CHAPTER XIV.

THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF MR. CANNING AND LORD GODERICH.

IN the preceding chapter we have stated the honourable and amicable rivalry between Peel and Canning for the office of premier, while the vacancy was but in distant prospect; we have shown that at the first the chances were decidedly in Peel's favour, but that as Canning began more and more to develop liberal views of foreign policy, and on one great question in domestic affairs-that of Catholic Emancipation -to enunciate lofty sentiments of civil and religious liberty, that the odds rapidly turned so decidedly in his favour, that at the time of Lord Liverpool's death, to use the language of the race-course, "Peel was nowhere." Mortified as he must have been by such a disappointment, there were circumstances attending the success of his rival, which made that success neither very enviable nor very desirable. ning's career as minister was too brief to allow of the full development of the difficulties by which he was surrounded; but an examination of the nature of these difficulties is too important to the right understanding of the somewhat complicated transactions which followed his premature death, to be passed over without due attention.

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Though the liberal party generally hailed Canning's success with delight, the veteran Whigs, who had been the political associates and personal friends of Mr. Fox, were far from sharing this enthusiasm. As a partisan of Pitt, devoted and unscrupulous in his attachment to his leader, Canning,

in his attacks on Fox, had exhibited a personal bitterness and rancour which went far beyond the bounds of legitimate party-strife, and which were the more deeply resented on account of the affection with which Fox's amiable qualities had inspired his followers. It was also too well remembered, that Canning had been foremost in defending the war against revolutionary France, and had then advocated principles almost the reverse of those he had so brilliantly set forth in his memorable speech on Portuguese affairs. Hence liberals of deep thought and reflection, men of the Jeremy Bentham school, accustomed to be guided by principles rather than by impulses, exhibited a kind of cold neutrality, which in some amounted to suspicion, and in others to direct hostility. Among the extreme radicals, there were many who bitterly remembered that Canning had supported the Six Acts, had vindicated the Manchester massacre, and had defended every questionable excess committed under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. Though as yet Reformers and Radicals were very commonly confounded in the same category, a Reform party had begun to be formed among the most intelligent of the middle classes in those manufacturing towns which had been hitherto excluded from all share in the representation, and though these men had no parliamentary strength, they already possessed great influence, and were acquiring more, over the opinion of the country.

Canning could never comprehend the existence of a party outside the House of Commons; the uniform error of his public life was mistaking the vote of a parliamentary majority for the voice of the nation; he could never comprehend that the eloquence which charmed a senate might fail to convince a people, and that the brilliancy which dazzled excited hearers at night would lose much of its effect with dispassionate readers in the morning. "Voti profanum vulgus et arceo," is not a very safe motto for an English statesman; the hatred

is very likely to become mutual, and the multitude, once driven away, is not always in the humour to be called back.

The support, then, which Canning had to expect from the Liberal party could not be unanimous; the sections which held back, or evinced hostility, though not the most numerous, were those whom an established character for consistency rendered the most respected. The Liberals, who freely and generously tendered him their support, did so on the avowed principle that it was necessary at all hazards to keep the Eldon party from forming a pure Tory administration, and with no very obscure intimation, that they trusted more to what Mr. Canning might become than to what he had previously been. They thought, and not without reason, that a Liberal party could not long continue in office, without being almost irresistibly impelled to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, and to grant some measure of parliamentary reform

But the greatest deduction likely to be made from the Liberal support on which Canning seems too confidently to have calculated, was the entire body of Dissenters. Though subject themselves to political disabilities, the majority of Dissenters opposed the removal of disabilities from the Catholics; indeed, one of the best pamphlets ever written against Catholic Emancipation proceeded from the pen of the Rev. John Burnett, since remarkable as one of the most able advocates of what are called liberal opinions among the Congregationalist divines. But Canning disliked Dissenters as sincerely as Dr. Johnson himself, and the fact of his hostility was generally known and strongly resented throughout the body.

Among the elements of Tory hostility on which Mr. Canning must have looked with apprehension, the first place must beyond all doubt be assigned to the Church. His wellknown attachment to the Episcopal establishment did not

atone for his advocacy of Catholic Emancipation. A clerical agitation was commenced against him the instant that his cabinet was formed; and had his ministry continued, it would have been found a most formidable and dangerous enemy, probably sufficiently powerful to effect his overthrow.

Though Canning could rely on the support of a great part of the young nobility in the House of Commons, those who were called "the statesmen of the schools," whose classical sympathies were won by a classical mind, he had little reason to hope for much favour from that class of countrygentlemen, sometimes described as the "statesmen of the quarter-sessions." To them he had the incurable defect of being a parvenu; their aristocratic prejudices were shocked by seeing one whom they regarded as a political adventurer raised to the head of affairs by the mere force of talent. The minister was, in fact, a general without an army, and his only chance of success was the possibility of encountering an army without a general.

When the parliament re-assembled on the 1st of May, the avenues of the House of Commons were filled at an early hour, and the House itself was crowded to excess. Several leading peers and eminent prelates were present, anxious to hear some explanation of the causes which had separated political friends, who had so long acted together through evil report and through good report; and not less eager to ascertain the truth of the report which promised to Canning the support of some of the leading liberals. The partial truth of the report was soon evident when Mr. Brougham, Sir Francis Burdett, and Sir Robert Wilson, were seen to take their seats on the ministerial benches.

Mr. Peel took the opportunity of the writ for his successor being moved, to explain the circumstances of his resignation. "If," said he, "I had acted in consequence of levity or disappointed ambition, of personal pique or opposition toward

a rival, I should feel that I was, though not constitutionally, yet morally responsible, and should have shown by such conduct, that I was unworthy of the confidence with which my sovereign had honoured me. But, sir, I acted from none of those motives; they did not form the grounds on which I retired from the public service. I acted solely upon principles which I had frequently professed, and which I considered to form part of my public character.

"For a space of eighteen years, I have pursued one undeviating course of conduct, offering during the whole of that time an uncompromising, but a temperate and fair, and, as I believe, a constitutional resistance to the making of any further concessions towards the Roman Catholics. During fourteen out of these eighteen years, I have held office; and during eleven of those fourteen years, I have been closely connected in office with that country most interested in the decision of those claims. The opinions which I held during that time, I still retain; and I thought, from having always avowed those opinions, but, above all, from having while in office taken an active, and, I may add, an important part against the claims, that I could not remain in office after events that rendered it probable that I should be the single minister of the crown who was to continue opposed to them.

"I say, sir, under these circumstances, I did not feel that it would be consistent with the career I had hitherto pursued, and with the maintenance of my own character as a public man, to acquiesce in arrangements which would benefit myself by enabling me to remain in office, which however I could not do without acting in a manner calculated materially to promote the successful termination of a question, to which, under other circumstances, and in other aspects of political affairs, I had offered the most decided resistance...

"If even the administration could have remained in the same state as before-if it could have continued exactly