“But there now came a man amongst them who soon surpassed all the rest in power, as well as in impudence and insolence towards the people. This was that Spencer Perceval of whose signal death we shall have to speak by and bye. This man, a sharp lawyer, inured, from his first days at the bar, to the carrying on of state prosecutions; a sort of understrapper, in London, to the attorneys-general in London, and frequently their deputy in the counties; a short, spare, pale faced, hard, keen, sour-looking man, with a voice well suited to the rest, with words in abundance at his command, with the industry of a laborious attorney, with no knowledge of the great interest of the nation, foreign or domestic, but with a thorough knowledge of those means by which power is obtained and preserved in England, and with no troublesome scruples as to the employment of those means. He had been Solicitor General under Pitt up to 1801, and Attorney General under Addington and Pitt up to February, 1806. This man became the _adviser of the Princess_, during the period of the investigation and correspondence of which we have just seen the history; and, as we are now about to see, the power he obtained, by the means of that office, _made him the Prime Minister of England to the day of his death_, though no more fit for that office than any other barrister in London, taken by tossing up or by ballot.” _Extract 2.—Of Perceval’s illiberal, factious, and crooked policy._ “We have seen that the King was told that the _publication_” (the publication of the Princess of Wales’s justification) “would take place on _the Monday_. That Monday was _the 9th of March_. In this difficulty what was to be done? The whig ministry, with their eyes fixed on the _probable speedy succession of the Prince_, or at least, _his accession to power_, the King having recently been in a very shakey state; the whig ministry, with their eyes fixed on this expected event, and not perceiving, as Perceval did, the power that the _unpublished book_ (for ‘The Book’ it is now called) _would give them with the Prince_ as well as with the King, the whig ministry would not consent to the terms of the Princess, thinking, too, that in spite of her anger and her threats, she would not throw away the scabbard as towards the King.