"The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul, producing holy witness, Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,-- A goodly apple rotten at the heart; O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!"
Indeed, the whole panegyric which follows the quotation from Scripture is of that description which is sure to raise for its author a monument, whereon will be engraved, "Grovelling servility to royalty, and a mean sacrifice of public duty at the altar of private friendship." The following brief extract will be sufficient to establish the justness of our censure:
"The RELIGION of the Duke of York was SINCERE. His family affections were strong, and the public cannot have forgotten the _pious_ tenderness with which he discharged the duty of watching the last days of his royal father. No pleasure, no business, was ever known to interrupt his regular visits to Windsor, where his unhappy parent could neither be _grateful_ for, nor even be sensible of, his unremitted attentions. (!!!) His royal highness prepared the most splendid victories our annals boast, by an unceasing attention to the character and talents of the officers, and the comforts and health of the men. Terms of service were fixed for every rank, and neither influence nor _money_ was permitted to FORCE any individual forward. (!!!) It has never been disputed(?) that, _in the field_, his royal highness displayed INTELLIGENCE,(!) MILITARY SKILL,(!!) and his family attribute, the most UNALTERABLE COURAGE.(!!!) If a tradesman, whose bill was unpaid by an officer, thought proper to apply to the Horse Guards, the debtor received a letter from HEADQUARTERS, requiring to know if there existed any objections to the account, and failing in rendering a satisfactory answer, he was put on stoppages until the creditor's demand was satisfied. Repeated applications of this kind might endanger the officer's commission, _which was then sold for the payment of his creditors_."
While Sir Walter enlarges upon the duke's VIRTUES, (virtues, indeed!) in a similar strain to the above, he uses the most palliative language to gloss over his notorious vices. Not a syllable does he say about his royal highness' OWN CREDITORS BEING LEFT UNPAID, nor does he advocate the propriety, that the commander-in-chief ought to have been "put on stoppages until HIS numerous creditors were satisfied," or that the several commissions he held in the British army should have been "sold for the payment of HIS creditors!" In eulogizing the "military skill, intelligence, and unalterable courage of his royal highness," all allusion to the duke's _precipitate flight from Lisle_ is carefully omitted, and that Houchard, the governor of that fortress, lost his head for not driving him into the sea, which it was proved he might easily have done, through the duke's obstinacy and WANT of _military skill_!!! Are the very clear statements and unshaken evidence of Mrs. Clarke also to be set at nought, because a small majority of the most venal House of Commons of any in our history thought proper to acquit his royal highness from her charges? Was not every honourable man in England convinced of their verity? And did not universal execration COMPEL the commander-in-chief TO RESIGN, in defiance of that contemptible and loathed majority? Yet all these well-known FACTS are so smoothed down by misrepresentation and shuffling excuses, that his royal highness is actually made to appear a MARTYR TO POPULAR OPINION!!! When speaking of the duke's "_pious_ attentions" to his royal father, the "celebrated novel-writer" says not a syllable about the infamy of receiving ten thousand pounds a-year for such unnecessary services,--unnecessary, because, at their commencement, they were only formally bestowed for the sake of gain, and not through a sense of filial duty; and, for a greater part of the period, they were less necessary, for _forms_ could be of no use to a _dead monarch_!