the whole body and spirit of our recent poetry, and existing poetical life.

We have presented and summed up the gains and losses of a seven years' period. We have now to enter upon another, shorter, but not less alive with incident and the spirit of progress.

VOL. II.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

Opening of New Parliament-Death of the Duke of York-Grant to the Duke of Clarence--Illness of Lord Liverpool-Lord Liverpool and Mr. Canning-Lord Liverpool as Minister-The Corn Bill— Catholic Question-New Administration-Mr. Canning consulted-Mr. Peel-Resignation of Cabinet Ministers-Mr. Canning, Premier— -New Cabinet-Retirement of Lord Eldon.

THE period on which we are now entering the last years of the reign of George IV.-is one of remarkable interest and importance in the retrospect, though the complaint of the time was of stagnation of public business. It is true that, for three sessions, scarcely anything was done of what is commonly called public business. In regard to variety of subject, the records of parliament perhaps were never before so meagre, for three consecutive sessions. At the same time, the registers of the period are full of ministerial correspondence, ministerial explanations, and ministerial difficulties for this there was ample reason; and in this lay the deep importance and interest of the period.

It is common for society to complain of loss of the public time, and postponement of public business, when a change of ministry, or other event, induces explanation of their personal conduct on the part of public men. It is common

to complain of such explanations, as if statesmen were obtruding their personal concerns upon a public which does not care for them, but wants to be about its own business. But this is, wherever held, a vulgar error, and a most pernicious one. Every true statesman knows that his personal honour is a national interest; and every enlightened citizen knows that the highest distinction of a nation is the rectitude of its rulers; and that no devotion of time, thought, patience, and energy, can be too great

for the object of upholding the standard of political honour among statesmen. In the most ordinary times, therefore, the enlightened citizen will eagerly receive, and earnestly weigh, the statements of public men with regard to their official conduct, aware that the postponement of legislative acts is a less evil than that of failing to discharge every conscience, to decide upon every reputation, as it comes into question; and thus to ascertain that the moral ground is firm and secure, before proceeding to political action. If it be thus in ordinary times, much stronger was the obligation to prove the conduct and reputation of statesmen at the period we are now entering upon. If, during the next three years, ministerial difficulties and explanations seem to be endless, there must be some cause; the embarrassment must be, in fact, a characteristic of the time.

We have witnessed the admission into the cabinet of two men who were called 'political adventurers'; and we have recognised in this event the sign that a new time had arrived, requiring for its administration a new order of men. Though the new men had acted and succeeded in their function, the struggles and perplexities of the transition from one state of society and government to another had yet to be gone through; and the beginning of these struggles and perplexities is what we have now to contemplate. We shall see ministry after ministry formed and dissolved. We shall see that the difficulty lay, not in finding competent men-for able men abounded at that time-but in determining what great principle, of those afloat, should so preponderate as to determine the government of the country. In the trial of this all-important point, the next three years cannot now be said to have been wasted, though at the time the vexation was severe, of seeing great questions standing still, ordinary legislative business thrust aside, and a temper and language of political bitterness rising up, such as could never have been anticipated among men of rational capacities and gentlemanly education,

The king opened the new parliament in person on the 21st of November, declaring in his speech that he called the Houses together for the special purpose of declaring

and accounting for the measures taken by government in opening the ports to some kinds of grain and pulse, in consequence of the scarcity produced by the drought of the summer. In answer to various complaints in both Houses about the scanty revelations of the speech, Lord Liverpool and Mr. Canning pleaded the special nature of the business which occasioned the present sitting, and promised the regular supply of information and suggestion at the regular time after the Christmas recess. Ministers obtained the indemnity they sought for opening the ports during the recess; and, with one exception, little else was done before Christmas. But that exception was a brilliant and most significant one. Mr. Canning accounted to parliament, and obtained its enthusiastic sanction, for sending troops to Portugal.

The sanction of parliament was indeed most enthusiastic; and so was the response from the country. But it is believed by those who ought to know, that this speech was fatal to Mr. Canning. His earnestness and eloquence were taken by the Tories as a demonstration in favour of liberalism. They well knew that he was in fact, though not in name, the leader of the government. They knew that the Duke of York so clearly considered him so, that he had just made an audacious attempt, by addressing the king, to get him dismissed from the cabinet. They gave all their strength to bear him down, and wrought against him with a new exasperation, from the date of his announcement of his having despatched the troops to Portugal. They could not bear him down in intention and in act. They could not bear him down in the estimation of the country, in which he was indeed rising from day to day. But there was a way in which he was in their power; they enfeebled his health. They could not bow his noble head, or tame his princely eye, by reproach or threat; but they could and did, without design or consideration, by the poison of disease. There are few men whose nerves are not more or less in the power of other men's judgments and tempers; and of those few, Canning was certainly not one. His magnificent organisation, adequate to the production of everything that can ennoble the human being-absolutely teeming

with genius-had the one imperfection of being too sensitive. This was so clear-so evident on the merest glance at his face-that those have much to answer for who failed in the consideration thus bespoken by nature herself. Canning needed no indulgence. In the depth of illness, his high courage would have spurned it. He never deprecated; never, we may be sure, in the innermost breathings of his soul. He provoked much, dared everything, and endured till nature broke down. But nature was breaking down all the time that his enemies were most merciless; and they never saw it. It was visible in the weakening brow, the deepening eye, the quivering lip, the heavy and uncertain step. His enemies did not mark these signs which grieved his friends; and when, in reply to their rancour, the eye flashed again as it was wont, and the cheek flushed, and the voice rang from the roof, they were sure that they had done him no harm. From the time of his speech on sending aid to Portugal, the contest between Canning and his policy, and his foes and their policy, became deadly. It was indeed death that now interposed, and finally settled the conflict.

The Duke of York was the first who was withdrawn. The lord chancellor saw much of him for some weeks before his death; and the chancellor's opinion was, that his thoughts were almost exclusively occupied by the Catholic question, and the dread, in regard to that question, of the ascendency of Mr. Canning. In Lord Eldon's own opinion, his existence was essential to the effectual counteraction of Mr. Canning's influence, and to his displacement from the councils of the king. 'His death,' declares Lord Eldon, must affect every man's political situation— perhaps nobody's more than my own. It may shorten, it may prolong, my stay in office.' Of course, Mr. Canning himself must have known as well as other people the importance of the life that had gone-the significance of the death that had arrived. It must have been with a singular mixture of feelings that a man of his patriotism and power of will, and of his magnanimity and sensibility, must have bent over the vault in St. George's Chapel, into whose darkness, amidst the blaze of torches, the body of his arch-enemy was descending. It was then and there