour to subscribe myself,

Your Majesty's most dutiful, And most affectionate Son and Subject, (Signed) G. P.

Brighton, 2d Oct. 1808.

My Dear Brother,

By the last night's Gazette, which I have this moment received, I perceive that an extensive promotion has taken place in the army, wherein my pretensions are not noticed; a circumstance which, whatever may have happened upon other occasions, it is impossible for me to pass by, at this momentous crisis, without observation.

My standing in the army, according to the most ordinary routine of promotion, had it been followed up, would have placed me either at the bottom of the list of generals, or at the head of the list of lieutenant-generals. When the younger branches of my family are promoted to the highest military situations, my birth, according to the distinctions usually conferred

on it, should have placed me first on that list.

I hope you know me too well, to imagine that idle inactive rank is in my view; much less is the direction and patronage of the military departments an object which suits my place in the state, or my inclinations; but, in a moment when the danger of the country is thought by government so urgent as to call forth the energy of every arm in its defence, I cannot but feel myself degraded, both as a prince and a soldier, if I am not allowed to take a forward and distinguished part in the defence of that empire and crown, of the glory, prosperity, and even existence of that people, in all which mine is the greatest stake,

To be told I may display this zeal solely and simply at the head of my regiment, is a degrading mockery.

If that be the only situation allotted me, I shall certainly do my duty, as others will; but the considerations to which I have already alluded entitle me to expect, and bind me in every way to require, a situation more correspondent to the dignity of my own character and to the public expectation.

It is for the sake of tendering my services in a way more formal and official than I have before pursued, that I address this to you, my dear brother, as the commander in chief, by whose counsels the constitution presumes that the military department is administered:

If those who have the honour to advise his majesty on this occasion, shall deem my pretensions, among those of all the royal family, to be the only one fit to be rejected and disdained, I may at least hope, as a debt of justice and honour, to have it explained, that I am laid by in virtue of that judegment, and (H4)

not

Brighton, Oct. 9, 1803.

My Dear Brother,

I have taken two days to consider the contents of your letter of the 6th inst. in order to be as accurate as possible in my answer, which must account to you for its being longer perhaps than I intended, or I could have wished.

I confide entirely in the personal kindness and affection expressed in your letter, and am, for that reason, the more unwilling to trouble you again on a painful subject, in which you are not free to act, as your inclination I am sure would lead you. But, as it is not at all improbable, that every part of this transaction may be publicly canvassed hereafter, it is of the utmost importance to my honour, without which I can have no happiness, that my conduct in it shall be fairly represented, and correctly understood. When I made a tender of my services to his majesty's ministers, it was with a just and natural expectation that my offer would have been accepted in the way in which alone it could have been most beneficial to my country, or creditable to myself: or, if that failed, that at least (in justice to me the reasons for a refusal would have been distinctly stated; so that the nation might be satisfied that nothing had been omitted on my part, and enabled to judge of the validity of the reasons assigned for such a refusal. In the first instance, I was referred to his majesty's will and pleasure; and now I am informed by your letter, that before "he had appointed me to the command of the 10th light dragoons, he had caused it to be fully explained to me what his sentiments were with respect to a prince of Wales entering into the army."

It is impossible, my dear brother, that I should know all that

passed between the king and you; but I perfectly recollect the statement you made of the conversation you had had with his majesty, and which strictly corresponds with that in your letter now before me. But I must, at the same time, recal to your memory my positive denial, at that time, of any condition or stipulation having been made upon my first coming into the army; and I am in possession of full and complete documents, which prove that no terms whatever were then proposed, at least to me, whatever might have been the intention: and the communications which I have found it necessary subsequently to make, have ever disclaimed the existence of such a compromise at any period, as nothing could be more averse to my nature, or more remote from my mind.

As to the conversation you quote in 1796 (when the king was pleased to appoint me to succeed sir William Pitt), I have not the most slight recollection of its having taken place between us. My dear brother, if your date is right, you must be mistaken in your exact terms, or at least in the conclusion you draw from it; for, in the intimacy and familiarity of private conversation, it is not at all unlikely that I should have remembered the communication you made me the year before; but that I should have acquiesced in, or referred to, a compromise which I never made, is utterly impossible.

Neither in his majesty's letter to me, nor in the correspondence with Mr. Addington (of which you may not be fully informed), is there one word, or the most distant allusion to the condition stated in your letter; and even if I had accepted the command of a regiment on such terms, my acquiescence could only