¹ The Times, 17 July 1830. For the public and parliamentary suspicion regarding Victoria's private fortune, see Kuhn, William M., “Queen Victoria's Civil List: What Did She Do with It?” Historical Journal 36 (1993): 645–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Muldrew, Craig, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (New York, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Linda Colley, “The Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty and the British Nation, 1760–1820,” Past and Present, no. 102 (1984): 125, and Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), p. 206Google Scholar. See also Langford, Paul, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689–1798 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 547–48Google Scholar.

⁴ Thompson, F. M. L., English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1963), pp. 16–17Google Scholar; Beckett, J. V., The Aristocracy in England, 1660–1914 (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; Habakkuk, John, Marriage, Debt, and the Estates System: English Landownership, 1650–1950 (Oxford, 1994), p. 279CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vickery, Amanda, The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England (New Haven, Conn., 1998), pp. 13–14, 37Google Scholar; McCahill, Michael W., “Open Elites: Recruitment to the French Noblesse and the English Aristocracy in the Eighteenth Century,” Albion 30 (1998): 599–629CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Davidoff, Leonore and Hall, Catherine, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago, 1987)Google Scholar; Langford, Paul, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar; Earle, Peter, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660–1730 (Berkeley, 1989)Google Scholar; Raven, James, Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England, 1750–1800 (Oxford, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smail, John, The Origins of Middle-Class Culture: Halifax, Yorkshire, 1660–1780 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994)Google Scholar; Hunt, Margaret R., The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley, 1996)Google Scholar; Wahrman, Dror, Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c. 1780–1840 (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Klein, Lawrence E. places this phenomenon in a broader context in “Politeness for Plebes: Consumption and Social Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century England,” in The Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text, ed. Bermingham, Ann and Brewer, John (London, 1995), p. 373Google Scholar. In his analysis of the middling sort's appetite for guides to polite culture, Klein cites Daniel Bell's theory of “the cultural contradiction of commercial society.” Bell posits that the twentieth-century economic principle based on rationality and efficiency combined with a culture based on profligacy and waste had its roots in the eighteenth. Bell, Daniel, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York, 1976)Google Scholar.

⁶ Hibbert, Christopher, George IV Prince of Wales, 1762–1811 (New York, 1974), pp. 23, 72–73, 105–6, 175–77Google Scholar; see also Fulford, Roger, George the Fourth (London, 1935), p. 33Google Scholar. George's latest biographer blames the prince's excessive pursuit of pleasure on George III's inflexible insistence on duty and obedience as a condition for his love; Smith, E. A., George IV (New Haven, Conn., 1999)Google Scholar.

⁷ The Correspondence of George, Prince of Wales, 1770–1812, ed. Aspinall, Arthur, 8 vols. (London, 1963–71), 1:4, 99, 155Google Scholar.

⁸ Ibid., 1:167, 179–80, 214, 272.

⁹ Ibid., 2:226; Hibbert, George IV, p. 128.

¹⁰ Correspondence of George, 3:4.

¹¹ Brooke, John, King George III (New York, 1972), pp. 204, 206–7Google Scholar; Hanoverian, A, A Letter to the House of Peers, on the Present Bill Depending in Parliament, Relative to the Prince of Wales’ Debts (London, 1795), p. 8Google Scholar; this pamphlet was also published under the punchier title, John Bull Starving to Pay the Debts of the Royal Prodigal: A Letter to the House of Peers.

¹² Hibbert, George IV, pp. 163–64. The king's message was read to both Houses on 27 April 1795. I drew my accounts of parliamentary debates from The Times and checked them for discrepancies and omissions against the Morning Chronicle and the detailed account of the debates in Huish, Robert, Memoirs of George the Fourth, 2 vols. (London, 1831), 1:336–73Google Scholar.

¹³ Correspondence of George, 2:250–51Google Scholar; Charles James Fox to Henry Holland, 17 May 1795, Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, ed. Russell, Lord John, 4 vols. (London, 1854), 3:108Google Scholar.

¹⁴ [Miles, William Augustus], A Letter to the Prince of Wales, on a Second Application to Parliament, to Discharge Debts Wantonly Contracted since May, 1787, 11th ed. (of 13) (London, 1795)Google Scholar; for Miles, see Dictionary of National Biography, 1908–9 ed. The author of A Letter to Charles Grey, Esq. on His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales (London, 1795) on p. 40Google Scholar alleged that the author had written an answer to his own pamphlet in order to prolong the controversy: Observations on a Letter to the Prince of Wales, in Consequence of a Second Application to Parliament &c. and on Those Signed Neptune and Legion, in the Same Pamphlet (London, 1795). The Neptune letter of 1784, which presents the prince under the bad influence of Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and others, is included in the 11th ed., which also contains a postscript answering the Observations. Edward Thurlow, who had been replaced as lord chancellor by Lord Loughborough in June 1792 after a disagreement with Pitt, denounced A Letter to the Prince of Wales in the Lords on 25 June 1795 as a gross, scandalous libel: Correspondence of George, 2:305n.; Prince to Queen Charlotte, 3 July 1795, Correspondence of George, 3:71; Fox to Holland, 14 June 1795, Memorials and Correspondence of Fox, 3:109.

¹⁵ Cannadine, David, Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain (London, 1995), pp. 37–41Google Scholar; Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt, and the Estates System, chap. 4; Beckett, Aristocracy, chap. 9.

¹⁶ Hoppit, Julian, “The Use and Abuse of Credit in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Business Life and Public Policy: Essays in Honour of D. C. Coleman, ed. McKendrick, Neil and Outhwaite, R. B. (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 68–73Google Scholar, and “Attitudes to Credit in Britain, 1680–1790,” Historical Journal 33 (1990): 305–22Google Scholar; Hunt, Middling Sort, p. 43.

¹⁷ The Times, 15 May 1795. Unless otherwise noted, I drew all background information on M.P.s from Thorne, Roland G., ed., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1790–1820, 5 vols. (London, 1986), vols. 3–5Google Scholar.

¹⁸ The Times, 16 May 1795.

¹⁹ The Times, 25 June 1795.

²⁰ Morning Chronicle, 15 May 1795.

²¹ The Times, 6 June 1795; Ayling, Stanley, A Portrait of Sheridan (London, 1985), pp. 107–8Google Scholar.

²² The Times, 9 and 15 May 1795.

²³ The Times, 6 June 1795.

²⁴ A Loyal, but Solemn Expostulation (London, 1795), p. 13Google Scholar; see also Nicholls, John, Observations on the Situation of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales (London, 1795)Google Scholar.

²⁵ The Times, 27 April and 15 May 1795. A Letter to the Lord Chancellor, on the Case of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales (London, 1795), pp. 12, 15–16Google Scholar, argued that the independence of the heir apparent not only preserved the hereditary succession but also the democratic branch of the constitution by checking the power of the crown.

²⁶ The Times, 28 April and 15 May 1795. This is a central argument in A Loyal, but Solemn Expostulation. A pamphlet sympathetic to the prince nonetheless advised him to reform along these lines. It observed, “The approach to a palace should partake of the magnificence of the building to which it leads: no filth or dirt, or trifling object, or tinsel decoration should be seen in a royal avenue, whose character should gradually mark, and by degrees unfold, the majesty of the edifice to which it belongs.” Two Words of Counsel, and One of Comfort: Addressed to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales (London, 1795), pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

²⁷ The Times, 15 May 1795; Pollock, John, Wilberforce (New York, 1978), pp. 129, 265–68, 302–3Google Scholar.

²⁸ The Times, 15 May 1795. A Morning Chronicle editorial of 29 April 1795 already made the point about the prince's debts paling in comparison to the sums expended on the war. The duke of Bedford and earl of Lauderdale would argue the same in the Lords debate of 24 June: The Times, 25 June 1795.

²⁹ Reid, Loren, Charles James Fox, A Man for the People (Columbia, Mo., 1969), pp. 40–43, 122–24Google Scholar; Ehrman, John, The Younger Pitt: The Years of Acclaim (London, 1969), pp. 107, 591–603Google Scholar, quote on p. 601; Reitan, E. A., “The Civil List in Eighteenth-Century British Politics: Parliamentary Supremacy versus the Independence of the Crown,” Historical Journal 9 (1966): 318–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, ed. McDowell, R. B. (Chicago, 1974), 8:266, 286–87Google Scholar.

³¹ Kramnick, Isaac, The Rage of Edmund Burke: Portrait of an Ambivalent Conservative (New York, 1977), pp. 104, 107, 170–72Google Scholar.

³² Letter to a Noble Lord (1796), in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, ed. McDowell, R. B. (Oxford, 1991), 9:150, 162Google Scholar. For Burke's debts, his regret at not fleeing abroad at the end of June 1795, and a threatened execution in January 1796, see Correspondence of Burke, 8:280, 284–85, 292, 365–66.

³³ Burke, Writings and Speeches, 9:162.

³⁴ Pocock, J. G. A., “The Political Economy of Burke's Analysis of the French Revolution,” Historical Journal 25 (1982): 333CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This essay is reprinted in Pocock, J. G. A., Virtue, Commerce, and History (Cambridge, 1985), chap. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; quotation on p. 195.

³⁵ Reitan, “Civil List.” See also Kuhn, “Queen Victoria,” pp. 647–48; and Harling, Philip, The Waning of “Old Corruption”: The Politics of Economical Reform in Britain, 1779–1846 (Oxford, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ The Times, 22 May 1795; Hibbert, George IV, pp. 105–6; Morris, Marilyn, The British Monarchy and the French Revolution (New Haven, Conn., 1998), p. 151Google Scholar.

³⁷ Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 360.

³⁸ 2 and 28 July 1792, respectively, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, vols. 5–11, ed. M. D. George (London, 1935–54) (hereafter BMC), nos. 8112, 8117.

³⁹ James Gillray, Frying Sprats, Vide. Royal Supper and Toasting Muffins, 28 November 1791, BMC, nos. 7922–23; Richard Newton, Contributing to the Sinking Fund, 3 April 1792, BMC, no. 8078.

⁴⁰ Phillipson, Nicholas, “Adam Smith as Civic Moralist,” in Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Hont, Istvan and Ignatieff, Michael (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 179–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴¹ For the country-couple image, see, e.g., [Richard Newton?], Summer Amusement at Farmer G——'s Near Windsor, 9 August 1791, BMC, no. 7897, and Going to Market, 21 November 1791, BMC, no. 7915; Richard Newton, The Windsor Milkman; or, Any Thing to Turn a Penny, 12 June 1792, BMC, no. 8106. For the money hoarding, see [Kingsbury?], From the Originals at Windsor L—— C——Town's Dream, 20 March 1791, BMC, no. 7836; Richard Newton, A Visit to the R——l Cole Pit, 30 November 1791, BMC, no. 7924. For Schwellenberg, see [H. W.?], The Angelic Child Presented to the——[Queen] of Golconda, 10 February 1791, BMC, no. 7826; James Gillray, An Angel, Gliding on a Sun-Beam into Paradise, 11 October 1791, BMC, no. 7906. For the continuities and changes in George's caricature image throughout his reign, see Carretta, Vincent, George III and the Satirists from Hogarth to Byron (Athens, Ga., 1990)Google Scholar.

⁴² See, e.g., Billy in the Dumps, or How to Manage Affairs on the Next Meeting of Parliament, March 1794, BMC, no. 8434; Richard Newton, The Inexhaustible Mine! 22 June 1797, BMC, no. 9025.

⁴³ Sekora, John, Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett (Baltimore, 1977), pp. 73–74Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Morning Chronicle, 19 January 1793; Morning Post, 4–5 June 1791.

⁴⁵ Morning Post, 21 January and 17 April 1795, 9 August 1798. For the impact of charity and patronage on the royal family's image, see Prochaska, Frank, Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy (New Haven, Conn., 1995), chap. 1Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ True Briton, 24 August 1796; Telegraph, 14 April 1796.

⁴⁷ See Morning Chronicle, 12 and 17 January 1792, 5 June 1793, and 5 June 1794.

⁴⁸ Morning Chronicle and True Briton, 1 March 1796; The Times, 5 June 1798; Telegraph, 20 May 1796.

⁴⁹ “Caroline Girle Powys Annual Journal, 1757–1808,” 3 vols., British Library Additional Manuscript 42160, fols. 138–40 (20 August 1789), and 42161, fol. 6 (16 April 1795).

⁵⁰ The Times, 9 August 1792, 18 November 1791; Morning Post, 19 January 1796; The Times 26 November 1791.

⁵¹ See Correspondence of George for 1786.

⁵² Hoppit, “Use and Abuse of Credit,” p. 77.

⁵³ Kavanagh, Thomas, Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance: The Novel and the Culture of Gambling in Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore, 1993), pp. 38–46Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Hibbert, George IV, pp. 109–10; Correspondence of George, 2:214–16. Miles brought up the Escape scandal in A Letter, pp. 29–34, for which an anonymous pamphleteer admonished him: A Plain Statement of the Case Relating to the Intended Establishment of the Prince of Wales, and to the Mode Proposed to Parliament for the Discharge of His Debts Out of Such Establishment (London, 1795), p. 27Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ James Gillray, John Bull Ground Down, 1 June 1795, BMC, no. 8654.

⁵⁶ Rogers, Nicholas, “Pigott's Private Eye: Radicalism and Sexual Scandal in Eighteenth-Century England,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 4 (1993): 251, 262CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brewer, John, “The Wilkites and the Law, 1763–74: A Study of Radical Notions of Governance,” in An Ungovernable People: The English and Their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Brewer, John and Styles, John (New Brunswick, 1980), p. 153Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt, and the Estates System, pp. 294–95; A Loyal, but Solemn Expostulation, p. 8. Phyllis Deutch's study of the movement against aristocratic gaming argues that Fox's reputation as a gamester damaged his political standing in the 1780s; Deutch, Phyllis, “Moral Trespass in Georgian London: Gaming, Gender, and Electoral Politics in the Age of George III,” Historical Journal 39 (1996): 637–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁸ William Fitzwilliam, No. 45 Sloan St., to William Pitt, 4 May 1795, London Public Record Office, PRO 30/8/228, fols. 279–81; Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, p. 255; Ashton, John, The History of Gambling in England (London, 1898), pp. 222–24, 235–39Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Jefferys, Nathaniel, A Review of the Conduct of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales in His Various Transactions with Mr. Jefferys, during a Period of More than Twenty Years, Containing a Detail of Many Circumstances Relating to Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, Mrs. Fitzherbert &c. &c. &c., 2d ed., with additions (London, 1806), p. 8Google Scholar; Morning Chronicle, 19 February 1796; Thorne, History of Parliament (Jeffreys served as M.P. for Coventry, 1796–1803); Philo-Veritas [Gilliland, Thomas], Diamond Cut Diamond; or, Observations on a Pamphlet Entitled A Review of the Conduct of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Comprising a Free and Impartial View of Mr. Jeffreys, as a Tradesman, Politican, and Courtier, during a Period of Twenty Years (London, 1806)Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ The Times, 16 May and 25 June 1795. Observations on a Letter, pp. 25–26; and Thoughts on the Prince's Debts, 2d ed. (London, 1795), pp. 17–18Google Scholar, note the cheats to which princes were prey; [Miles], A Letter to the Prince of Wales, p. 87; and A Letter to the House of Peers, pp. 14–23, suggest that the prince and his creditors be left to thrash it out. See Hoppit, “Attitudes to Credit,” p. 315, and “The Use and Abuse of Credit,” pp. 73–78.

⁶¹ Hoppit, Julian, Risk and Failure in English Business, 1700–1800 (Cambridge, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brewer, John, “Commercialization and Politics,” in The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Brewer, John, McKendrick, Neil, and Plumb, J. H. (Bloomington, Ind., 1982), pp. 197–262Google Scholar, quotation on p. 199; Sainsbury, John, “John Wilkes, Debt, and Patriotism,” Journal of British Studies 34 (1995): 165–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶² The contradictions present in royal financial practices parallel the ambiguities that historians find in the measures taken to quell food riots. Not only were political and judicial authorities divided between the paternalist moral economy and the laissez faire political economy; the supposedly opposing philosophies often overlapped in practice. Supporters of free trade advocated paternalist measures like soup kitchens, promotion of alternatives to wheaten bread, and raising subscriptions to help the poor buy food. Although intended to prevent the government from interfering with the procedures of grain traders or imposing price controls, these measures in practice represented intervention, and in the case of subsidies for the poor, could even drive prices upward. See Douglas Hay, “The State and the Market in 1800: Lord Kenyon and Mr. Waddington,” Past and Present, no. 162 (1999): 101–62; Brown, Susan E., “‘A Just and Profitable Commerce’: Moral Economy and the Middle Classes in Eighteenth-Century London,” Journal of British Studies 32 (1993): 305–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶³ Lubbock, Jules, The Tyranny of Taste: The Politics of Architecture and Design in Britain, 1550–1960 (New Haven, Conn., 1995), p. 44Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ The Times, 26 June 1795.