Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/52

 for any sort of religion, was their grand master. But he was not inconsistent: he had his own personal aggrandizement in view, and appealed to fanaticism, bigotry, and ignorance to help him to attain it. If he was acting a part, he understood his own character, and was not acting out of it. But he and the Orange Lodges too completely misunderstood the nation they were living in. The saying of Charles II. to his brother, afterwards James II., might have shown them their mistake: "They will never kill me to make you king." When hard pressed by political necessity, the English people have not shrunk from revolutionary changes in their constitution; but they would never have embarked on a revolution with the object of placing Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, on the throne. The ridiculous plot was rendered still more ridiculous by the assertion made by the conspirators that they feared the Duke of Wellington intended to seize the crown for himself; that the Iron Duke, the most sternly upright and devotedly loyal of subjects, meant to depose William IV., set aside the little Princess Victoria, and become Emperor of the English, as Bonaparte had become Emperor of the French. The assertion had only to be made, and made publicly, to be drowned in the ridicule it excited. However, the plot of the Orange Lodges, the Duke of Cumberland's association with it, the unveiling of the scheme in the House of Commons by Joseph Hume, and Lord John Russell's masterly dealing with the whole matter, was a nine days' wonder in 1835. An address to the King was unanimously agreed to, praying him to dissolve the Orange Lodges; even the Orangemen in the House assented to this, and Greville says Lord