THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

THAT our readers may more clearly understand some of the political questions upon which we may touch, and others that are likely to arise, as well in Parliament as out of it, in the course of our future observations, we have thought it right to recapitulate, under one view, the various facts which have recently occurred

"Come like shadows, so depart."

Early in 1827 the moral decease of Lord Liverpool left the helm of the state for some weeks without a controlling hand to regulate its movements. Lord Liverpool was a man of moderate abilities, of great labour, of much experience and knowledge of the details of business, but no statesman; with contracted views; with the petty habits resulting from a life of office, and without one ray of the eloquence which distinguished some of his supporters and many of his opponents in Parliament. His Lordship's coadjutors, (with the exception of Messrs. Canning and Huskisson,) when his illness was pronounced to be incu rable, seem to have acted as one man, and resigned, although (which we are bound to believe, as the individuals have asserted the contrary) they denied any personal previous concert. The ultra-Tory oligarchy, actuated by similar sympathy, adopted similar views and measures with the seceders; and led on by the acknowledged gallantry of a noble military marquess, who was equally distinguished for his diplo matic services at Vienna and his disregard of emolument at home,* menaced their opponents, and even their Sovereign, with depriving him of their services, England of their talents, and any administration which might be formed, except from their own ranks, with the loss of their parliamentary numbers.

The country fortunately found in the firmness of the King, and the ability and courage of one distinguished individual-GEORGE CANNING -consolation for what it lost in the rapid decision of Eldon; the arithmetical intrepidity of Bexley+; the disinterested nationality of Melville; the lucid eloquence of Westmoreland; the colonial skill, and distaste for jobbing, of Bathurst; and even for the military promptness of the present Premier,

Mr. Canning had for some time been giving the liberal colour of his own extensive views even to the measures of the Government which he succeeded; and, supported by the friendship, the talent, the industry, and the knowledge of Mr. Huskisson, had commenced a series of reforms, in our state and commercial policy, which soon attracted the notice, and ultimately obtained in Parliament the support of his old opponents, the Whigs in both Houses, with only one, though that must be allowed a powerful exception, in Earl Grey, who, differing from him on the great question of Parliamentary reform, first declined office, and then withheld his adhesion from the new administration, The Sovereign, deserted by the main body of his former servants, threw himself into the hands of Mr. Canning, who, feeling that he approached the Whigs on all points, except that already specified,

See a letter soliciting a pension, found amongst Lord Liverpool's papers, with a remark of his own in pencil-"This is too bad."

+ See this noble Lord's motion, when in the House of Commons- That it is the opinion of this House, that a Bank of England note for one pound, together with a shilling, were equal to a guinea;" the current value of the paper being at the moment about fifteen shillings.

March, 1828.-VOL. XXII, NO. LXXXVII.

sought, and at length obtained, though not without undissembled reluctance on their parts, the support of nearly the whole body of the Whigs, and the union of a few of their most distinguished leaders, who accepted places in the cabinet. Lord Bexley also withdrew his resignation, and, retaining his former office, added his weight (valeat quantum) to the newly-formed administration. A parliamentary opposition immediately commenced, composed of those who had lately held office, (with the honourable exception of Mr. Peel, who for a time stood neuter) and strengthened by the main body of mercenaries, fortemque Gyan, fortemque Clounthen, who support the " powers that be," of whatsoever materials the Cabinet may be composed; the whole forming a party much more eminent for its rancour and personal hostility to the new minister, than for ability, eloquence, knowledge, or even character.

The talent of Mr. Canning (shackled and weighed down, as it must have been, by the sense of incipient illness, which so soon, and so fatally for England, hurried him to the grave) sustained with memorable eloquence and success the Government, both at home and abroad, and afforded well-grounded hope of what we might have expected, had Providence spared him. He calmed America, protected Portugal, awed Spain; liberated the new world and improved the old, by removing antiquated prejudices, and freeing commerce from the short-sighted restraints of selfishness and ignorance. In the Cabinet and the llouse of Lords he was sustained by the mild but manly eloquence and various knowledge of Lord Lansdowne, the legal ability of Lord Lyndhurst, and the luminous and powerful replies of Lord Dudley. The Legitimates of Europe, the framers and supporters of the Holy Alliance, were soon convinced, that a more vigorous hand than that of Lord Liverpool held the reins of Government in England, and with an ill-concealed dislike, yielded, where resistance was dangerous or impracticable. The Duke of Wellington having in April signed at Saint Petersburgh a convention, which had for its object the liberation of Greece, it was followed soon after by a treaty emanating from the Foreign Office, and signed by all the Great Powers. A fleet from the English, French, and Russian navies, was sent into the Mediterranean, to back the negotiations, if requisite, by an useful display of force, which ultimately led to a naval contest in the Bay of Navarino, rarely equalled and never surpassed, whether we consider the skill, the gallantry, or prompt decision of the united navies, or the determined and reckless bravery of their opponents. In another quarter, our differences with North America, arising chiefly out of the ill-concerted treaty of Ghent, were either wholly adjusted or put in train for final and favourable arrangement. Portugal was relieved from the errors of its own, or the machinations of its neighbour Government. The newly-formed kingdoms in South America were acknowledged and treated as allies; while nearer home, France became in fact, as before it had been in form, our ally, and placed its fleet in the Mediterranean, under the control of a British admiral. Ireland was soothed, and had its hopes revived, by the removal of Lord Manners, whose polished imbecility, and whose entire submission to a corrupt and selfish party, had thrown that country into a state little short of open rebellion. A profound lawyer was sent over to preside in the court of chancery, and while law was ably and temperately dispensed to all parties, justice was promised to all religions, by the appointment of country magistrates, without

requiring any other qualifications for the office but fair character and acknowledged ability. Amongst other calumnies, the Irish are said to be enemies to law. Far otherwise: they are rather too fond of it; but they have the singular taste to like it only when duly, fairly, and equally administered. The present Chancellor of Ireland is trying the experiment of a better and more impartial administration of justice;-let him be approved, supported, and, above all, continued in office, and the Irish will be found to resemble the English in their good, as at present they are charged with doing only in some of their worst qualities and propensities.

A fatal illness, brought on by over-exertion, and increased by daily irritation, from those who had dismissed themselves, deprived England of its chief minister; and if during his life party-spirit may have blinded the judgment of many, the almost universal and deep sorrow of this country, on his decease, would have convinced the most sceptical of the estimation in which Mr. Canning had been held, whose great talents may justly be said "to have expired in their brightest blaze at the moment when they appear to have consumed the very source that produced them." To prevent a dissolution of the Administration, Lord Goderich was appointed successor to Mr. Canning,

"Sed quantum mutatus ab illo !"

an honourable man, a fluent, and almost eloquent, but not a powerful speaker; with conciliating manners, and the recommendation to some of the seceders, that he was only a liberal Tory, and not a Whig, formed his chief, if not his only recommendations. He was deficient in self-possession, in the vivida vis animæ, or what the "Fancy" call "pluck," and above all, in the calm firmness which resists encroachment, come from whence it may, on the rights and immunities of a prime minister. He first lost the control of his own patronage, then the support of his former friends; and although the Whigs honourably fought his battle to the last, he tendered the resignation of his own office in despair, in preference to dismissing a refractory underling, who had recently been thrust into high station, from having been useful as a clerk in the Treasury! Lord Goderich thus affording another instance, added to the many since Tacitus had said of Galba, that he would have been deemed "Capax imperii, nisi imperasset." As a Minister, he was a useful public servant; as Premier, he was timid and inefficient. The office which Lord Goderich held was offered to Lord Harrowby, who most judiciously declined it. When the party acknowledges his own inability, we shall not disturb his tranquillity by entering on the question of his unfitness. Why Lord Goderich held the government a little longer one does not see, knowing that he could not remove the difficulty which had induced him to tender his resignation; for by not retiring he risked, so far as he could do, (supported as he was by great ability in almost all the departments, in the Cabinet,) the safety of the country, at a moment of no inconsiderable difficulty, both at home and abroad. But his nerves again failed him, as the meeting of Parliament approached, when he knew he should have much to encounter, to explain, and to defend; and he finally relinquished the government which he could no longer administer.

His Majesty next applied to the Duke of Wellington to form a Government, stipulating, as it is said, for the exclusion of some of the

late deserters, and for the retention of a few of Lord Goderich's administration, if they could be prevailed upon to remain.

To the Duke of Wellington, and to the mission on which he was employed, there were many and powerful objections. He had in his place in Parliament declared his own unfitness to fill the office of first minister; had termed his doing so "madness," and attributed the report of such an intention on his part, to the "baseness" of some opponent, who wished to misrepresent his motives and traduce his character. Nor was this the sole objection. His Grace held at the moment the office of Commander-in-Chief; one for which his whole life had been a course of preparation, and to which he brought, not only the benefit of his own great experience, but the lustre of a military fame, acquired in almost every country of the civilized world: when, therefore, it was found that his Grace intended to retain his military, while he accepted the first civil office of the state, to surprise soon succeeded the most marked and general disapprobation.

It is true, that while we possess our present Sovereign, we have only to fear for the precedent thus afforded. A future day, and a less firm, or a less conscientious Monarch, might throw England into the hands of some bold and distinguished soldier, might revive the example of the old Maires du Palais of France, and might place a Sardanapalus sovereign in a voluptuous, expensive, and disgraceful retirement, even from the sight of his subjects, while his military jailor administered all the powers of government in his degraded master's name. The murmurs, both deep and loud, led his Grace to resign the command of the Army, and to put the office, it is said, in Commission; that is, in the hands of one or more of his former associates and dependants, over whom, of course, he is to have neither undue influence nor control. Credat Judæus Apella. The chief benefit derived from the military administration of the late Duke of York was, that he dispensed its patronage without fear or favour; and the necessary effect of such a conviction, on the minds of the public, was, that in the course of time the English army became one of the best, his Royal Highness having received it one of the worst in Europe.

How can the Duke of Wellington shield the military part of his recent structure from the ceaseless and interested attacks of his Parliamentary friends? We shall soon again have suckling Colonels and beardless Generals-and the dead weight, already heavy enough, God knows! made quite intolerable, by detaching our old and accomplished, but unpatronized officers; putting them on half-pay, and replacing them by the noble scions from the various stocks which possess the Parliamentary interests of the country!

The narrowness of our limits compels us to be short on various remaining, though important subjects. IRELAND, the sufferings and wants of which would fill volumes, must be condensed into a page. CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION, promised to the Irish as the fatal bribe for the surrender of their country, first at the siege of Limerick, and again at the Union, must be yielded-or the country be reduced by our military chief Governor to the state in which Louvois, the bloody instrument of the blind bigotry of LOUIS XIV. left the Palatinate; and England extirpate six millions of men, or grant them their rights. There has been some occasional babble about "securities:"-who is to secure the securers? England must by its own strength and firmness,

by its valour and its pecuniary influence, hold Ireland in proper, because legal subjection; but as to religion, let her recollect the words of the opera, once admirably applied to America by the great Lord Chatham :"Let all her ways be unconfined,

And clap the padlock on her mind."

Let the whole tithe system be altered and equalized; let the body called Tithe Proctors be disbanded. The Protestant hierarchy ought to yield after the death of the present possessors (Oh! the vice of vested interests) a part of its enormous and overgrown income, to build places of worship, and to equalize the incomes of the inferior Protestant clergy; grant to the Catholics their fair share, and at all events, a right to participate in political privileges, and fifty years will show those who may then survive, Ireland, civilized, happy, peaceable, and attached, to its benefactor and friend. Let England adhere to the present plan of Government, and wait for another continental, or other war, and she will find the seeds of her present narrow and cruel policy, producing large and dangerous crops-of armed men!

FRANCE.-Mr. CANNING'S Government of England was essentially fatal to that of Villele-a man of expedients, a state scene-shifter ;but a liberal Government here, coupled with the silent but powerful influence of a representative one in France, and for a time with the aid of a free press, introducing, like the application of steam, a new agent into the moral, as that has done into the physical world, at length became indomitable. The people found their strength at the elections, and Villele and his puppets were blown into the air by an element, the operations of which they could not regulate or control.

The effects will not rest merely with this change of men. Two great nations, separated by a dyke alone, which may be crossed in two hours, will no longer be enemies, or suffer their Governments to make or keep them so; but will unite in a generous rivalry for the benefit of each country, and eventually of the human race. The approximation has already commenced; and the bloody hands shaken in the heat of battle at Navarino will bind men for ever, who hitherto have never met but for the purpose of mutual destruction!

Let us look to the NETHERLANDS.-That country, by the wisdom of its Monarch, is quietly but rapidly advancing towards the rank of a "Great Power;" reducing its debt, improving its local or commercial advantages. Equalizing the political, and above all, the religious rights of his subjects, William (the First ?) is becoming at once, the father, the friend, and the Sovereign of a happy and contented, because an united people. SPAIN is still labouring with the throes of a free constitution, which at length she will obtain, though it will cost her dear; it may, amongst other precious possessions, cost her the ejection of the beloved Ferdinand, and his whole dynasty. While that amiable and honest man exists, according to his own wishes, there will be nothing to communicate, relating to his fine country, except that the Monarch is again employed in disturbing the government of his neighbour, while he has hitherto never had one day of peace in the administration of his own. He is now (in the intervals left him from embroidering petticoats for the blessed Virgin) busily engaged in drawing up an act of amnesty for those who rescued him from the claws of Napoleon, and guarded him on his return to Spain, but incurred the penalties of his murderous gratitude for endeavouring to make him a free Monarch over a free country.