House of Brunswick

“ That during the one hundred and fifty-seven years the Brunswick family have reigned over the British Empire, the policy and conduct of the majority of the members of that family, and especially of the various reigning members, always saving and excepting her present Majesty, have been hostile to the welfare of the mass of the people. This will be sought to be proved at length by a sketch of the principal events in the reign of each monarch, from August 1st, 1714, to the present date. ”

“ In New-Brunswick, a man with his axe and a few other simple tools, provides himself with a house and most of his implements of husbandry,—and while a European would consider himself as an outcast, he feels perfectly at home in the depth of the forest. In new countries likewise the mind acquires those ideas of self-importance and independence so peculier to Americans. ”

“ Her present Majesty, Alexandrina Victoria, was born May 24th, 1819, and ascended the throne June 20th, 1837, as representing her father, the Duke of Kent, fourth son of George HI. On February 10th, 1840, it being the general etiquette for the Brunswick family to intermarry amongst themselves, she was married to her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg, who received an allowance from the nation of £30,000, to compensate him for becoming the husband of his wife. The Queen, more sensible than others of the arduous position of a Prince Consort, wished her loyal husband to have £100,000 a year. ”

“ It is now submitted that Parliament possesses no Legislative right but what it derives from the people, and that the people are under no irrevocable contract or obligation to continue any member of the House of Brunswick on the throne. In order to show that this is not a solitary opinion, the following Parlimentary dicta are given:—
The Honorable Temple Luttrell, in a speech made in the House of Commons, on the 7th November, 1775, showed "that of thirty-three sovereigns since William the Conqueror, thirteen only have ascended the throne by divine hereditary right.... ”

“ One dynasty has no dislike to a strong prejudice in favour of a preceding dynasty, when the latter has ceased to be formidable. The propensity to adhere to royalty is looked upon as a good symptom; and the event generally answers the expectation. The favourite courtiers under the house of Brunswick have come of Jacobite families.
A century ago, according to a passage in Gay, Lincoln's Inn and the neighbourhood were dangerous places to walk through at night. ”

“ The grandfather of our George I., William, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, had seven sons, and all these were dukes, like their father. On the decease of the latter, they affected to discover that if the seven heirs, each with his little dukedom, were to marry, the greatness of the house would suffer alarming diminution. They accordingly determined that one alone of the brothers should form a legal matrimonial connection, and that the naming of the lucky re-founder of the dignity of Brunswick should be left to chance! ”

“ After the pleasant labour a sumptuous banquet followed, and the envoy and Duchess announced to the bridegroom at home that his bride would set out on the 11th, provided by that time intelligence was received of the sailing from England of the fleet which was to serve for a wedding escort across the sea.
The Duke of Brunswick was a man who, whenever he asserted that he was going to speak to you with perfect frankness, was really about to treat you with anything but candour. ”

“ She has just finished, and placed it in her dairy, a little bark-lined recess adjoining the house—and now, on hospitable thoughts intent, she has caught up her pail and is gone for water—in this we are most luxurious in New Brunswick, never keeping any quantity in the house, but using it bright and sparkling as it gushes from the spring. While she is gone, we will take a pencilling of her dwelling. A beautiful specimen of still-life, in the shape of a baby six months old, reposes in its cradle—its eye-lids' long and silky fringes are lightly folded in sleep on its smooth round cheek. ”

“ Curious notions of truth and honor seem current among these Brunswicks!
On the 27th of June, the Lords, on a message from the Prince Regent, voted an additional allowance of £6,000 a year to the Duke of Cumberland in consequence of the marriage. In the House of Commons, after a series of very warm debates, in which Lord Castlereagh objected to answer "any interrogatories tending to vilify the Royal Family," the House ultimately refused to grant the allowance by 126 votes against 125. ”

“ New Brunswick received a city charter from the royal governor in 1730, and was chartered as a city by the state legislature in 1784. During the War of Independence, General Washington and his army entered New Brunswick on the 28th of November 1776, but on the approach of the enemy evacuated it, and from the 3rd of December 1776 to the 13th of April 1777 it was occupied by the British under Lord Howe. Cornelius Vanderbilt was for several years the proprietor of the Bellona Hotel of New Brunswick, now a tenement house. ”

“ In 1794, the debts of the Prince of Wales then amounting to about £650,000, not including the amounts due on the foreign bonds, a marriage was suggested in order to give an excuse for going to Parliament for a vote. This was at a time when the Prince was living with Mrs. Fitzherbert as his wife, and when Lady Jersey was his most prominent mistress. The bride selected was Caroline of Brunswick. A poor woman for a wife, if Lord Malmesbury's picture is a true one, certainly in no sense a bad woman. ”

“ If a man lent books, newspapers, or pamphlets without license, he might be fined twenty pounds for every offence. If he permitted lectures or debates on any subject whatever, he might be fined one hundred pounds a day. And yet people dare to tell us that we owe our liberties to these Brunswicks!
On the 1st of June, 1795, Gillray, in a caricature entitled "John Bull Ground Down," had represented Pitt grinding John Bull into money, which was flowing out in an immense stream beneath the mill. The Prince of Wales is drawing off a large portion, to pay the debts incurred by his extravagance ”

“ The Queen, it appears, has still chances left her, and your Majesty will probably have plenty of aspirants to her hand, from whom you may choose a new son-in-law! Duke Eric of Brunswick91 has sent a gentleman hither with credentials, Doctor Joachim Gotzen, to offer the Queen a share in his bed and board. He likewise offers his portion of the Duchy of Brunswick, such as it is, and 100,000 crowns which he has in France, and undertakes that, if he dies without children, his dominions and the rest of his property shall go to the House of Austria. ”

“ Besides the College of New-Brunswick incorporated by charter, there are Grammar Schools established in several counties which are liberally supported. By the bounty of the Legislature, twenty pounds per annum is allowed to be drawn out of the Province Treasury for every Parish where a School-House is provided, and the sum of thirty pounds raised by the inhabitants, to enable them to employ good and sufficient teachers, and this bounty extends to three schools in each Parish. ”

“ When two years later the inhabitants of the State of Maine prepared to invade New Brunswick, the announcement was received with intense feelings of regard for the honor of the British Crown. The House, which was then sitting, voted £100,000, and 8,000 men to aid the New Brunswickers in repelling the invaders, and rising in a body gave three cheers for the queen, and three for their loyal brethren of the sister province. Long may the feeling continue to exist, and grow within our borders! ”

“ In the army, the normal schoolmasters can tell how this brave Brunswicker rendered education difficult, and drove out, one by one, many of the best teachers. Soldiers who think too much, make bad machines. It was the father of the present Duke of Cambridge who publicly expressed his disbelief, in 1844—5, of the failure of the potato crop in Ireland, "because he had always found the potatoes at his own table very good!" ”

“ At the accession of George I. the national debt of this country, exclusive of annuities, was about £36,000,000; after five Brunswicks have left us, it is £800,000,000 for Great Britain and Ireland, and much more, than £110,000,000 for India. The average annual national expenditure under the rule of George I. was £5,923,079; to-day it is more than £70,000,-000, of which more than £20,000,000 have been added in the last twenty years. During the reign of George I. land paid very nearly one-fourth the whole of the taxes; to-day it pays less than one-seventieth part ”

“ A County Court-House, which also serves for a Market; a small commodious Church in a sightly situation, two neat Chapels, one belonging to the Baptists, and the other to the Methodists; a Catholic Chapel in progress; a Gaol, and a [47] building occupied as a College till another one on an enlarged scale can be erected; a Poor House in the vicinity of the town, on a liberal scale ”

“ The suitor was a soldier and a prince. Augustus Frederick, Crown Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, was allured by the ‘beaux yeux de la casette’ of the little heiress, which contained, after all, only one hundred thousand thalers, fifteen thousand pounds sterling; but an humble dower for a duke’s only daughter. In the meantime the affianced lover had to prove himself, by force of arms, worthy of his lady and her fortune. To the siege of Philipsburg, in the year 1676, repaired the chivalrous Augustus of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. ”

“ The superiority of the Upper House over the Lower was, on the whole, steadily maintained during the reign of George II., the ministers not being anxious to strengthen the High Church party in the Lords, and the King himself so rarely suggesting fresh creations as to cause a belief that he particularly disliked increasing their numbers. It was reserved for George III., by an unsparing use of his prerogative, entirely to change the character of the Upper House, and thus lay the foundation for that disrepute into which, since then, the peers have been constantly falling. ”

“ One day or other my son will be married, and then I shall have his wife’s ladies pretending to take place in my palace, which they shall not do.’ The Princess of Brunswick left England in a naturally angry mood. The King, reluctantly and tardily, paid both her journeys, and gave her 1,000l. besides. Her mother left her nothing.
The death of a woman of less note caused some conversation in Queen Charlotte’s circle, soon after the demise of the Princess-dowager of Wales, and it may be fittingly noticed here. ”

“ The first store was kept by a man named Cairns, who lived in an old house on the bank of the river near the gate of the first Church built in Fredericton [in front of the present Cathedral] . He used to sell fish at one penny each and butternuts at two for a penny. He also sold tea at $2.00 per lb. which was to us a great boon. We greatly missed our tea. Sometimes we used an article called Labrador, and sometimes steeped spruce or hemlock bark for drinking, but I despised it.
There were no domestic animals in our settlement at first except one black and white cat, which was a great pet. ”

“ He talked of going abroad; he sold five hundred horses and shut up Carlton House; he proposed to live in the country and devote three-fourths of his income to the payment of his debts. By August 1794 matters had proceeded so far that he had promised the king to give up Mrs. Fitzherbert and to marry the Princess of Brunswick. A reconciliation was all the more easy because, since the disunion among the leading whigs in 1792, the prince had nearly severed himself from his old friends. ”

“ Coutts, the bankers. Out of all the Brunswicks England has been cursed with, George I. is the only one against whom there is no charge of wanton falsehood to his ministers or subjects, and it is fairly probable that his character for such truthfulness was preserved by his utter inability to lie in our language.
Not only did George, Prince of Wales, thus deny his marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert, but repeated voluntarily the denial after he became King George IV. Despite this denial, the King's executors, the Duke of Wellington and Sir William Knighton, were compelled by Mrs. ”

“ Brunswick is an old and rather ugly town, with large and gloomy houses, an old church in full Gothic style, and a town hall even more Gothic. It is a great relief to find something really old after a succession of little capitals rebuilt without character or historical memory, with their tawdry modern ornamentation. I noticed a magnificent breed of 200 post horses and draught and military horses; they are splendid, strong and vigorous animals; I do not know whether the district produces them or if they are brought from Mecklenburg. ”

“ The grave and serious demeanour of these people is as different from the savage scowl of the discontented peasant, murmuring beneath the burthen of taxation and ill-remunerated toil, as from the free, light-hearted, and careless laughter, both of which characterise the rural groups in the fertile fields of England. New Brunswick is the land of strangers; even the first settlers, the "sons of the soil," as they claim to be, have hardly yet forgot their exile, a trace of which character, be he prosperous as he may, still hovers over the emigrant. ”