On the first occasion on which George I. left England to visit Hanover, he appointed the Prince of Wales regent of the kingdom during his absence. The prince, in spite of his limited powers--he was unable to act on the smallest point without the sanction of ministers--contrived to gain considerable and well-deserved popularity. George never again allowed him to hold the same honourable office; and the son and father hated each other ever after. In the May of this year, that son, now King, quitted England in order to visit the Electorate, but he did not appoint Frederick, Prince of Wales, as regent during his absence. He delegated that office to the Queen, and most probably by the Queen’s advice. Frederick had not been long in London before the opposition party made him, if not their chief, at least their rallying point. The prince hated his father heartily and openly, and he had as little regard for his mother. When application was made to parliament to pay some alleged deficiencies in the civil list, Frederick was particularly severe on the extravagance of his sire and the method adopted to remedy it. He talked loudly of what he would have done in a similar extremity, or rather of how he would never have allowed himself to fall into so extreme a difficulty. He was doubly in the wrong; ‘in the first place, for saying what he ought only to have thought; and, in the next, for not thinking what he ought not to have said.’ It was not likely, even if the King had been so disposed, that the Queen would have consented to an arrangement which would have materially diminished her own consequence. She was accordingly invested with the office of regent; and she performed its duties with a grace and an efficiency which caused universal congratulation that the post had not been confided to other, and necessarily weaker, hands. She had Sir Robert Walpole at her side to aid her with his counsel; and the presence of the baronet’s enemy, Lord Townshend, with the King had no effect in damaging the power effectively administered by Caroline and her great minister. It was not merely during the absence of the King in Hanover that Caroline may be said to have ruled in England. The year 1730 affords us an illustration on this point.