Prince bowed, and advancing to the woolsack, delivered his patent of nobility and writ of summons to the Lord Chancellor. He then returned to the table where Sir J. Shaw-Lefevre, Clerk of the Parliaments, administered the oath to him, as Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay, Earl of Chester and Carrick, and Lord of the Isles. Having signed the roll, the procession passed round behind the woolsack, till the Prince reached the right-hand side of the Throne, where he took his seat formally on the Chair of State reserved for the Heir-Apparent to the Crown. As he seated himself he placed his hat on his head. Then uncovering he rose, advanced to the woolsack, and shook hands with the Lord Chancellor, who very slightly raised his hat as he went through the formal salutation. The procession then left the House, and business was suspended till five o’clock, when the Prince reappeared in ordinary walking-dress, with the Duke of Cambridge, beside whom he sat on one of the cross-benches throughout the debate on the Address. In both Houses the Government was attacked, mainly on account of its foreign policy. The Tories pretended to see in the proposed cession of the Ionian Islands to Greece the premonitory sign of the fall of the British Empire. Their argument turned on a strange misconception, not only of the arrangements made at Vienna in 1815, but of the Queen’s prerogative. The Ionian Islands were never British territory. They formed an independent Republic, placed by the European Powers under the protection of England.[147] But the primary aim of that protectorate was to foster the spirit of Greek nationality, and not to give Corfu to England as a place of arms. When the Ionians therefore desired annexation to Greece, and Greece was able to protect them, England would have been false to the trust she undertook in 1815, if she had maintained her protectorate by force. Earl Grey clearly proved that it was quite within the prerogative of the Queen to cede a protectorate without consulting Parliament. In fact, as the magnificent island of Java, which was a possession and not a protectorate, was given to the Dutch without Parliament being consulted on the subject, it is difficult to understand why the Opposition raised the question of prerogative in this instance. Mr. Disraeli’s complaints that certain Ministers--of whom Mr. Gladstone was one--had made speeches during the recess indicating a [Illustration: THE VANDYKE ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE.]