The English Royal family has had a windfall. The late
King of Hanover left in his will £150,000 to Queen Victoria, and a similar sum to each of her daughters, making £900,000 in all. The private property in Hanover, £2,400,000, having, however, been sequestrated to form the Guelph Fund, it has been impossible to pay these legacies, the interest of which has thus been lost for twenty-six years. The sequestration having been removed, the Duke of Cumberland, after the passage of the necessary Bill through the German Parliament, will, it is believed, pay the legacies, or rather, the interest on them, according to the terms of his father's bequest. The money will not be unwelcome. The English Royal family is now the only reigning House in Europe without a private fortune, and as the Hohenzollerns, Haps- burgs, and House of Savoy have grown immensely rich, its want of means is accentuated by comparison with its equals. The old Royal domain is gone, the Princes cannot marry heiresses, and no one leaves money to Royal persons, the popular prejudice that they must be rich being incurable, and increased by the wild stories, now acknowledged even by Mr. Labouchere to be baseless, of enormous wealth accumu- lated by Queen Victoria. At the next vacancy, the Crown will be made even poorer, and unless the branches not really in the succession are struck out of it and left to their own devices, the maintenance of the descendants of George III. will be matter of serious difficulty. Some even of the petty Princes, such as Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and Nassau, are very rich, and the reigning family of Holland was so till the extravagance of the late King scattered the accumulation. The idea that a poor Sovereign will be more constitutional, is not correct. He only becomes less content with his position.
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