"
It is remarkable that the leaders of the Opposition were in a great
degree stimulated in the line they took by the very same hopes which had
animated Fox and his followers in 1789--the expectation that the
Regent's first act would be to discard the existing ministry, and to
place them in office. But again they were disappointed in their
anticipations, of the realization of which they had made so sure that
they had taken no pains to keep them secret. They even betrayed their
mortification to the world when the Prince's intentions on the subject
of the administration became known by the violence of their language in
Parliament, some of their party denouncing the employment of the Great
Seal to give the royal assent to the bill as "fraud and forgery." Nor,
indeed, could the Regent himself, even while expressing his intention to
make no change in the administration, lest "any act of his might in the
smallest degree have the effect of interfering with the progress of his
sovereign's recovery," suppress an expression of dissatisfaction at the
recent arrangements, which he considered had placed him in "a situation
of unexampled embarrassment," and had created "a state of affairs ill
calculated, as he feared, to sustain the interests of the United Kingdom
in this awful and perilous crisis, and most difficult to be reconciled
to the general principles of the British constitution.
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