It is time we entered better society than we have been in for the last few lectures. Of course much depends on the meaning of the word “better.” I do not think we need attach any moral significance to it. Let me at once admit that by better, I mean more select, or, perhaps, “exclusive” is the right term. For most people in the time of which I am about to treat it was necessary to be born to good society in order to obtain an entrance to it. Yet there were exceptions. Whilst there were men like Brougham whose genius compelled recognition, though they were made to feel that they neither were nor could be members of the inner circle; there were others, without even his social qualifications, who took their place therein and made themselves felt and even feared by the highest in the land. Such a man was the author of the papers from which I shall borrow so much to-day; nor can we forget that the rival in _ton_ to the Prince Regent himself, the first gentleman in Europe, was Brummell, the tradesman’s son. The subject of my remarks to-day will be at first mainly political, not that I have any desire to raise controversial questions; but one is bound to do so, when speaking of English life during the great war with Napoleon, which bears so striking an analogy to the present. There is a marked tendency to-day to say that the conduct of our statesmen and of society in general contrasts unfavourably with that of men of a century ago; and I think I shall be able to prove conclusively that, under very different conditions the passions of men are much the same as formerly, and that, if the advantage is on either side, it is with the present rather than with the past. I feel I have set myself a very difficult task in attempting to define a Whig in the later years of George III.