Descendants of the Stuarts

X PREFACE.
discarded policy of the Plantagenets ; a policy
which for the last two centuries had been falling
into desuetude, and which it was reserved for this
monarch to reanimate with, if possible, increased
inveteracy.
Queen Anne, George the Pirst, George the Second,
and George the Third, walked in the steps of their
Orange predecessor, — were engaged in perpetual
warfare with Erance, and abjured the peaceful notions
which, since the times of Edward the Fourth, had
gradually influenced our national polity.
Under George the Pourth the unnatural hostility
existing between England and Erance may be said to
have received its death-blow ; the chivalrous support
which our sovereign rendered to Louis the Eighteenth
earning for him the eternal gratitude of that good
old prince — who perhaps of all monarchs that have
ever reigned conferred the most lasting benefits upon
his subjects without meeting with the slightest return
of gratitude. And thus for George the Eourth was
reserved the honour, not only of allaying the animo-
sity existing between the rival countries, but also
of repaying the princely hospitality evinced by
Louis's ancestor towards James the Second.
That the Oath abjuring the descendants of the
Stuarts, and which, be it remembered, is taken hy
all members of parliament and public function-
aries, is incongruous as to the language in which it
is couched, is notorious ; although it is simply the
verbiage, not the intention of the Act, which the death