the royal character, and to trifle with those light, subordinate, lacquered sceptres in those hands that sustain the ball representing the world, or which wield the trident that commands the ocean.  Cross a brook, and you lose the King of England; but you have some comfort in coming again under his Majesty, though “shorn of his beams,” and no more than Prince of Wales.  Go to the north, and you find him dwindled to a Duke of Lancaster; turn to the west of that north, and he pops upon you in the humble character of Earl of Chester.  Travel a few miles on, the Earl of Chester disappears, and the king surprises you again as Count Palatine of Lancaster.  If you travel beyond Mount Edgecombe, you find him ones more in his incognito, and he is Duke of Cornwall.  So that, quite fatigued and satiated with this dull variety, you are infinitely refreshed when you return to the sphere of his proper splendor, and behold your amiable sovereign in his true, simple, undisguised, native character of Majesty.

In every one of these five principalities, duchies, palatinates, there is a regular establishment of considerable expense and most domineering influence.  As his Majesty submits to appear in this state of subordination to himself, his loyal peers and faithful commons attend his royal transformations, and are not so nice as to refuse to nibble at those crumbs of emoluments which console their petty metamorphoses.  Thus every one of those principalities has the apparatus of a kingdom for the jurisdiction over a few private estates, and the formality and charge of the Exchequer of Great Britain for collecting the rents of a country squire.  Cornwall is the best of them; but when you compare the charge with the receipt, you will find that it furnishes no exception to the general rule.  The Duchy and County Palatine of Lancaster do not yield, as I have reason to believe, on an average of twenty years, four thousand pounds a year clear to the crown.  As to Wales, and the County Palatine of Chester, I have my doubts whether their productive exchequer yields any returns at all.  Yet one may say, that this revenue is more faithfully applied to its purposes than any of the rest; as it exists for the sole purpose of multiplying offices and extending influence.

An attempt was lately made to improve this branch of local influence, and to transfer it to the fund of general corruption.  I have on the seat behind me the constitution of Mr. John Probert, a knight-errant dubbed by the noble lord in the blue ribbon, and sent to search for revenues and adventures upon the mountains of Wales.  The commission is remarkable, and the event not less so.  The commission sets forth, that, “upon a report of the deputy-auditor” (for there is a deputy-auditor) “of the Principality of Wales, it appeared that his Majesty’s land revenues in the said principality are greatly diminished";—­and “that upon a report of the surveyor-general of his Majesty’s land revenues, upon a memorial