But by far the most important light in which we republicans can contemplate the career of George IV. in connexion with the object of increasing our love for the institutions under which we live, is that of morality and religion. The point may be conceded, which is always advanced as the main argument in support of hereditary monarchical government--that it is better adapted to preserve the peace of a country by keeping the succession free from difficulty and doubt, though a reference to history may perhaps warrant the denial even of this position, by exhibiting the various usurpations, murders, unnatural rebellions of children against parents, and other heart-sickening crimes, the consequences of the right invested in one family of exercising sovereign rule, which have so often plunged whole nations into misery and blood;--but this point may be acknowledged; we may admit that elections of chief magistrates are more likely to be the source of frequent troubles. If it can nevertheless be shown, that there is that in the very essence of monarchical institutions which is in any way hostile to virtue, the question ought to be considered as settled in favour of the system that is free from this insuperable objection; for it cannot be denied, that any principle at all tending to aid the propagation of immorality, is the worst which can be admitted into the social and political compacts by which men are united together, and should most be deprecated and eschewed. No matter what apparent or real beneficial results may flow from it, they cannot counterbalance the detriment it may inflict upon the surest guarantee of permanent good to man, both in his individual and aggregate capacity--both with regard to his temporal and eternal interests. National happiness and prosperity of a durable character, are inseparable from national virtue. The evils produced by dissensions concerning the chief power in a state, are in a degree contingent and temporary; those engendered by immorality are certain and lasting. Let then the pages, not merely of the book which tells the story of George IVth of England, but of all history be consulted, and who will deny that they furnish overwhelming evidence that the moral atmosphere of courts has been at all times tainted and baleful; that they have been ever the centres of corruption and vice, and that they must ever be so? They must ever be so, we assert, because the natural and unavoidable result of raising any collection of persons above the opinion, as it were, of the rest of the world, and of surrounding them with a species of _prestige_ which prevents their vices and follies from being viewed in their real hideousness, is to ensure amongst them the sway of immorality. They thus form a sanctuary for corruption, which can never be established in a country where no factitious distinctions exist; there profligacy can have no refuge when hard pressed by public opinion, no ramparts behind which to protect