Frederick, Prince of Wales, died on the 20th of March, 1751. Having caught a slight cold, without being alarmed at his illness, he soon felt seriously affected. "I feel death," he had said. The dispute which reigned in the royal family did not cease at the grave; the project of the Regency law had occasioned some bitter passages between the dowager princess, mother of the new Prince of Wales, and the Duke of Cumberland. The prince was not popular. "I do not know why," said King George II. "This nation is capricious. The Scotch and the Jacobites think ill of him; and the English do not like discipline." On the 6th of March, 1754, Henry Pelham unexpectedly died. His administration had been just and intelligent, without vigor, but without disturbance. "I shall have no more peace," exclaimed the old king when he learned of his minister's death. As clever in court finesse as he was incapable of directing with grandeur general policy, the Duke of Newcastle knew how to seize the high rank that escaped the dying hands of his brother. William Pitt bided his time. It was in the midst of this administrative weakness and intellectual stagnation that a religious movement had begun, and was spreading, which was destined to reanimate moral life in England, to purify manners, and to give it strength to resist the fatal impulse of the French Revolution. Under the influence of examples which originated in the court of Charles II., and which since then had been fostered by numerous scandals, English society was gradually corrupted in high places, and the contagion of moral evil was beginning to make itself felt even in the most remote provinces. Religious faith, enfeebled by the indifference of the clergy as well as by the theories of philosophers, was struggling faintly against the depravity of manners. The Anglican Church had fallen into a respectable languor; the old dissenting sects, having escaped from the tight bonds of persecution, had lost their ancient fervor. [Image] William Pitt--Lord Chatham. {225}