The ministers of the Regent might, however, have done better justice to themselves, and to their opportunities, but for their contemptible master. The difficulty of conciliating that man was immensely enhanced by his disreputable domestic circumstances, and the daily need of avoiding exposure, by keeping watch[1] upon the _Examiners_ and the _Registers_ of the day. Animadversions upon the conduct of the Irreclaimable are pretty generally wasted; and when the Irreclaimable is in sovereign power, discussion on his personal demerits is apt to be mixed up, somehow or other, with such meaner questions as the welfare of his subjects, and the stability of the Throne. At this stage, “I told you so” becomes sedition; and the next thought is of sabres, and bayonets, and dungeons. So the Liverpool ministry had their hands full, between this selfish prince and starving people. Throughout the year 1816, there was a determined outcry for Parliamentary Reform and reduction of public expenditure. And being demanded as _rights_, the end of granting these things was looked upon as something too awful to contemplate. * * * * * One leading difficulty with the Reformers was as to the mode: Reformers of that day must be divided into classes and sub-classes, when their history comes to be written. There were avowed Republicans at one end of the scale, and advocates of a purified Constitution at the other. Their common opponents, however, not only refused to make distinction, but took hold of minor differences and threw them in the Reformers’ teeth; thus discrediting the entire principle. For example: Mr. Watson, surgeon, is found to have a number of prepared pike-heads in his house. He is ready to employ force, if it comes to the point. Mr. William Cobbett, editor, takes the liberty of telling the nation that it will never be itself again without a reform. He abhors violence of any sort or kind. Yet both of these persons, along with all those of intermediate shades of opinion, are decried as subverters of the Constitution. This trick had been kept up for twenty-five years past. And now that “the most powerful and effective public writer that ever appeared,” the “closest political reasoner of his time” (as described by cotemporaries), was the leading writer and reasoner upon Reform in Parliament: the best thing to do was to impute unworthy and wicked motives, and to follow that up by an endeavour to curtail his liberty.