XXI. 90. statesman were of the very first order. Like all other men gifted CHAP. with the highest class of intellect, his was capable of application at will to any subject; and the man whose 1827. eloquence and play of fancy had so often charmed and His characenchained the House of Commons, was equally felicitous terasa when he came to discuss the details of finance or the corn and orator. averages, as Chancellor of the Exchequer or leader of the House of Commons. But though his powers were thus capable of various application, his disposition led him to the realms of imagination; his longing was to the world of fancy more than the world of reality he was fitted by nature to have been a great author rather than a great statesman. As it was his powers of eloquence which gave him the lead in the House of Commons, so it was the qualities with which they were allied which cut him short at the highest point of his career. The susceptibility to sentiment, the fineness of feeling, the refinement of thought, which constituted the charm of his eloquence not less than logical precision its strength, were mainly owing to the unhappy sensitiveness with which, in poetic minds, they are so frequently allied, and which threw him, on the alienation of his friends, into the state of mental excitement which led to results that proved fatal to his constitution. If the brevity of his career as Minister gave him few opportunities of engraving his acts in indelible characters on the annals of his country, he made good use of the short time that was allotted him, and has left a name second to none, in point of brilliancy, of all the statesmen who ever guided the destinies of England. The King, it is now known, had been personally hurt at the resignation of the six Cabinet Ministers when Mr Canning was appointed,* and for this reason, as well as the strength of the liberal party in the Cabinet, no attempt "The King blamed all the ministers who had retired when Mr Canning was made Minister, and represented in substance, that it was they, and not he, who had made Mr Canning minister."-Twiss's Life of Lord Eldon, iii. 82. CHAP. XXI. 1827. 91. was made to offer the premiership to any of their party. Mr Huskisson, whose health, as well as that of Mr Canning, had suffered severely from the anxieties of office Lord Gode- during the last six months, had gone abroad on the close premier, of the session, and was in the Styrian Alps when the struction of intelligence of Mr Canning's death reached him. He was the Cabinet. not, moreover, of sufficient weight in the House to justify rich made and recon his being placed at the head of the Cabinet. The King, therefore, as a matter of necessity, sent for Lord Goderich, who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the days of prosperity, had been a very popular Minister, and he was appointed Premier. Mr Huskisson succeeded Lord Goderich as Colonial Secretary, and Mr Herries was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. His appointment gave such offence to the Whigs that Lord Lansdowne waited on his Majesty with his resignation of his office as Home Secretary, and was only prevailed on to hold it, on the assurance that it was not the King who had recommended him to Lord Goderich, but Lord Goderich who had recommended him to the King. Lord Harrowby retired from the office of President of the Council, which was bestowed on the Duke of Portland, and Lord Carlisle succeeded his grace as Lord Privy Seal. Sir A. Hart was made Chancellor of Ireland, and Mr Shadwell Vice-Chancellor of England. The Duke of Welling1 Ann. Reg. ton, who had retired chiefly from a sense of personal 1827, 191, slight on Mr Canning's appointment, immediately resumed his place as Commander-in-Chief, though without a seat kisson's Me- in the Cabinet. The Government, as remodelled, was, moirs, 142, 143. upon the whole, of a Whig character, though several members of it adhered to Conservative principles.1 192; Eldon's Life, iii. 20, 24; Hus 92. of the new Lord Goderich's Cabinet has become a byword in Weakness subsequent times; and certainly its troubled existence, and Cabinet, and speedy termination without external causes, prove that the seeds of dissolution were from the first implanted in its bosom. It was not, however, from any deficiency in abi its cause. XXI. 1827. lity that this tendency to decay arose; on the contrary, CHAP. the Cabinet presented a splendid array of names, which it would have been difficult to have found a parallel to, in point of ability, in any other list in the kingdom. Its weakness arose from that very ability itself, and the different sentiments with which its highly-gifted members were animated. The weakness of a coalition is in the direct ratio of the talent and vigour of its members; its strength of their weakness, provided there are one or two brilliant exceptions. What makes them, in general, after a brief period, fall to pieces, is not that they want talents to do great things, but that those things are different. Weak men of different opinions can hold together, because they all yield to the ascendant of superior genius; but strong men cannot do so for any length of time, because no one will yield to another. 93. reduction manry. Though nearly impotent from this cause for good, the new Ministry showed, even in its cradle, it was adequate Impolitic to evil. One of its first steps was to reduce to a third of of the yeoits former amount the yeomanry cavalry of Great Britain, the numbers being reduced from 35,500 to 13,500. Various additions have since been made to this noble force, which unites the high and the low by the bonds of common loyalty to their country and each other; but it has never attained anything like the numerical amount which it had then reached. This strange step was the more reprehensible that the military force of Great Britain, reduced to the lowest point by the clamour for economy, was dispersed over every quarter of the globe in defence of our colonies; that the alarming insurrections of 1820 and 1821 had been put down mainly by the yeomanry force, which had a moral influence much beyond its physical strength; and that the state of Ireland, as will be immediately shown, was so threatening that every regular soldier was required from Great Britain to prevent rebellion openly breaking out. All these considerations, XXI. 1827. CHAP. how pressing soever, yielded to the desire to suppress the Tory clubs," as the yeomanry regiments were called in private by the Whig leaders.* This reduction excited the greatest discontent, and many of the regiments offered to serve without pay, but it was refused; a decision which demonstrated it was political, not financial, considerations which had suggested the reduction. It was a melancholy proof of the length to which party spirit can carry even estimable and able men, when the first use of power made by a great party, when they had obtained it after a long exclusion, was to weaken the bulwarks of the throne in order that they might extinguish the cradle of loyalty. 94. of the Gode net. The divisions in the Cabinet were so well known that Dissolution it was generally expected it would break up before the rich Cabi- end of the year. It dragged a painful existence on, however, to the beginning of 1828. Matters were brought to a crisis in the first week of January by the necessity of appointing a finance committee, agreeably to a promise made by Mr Canning, when opening the budget of the preceding year. The Cabinet, on the suggestion of Mr Tierney, who took the lead on the occasion, had resolved on LORD ALTHORPE, eldest son of Earl Spencer, a Whig leader, who soon after rose to eminence. This resolution was taken with the concurrence of Lord Goderich, but without the knowledge of Mr Herries, who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, naturally thought he should at least have been consulted on such an appointment. The result was, that Mr Herries tendered his resignation, which Lord Goderich received with considerable rich, Jan. 7, agitation. On his side, Mr Huskisson intimated to Lord 1828; Ann. Goderich that he would resign if the nomination of 9. II. Lord Althorpe was not carried through; 1 and as Lord Goderich now deemed it requisite to put a veto on that Nov. 30, 1827. Dec. 21. 1 Mr Huskisson to Lord Gode Reg. 1828, *The Author often heard them so designated at that time by persons of the highest eminence in the confidence of Government. XXI. appointment, Mr Huskisson tendered his resignation, and CHAP. Lord Goderich, seeing it impossible to carry on the Government, escaped the difficulty by resigning himself. 1828. Jan. 8. ton appoint The King, thus deserted by the Coalition Ministry, as 95. a matter of necessity sent for the Duke of Wellington, The Duke who, albeit of military habits, and little skilled in the of Wellingintrigues of courts, hastened, with his wonted patriotic ed premier, spirit, to respond to the summons of his Sovereign. Few Cabinet. changes in the Cabinet, in the first instance at least, took place on his appointment. The Liberal Tories remained, but the decided Whigs retired. Lord Lansdowne resigned his situation as Home Secretary, which Mr Peel, with the entire concurrence of the nation, resumed. Mr Tierney resigned the Mastership of the Mint; Lord Melville was restored to his position as head of the Admiralty; Mr Goulburn was made Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Earl Bathurst President of the Council. Sir James Scarlett resigned the office of Attorney-General, and was succeeded by Sir Charles Wetherall. But the whole Canning party-Lord Dudley and Ward, Lord Palmerston, and Mr C. Grant-retained their places; and even Mr Huskisson and Mr Herries, whose hostility had proved fatal to the late Ministry, remained in power, 1828,9,12; not without some regret on the part of the friends of the i. 458, 459. former. 1 1 Ann. Reg. Martineau, son's resig Retford Mr Huskisson, however, soon found that it is easier to 96. retain office in a divided Cabinet than public estimation Mr Huskisby forming part of it. A question ere long arose, on nation on which the divergence of opinion between him and the the East majority of his colleagues became apparent. The great and that of question of parliamentary reform lay as a stumbling- his friends. block in their way, and it was brought on early in the next session of Parliament by the pending bills for the disfranchisement of Penryn and East Retford. The bill for the first passed the Commons without opposition, with a clause transferring the franchise to Manchester May 20. |