had excited one universal sentiment of respect and esteem. In his youth, he had been tried as a general in the field; the campaigns in Flanders terminated in a retreat; but the duke-unexperienced as he was, at the head of an army which, abounding in valour, had yet much to learn in tactics, and compelled to act in concert with allies who were not always either unanimous or decided displayed many of the qualities of an able general, and nobly supported that high character for daring and dauntless courage which is the patrimony of his house. He was subsequently raised to the office of commanderin-chief of all his majesty's forces; that office he held for upwards of thirty-two years, and his administration of it did not merely improve, it literally created, an army. During his campaigns, he had felt keenly the abuses which disgraced its internal organization, and rendered its bravery ineffectual; he applied himself, with a soldier's devotion, to the task of removing them; he identified himself with the welfare and the fame of the service; he possessed great readiness and clearness of comprehension in discovering means, and great steadiness and honesty of purpose in applying them. By unceasing diligence, he gave to the common soldier comfort and respectability; the army ceased to be considered as a sort of pesthouse for the reception of moral lepers; discipline and regularity were exacted with unyielding strictness; the officers were raised by a gradual and well ordered system of promotion, which gave merit a chance of not being pushed aside to make way for mere ignorant rank and wealth. The head as well as the heart of the soldier took a higher pitch; the best man in the field was the most welcome at the Horse Guards; there was no longer even a suspicion that unjust partiality disposed of commissions, or that peculation was allowed to fatten upon the spoils of the men; the officer knew that one path was open to all, and the private felt that his recompense was secure. The spirit thus produced soon showed its effects in the field. Before the present century, the military exertions of Britain on the continent, had been confined to the furnishing of small contingents, and even many of the expeditions in the earlier part of the revolutionary war had possessed perhaps by far too much of that character: we had never placed an army in the field which was not merely an auxiliary, and sometimes no very important one, of some military potentate in whose legions it swallowed up. But, from 1808, we assumed a more independent and imposing position; our success was miraculous; the British armies appeared in Spain as perfect in all matters of discipline and equipment, as full of confidence in themselves and in their leaders, as if the means of military success had for centuries been cultivated by the country equally with naval power; and, in every field, the accumulated laurels of twenty years of victory over all the other nations of Europe were wrested triumphantly from the armies of France. With this immortal story the name of the duke of York is as inseparably connected as is the fame of any captain who led our squadrons to battle: it was he, whose ever-vigilant attention had formed the armies that tram was pled down the military opposition of every hostile country into which they had marched, while their discipline gained the good-will even of invaded provinces. The duke of York possessed the further merit, that, while he wielded this powerful arm, and all the patronage which the command of it bestowed, he neither allowed the distribution of that patronage to be affected by political party spirit, nor exposed himself to the jealousy which might have been excited, in minds very sensitive to theoretical danger to the constitution, by the frequent interference of the head of the army in matters of mere political discussion. At no period since the revolution, has party spirit run higher than during the greater period of his career: his own opinions upon general politics were neither fickle nor concealed, but they never interfered with the strict impartiality of his office; men of all parties allowed, that the differences of their political sentiments neither favoured nor impeded the progress of themselves or of their relations in the army. The rank of his royal highness, which brought him so near the throne, saved him from the necessity of supporting himself by too intimate an union with the ministers of the day: he kept himself and his office separate from the discussions of the cabinet. Possessing very fair talents, a clear straight-forward understanding, carefully cultivated by education, and equally free from subtlety and pedantry, his own political opinions were those of a sensible, moderate-minded, constitutional, man; and he did not shrink, when the occasion seemed to call for it, from avowing them with manliness and sincerity. Undoubtedly, a royal personage ought to mix himself up as little as possible in parliamentary debate; for he must expect to have his sentiments canvassed like those of any other parliamentary orator, and the gloss of dignity may be partly marred in the encounter; but, on the other hand, it is only vulgar prejudice that can decry a prince because he publicly declares his sentiments on great questions which concern no less the rights of the people than the prerogative of the Crown. In the debate on the Catholic question in 1825, he had declared his reasonable and conscientious hostility to the Catholic claims, with a sincerity which no man questioned, and a plainness which was worthy of all respect. Yet for this manly expression of his sentiments as a British peer, on a matter which touched, more vitally than any other, the constitution of the people over whom he might one day be called to rule, the trashy orators of the associated Irish agitators had lavished upon him all the abuse in which the dictionary of vulgar malevolence is so rich, and had even expressed a fiendish exultation at the progress of the wasting and painful disease which was leading him to the grave. With ill-assumed lugubriousness they now pretended to join the voice of universal regret which arose from every quarter of the British islands. The soldier, indeed, followed his bier as that of the benefactor to whom he had been indebted for comfort, security, and respectability; but scarcely less did all other ranks of the community mourn with affectionate sorrow over the loss of a prince whose personal qualities had always been popular, and to whom, in his public capacity, they felt that the empire owed a heavy debt of gratitude for all that he had effected for its safety and its fame. There was little room for hesitation in selecting a successor for his royal highness as commanderin-chief: there was only one man in whom personal merit and the fullest confidence of the country were united. Military fame, habits of business, and long practical acquaintance with every department of the army, placed the duke of Wellington, already mastergeneral of the ordnance, beyond the reach of competition; he was called to the head of the army which had so often followed him to victory in the field. The only objection uttered against the appointment was directed, not against his fitness to be commander-inchief, for on that all men were agreed, but on the fitness and expediency of his continuing to hold, along with that office, his former seat in the cabinet. There were those who traced, and justly, the impartiality which pervaded every part of the duke of York's administration, in a great degree to his want of official political connection with the ministry. He was no party to their measures of state; strictly speaking, he was a servant, and could not be a colleague; he was intrusted with the welfare of the military service alone, and to aspirants to military favour on the ground of political services, he could always reply, that to him no political services could be rendered, and that he had no interests to cherish but that of the army. It cannot be denied, however, that this independence was rather to be ascribed to the rank of the royal duke; he had not been brought into his office as the adherent of a party, and he was not to be shaken from it by a change of ministry: he, therefore, had no motive to use his patronage for the purpose of supporting a cabinet as if his own power had depended upon its prosperity. But this is only an additional reason why every arrangement ought to be avoided which may lend facilities to the operation of such a motive; and, as a man's anxiety to serve and support a ministry will always increase with the extent to which he is dependent upon them, so will the temptation to employ his patronage for the political benefit of them and of himself. Parliament met, pursuant to adjournment, on the 8th of February, and one of its earliest measures was to vote an address of condolence to the king, on the death of his royal brother. Lord Liverpool moved it in the House of Lords, and Mr. Peel in the Commons. (February 12); in the latter House, it was seconded by Mr. Brougham. All political asperity was forgotten in an unanimous expression of respect for the private character, and official conduct of the deceased. Mr. Peel said, that he would studiously abstain from touching any point which might excite discordant opinions or angry feelings; but he was confident that every man, whatever might be his political sentiments, would willingly join in expressing deep sorrow for the death of an illustrious prince, who had executed a high office, and fulfilled an important trust, with great talent and untainted impartiality, and in testifying deep sympathy with his majesty on the loss of a brother, who, after having been his play-mate, had been the most faithful and useful of his servants, and who, on his death-bed, could justly console himself with the reflection that he had never abandoned a friend, or resented an injury. Laboured panegyrics on departed princes were better suited to despotic countries, than to those where the human mind grew up in robust and healthy freedom; but he was confident he did not transgress the truth, when he said, that the duke of York possessed qualities which eminently fitted him for the discharge of his high duty, and had lost no opportunity of turning them to advantage in the discharge of that duty; that, as commander in chief, he had improved the discipline, and raised the moral charac ter of the army. No man was capable of appreciating what he had effected in his capacity of commander-in-chief, who had not made himself acquainted with the state, the discipline, and the constitution of the army, when the duke entered upon his office, as well as with its state, when death removed him from his command, "I can never forget," said Mr. Peel, "the last words which I heard from the royal prince, only nine days be fore his death. When he received the news of a part of our troops having landed at Lisbon, he exclaimed, in a faint, but triumphant, voice, I wish that the country could compare the state of the brigade which has landed at Lisbon in 1827, with the state of the brigade which landed at Ostend in 1794." These were the last words which I heard from the living lips of the duke of York." The duke had been forty-six years a soldier, and when he came into office, he had declared, that no man should for the future labour under the disadvantages which he had had to contend with. To enumerate all the benefits which the duke had conferred upon the army, it would be necessary to go through many details of various regulations connected with religious duties, with military schools, with points of discipline, and with the security of fair hopes of promotion to every man in the service. But it was sufficient to recollect, that, while the duke of York held the office of commander-in-chief, every man knew that justice would be done him: and it was by this, and not by the minute regulations of discipline, that the English army had obtained that plastic energy which distinguishes the free soldier from another. During the long period, during the ten thousand days, in which the duke of York had been in office, he (Mr. Peel) did not think that one of those days had passed without his devoting some portion of it to the business of his official situation. No letter ever came to the office, which, if it had a signature, was not read and attended to. Individuals might frequently have mistaken the proper quarter to which their applications should be addressed; but even in these cases a civil answer was always returned, accompanied by a direction to the applicant respecting the department to which he ought to apply. The impartiality of the royal duke had always been the theme of applause in that House, whenever his disposal of promotions had been brought under its notice. On the augmentation of the army in 1825, the only lieutenants who were promoted were senior lieutenants; no interest was allowed to interfere in this, and the only exception to the rule which the duke had here laid down, was one which reflected any thing but dishonour. It was in the case of a lieutenant of the year 1814, who was promoted on account of his conduct at the battle of Waterloo, where the command of his regiment devolved upon him, all the other officers of the regiment having been disabled or slain. In 1825, twenty-two captains were promoted to the rank of majors without purchase. The power of conferring promotion without purchase was certainly a means of conferring favour; but the average service of these twentytwo captains, who had thus obtained majorities without purchase, was twenty-six years. Sixteen majors were also raised to the rank of lieutenant-colonels, and the average service of these was fifteen years. During the whole of the time in which the duke of York was in office, there had never been an instance of an officer being raised by purchase over the head of another, without the offer being previously made to that officer, or unless he had for some reason for feited his claims to promotion. Three-fourths of the commissions which had been given away in the year 1825 without purchase, were conferred upon the sons or relatives of old officers. The duke had possessed extraordinary advantages from having been in the army for forty-six years, and having filled the office of commander-in-chief for thirty-six years. It was no slight encouragement to a soldier to know that an experienced eye observed him, while there was no greater advantage in a commanderin-chief than to know who had seen service. Mr. Brougham considered it no small praise to the Duke of York, that, having for so long a time held the office of commander-in-chief, he had never allowed his political principles by which he (Mr. Brougham) meant party principles to interfere in the discharge of the duties of his office. The best testimony of the sincerity and honesty, with which the late duke entertained those strong political sentiments which he was known to hold upon some subjects was, that he entertained them free from all asperity towards the persons who differed from him.-Sir R. Wilson said, it was worthy of observation, that the improvement, which the duke of York had effected in the discipline of the army, was maintained without any exaggerated severity. When his royal highness came into office, corporal punishment, which had been carried to so great an extent as to become a matter of opprobrium in the eyes of foreigners, was considerably reduced by him; and it was to be hoped that the House would complete what the late commanderin-chief had begun. The kindness, the benevolence, and the impartiality, of the duke of York were well known; and although parties, upon whose cases he judged, might sometimes think his decisions harsh, yet in no case had any one impeached the motives upon which he had determined. By the death of the duke of York, his next brother, the duke of Clarence, became the nearest heir of the crown. It was thought that this change in his situation would be accompanied with the necessity of a more expensive style of living; and, on the 15th of February, a royal message was presented to both Houses of parliament, stating that his majesty was desirous of making a further provision for the support of the duke and duchess of Clarence, suitable to the present situation of their royal highnesses. The message was taken into con |