A History of the Four Georges 
and of William
by Justin 
McCarthy and Justin Huntly 
McCarthy 
 
The Project Gutenberg eBook, A History of the Four Georges and of 
William 
IV, Volume IV (of 4), by Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy 
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with 
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or 
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Title: A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 
4) 
Author: Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy 
 
Release Date: November 13, 2007 [eBook #23472] 
Language: English 
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY 
OF THE FOUR GEORGES AND OF WILLIAM IV, VOLUME IV 
(OF 4)*** 
E-text prepared by Al Haines 
 
Transcriber's note: 
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly 
braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred 
in the original book. For its Index, a page number has been placed only 
at the start of that section. 
In the original volumes in this set, each even-numbered page had a 
header consisting of the page number, the volume title, and the chapter 
number. The odd-numbered page header consisted of the year with 
which the page deals, a subject phrase, and the page number. In this set 
of e-books, the odd-page year and subject phrase have been converted 
to sidenotes, usually positioned between the first two paragraphs of the 
even-odd page pair. If such positioning was not possible for a given 
sidenote, it was positioned where it seemed most logical. 
In the original book set, consisting of four volumes, the master index 
was in Volume 4. In this set of e-books, the index has been duplicated 
into each of the other volumes, with its first page re-numbered as 
necessary, and an Index item added to each volume's Table of 
Contents. 
 
A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES 
AND OF WILLIAM IV. 
by 
JUSTIN MCCARTHY
and 
JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY 
In Four Volumes 
VOL. IV. 
 
Harper & Brothers Publishers New York and London 1901 
Copyright, 1901, by Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved. 
 
CONTENTS OF THE FOURTH VOLUME. 
LXIII. "OPENS AMID ILL OMENS" . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 
LXIV. POPULAR ALARMS--ROYAL EXCURSIONS . . . . . . . . 15 
LXV. GEORGE CANNING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 
LXVI. THE CLOSE OF CANNING'S CAREER . . . . . . . . . 46 
LXVII. "THE CHAINS OF THE CATHOLIC" . . . . . . . . . . 65 
LXVIII. THE LAST OF THE GEORGES . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 
LXIX. KING WILLIAM THE FOURTH . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 
LXX. LE ROI D'YVETOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 
LXXI. REFORM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 
LXXII. THE GREAT DEBATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 
LXXIII. THE TRIUMPH OF REFORM . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 
LXXIV. THE EMANCIPATION OF LABOUR . . . . . . . . . . . 188
LXXV. THE STATE CHURCH IN IRELAND . . . . . . . . . . 205 
LXXVI. "ONLY A PAUPER" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 
LXXVII. PEEL'S FORLORN HOPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 
LXXVIII. STILL THE REIGN OF REFORM . . . . . . . . . . . 261 
LXXIX. THE CLOSE OF A REIGN AND THE OPENING OF AN 
ERA 280 
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 
 
{1} 
A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 
CHAPTER LXIII. 
"OPENS AMID ILL OMENS." 
The closest student of history would find it hard indeed to turn to the 
account of any other royal reign which opened under conditions so 
peculiar and so unpropitious as those which accompanied the 
succession of George the Fourth to the English throne. Even in the 
pages of Gibbon one might look in vain for the story of a reign thus 
singularly darkened in its earliest chapters. George the Fourth had 
hardly    
    
		
	
	
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