The distress which had pressed so severely on the people, and which

had set them thinking about the most perilous political changes, was

intimately connected with the state of the country. Throughout the

troubled period of almost incessant war and lavish expenditure between

1797 and 1815, the business of the nation was carried on with an

inconvertible paper currency, the precious metals having nearly all

departed from the country. Bank notes were issued in such quantities,

to meet the exigencies of the Government, that the prices of all

commodities were nearly doubled. The Bill which was passed in 1819

providing for the resumption of cash payments had reduced the currency

from £48,278,070, which was its amount in 1819, to £26,588,000, in

1822. The consequence was the reduction of prices in the meantime,

at the rate of fifty per cent., in all the articles of production

and commerce. With this tremendous fall of prices, the amount of

liabilities remained unchanged; rents, taxes, and encumbrances were to

be paid according to the letter of the contract, while the produce and

commodities--the sale of which was relied upon to pay them--did not

produce more than half the amount that they would have brought at the

time of the contracts. The evil of this sudden change was aggravated

by the South American Revolution, in consequence of which the annual

supply of the precious metals was reduced to a third of its former

amount. It was peculiarly unfortunate that this stoppage in the supply

of gold and silver occurred at the very time that the Legislature

had adopted the principle that paper currency should be regarded as

strictly representing gold, and should be at any moment convertible

into sovereigns. A paper currency should never be allowed to exceed

the available property which it represents, but it is not necessary

that its equivalent in gold should be lying idle in the coffers of the

Bank, ready to be paid out at any moment the public should be seized

with a foolish panic. It is enough that the credit of the State should

be pledged for the value of the notes, and that credit should not

be strained beyond the resources at its command. The close of 1822

formed the turning-point in the industrial condition of the country.

The extreme cheapness of provisions, after three years of comparative

privation, enabled those engaged in manufacturing pursuits to purchase

many commodities which they had hitherto not been able to afford. This

caused a gradual revival of trade, which was greatly stimulated by the

opening of new markets for our goods, especially in South America,

to which our exports were nearly trebled in value between 1818 and

1823, when the independence of the South American Republics had been

established. The confidence of the commercial world was reassured by

the conviction that South America would prove an unfailing Dorado for

the supply of the precious metals. The bankers, therefore, became more

accommodating; the spirit of enterprise again took possession of the

national mind, and there was a general expansion of industry by means

of a freer use of capital, which gave employment and contentment to

the people. This effect was materially promoted by the Small Note Bill

which was passed in July, 1822, extending for ten years longer the

period during which small notes were to be issued; its termination

having been fixed by Peel's Bill for 1823. The average of bank-notes in

circulation in 1822 was £17,862,890. In November of the following year

it had increased by nearly two millions. The effect of this extension

of the small note circulation upon prices was remarkable. Wheat rose

from 38s. to 52s., and in 1824 it mounted up to 64s. In the meantime

the bullion in the Bank of England increased so much that whereas

in 1819 it had been only £3,595,360, in January, 1824, it amounted

to £14,200,000. The effect of all these causes combined was the

commencement of a reign of national prosperity, which burst upon the

country like a brilliant morning sun, chasing away the chilling fogs of

despondency, and dissipating the gloom in the popular mind.

On the 12th of February, 1823, the President of the Board of Trade

said, in his place in Parliament:--"The general exports of the country

in the four years from 1815 to 1819 had decreased £14,000,000 in

official value; and he took the official value in preference to the

declared, because it was from the quantity of goods produced that the

best measure was derived of the employment afforded to the different

classes of the community. In the year from the 5th of January, 1819,

to the 5th of January, 1820, the exports of the country fell off no

less than £11,000,000; and in looking at that part of it which more

completely embraced British or Irish manufacture, he found that the

difference in four years was £8,414,711; and that in the year from the

5th of January, 1820, to the 5th of January, 1821, there was a decrease

of £8,929,629. Nobody, therefore, could be surprised that, at that

period, the industry of the country appeared to be in a state of the

utmost depression; that our manufacturers were most of them unemployed;

that our agriculturists were many of them embarrassed; and that the

country, to use the phrase of a friend of his in presenting a petition

from the merchants of London, 'exhibited all the appearances of a dying

nation.' Though the condition of the agricultural interest was not as

favourable as he could wish, still it was most satisfactory for him to

state that not only did the exports of last year [1822] exceed those of

all the years to which he had been alluding, but also those of the most

flourishing year which had occurred during the continuance of the war.

In all material articles there had been a considerable increase. The

export of cotton had increased ten per cent., and hardware seventeen

per cent.; of linens twelve per cent., and of woollens thirteen per

cent.; and the aggregate exports of 1822 exceeded those of 1820 by

twenty per cent., and of 1821 by seven per cent., notwithstanding a

deduction was to be made from the exports of one great article, sugar,

owing to a prohibitory decree of Russia, amounting to thirty-five per

cent." The result of this prosperous state of things was that, in

1823, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer was enabled to present the

best and most popular Budget that had been laid before Parliament for

many years, remitting a large amount of taxes that had pressed most

heavily on the springs of industry, and inflicted the greatest amount

of inconvenience and privation upon the people. The revenue of the

nation in that year was £57,000,000, and the expenditure was estimated

at £49,672,999, leaving a surplus of upwards of £7,000,000. Of this

surplus, £5,000,000 was set aside for the reduction of the National

Debt, and the remainder for the remission of taxes. As the assessed

taxes were most oppressive, they were reduced fifty per cent., a

reduction which was estimated on the window tax alone at £1,205,000. On

the whole, the assessed taxes were reduced by £2,200,000. This included

£100,000, the total amount of assessed taxes in Ireland. In England the

whole of the window tax was removed from the ground floors of shops and

warehouses.

In 1823 we behold the starting-point of the liberal system of

commercial policy, for which not only England, but all the world,

is so much indebted--the rivulet which gradually expanded into a

mighty river bearing incalculable blessings upon its bosom to every

nation under heaven. The appointment of Mr. Huskisson as a member of

the Government was an immense advantage to the nation. He was a man

of great abilities, which he had perseveringly devoted to the study

of political economy. He was a complete master of all subjects in

which statistics were involved, and was universally looked up to as

the highest authority on all financial and commercial questions. As

President of the Board of Trade he had ample opportunities of turning

his knowledge to account, and to him is mainly due the initiation

and direction of the course of commercial policy which a quarter of

a century later issued in the complete triumph of Free Trade. Mr.

Huskisson was not only intimately acquainted with the whole range of

economic, financial, and mercantile subjects, in their details as

well as in their principles, he was also a powerful debater, a sound

reasoner, and was animated in all he did by a spirit of generous

philanthropy. At the same time it is only just to point out that he

did but carry out the policy of Mr. Wallace, the Vice-President of the

Board of Trade, a statesman whose name is almost forgotten.

A law in force since the time of Cromwell had provided that no

merchandise from Asia, Africa, or America should be imported into

Great Britain in any foreign ships; and not only the commander, but

three-fourths of the crew, were required to be English. In addition

to this restriction of our foreign commerce to English-built and

English-manned ships, discriminating duties were imposed upon foreign

ships from Europe, which had to pay more heavily than if the goods

were imported under the British flag. The object of this system,

which prevailed for one hundred and fifty years, was to maintain the

ascendency of Britain as a Maritime Power. Adam Smith remarks that the

Navigation Act may have proceeded from national rivalry and animosity

towards Holland; but he held that its provisions were as beneficial as

if they had been dictated by the most consummate wisdom. He admits,

however, that they were not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the

growth of that opulence that can arise from it, remarking, "As defence

is of more value than opulence, the Act of Navigation is perhaps the

wisest of all the commercial regulations of England." But had Adam

Smith lived later on, he would have seen that the utmost freedom of

commerce with foreign nations, and the most boundless opulence arising

from it, are quite compatible with a perfect system of national

defence; and whatever were the advantages of the restrictive system,

other nations could act upon it as well as England. America did so, and

thus commenced a war of tariffs equally injurious to herself and the

mother country, causing the people of each to pay much more for most of

the commodities they needed than they would have done if the markets

of the world were open to them. The consequence was that both parties

saw the folly of sending their ships across the Atlantic in ballast,

and a commercial treaty was concluded in 1815, which put the shipping

of both America and England upon an equal footing, and relieved them

from the necessity of paying double freight. The reciprocity system

was also partially adopted in our commerce with other countries. In

1822 Mr. Wallace had brought in four Bills, which made other important

alterations. The 3 George IV., cap. 41, repealed certain statutes

relating to foreign commerce which were passed before the Navigation

Act. Another Act (cap. 42) repealed that part of the Navigation Act

itself which required that goods of the growth or manufacture of

Asia, Africa, and America should only be imported in British ships;

and that no goods of foreign growth or manufacture should be brought

from Europe, except from the place of their production, and in the

ships of the country producing them. The next enactment prescribed

certain specified goods to be brought to Great Britain from any port

in Europe, in ships belonging to the ports of shipment. Two other

Acts further extended freedom of commerce, and removed the vexatious

restrictions that had hampered our colonial and coasting trade. In

1823 Prussia retaliated, as the United States had done, which led Mr.

Huskisson to propose what are called the Reciprocity Acts, 4 George

IV., cap. 77, and 5 George IV., cap. 1, which empowered the king, by

Order in Council, to authorise the importation and exportation of goods

in foreign ships from the United Kingdom, or from any other of his

Majesty's dominions, on the same terms as in British ships, provided

it should first be proved to his Majesty and the Privy Council that

the foreign country in whose favour the order was made had placed

British ships in its ports on the same footing as its own ships. These

enactments proved an immense advantage to the people of the nations

affected by them, and satisfied all parties but the ship-owners, who

cried out loudly that their interest was ruined. But their complaints

were altogether unfounded, as will appear from the following figures.

Under the restrictive system, from 1804 to 1823, the tonnage of British

shipping had increased only ten per cent. Under the Reciprocity Acts

and the Free Trade system, from 1823 to 1845, the increase rose to

forty-five per cent. This result fully bore out the calculations and

anticipations of Mr. Huskisson, in his answer to the arguments of the

Protectionists.

[Illustration: THE ADMIRALTY, LONDON.]

Some remarkable commercial reforms were introduced by Robinson

and Huskisson in 1824. In the previous year the Chancellor of the

Exchequer was able to boast of a very large surplus, and this year

he had a surplus of £1,050,000. Part of it was devoted to the repair

and embellishment of Windsor Castle; £40,000 were devoted towards

the erection of rooms for the reception of the library of George

III., which was presented to the British Museum by his successor,

whose gift, however, was somewhat discounted by the fact that he was

with difficulty dissuaded from selling the collection. With £57,000

Government purchased Angerstein's collection of pictures, which

became the nucleus of the National Gallery. But the main object of

the Budget was not expenditure but economy. The Four per Cents. were

redeemed or exchanged for Three-and-a-Half per Cent. Stock, and a

death-blow was given to the old system of bounties by a reduction of

that on the herring fishery and the immediate cessation of that on

inferior kinds of linen, while that on the higher class of linen was

annually decreased ten per cent. There was further a reduction of the

duties on rum and coals, with the result, as Robinson prophesied, that

lower prices considerably increased the consumption. His greatest

innovations, however, concerned the wool and silk trades. In the former

there prevailed a great conflict of interests. The agriculturists

wished for the prohibition of foreign wool; the manufacturers desired

the retention of an export duty, together with free importation. The

judicious Chancellor effected a compromise by which the duty on foreign

wool was reduced from 6d. to 1d. per pound, while the exportation of

English wool was sanctioned on a similar duty. The fear of a large

exportation of English wool proved so groundless that by 1826 only

100,000 pounds in weight had been exported, while 40,000,000 pounds of

foreign wool had been introduced.

[Illustration: GEORGE III.'S LIBRARY, BRITISH MUSEUM.]

In much the same way the silk industry had been protected by

prohibitory legislation, of which the only effect was to convert

smuggling into an important trade. Again, the manufacturers petitioned

for the removal of the duties upon spun silk, but were eager to exclude

foreign manufactured silks. On the other hand, the silk spinners were

opposed to the introduction of spun silk, but desired the removal of

duties upon raw silk, while the journeymen believed that ruin stared

them in the face if foreign manufactured silks were introduced.

Robinson, with Huskisson's assistance, decided to admit foreign silk

on an _ad valorem_ duty of 30 per cent. At the same time he largely

reduced the duties on the raw material. The duty on Indian silk was

reduced from 4s. to 3d., that on Chinese and Italian silks from 5s.

6d. to 6d., that on organzine from 14s. 10d. to 7s. 6d. a pound. The

manufacturers vowed and protested that they were ruined; in ten years'

time they were exporting to France, their former rival, £60,000 worth

of manufactured silk.

High duties were not the only evils that had been strangling the silk

trade. Its chief seat was at Spitalfields, where by the Act of 1811

and other legislation the magistrates had been empowered to fix the

rate of wages, and to subject to severe penalties any masters who

employed weavers in other districts. The result, said a manufacturers'

petition in 1823, is, "that the removal of the entire manufacture from

the metropolis is inevitable, if the Acts are to continue any longer

in force." However, the journeymen declared that a repeal of the Acts

would be followed by the reduction of their wages and the increase of

the poor rates. No less than 11,000 petitioned against Huskisson's

motion for a repeal, and, though the Bill passed the House of Commons

by small majorities, it was so altered by amendments in the Lords that

it was abandoned for the Session. But in this remarkable Session of

1824 it was reintroduced and passed through all its stages. As a result

the Combination Acts directed against meetings of workmen to affect

wages, the Acts which prevented the emigration of artisans, and the

laws against the exportation of machinery were brought under discussion

by Joseph Hume. The last question was waived for the present, but

the laws interfering with the emigration of artisans were repealed

without a voice being raised in their favour. As for the Combination

Acts, it was ordained that no peaceable meeting of masters or workmen

should be prosecuted as a conspiracy, while summary punishments were

enacted on those "who by threats, intimidation, or acts of violence

interfered with that freedom, which ought to be allowed to each

party, of employing his labour or capital in a manner he may deem

most advantageous." In consequence, however, of the outrages which

occurred during the Glasgow strikes of 1824, during which a workman who

disregarded the wishes of his union was shot, and men of one trade were

employed to assassinate the masters of another, further legislation

was necessary. By the Act of 1825 all associations were made illegal,

excepting those for settling such amount of wages as would be a fair

remuneration to the workman. Any other combination either of men

against masters or of masters against men, or of working men against

working men, was made illegal. The law thus framed continued to

regulate the relations of capital and labour for nearly half a century.

Of course, the commercial changes introduced by Mr. Huskisson and Mr.

Robinson excited loud murmurs of dissatisfaction from the interests

affected, especially the shipping interest. But the best answer to

objectors was the continuously flourishing state of the country. At

the opening of the Session in 1825, Lord Dudley and Ward, in moving

the Address in answer to the King's Speech in the Upper House,

observed:--"Our present prosperity is a prosperity extending to all

orders, all professions, and all districts, enhanced and invigorated

by the flourishing state of all those arts which minister to human

comfort, and those inventions by which man obtains a mastery over

nature by the application of her own powers, and which, if one had

ventured to foretell a few years ago, it would have appeared almost

incredible." This happy state of things was the result of a legitimate

expansion of trade. Manufacturers and merchants were at first guided

by a spirit of sober calculation. The steady advance in the public

securities, and in the value of property of all sorts, showed that

the national wealth rested upon a solid basis. The extension of the

currency kept pace with the development of trade and commerce, and

the circulation of bankers' paper was enormously increased. But out

of the national prosperity there arose a spirit of rash speculation

and adventure, resulting in a monetary crisis. The issue of notes by

country banks was under no restriction; no measures were taken to

secure that their paper represented property, and could be redeemed if

necessary. There were hundreds of bankers in the provinces who could

issue any quantity of notes they pleased, and these passed as cash from

hand to hand. The spirit of speculation and enterprise was stimulated

to a feverish degree of excitement by the recognition of the states of

Colombia, Mexico, and Buenos Ayres, formally announced in the King's

Speech on the 3rd of February, which said that treaties of commerce had

been made with those new states. The rich districts of South America

being thus thrown open, there was a rush of capitalists and adventurers

to work its inexhaustible mines. A number of companies was formed for

the purpose, and the gains of some of them in a few months amounted to

fifteen hundred per cent. The result was a mania of speculation, which

seized upon all classes, pervaded all ranks, and threw the most sober

and quiet members of society into a state of tumultuous excitement.

Joint-stock companies almost innumerable were established, to

accomplish all sorts of undertakings. There were thirty-three companies

for making canals and docks, forty-eight for making railroads,

forty-two for gas, twenty insurance companies, twenty-three banking

companies, twelve navigation packet companies, five indigo and sugar

companies, thirty-four metal companies, and many others. The amount

of capital subscribed in these various companies, which numbered two

hundred and seventy-six, was upwards of £174,000,000. In connection

with South America there was the Anglo-Mexican Company, the Brazilian,

the Colombian, Real de Monte, and the United Mexican. On the South

American shares only ten pounds each had been paid, except the Real

de Monte, on which £70 had been paid. We may judge of the extent to

which gambling speculation was carried from the following statement

of the market prices of the shares, in five of the principal mining

companies, at two periods, December 10th, 1824, and January 11th,

1825:--

December 10th. January 11th.

£ s. d. £ s. d.

Anglo-Mexican 33 0 0 158 0 0

Brazilian 0 10 0 66 0 0

Colombian 19 0 0 82 0 0

Real de Monte 550 0 0 1,350 0 0

United Mexican 35 0 0 1,550 0 0

In the course of this commercial madness the imports greatly exceeded

the exports, and there was consequently a rapid drain of specie

from the country. The drain of bullion from the Bank of England was

immense. In August, 1823, it had £12,658,240, which in August, 1825,

was reduced to £3,634,320, and before the end of the year it ran

as low as £1,027,000. Between July, 1824, and August, 1825, twelve

millions of cash were exported from Great Britain, chiefly to South

America. During the Revolutionary war, which had lasted for fourteen

years, the capital of the country had been completely exhausted,

while all productive labour had been abandoned. The unworked mines

were filled with water. They were accessible, it is true, to English

speculators, but they were worked exclusively with English capital. The

South American mining companies were so many conduits through which a

rapid stream of gold flowed from Great Britain. The catastrophe that

followed took the commercial world by surprise; even the Chancellor of

the Exchequer failed to anticipate the disaster. On the contrary, his

Budget of 1825 was based upon the most sanguine expectations for the

future, and on the assurance that the public prosperity was the very

reverse of what was ephemeral and peculiar, and that it arose from

something inherent in the nation. Even at the prorogation of Parliament

in July, the Royal Speech referred to the "great and growing"

prosperity on which his Majesty had the happiness of congratulating

the country at the beginning of the Session. The commercial crisis,

however, with widespread ruin in its train, was fast coming upon

Britain. Vast importations, intended to meet an undiminished demand

at high prices, glutted all the markets, and caused prices to fall

rapidly. Merchants sought accommodation from their bankers to meet

pressing liabilities, that they might be enabled to hold over their

goods till prices rallied. This accommodation the bankers were unable

to afford, and sales were therefore effected at a ruinous loss. The

South American mines, it was found, could not be worked at a profit,

and they made no return for the twenty million pounds of British money

which they had swallowed up. The effect was a sudden contraction of

the currency, and a general stoppage of banking accommodation. The

country banks, whose issues had risen to £14,000,000, were run upon

till their specie was exhausted, and many of them were obliged to stop

payment. The Plymouth Bank was the first to fail, and in the next three

weeks seventy banks followed in rapid succession. The London houses

were besieged from morning to night by clamorous crowds, all demanding

gold for their notes. Consternation spread through all classes. There

was a universal pressure of creditors upon debtors, the banks that

survived being themselves upon the edge of the precipice; and the

Bank of England itself, pushed to the last extremity, peremptorily

refused accommodation even to their best customers. Persons worth one

hundred thousand pounds could not command one hundred pounds; money

seemed to have taken to itself wings and fled away, reducing a state

of society in the highest degree artificial almost to the condition

of primitive barbarism, which led Mr. Huskisson to exclaim, "We were

within twenty-four hours of _barter_."

It is impossible to conceive the extent of suffering and desolation

inflicted upon society, almost every family being involved, more or

less, in the general calamity. Flourishing firms were bankrupt, opulent

merchants impoverished, the masses of working people suddenly thrown

out of employment, and reduced to destitution; and all from causes

with which the majority had nothing to do--causes that could have been

prevented by a proper monetary system. If Bank of England notes had

been a legal tender, to all intents and purposes supplying the place

of gold as currency; if these notes had been supplied to the country

banks in any quantities they required, ample security being taken to

have assets equal to their respective issues, then the currency would

have had an elastic, self-adjusting power, expanding or contracting

according to the requirements of commerce. Inordinate speculation would

not have been stimulated by a reckless system of credit, and business

would have been conducted in a moderate and judicious manner, instead

of rushing on at a high pressure that rendered a crash inevitable.

The Government, after anxious and repeated deliberations, supplied

a remedy on this principle. They determined to issue one-pound and

two-pound notes of the Bank of England, for country circulation, to

any amount required. In the meantime the Mint was set to work with all

its resources in the coining of sovereigns, which, for the course

of a week, were thrown off at the rate of 150,000 a day. The notes

could not be manufactured fast enough to meet the enormous demand for

carrying on the business of the country. In this dilemma the Bank was

relieved by a most fortunate discovery--a box containing £700,000, in

one- and two-pound notes that had been retired, but which were at once

put into circulation. The people having thus got notes with Government

security, the panic subsided, and the demand for gold gradually ceased.

The restoration of confidence was aided by resolutions passed at a

meeting of bankers and merchants in the City of London, declaring

that the unprecedented embarrassments and difficulties under which

the circulation of the country laboured were mainly to be ascribed

to a general panic, for which there were no reasonable grounds; that

they had the fullest confidence in the means and substance of the

banking establishments of the capital and the country; that returning

confidence would remove all the symptoms of distress caused by the

alarms of the timid, so fatal to those who were forced to sacrifice

their property to meet unexpected demands. The new measures so promptly

adopted and so vigorously carried into effect, raised the circulation

of the Bank of England notes in three weeks from £17,477,290 to

£25,611,800. Thus the regular and healthful action of the monetary

system was restored by an adequate circulation of paper money, on

Government security, without specie to sustain it. There were at the

time of the crash 770 country bankers; 63 stopped payment, 23 of them

having subsequently resumed business, and paid twenty shillings in the

pound; and even those that were not able to resume, paid an average of

seventeen shillings and sixpence in the pound. It was estimated that

the total loss to the country by this panic was one hundred million

pounds.

Such a tremendous crash in the commercial world could not have occurred

without involving the working classes in the deepest distress. In order

fully to understand all that society has gained by the instruction

of the people, by extending to them the blessings of education, and

especially by the diffusion of useful knowledge through the medium

of cheap literature, we have only to read the records of popular

disturbance and destructive violence which occurred in 1825 and 1826.

In the August of the former year there was a combination of seamen

against the shipowners at Sunderland; and on one occasion there was a

riot, when a mob of some hundreds flung the crew of a collier into the

sea. They were rescued from drowning, but, the military having fired

on the rioters, five persons were killed. Their funeral was made the

occasion of a great popular demonstration. There was a procession with

flags, and a band of singers, twelve hundred seamen walking hand in

hand, each with crape round the left arm. In the Isle of Man the people

rose against the tithing of their potatoes, and were quieted only by

the assurance that the tithe would not be demanded of them, either that

year or at any future time. In the spring of 1826 the operatives of

Lancashire rose up in open war against the power-looms, the main cause

of the marvellous prosperity that has since so largely contributed to

the wealth of England. They believed that the power-looms were the

cause of their distress, and in one day every power-loom in Blackburn,

and within six miles of it, was smashed; the spinning machinery having

been carefully preserved, though at one time the spinning jennies

were as obnoxious as the power-looms. The work of destruction was not

confined to one town or neighbourhood. The mob proceeded from town

to town, wrecking mill after mill, seizing upon bread in the bakers'

shops, and regaling themselves freely in public-houses. They paraded

the streets in formidable numbers, armed with whatever weapons they

could lay hands on--scythes, sledge-hammers, and long knives. They

resisted the troops fiercely, showering upon them stones and other

missiles. The troops, in their turn, fired upon the crowds, and when

they were dispersed the streets were stained with blood, the mob

carrying away their wounded into the fields. In one week no less than a

thousand power-looms were destroyed, valued at thirty thousand pounds.

In Manchester the mob broke the windows of the shops. At Carlisle,

Norwich, Trowbridge, and other places in England, similar lawless

proceedings occurred. Even in Glasgow the blame of the general distress

was thrown upon the machinery, not only by the ignorant operatives, but

by the gentry and the magistrates. In Dublin the silk-weavers marched

through the streets, to exhibit their wretchedness.

The distress was greatly aggravated, and spread over the whole country,

by the extraordinary drought which prevailed in the summer of 1826.

The richest meadows were burnt up. The stunted grain crops were only

a few inches in height. The cattle, and even the deer in noblemen's

parks, died from thirst. The people sat up all night to watch the

springs, waiting for their turn to be supplied. Water was retailed

in small quantities, and sold like beer. Those who occupied the more

favoured districts sent jars of fresh water to their friends in other

places, as most acceptable presents. In the midst of all this scarcity

and suffering the Corn Laws stopped the supplies of provisions from

abroad, which were ready to be poured in in any quantities. Bills

had been passed with great difficulty through Parliament, to enable

Government to relax the restrictions of the Corn Laws, in order to meet

the emergency. But so clogged were those enactments with conditions,

that in autumn Ministers were obliged to anticipate their operation by

opening the ports, trusting to the legislature for an indemnity. It is

melancholy to reflect upon the perplexities and miseries in which the

country was involved through the mistaken views of the landed interest,

then predominant in Parliament.

[Illustration: SCENE IN DUBLIN: PAINTING KING WILLIAM BLACK. (_See p._

247.)]

One important result of this terrible distress was to force on

emigration to a large extent, and thus to people the American States.

Emigration at that time was without any guidance, and the result was

a vast amount of disappointment and suffering among the emigrants.

Consequently, Mr. Wilmot Horton moved for a select committee to inquire

into the expediency of encouraging emigration from the United Kingdom.

The committee was appointed, and presented its report and evidence

before the dissolution of Parliament, with a recommendation that the

subject should be pursued without loss of time.

Lord Redesdale in a letter to Lord Eldon, written in 1821, soon after

the king's visit, gave expression to some important truths about the

Government of Ireland. "Ministers," he said, "have fancied that Ireland

would do better without a Lord-Lieutenant, and some of them have called

his office a useless pageant, but under the present circumstances they

would govern the colonies as well without governors as they can govern

Ireland without that pageant. If the pageant is useless, it is because

they make it useless, because they give him a Secretary to thwart him,

or to be a viceroy over him. The office of Lord-Lieutenant requires,

in my opinion, a considerable portion of ability, sound judgment,

discretion, firmness, good temper, and conciliating manners. Such a

Lord-Lieutenant ought to be supreme. If Ministers think fit to appoint

to such an office a man wholly unqualified for it, they must put him

in leading-strings, and give him a Secretary with all the qualities

the Lord-Lieutenant ought to have; and, moreover, with a disposition

to conceal rather than display his power over his superior--to lead,

and not to command, the Lord-Lieutenant. In England the machine goes on

almost of itself, and therefore a bad driver may manage it tolerably

well. It is not so in Ireland. The country requires great exertion

to bring it into a state of order and submission to law. The whole

population--high and low, rich and poor, Catholic and Protestant--must

all be brought to obedience to law; all must be taught to look up to

the law for protection. The gentry are ready enough to attend grand

juries, to obtain presentments for their own benefit, but they desert

the quarter-sessions of the peace. The first act of a constable in

arrest must not be to knock down the prisoner; and many, many reforms

must be made, which only can be effected by a judicious and able

Government on the spot. Ireland, in its present state, cannot be

governed in England. If insubordination compels you to give, how are

you to retain by law what you propose to maintain while insubordination

remains? It can only be by establishing completely the empire of the

law."

The Marquis Wellesley was sent over to Ireland by Lord Liverpool

in order to govern Ireland upon this principle; and he might have

succeeded better if he had not been checked by Mr. Goulburn, the Chief

Secretary, distinguished by his hostility to Catholic Emancipation, who

was appointed "viceroy over him." In a letter which the Marquis wrote

to the Duke of Buckingham (June 14th, 1824) he refers to some of the

difficulties with which he had to contend in carrying out an impartial

policy between the extreme parties, which were then very violent.

His labours, however, in enforcing respect for the law and effecting

improvements were not altogether in vain. "The situation of Ireland,"

he writes, "although very unsatisfactory, is certainly much improved,

and foundations of greater improvement have been firmly laid. The

committees of Parliament have done much good; and, if vigorously and

fairly pursued, may effect a permanent settlement of this distracted

country. The present violent collision of the two ultra parties, or

rather factions, Orange and Papist, is a crisis of the disorder which

was necessary to their mutual dissolution, an event which I think is

fast approaching, and which must be the preliminary of any settlement

of peace."

The evils of the social state of Ireland were bad enough without

being aggravated by the virulence of faction. The result of numerous

Parliamentary inquiries, and the observations of travellers from

foreign countries, was to present a state of society the most

deplorable that can well be imagined in any civilised country under a

Christian Government. Many of the lower orders, especially in Munster

and Connaught, as well as in mountainous districts of the other

provinces, maintained a state of existence the most wretched that can

be conceived. They lived in cabins built of mud, imperfectly covered

with sods and straw, consisting generally of one room, without any

window, with a chimney which admitted the rain, but did not carry

off the smoke. They had little or nothing that deserved the name of

furniture; their food consisted of potatoes and salt, with milk or a

herring sometimes as a luxury; their wages, when they got work, were

only sixpence or fourpence a day. They subsisted on small patches of

land, which were continually subdivided as the children got married,

the population at the same time multiplying with astonishing rapidity.

When the potatoes and the turf failed, towards summer, the men went

off to seek harvest work in the low lands and richer districts of the

country, and in England and Scotland. The women, locking up the doors,

set forth with the children to beg, the youngest of the lot being

wrapped up in blankets, and carried on their backs. They passed on from

parish to parish, getting a night's lodging, as they proceeded, in a

chimney corner or in a barn, from the better part of the peasantry and

farmers, who shared with them their potatoes, and gave them "a lock of

straw" to sleep on. Thus they migrated from county to county, eastward

and northward, towards the sea, lazily reposing in the sunshine by the

wayside, their children enjoying a wild kind of gipsy freedom, but

growing up in utter ignorance, uncared for by anybody, unrecognised

by the clergy of any church. The great proprietors were for the most

part absentees, who had let their lands, generally in large tracts,

to "middlemen," a sort of small gentry, or "squireens," as they

were called, who sublet at a rack-rent to the peasantry. Upon these

rack-rented, ignorant cultivators of the soil fell a great portion

of the burden of supporting the Established clergy, as well as their

own priesthood. The tithes were levied exclusively off tillage, the

rector or vicar claiming by law a tenth of the crop, which was valued

by his "tithe proctors," and unless compounded for in money, which was

generally done by the "strong farmers," before the crop left the field,

the tenth sheaf must have been set aside to be borne away on the carts

of the Protestant clergyman, who was regarded by the people that thus

supported him as the teacher of heresy.

Perhaps there is no cause from which Ireland has suffered more than

from misrepresentations. Nowhere have the want of discrimination,

and due allowance for the extravagant exaggerations of vehement

partisans, been more pernicious. There were in the reign of George

IV. no evils in Ireland which would not have yielded to the action of

just and impartial government, removing real grievances, and extending

to the people, in a confiding spirit, the blessings of the British

Constitution, in the spirit of Lord Wellesley's administration. He

had to contend, indeed, with peculiar difficulties. Ireland shared

largely in the general distress of the United Kingdom, occasioned by

the contraction of the currency, and the consequent low prices of

agricultural produce. He found a great portion of the south in a state

of licentiousness, surpassing the worst excesses of former unhappy

times; he had to deal with dangerous and secret conspiracies in other

parts of the country. He applied the energies of his powerful mind to

master these complicated difficulties in the spirit of conciliation

which had been enjoined in the king's instructions. He explored

every dangerous and untried path, and he laboured diligently, by the

equal administration of the laws, to promote peace and happiness

among all classes of the people. He succeeded to a great extent in

accomplishing the object of his administration. Mr. Plunket, the Irish

Attorney-General, in his speech on unlawful societies, in the House

of Commons, in February, 1825, described the country as in a state of

peace and prosperity. She had been enabled, by the noble lord at the

head of the Government, and by the measures which he had matured, to

enjoy the blessings which were the offspring of internal tranquillity.

Those measures had been properly administered, and public confidence

had been in consequence restored. "It was a great blessing," he said,

"it was a most gratifying object, to behold that country now floating

on the tide of public confidence and public prosperity. She was lying

on the breakers, almost a wreck, when the noble marquis arrived; and if

he had not taken the measures which have been so successfully adopted,

she never could have floated on that tide of public prosperity."

The Attorney-General defied the enemies of the administration to point

out a single instance in which the Viceroy had deviated from the line

of strict impartiality, yet he was the object of most virulent attacks

by the fanatical members of the Orange societies in Dublin, and by the

Orange press. Their animosity was excited to the utmost by a proceeding

which he adopted with reference to the statue of King William III. in

College Green. For some years a set of low persons, connected with

the Orange lodges, had been in the habit of bedaubing the statue

with ridiculous painting and tawdry orange colours, with a fantastic

drapery of orange scarves. The Catholics believed that this was done

with the avowed purpose of insulting them, and they thought that they

had as much right to undress as others had to dress a public statue.

On one occasion, therefore, they painted King William with lampblack.

Consequently, on the 12th of July, 1822, a serious riot occurred, in

the course of which lives were endangered, the tranquillity of the

metropolis was disturbed, and evil passions of the most furious kind

were engendered in the minds of the parties. As the peace must be

preserved, the only course was to put an end to those senseless brawls

by ordering that no unauthorised parties should presume to put their

hands on a public monument, either for the purpose of decorating or

defiling it. But this judicious order the Orangemen felt to be a wrong,

which should be resented and avenged by driving Lord Wellesley out

of the country. Accordingly, certain members of the Orange Society,

amounting to nearly one hundred, entered into a conspiracy to mob him

in the theatre. They were supplied with pit-tickets, and assembling

early at the door, they rushed in, and took possession of the seat

immediately under the Viceregal box. Other parties of them went to

the galleries. They agreed upon the watchword, "Look out." They had

previously printed handbills, which were freely distributed in and

about the theatre, containing insulting expressions, such as "Down

with the Popish Government!" Before the Viceroy arrived, they had been

crying for groans for the "Popish Lord-Lieutenant," for the house of

Wellesley, for the Duke of Wellington. When the marquis arrived he was

received with general cheering, that overbore the Orange hisses; but

during the playing of the National Anthem the offensive noise became so

alarming that some of the audience left the theatre. At this moment a

bottle was flung from one of the galleries, which was supposed to be

aimed at the head of the Lord-Lieutenant, and which fell near his box.

Some of the offenders in this "Bottle Riot," as it was called, were

prosecuted. Bills against them were sent up to the grand jury of the

city of Dublin. But as this body had a strong Orange animus, the

bills were thrown out. Mr. Plunket then proceeded by _ex-officio_

informations, which raised a great outcry against the Government, as

having violated the Constitution, and a resolution to that effect

was moved by Mr. Brownlow in the House of Commons. It turned out,

however, that his predecessor, Mr. Saurin, one of his most vehement

accusers, who alleged that the course was altogether unprecedented,

had himself established the precedent ten or twelve years before.

Forgetting this fact, he denounced the conduct of Mr. Plunket as "the

most flagrant violation of constitutional principle that had ever been

attempted." The trial in the Court of Queen's Bench, which commenced

on February 3rd, 1823, produced the greatest possible excitement.

The ordinary occupations of life appeared to be laid aside in the

agitating expectation of the event. As soon as the doors were opened,

one tremendous rush of the waiting multitude filled in an instant the

galleries, and every avenue of the court. The result of the trial was,

that the jury disagreed, the traversers were let out on bail, the

Attorney-General threatening to prosecute again; but the proceedings

were never revived.

But in the midst of all this strife and turmoil the work of real

amelioration steadily proceeded. The tithe proctor system was a great

and galling grievance to Protestants as well as Roman Catholics, but

especially to the latter, who constituted the mass of the tillers of

the soil. Such an odious impost tended to discourage cultivation, and

throw the land into pasture. The Tithe Commutation Act was therefore

passed in order to enable the tenant to pay a yearly sum, instead of

having the tenth of his crop carried away in kind, or its equivalent

levied, according to the valuation of the minister's proctor. It was

proposed to make the Act compulsory upon all rectors, but this was so

vehemently resisted by the Church party that it was left optional. If

the measure had been compulsory, the anti-tithe war, which afterwards

occurred, accompanied by violence and bloodshed, would have been

avoided. It was, however, carried into operation to a large extent,

and with the most satisfactory results. Within a few months after

the enactment, more than one thousand applications had been made

from parishes to carry its requirements into effect. In 1824, on the

motion of Mr. Hume for an inquiry into the condition of the Irish

Church Establishment, with a view to its reduction, Mr. Leslie Foster

furnished statistics from which it appeared that the proportion of

Roman Catholics to Protestants was four to one. In Ulster, at that

time, the Roman Catholic population was little more than half the

number of Protestants.

The year 1824 is memorable in Ireland for the establishment of the

Catholic Association. The Catholic question had lain dormant since

the Union. Ireland remained in a state of political stupor. There was

a Catholic committee, indeed, under the direction of a gentleman of

property, Mr. John Keogh, of Mount Jerome, near Dublin. But his voice

was feeble, and seldom heard. The councils of the Roman Catholics

were much distracted. Many of the bishops, and most of the gentry,

recommended prudence and patience as the best policy. Liberal statesmen

in England were willing to make concessions, but the conscientious

scruples of George III. had presented an insuperable barrier in the way

of civil equality. There was an annual motion on the subject--first by

Grattan, then by Plunket, and lastly by Burdett; but it attracted very

little attention, till the formidable power of the Catholic Association

excited general alarm for the stability of British institutions.

Adverting to the past history of Ireland--her geographical position,

her social state in respect of the tenure of property, and the numbers

of the respective religious denominations of her people--the ablest

Conservative statesmen considered that it would be extremely difficult

to reconcile the perfect equality of civil privilege, or rather the

_bonâ fide_ practical application of that principle, with those objects

on the inviolable maintenance of which the friends and opponents of

Catholic Emancipation were completely agreed--namely, the Legislative

Union and the Established Church. There was the danger of abolishing

tests which had been established for the express purpose of giving

to the legislature a Protestant character--tests which had been

established not upon vague constitutional theories, but after practical

experience of the evils which had been inflicted and the dangers

which had been incurred by the struggles for ascendency at periods

not remote from the present. There was the danger that the removal of

civil disabilities might materially alter the relations in which the

Roman Catholics stood to the State. Sir Robert Peel, in his "Memoirs,"

recites those difficulties at length, and in all their force. He fully

admits that "the Protestant interest" had an especial claim upon his

devotion and his faithful service, from the part which he had uniformly

taken on the Catholic question, from the confidence reposed in him on

that account, and from his position in Parliament as the representative

of the University of Oxford.

[Illustration: MR. HUSKISSON.]

Peel then shows how, and under what constraining sense of duty, he

responded to that claim: "And if the duty which that acknowledged claim

imposed upon me were this--that in a crisis of extreme difficulty

I should calmly contemplate and compare the dangers with which the

Protestant interest was threatened from different quarters--that I

should advise a course which I believe to be the least unsafe--that

having advised and adopted, I should resolutely adhere to it--that

I should disregard every selfish consideration--that I should

prefer obloquy and reproach to the aggravation of existing evils,

by concealing my real opinion, and by maintaining the false show

of personal consistency--if this were the duty imposed upon me,

I fearlessly assert that it was most faithfully and scrupulously

discharged."

The crisis of extreme difficulty to which Peel referred was occasioned

by the power acquired by the Catholic Association, which had originated

in the following manner. Early in 1823 Mr. O'Connell proposed to his

brother barrister, Mr. Sheil, and a party of friends who were dining

with Mr. O'Mara, at Glancullen, the plan of an association for the

management of the Catholic cause. At a general meeting of the Roman

Catholics, which took place in April, a resolution with the same design

was carried, and on Monday, the 12th of May, the first meeting of the

Catholic Association was held in Dempsey's Rooms, in Sackville Street,

Dublin. Subsequently it met at the house of a Catholic bookseller named

Coyne, and before a month had passed it was in active working order.

From these small beginnings it became, in the course of the year, one

of the most extensive, compact, and powerful popular organisations

the world had ever seen. Its influence ramified into every parish in

Ireland. It found a place and work for almost every member of the

Roman Catholic body; the peer, the lawyer, the merchant, the country

gentleman, the peasant, and, above all, the priest, had each his

task assigned him: getting up petitions, forming deputations to the

Government and to Parliament, conducting electioneering business,

watching over the administration of justice, collecting "the Catholic

rent," preparing resolutions, and making speeches at the meetings of

the Association, which were held every Monday at the Corn Exchange,

when everything in the remotest degree connected with the interests of

Roman Catholics or of Ireland was the subject of animating and exciting

discussion, conducted in the form of popular harangues, by barristers,

priests, merchants, and others. Voluminous correspondence was read by

the secretary, large sums of rent were handed in, fresh members were

enrolled, and speeches were made to a crowd of excited and applauding

people, generally composed of Dublin operatives and idlers. But as the

proceedings were fully reported in the public journals, the audience

may be said to have been the Irish nation. And over all, "the voice of

O'Connell, like some mighty minster bell, was heard through Ireland,

and the empire, and the world."

The objects of the Association were--"1st, to forward petitions to

Parliament; 2nd, to afford relief to Catholics assailed by Orange

lodges; 3rd, to encourage and support a liberal and independent press,

as well in Dublin as in London--such a press as might report faithfully

the arguments of their friends and refute the calumnies of their

enemies; 4th, to procure cheap publications for the various schools in

the country; 5th, to afford aid to Irish Catholics in America; and,

6th, to afford aid to the English Catholics." Such were the ostensible

objects, but more was aimed at than is here expressed. The Association

was formed on a plan different from other bodies in Ireland. It

proposed to redress all grievances, local or general, affecting the

people. It undertook as many questions as ever engaged the attention of

a legislature. "They undertook," said the Attorney-General Plunket,

"the great question of Parliamentary Reform; they undertook the repeal

of the Union; they undertook the regulation of Church property; they

undertook the administration of justice. They intended not merely to

consider the administration of justice, in the common acceptance of

the term; but they determined on the visitation of every court, from

that of the highest authority down to the court of conscience. They did

not stop here. They were not content with an interference with courts;

they were resolutely bent on interfering with the adjudication of every

cause which affected the Catholics, whom they styled 'the people of

Ireland.'"

The Association had become so formidable, and was yet so carefully kept

within the bounds of law by "Counsellor O'Connell," in whose legal

skill the Roman Catholics of all classes had unbounded confidence,

that the Government resolved to procure an Act of Parliament for its

suppression. Accordingly, on the 11th of February, 1825, a Bill was

brought into the House of Commons by the Irish Chief Secretary, Mr.

Goulburn, under the title of Unlawful Societies in Ireland Bill. The

plural form caused a great deal of debating. The Government declared

they wished to include the Orange Society as well as the Catholic

Association. But the Opposition had no faith in this declaration, and

Mr. Brougham stated that they would put down the Catholic Association

with one hand and pat the Orange Society on the back with the other.

The debates on the subject were very animated, and touched upon

constitutional questions of the widest interest to the public. The

Irish Attorney-General said he did not deny that if a set of gentlemen

thought fit to unite for those purposes, it was in their power to do

so; but then came the question as to the means which they employed,

and those means he denied to be constitutional. "They have," he said,

"associated with them the Catholic clergy, the Catholic nobility, many

of the Catholic gentry, and all the surviving delegates of 1791. They

have established committees in every district, who keep up an extensive

correspondence through the country. This Association, consisting

originally of a few members, has now increased to 3,000. They proceeded

to establish a Roman Catholic rent; and in every single parish, of the

2,500 parishes into which Ireland is divided, they appointed twelve

Roman Catholic collectors, which make an army of 30,000. Having this

their army of collectors, they brought to their assistance 2,500

priests, and the whole ecclesiastical body. And thus provided, they

go about levying contributions on the peasantry." This Mr. Plunket

pronounced to be unconstitutional, though not in the strict sense

illegal; the Association was a representative and a tax-levying body.

He denied that any portion of the subjects of this realm had a right

to give their suffrages to others, had a right to select persons

to speak their sentiments, to debate upon their grievances, and to

devise measures for their removal. This was the privilege alone of

the Commons of the United Kingdom. He would not allow that species of

power to anybody not subjected to proper control. But to whom were

those individuals accountable? Where was their responsibility? Who was

to check them? Who was to stop their progress? By whom were they to be

tried or rebuked if found acting mischievously? People not acquainted

with Ireland were not aware of the nature of this formidable instrument

of power, greater than the power of the sword. Individuals connected

with it went into every house and every family. They mixed in all the

relations of private life, and afterwards detailed what they heard with

the utmost freedom. The Attorney-General could not conceive a more

deadly instrument of tyranny than it was when it interfered with the

administration of justice. Claiming to represent six millions of the

people of Ireland, it denounced as a public enemy, and arraigned at the

bar of justice, any individual it chose to accuse of acting contrary

to the popular interest. Thus the grand inquest of the people were the

accusers, and there was an unlimited supply of money to carry on the

prosecution. The consequence was that magistrates were intimidated,

feeling that there was no alternative but to yield, or be overwhelmed

by the tide of fierce popular passions.

[Illustration: "SOLICITING A VOTE." FROM THE PAINTING BY R. W. BUSS,

1834.]

After a debate of four nights the second reading was carried by the

large majority of one hundred and fifty-five, the numbers being two

hundred and seventy-eight to one hundred and twenty-three. In the House

of Lords the numbers were nearly four to one in favour of the measure,

which was quickly passed into law. As soon as this fact was made

known in Ireland, Mr. O'Connell moved that the society be dissolved.

This was no sooner done than a new society was formed; and when the

Attorney-General returned to Ireland he found it in active operation.

It was in reference to this proceeding O'Connell boasted that he could

drive a coach-and-four through an Act of Parliament. It was declared

that the new Catholic Association should not assume, or in any manner

exercise, the power of acting for the purpose of obtaining redress of

grievances in Church or State, or any alteration in the law, or for

the purpose of carrying on or assisting in the prosecution or defence

of causes civil or criminal. Nothing could be more inoffensive or

agreeable than its objects, which were to promote peace, harmony,

and tranquillity; to encourage a liberal and enlightened system of

education; to ascertain the population of Ireland, and the comparative

numbers of different persuasions; to devise means of erecting suitable

Catholic places of worship; to encourage Irish agriculture and

manufactures, and to publish refutations of the charges against the

Catholics. Such was the new platform; but the speeches were of the same

defiant and belligerent strain as before. The speakers still prayed

that God Almighty would increase the dissensions and differences of the

Government, and rejoiced in the inspiring prospect of a cloud bursting

on England from the North, where Russia had 1,300,000 men in arms.

On the 1st of March Sir Francis Burdett presented a Catholic petition,

and in a speech of great eloquence and force moved for the appointment

of a committee to inquire into the grievances of which it complained.

The question thus brought before the House of Commons was one on which

the Cabinet was divided. Canning had come down to the House from a

sick bed, and on a crutch, to give his support to the motion. Plunket

delivered one of his most powerful speeches on the same side. Peel

took upon himself the heavy task of replying to both. He was supported

by Mr. Leslie Foster. Brougham closed the debate; and the motion was

carried by a majority of thirteen, amid loud cheers. Resolutions

were adopted, and a Bill founded upon them passed the Commons, but

it was lost in the Upper House, where it was thrown out, on the 19th

of May, by a majority of sixty-five. It was on that occasion that

the Duke of York, then heir presumptive to the Throne, made the

celebrated declaration against all concession to the Catholics, which

excited against him intense animosity in Ireland. At the conclusion

of a vehement speech he said:--"If I have expressed myself warmly,

especially in the latter part of what I have said, I must appeal to

your lordships' generosity. I feel the subject most forcibly; but it

affects me the more deeply when I recollect that to its agitation

must be ascribed that severe illness and ten years of misery which

had clouded the existence of my beloved father. I shall therefore

conclude with assuring your lordships that I have uttered my honest

and conscientious sentiments, founded upon principles I have imbibed

from my earliest youth, to the justice of which I have subscribed after

careful consideration in maturer years; and these are the principles

to which I will adhere, and which I will maintain, and that up to the

latest moment of my existence, whatever may be my situation of life, so

help me God!"

It was not Protestants only that were alarmed at the democratic

movement which was guided by O'Connell. The Roman Catholic peers, both

in England and Ireland, shared their apprehensions. Lord Redesdale,

writing to Lord Eldon, said:--"I learn that Lord Fingall and others,

Catholics of English blood, are alarmed at the present state of things,

and they may well be alarmed. If a revolution were to happen in

Ireland, it would be in the end an Irish revolution, and no Catholic of

English blood would fare better than a Protestant of English blood. So

said Lord Castlehaven, an Irish Catholic of English blood, one hundred

and seventy years ago, and so said a Roman Catholic, confidentially to

me, above twenty years ago. The question is not simply Protestant and

Catholic, but English and Irish; and the great motive of action will be

hatred of the Sassenach, inflamed by the priests."

Apprehensions of this kind were not lessened by the memorable speech

of Mr. Canning, delivered on the 15th of February, in which he gave

a narrative of his labours and sacrifices in the Catholic cause,

and complained of the exactions and ingratitude of its leaders.

Having shown how he stood by the cause in the worst of times, he

proceeded:--"Sir, I have always refused to act in obedience to the

dictates of the Catholic leaders; I would never put myself into their

hands, and I never will.... Much as I have wished to serve the Catholic

cause, I have seen that the service of the Catholic leaders is no easy

service. They are hard taskmasters, and the advocate who would satisfy

them must deliver himself up to them bound hand and foot.... But to

be taunted with a want of feeling for the Catholics, to be accused of

compromising their interests, conscious as I am--as I cannot but be--of

being entitled to their gratitude for a long course of active services,

and for the sacrifice to their cause of interests of my own--this is a

sort of treatment which would rouse even tameness itself to assert its

honour and vindicate its claims."

Parliament was prorogued on the 31st of May, 1826, and two days

afterwards dissolved. It had nearly run its course. It was the sixth

Session, which had been abridged with a view of getting through

the general election at a convenient season. But though short, the

Session had much work to show of one kind or another, including

some useful legislation. The Parliamentary papers printed occupied

twenty-nine folio volumes, exclusive of the journals and votes. The

Parliament whose existence was now terminated had, indeed, effected

the most important changes in the policy of Great Britain, foreign and

domestic. Mr. Canning had severed the connection, unnatural as it was

damaging, between England and the Holy Alliance. The Government of the

freest country in the world, presenting almost the only example of a

constitution in which the power of the people was represented, was no

longer to be associated in the councils of a conclave of despots; and

this change of direction in its foreign policy was cordially adopted by

the House of Commons and by the nation. Another great and vital change

in national policy was the partial admission of the principles of Free

Trade, which the Tories regarded, not without reason, as effecting

a complete revolution, which extended its influence to the whole

legislation and government.

[Illustration: ELECTION MEETING IN IRELAND. (_See p._ 254.)]

In one respect the general election happened at an unseasonable time.

It was the driest and warmest summer on record. On the 28th of June,

the hottest day in the year, the thermometer stood at eighty-nine

and a half degrees in the shade. Several deaths were occasioned

by sunstroke; among the victims were a son of Earl Grey, and Mr.

Butterworth, the eminent law bookseller, a candidate for Dover. The

elections were carried on in many places with great spirit. But, though

there were exciting contests, the struggles were not for parties, but

for measures. There were three great questions at issue before the

nation, and with respect to these pledges were exacted. The principal

were the Corn Laws, Catholic Emancipation, and the Slave Trade. In

England and Wales one hundred and thirty-three members were returned

who had never before sat in Parliament. This large infusion of new

blood showed that the constituencies were in earnest. In Ireland the

contests turned chiefly on the Catholic question. The organisation

of the Catholic Association told now with tremendous effect. In

every parish the populace were so excited by inflammatory harangues,

delivered in the chapel on Sundays, after public worship, both by

priests and laymen--the altar being converted into a platform--that

irresistible pressure was brought to bear upon the Roman Catholic

electors. The "forty-shilling freeholders" had been multiplied to an

enormous extent by the landlords for electioneering purposes. Roman

Catholic candidates being out of the question, and the Tory interest

predominant in Ireland, electioneering contests had been hitherto

in reality less political than personal. They had been contests for

pre-eminence between great rival families; consequently, farms were cut

up into small holdings, because a cabin and a potato garden gave a man

who was little better than a pauper an interest which he could swear

was to him worth forty shillings a year. The Protestant landlords who

pursued this selfish course little dreamt that the political power they

thus created would be turned with terrible effect against themselves;

and they could scarcely realise their position when, in county after

county, they were driven from the representation, which some of them

regarded as an inheritance almost as secure as their estates. The most

powerful family in Ireland, and the most influential in the Government,

was that of the Beresfords, whose principal estates lay in the county

Waterford, and where no one would imagine that their candidate could

be opposed with the least prospect of success. But on this occasion

they suffered a signal defeat. The forty-shilling freeholders, as well

as the better class of Roman Catholic farmers, were so excited by the

contest that they went almost to a man against their landlords. In many

cases they had got their holdings at low rents on the express condition

that their vote should be at the disposal of the landlord. But all such

obligations were given to the winds. They followed their priests from

every parish to the hustings, surrounded and driven forward by a mass

of non-electors armed with sticks and shouting for their church and

their country. O'Connell was now in his glory, everywhere directing

the storm which he had raised. When the contest was over, many of the

landlords retaliated by evicting the tenants who had betrayed their

trust and forfeited their pledges. They were tauntingly told that they

might go for the means of living to O'Connell and the priests. This was

a new ingredient in the cauldron of popular discontent, disaffection,

and agrarian crime. The gain of the Catholic party in Ireland, however,

was more than counterbalanced by the gain of the opposite party in

England and Scotland.

The new Parliament met on the 14th of November. Mr. Manners Sutton

was re-elected Speaker. A week was spent in the swearing-in of

members, and on the 21st the Session was opened by the king in person.

In the Royal Speech allusion was made to the throwing open of the

ports for the admission of foreign grain, and the distress that had

visited the manufacturing districts. The Address was carried in the

Upper House without a division, and in the Lower House an amendment,

moved by Mr. Hume, found only twenty-four supporters. On the 5th of

December Alderman Waithman moved for a committee of inquiry with

reference to the part taken by members of Parliament in the Joint

Stock mania of 1824-5-6. He stated that within the last three years

six hundred joint-stock companies had been formed, most of them for

dishonest purposes. The directors of these fraudulent schemes worked

with the market as they pleased, forcing up the prices of shares to

sell, and depressing them to buy, pocketing the difference. He dwelt

particularly on the Arignon Mining Company, of which the late chairman

of the Committee of Ways and Means, Mr. Brogden, had been a director.

The directors of this company, besides an allowance of three guineas

per day for the use of their names, had divided between them a large

surplus, arising from traffic in shares. Other members of the House,

he alleged, had enriched themselves by bubble companies, particularly

Sir William Congreve. At the suggestion of Mr. Canning, the inquiry

was restricted to the Arignon Company. A vast amount of loss and

suffering had been inflicted by these bubble companies. A check was

given to the steady and wholesome progress of the country by the fever

of excitement, followed by a sudden and terrible collapse. Healthful

commerce was blighted, and one of the worst results of the revulsion

was that it not only swept away the delusive projects of adventurers,

but paralysed for a season the operations of legitimate enterprise.

The commercial atmosphere, however, had been cleared by the monetary

crisis of 1825-6. An extensive decomposition of commercial elements was

effected. Masses of fictitious property were dispersed, and much of the

real capital of the country was distributed in new and safe channels,

which caused the year 1827 to open with more cheering prospects.

The Duke of York did not long survive his vehement declaration against

the concession of the Catholic claims. His vow that he would never

permit the Emancipation to take place, whatever might be his future

position--alluding to his probable accession to the Throne--embittered

the feelings of the Irish Roman Catholics against him. His disease

was dropsy, and Mr. Sheil, at a public dinner, jeeringly referred to

the "rotundity of his configuration." Mr. O'Connell, with equally

bad taste, exulted in the prospect of his dissolution, and said, "I

wish no physical ill to the royal duke; but if he has thrown his oath

in the way of our liberties, and that, as long as he lives, justice

shall not be done to the people of Ireland, it is a mockery to tell

me that the people of Ireland have not an interest in his ceasing

to live. Death is the corrector of human errors; it is said to be

man's hour for repentance, and God's opportunity. If the royal duke

should not become converted from his political errors, I am perfectly

resigned to the will of God, and shall abide the result with the most

Christian resignation." The duke's bodily sufferings increased very

much towards the end of 1826, and in December the disease manifested

the most alarming symptoms. He continued to the last to discharge his

duties as Commander-in-Chief. His professional zeal flashed out even

on his death-bed. At a time when his breathing was so oppressed that

it was necessary to support him with pillows in an upright position,

he personally gave all the orders, and directed all the arrangements,

for the expedition which left England in the middle of December, when

the peace of Europe was in imminent danger from the threatened invasion

of Portugal. Notwithstanding his dislike to Canning, in consequence of

their difference on the Catholic question, he co-operated with him in

this matter with an earnestness and vigour which the Duke of Wellington

himself could not have surpassed. On the 5th of January, 1827, he died.

The occasion for the Portuguese expedition arose in this way: bands

of Portuguese rebels, armed, equipped, and trained in Spain, at the

instigation of France, passed the Spanish frontier, carrying terror

and devastation into their own country, crossing the boundary at

different points, and proclaiming different pretenders to the throne of

Portugal. Had Spain employed mercenaries to effect the invasion, there

could not be a doubt of its hostile character. Portugal then enjoyed a

constitutional government, under the regency of the infant daughter of

the King of Brazil. The Absolutist party had proclaimed Don Miguel, the

King of Brazil's younger brother. During the civil war the rebels had

been driven into Spain, where they were welcomed with ardour, equipped

afresh, and sent back to maintain the cause of Absolutism in the

Portuguese dominions. England was bound by treaty to assist Portugal

in any such emergency. Her aid was demanded accordingly, and, averse

as Mr. Canning was from war, and from intervention in the affairs of

foreign states, he rendered the assistance required with the utmost

promptitude. On Friday, December 3rd, the Portuguese ambassador made a

formal demand of assistance against a hostile aggression from Spain.

Canning answered that, though he had heard rumours to that effect,

he had not yet received such precise information as justified him in

applying to Parliament. It was only on Friday that that information

arrived. On Saturday the Cabinet came to a decision; on Sunday

the decision received the sanction of the king; on Monday it was

communicated to both Houses of Parliament, and on Tuesday the troops

were on their march for embarkation. The expedition arrived at Lisbon

in good time, and had the desired effect of restoring tranquillity and

preventing war--that "war of opinions" which Canning so much dreaded.

It was on this occasion that Canning delivered the magnificent oration

which electrified the House and the country. No speech in Parliament

had ever before produced such an effect. Only a man of splendid genius

and intense sympathy, placed in a position to wield the force of a

great nation, could have delivered such a speech or produced such an

effect. "The situation of England," he said, "amidst the struggle of

political opinions which agitates more or less sensibly different

countries of the world, may be compared to that of the ruler of the

winds--

'Celsa sedet Æolus arce,

Sceptra tenens; mollitque animos et temperat iras;

Ni faciat, maria ac terras cœlumque profundum

Quippe ferant rapidi secum verrantque per auras.'

"The consequence of letting loose the passions at present chained and

confined would be to produce a scene of desolation which no man can

contemplate without horror, and I would not sleep easy on my couch if

I were conscious that I had contributed to accelerate it by a single

moment. This is the reason why I dread the recurrence of hostilities in

any part of Europe; why I would forbear long on any point which did not

taint the national honour, ere I let slip the dogs of war, the leash

of which we hold in our hands, not knowing whom they may reach, or

how far their ravages may be carried. Such is the love of peace which

the British Government acknowledges, and such the necessity for peace

which the circumstances of the world inculcate. Let us fly to the aid

of Portugal, because it is our duty to do so; and let us cease our

interference when that duty ends. We go to Portugal not to rule, not

to dictate, not to prescribe constitutions, but to defend and preserve

the independence of an ally. We go to plant the standard of England

on the well-known heights of Lisbon. Where that standard is planted,

foreign dominion shall not come." The House received this speech with

tumultuous applause, and refused to listen to the objections that Mr.

Hume and others wished to urge against the expedition on the score

of economy. In the Upper House also the Government was sustained by

an overwhelming majority. The expedition, consisting of six thousand

men, received orders to march (as we have seen) on the 11th of

December, and began to land in Lisbon on Christmas Day. The incursions

from Spain immediately ceased, and France, which had instigated and

secretly encouraged the movement, now found it prudent to disclaim all

connection with it. Before eighteen months had elapsed the troops had

returned.

Toryism had now lost two of its main pillars, the Marquis of

Londonderry and the Duke of York. They had worked together for many

years, one directing the foreign policy of the country while sustaining

the chief burden of a great war against France, the other at the head

of the British army, whose valour ultimately triumphed at Waterloo.

A third of those pillars, Lord Liverpool, was now struck down; and

the fourth, Lord Eldon, was not destined to survive very long. On the

17th of February a stroke of paralysis terminated the public life

of the Prime Minister, though he survived till December 4th in the

following year (1828). He was born in 1770, and as Mr. Jenkinson and

Lord Hawkesbury had been a firm supporter of Mr. Pitt; his Premiership

commenced on June 9th, 1812. He had acquired from his father an

extensive knowledge of monetary and commercial affairs, and this,

combined with the experience of a protracted official career, gave

him a great advantage in Parliament, making him master of the leading

principles and facts. Amiable, exemplary, frank, and disinterested

in his private character, he secured the attachment of his friends,

and conciliated the good-will of his political opponents. He was

not distinguished for superior statesmanship, power in debate, or

originality of mind; but as a political leader he was what is called a

safe man--cautious, moderate, plausible, and conciliatory. His Cabinet

was weakened by division, the most agitating topic of the day being an

open question with its members--Eldon, Wellington, and Peel voting with

him on one side, Canning and his friends on the other. His practical

wisdom was shown in so far yielding to the spirit of the times as to

admit Mr. Canning into the Cabinet on the death of Lord Londonderry,

though he found great difficulty in overcoming the repugnance of the

king to this arrangement. In the same spirit he had admitted the

Grenvilles to a responsible share in the Administration. Had he been

a man of more decision of character and more energetic will, he would

have been more one-sided and straightforward, and that would not have

suited a time of great transition and changes of political currents.

During his long tenure of office new ideas were fermenting in the

public mind. The people had become impatient of class legislation,

and were loudly demanding greater influence in the legislation of

the country, greater security for their rights, and freer scope for

their industry. They had the most powerful advocates in the press

and in Parliament, where Henry Brougham stood foremost among their

champions, incessantly battling for their cause. The Conservatives were

entrenched behind the bulwarks of monopoly, which were assailed with

a frequency and determination that, it was foreseen by the wisest of

their defenders, nothing could ultimately resist. Lord Liverpool, with

great tact and prudence, managed to postpone the hour of surrender so

long as he was in command of the fortress. He had yielded one outwork

after another, when resistance was no longer possible, but the value

of his services in retaining the rest was not fully appreciated till

he was disabled and placed _hors de combat_. Without any far-reaching

sagacity, he could estimate the relative value of existing social and

political forces, and, weighing all the circumstances, determine what

was the best thing to be done, the best of several courses to adopt

here and now. He felt that Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary

Reform might be still safely resisted, and here he was loyal to his

party; but on questions of currency, Free Trade, and navigation, he

went readily with his Liberal supporters.

[Illustration: LISBON.]

When he was removed, it was evident that the temporising system would

do no longer. The head of the Cabinet must take one side or the

other. The Prime Minister must be a friend or an enemy of progress--a

Reformer or an anti-Reformer. In these circumstances the king had

great difficulty in forming an Administration. The prostration of

Lord Liverpool had come upon the political world "with the force of

an earthquake," convulsing parties in the most violent and singular

manner, and completely changing the aspect of affairs at Court and in

the State. The Sovereign had before him, on one hand, Mr. Canning,

the leader of the House of Commons, the most popular Minister, the

most brilliant statesman in England since the days of Pitt. How could

he put aside his claims to be Prime Minister? On the Tory side there

was no statesman to whom the post could be safely entrusted. If Eldon

could be kept in his place as Lord Chancellor, it was as much as could

be expected at his time of life. The Duke of Wellington's military

character, as well as his anti-Catholic feeling, prevented his being

placed at the head of an Administration. Mr. Peel was considered too

young to occupy so great a position. The latter was consulted, and

gave it as his opinion that an anti-Catholic Ministry could not be

formed. The issue was, that, after a fortnight's anxious suspense

and difficulty, the king entrusted Mr. Canning with the formation of

a Ministry. The task which he undertook was extremely delicate and

difficult. He was greatly disliked by the chiefs of both parties.

He belonged to no old aristocratic house. He had risen to the first

position in the State by his genius and industry, by the wise and

beneficent application of the most brilliant and commanding talents.

These excited intense jealousy among those whose principal merit

consisted in hereditary rank. When he had received the king's orders,

though aware of their feelings towards him, he dealt with them in a

frank and generous spirit. He wrote to his colleagues individually,

courteously expressing his desire that the public service might

still enjoy the advantages to be derived from the exercise of their

administrative talents. Most of them answered evasively, pretending

that they did not know who was to be Prime Minister, and postponing

their decision till they had received that information. As soon as

they learnt that they were to serve under Mr. Canning, the entire

Administration, with very few exceptions, resigned. Mr. Peel did not

share the antipathies of his aristocratic colleagues. Mr. Canning

declared that he was the only seceding member of the Government that

behaved well to him at this time; and so high was his opinion of that

gentleman that he considered him to be his only rightful political

heir and successor. He was not deceived on either of those points.

Mr Peel, writing confidentially to Lord Eldon, on the 9th of April,

expressed his feelings frankly, and they did him honour. His earnest

wish was to see the Government retained on the footing on which it

stood at the time of Lord Liverpool's misfortune. He was content with

his own position as Home Secretary. Though differing from every one of

his colleagues in the House of Commons on the Catholic question, he

esteemed and respected them, and would consider it a great misfortune

were his Majesty to lose the services of any of them, "but particularly

of Canning." He was willing to retire alone if the rest of his

colleagues, who did not feel the same difficulty, would consent to hold

office with Canning. He advised the king that an exclusive Protestant

Government could not be formed. He also said that he was out of the

question as the head of a Government under the arrangement that he

considered the best that could be made, namely, the reconstruction of

the late Administration, "because it was quite impossible for Canning

to acquiesce in his appointment." He was, however, ready to give

Canning's Government his general support.

On the 10th of April, when Mr. Canning kissed hands as First Lord of

the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, he found himself deserted

by the Duke of Wellington, Lord Eldon, Mr. Peel, Lords Bathurst,

Melville, and Westmoreland. The members of the Cabinet who finally

adhered to him were Lord Harrowby, Mr. Huskisson, Mr. Wynne, and Mr.

Robinson, afterwards Lord Goderich, who had become Secretary of the

Colonial Department, with the lead of the Government in the House of

Lords. Having received the resignations, and presented them to the

king, Mr. Canning said:--"Here, sire, is that which disables me from

executing the orders I have received from you respecting the formation

of a new Administration. It is now open to your Majesty to adopt a

new course; for no step has yet been taken in the execution of those

orders that is irrecoverable." He added, that if he was to go on, his

writ must be moved for that day, which was the last before the Easter

recess. The king at once gave him his hand to kiss, and confirmed

the appointment. Two hours afterwards the House was ringing with

acclamations while Mr. Wynne was moving that a new writ be issued for

the borough of Newport in consequence of the Right Honourable George

Canning having accepted the office of First Lord of the Treasury. This

was a result which Lord Eldon did not anticipate. He evidently expected

that Canning would be foiled in his attempt to form a Ministry. He

wrote, "Who could have thought it? I guess that I, Wellington, Peel,

Bathurst, Westmoreland, and C. will be out." Again he says, "The whole

conversation in town is made up of abusive, bitterly abusive, talk of

people about each other--all fire and flame. I have known nothing like

it." Elsewhere he remarks, "I think political enmity runs higher and

waxes warmer than I ever knew it."

The irritation arose from the fact that the force of public opinion was

wresting political power from the families that had so long held it in

well-assured possession as their hereditary right. Mr. Canning appeared

before them as the man in whom that opinion had triumphed--who, by his

own talents and merit alone, had risen to the first position in the

State, to be, in fact, the chief ruler, the acting Sovereign of the

empire. Hence the mortification, hence the factious wrath that was

poured upon his devoted head. They succeeded in victimising a statesman

of whom, as Englishmen, they ought to have been proud, vainly hoping

that they could thereby maintain the domination of their order in

the Government of the country. They were aware that the state of Mr.

Canning's health was not good. He had all the exquisite sensibility

as well as the pride of genius. His finely strung nervous system had

been overwrought by incessant labour and anxiety, and irritated by

the unworthy and unmerited attacks to which he had been subjected.

He suppressed his feelings with a manly self-control, and a noble

disdain of the mean and virulent assaults upon him. But he felt keenly,

nevertheless, and the more carefully he hid the wounds of his mind, the

more fatally the poisoned shafts rankled within.

The new Premier, however, was resolute, and persevered with his

arrangements. He found an excellent successor to Lord Eldon, as

Chancellor, in Sir John Copley, the Master of the Rolls, who was

created Lord Lyndhurst. Mr. Peel, as Home Secretary, was succeeded by

Mr. Sturges Bourne, who retired after a few weeks to make way for the

Marquis of Lansdowne. He represented a section of the Whigs, prominent

among whom were Brougham, Tierney and Burdett, who gave their support

to the Ministry. The Duke of Clarence succeeded Lord Melville as

First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Marquis of Anglesey the Duke of

Wellington as Master-General of the Ordnance. Viscount Palmerston was

appointed the Secretary at War, with which office he commenced his

long, brilliant, and popular career as a Cabinet Minister. The new

Master of the Rolls was Sir John Leech, the Attorney-General Sir James

Scarlett, and the Solicitor-General Sir N. Tindal. Mr. Lamb, afterwards

Lord Melbourne, succeeded Mr. Goulburn as Chief Secretary of Ireland.

These three events--the death of the Duke of York, the appointment

of Mr. Canning as Prime Minister, and the entire remodelling of the

Cabinet on Liberal principles--succeeding one another so rapidly

in the early months of 1827, were regarded as the turning-points

in the modern history of England, and fraught with most momentous

consequences. The first changed the Heir-Apparent to the Throne, and

for an obstinate bigot substituted a prince of popular sympathies. The

second represented the triumph of intellect and public opinion over

rank and monopoly. "Changes so vast," writes Sir Archibald Alison,

"could not fail to exercise a powerful influence on the course of

events in future times. The magnitude of the change appeared in the

most decided manner when the Ministerial explanations usual in such

cases took place in Parliament. Both Houses were crowded to excess,

both in the highest degree excited, but the excitement in the two

was as different as the poles are asunder: in the Commons it was the

triumph of victory, in the Peers the consternation of defeat. So

clearly was this evinced that it obliterated for a time the deep lines

of party distinction, and brought the two Houses, almost as hostile

bodies united under different standards, into the presence of each

other. The Commons rang with acclamations when the new Premier made

his triumphant explanation from the head of the Ministerial bench;

but they were still louder when Mr. Peel, from the cross benches, out

of office, said, 'They may call me illiberal and Tory, but it will be

found that some of the most necessary measures of useful legislation

of late years are inscribed with my name.' The tide of reform had

become so strong that even the avowed Tory leaders in the Lower House

were fain to take credit by sailing along with it. In the House of

Lords, on the other hand, the feeling of the majority was decidedly

hostile to the new Administration, and that not merely on the Tory

benches, where it might naturally have been looked for, but among the

old Whig nobility, who had long considered Government as an appendage

of their estates. It was hard to say whether the old peers on both

sides responded more strongly to the Duke of Wellington's and Lord

Eldon's explanation of their reasons for declining to hold office, or

to Earl Grey's powerful and impassioned attack on the new Premier. The

division of the two Houses was clearly pronounced; the one presaged its

approaching triumph, the other its coming downfall. The secret sense of

coming change had raised their numbers in unwonted combinations, and

the vital distinction of interest and order had for the time superseded

the old divisions of party."

Mr. Canning had now attained the highest summit to which the ambition

of a British subject can aspire. With the acclamation of the

country and of the House of Commons, he had taken the first place

in the Government of the empire, to which he had raised himself by

his talents and his merit alone, surmounting as he rose the most

formidable impediments, aristocratic antipathies, class interests, and

royal dislike. He was the idol of the nation, and not only in Great

Britain, but throughout the world, his fame shone brightest of all

the public men of his age. His name was associated with the triumph

of Liberal principles throughout Europe and America; he was at the

head of a strong Government, and he had conciliated the good-will of

his Sovereign. Such a combination of what are usually regarded as the

elements of human happiness has rarely, if ever, been known in the

history of England, where alone such a phenomenon could occur. As a man

of genius, as an orator, as a political leader, he enjoyed a reputation

and a degree of success which in any one of these capacities would be

regarded by the majority of men as the acme of human felicity. But

in addition to these he enjoyed a position and wielded a power with

which many great men have been content, without the brilliant halo of

glory with which, in Canning's case, they were surrounded. But it is a

singular and humbling illustration of the vanity of human wishes and

human glory, that this great man was, after all, unhappy, and that the

political enemies he had vanquished had the power of bringing him to

an early grave. The Whig and Tory lords studied in every way to wound

the proud spirit, which they knew to be extremely sensitive. They

scowled upon him with looks of resentment and vengeance. Old friends

averted their eyes from the affectionate companion of earlier days;

the cordial pressure of his hand was not returned; his associates

and supporters in office and in Parliament were, for the most part,

his former opponents in many a political battlefield. The odium of

being a convert to Liberal principles settled upon his noble spirit

like a fatal blight, the animosity with which intolerance pursues the

honest and generous lover of truth and right pierced his susceptible

nervous system like a keen, pitiless, persistent east wind. This was

more than his delicate organism could long bear. The state of his mind

affected his bodily health. The charm of his conversation made him the

delight of his friends in private society, in which he found a solace

and a welcome relaxation from the toils of office. It was natural,

though to be regretted, that with such a susceptible, enjoying, and

genial temperament, delighting in wit and humour, and diffusing

pleasure around him by the coruscations of his own genius, he should

have lingered longer in convivial parties than was prudent for his

health. The consequence was an inflamed and irritable state of the

system. Thus predisposed to disease, he caught cold by sitting under

a tree, after being heated with walking, while on a visit with Lord

Lyndhurst at Wimbledon. Attacked with inflammation of the kidneys, he

went to Chiswick, on the advice of his doctors, and there, on the 8th

of August, after a brief period of intense suffering, he died in the

villa of the Duke of Devonshire, and in the same room in which a man of

kindred genius, the illustrious Charles James Fox, breathed his last.

[Illustration: LORD LIVERPOOL. (_After the Portrait by Sir T. Lawrence,

P.R.A._)]

The Ministerial changes consequent on the death of Mr. Canning were

announced on the 17th of August. Viscount Goderich, afterwards Earl

of Ripon, became the First Lord of the Treasury, the Duke of Portland

President of the Council, Mr. Herries Chancellor of the Exchequer,

Mr. Huskisson Colonial Secretary, and Mr. C. Grant President of the

Board of Trade. On the 22nd the Duke of Wellington was gazetted as

Commander-in-Chief. He accepted this office at the earnest request of

the king, and it was universally felt that he was the fittest man for

the post; but those who, with Lord Eldon, earnestly wished for the

speedy downfall of the new Ministry--which they regarded as almost

exclusively Canningite--lamented that he should have assumed that

position which would necessarily paralyse his opposition in the House

of Lords, and so far tend to keep in the Administration. There was,

however, little chance of that, for perhaps no Cabinet was ever more

divided. They intrigued man against man, section against section; and

at last, without any external pressure, the Cabinet fell to pieces from

its own weakness. Lord Goderich lost heart, and gave in his resignation

before Parliament met. The king was at Windsor while the work of

dissolution was going on. When it was complete, he said, "If they had

not dissolved themselves by their own acts, I should have remained

faithful to them to the last." They appeared before him on the 8th of

January, 1828, to resign the offices which they had received from his

hands. The Duke of Wellington was then sent for. It was not his wish to

become Prime Minister of England. The reasons which had impelled him,

on a former occasion, to resist the solicitations of his colleagues

induced him now to remonstrate respectfully with the Sovereign; but the

king would take no denial.

[Illustration: DEVONSHIRE VILLA, CHISWICK.]

Lord Goderich acted with great humility. In a letter to the Duke of

Buckingham, shortly after his resignation, he expressed his willingness

to serve under the Duke of Wellington, though it might certainly be

a matter of doubt with him how far, in existing circumstances, he

could with credit accept office. But as the Government was to rest

upon a broad basis, and was not to oppose the principles he had always

advocated, he was ready to consider favourably any offer that might

be made to him. The task which Wellington had undertaken was a most

difficult one, considering the nature of the questions that agitated

the public mind, and the course which he had adopted in reference to

them. The new Government was announced on the 25th of January. It

retained several members of the Goderich Ministry--namely, Lord Dudley,

Mr. Huskisson, and Mr. Herries. The Duke of Wellington was Premier, Mr.

Goulburn Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Aberdeen Chancellor of the

Duchy of Lancaster, and Lord Ellenborough Privy Seal. Mr. Canning's

widow was created a viscountess, with a grant of £6,000 a year, to

be enjoyed after her death by her eldest son, and, in case of his

death, by her second son. The former was in the navy, and perished

accidentally soon after his father's death. The second son, to whom

the family honours descended, was the Governor-General of India during

the most memorable crisis in the history of that empire. The grant was

opposed by Lord Althorp, Mr. Hume, and Mr. Banks, but was carried by a

majority of 161 to 54.

Of all the expectants of office in the Wellington Administration, the

most bitterly disappointed was the ex-Chancellor, Lord Eldon, to whom

official life had from long habit become almost a necessity. He had

enjoyed power long enough in reason to admit of his retirement with a

contented mind; but the passion for it was never stronger than at the

present moment. He hastened to London a few days after Christmas on

account of rumours of a dissolution of the Cabinet. Having so often

done this when there was a talk of a Ministerial crisis, he was called

the "stormy petrel." Believing that he had mainly contributed to bring

about the Ministerial catastrophe, he was dreadfully mortified when he

saw in the newspapers the list of the new Ministers beginning thus:

"Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst." He had not set his heart this time on

the office of Lord Chancellor, he would have been content with the

Presidentship of the Council or Privy Seal; but his name was not found

in the list at all, nor had he been consulted in any way, or informed

about what was going forward during the fortnight that passed before

the Ministerial arrangements were completed. This utter neglect of his

claims excited his anger and indignation to the utmost, and caused him

to indulge in bitter revilings and threats against the new Cabinet.

The great Tory lords shared in his resentment, and felt that they were

all insulted in his person. Referring to the Ministerial arrangements,

he wrote:--"You will observe, Dudley, Huskisson, Grant, Palmerston,

and Lyndhurst (five) were all _Canningites_, with whom the rest were

three weeks ago in most violent contest and opposition; these things

are to me quite marvellous. How they are all to deal with each other's

conduct, as to the late treaty with Turkey and the Navarino battle, is

impossible to conjecture. As the first-fruits of this arrangement, the

Corporation of London have agreed to petition Parliament to repeal the

laws which affect Dissenters."

The Greeks had been struggling to emancipate themselves from the

tyrannical dominion of the Turks, aided in their war of independence

only by the voluntary contributions and personal services of

enthusiastic friends of freedom, like Lord Byron. At length, however,

the sanguinary nature of the contest, and the injury to commerce by

piracy, induced the Great Powers of Europe to interfere in order to

put an end to the war. Accordingly, on the 6th of July, 1827, a treaty

was signed in London by the Ministers of Great Britain, France, and

Russia, for the pacification of Greece. In pursuance of this treaty,

a joint expedition, consisting of British, French, and Russian ships,

entered the Bay of Navarino on the 20th of October, with the object

of compelling the Sultan to concede an armistice, in order that there

might be time for effecting an arrangement. The Sultan, Mahmoud, having

declined the mediation of the combined Powers, and Ibrahim Pasha having

received a large reinforcement of troops from Egypt, he was ordered

to put down the insurrection at every cost by land and sea. He had

accordingly recommenced the war with fanatical fury. All Greeks found

in arms were to be put to the sword, and the Morea was to be laid

waste. The combined fleet of the Allies had received orders to demand

an armistice, and if this were refused by the Turkish admiral, they

were to intercept the Turkish supplies, but not to commit hostilities.

When the Turkish fleet met the Allies, the futility of these

instructions became evident. They found it ranged at the bottom of the

bay, in the form of a crescent. Instead of parleying, the Turks began

to fire, and the battle commenced apparently without plan on either

side. It soon became general. Admiral Codrington, in the _Asia_, opened

a broadside upon the Egyptian admiral, and soon reduced his ship to a

wreck; others in rapid succession shared the same fate. The conflict

lasted with great fury for four hours. When the smoke cleared off, the

enemy had disappeared, and the bay was strewn with the fragments of

their ships. Among the Allies, the loss of the British was greatest,

though not large--only 75 men killed and 197 wounded. The catastrophe

produced immense excitement at Constantinople, and had the Janissaries

(those fierce and bigoted defenders of Mohammedanism whom the Sultan

had so recently extirpated) been still in existence, it would have

fared ill with Christians in that part of the world. The Sultan

demanded satisfaction, which would not be granted, and the European

ambassadors left Constantinople. The battle of Navarino occurred at

the time when the Duke of Wellington assumed the reins of office, our

ambassador having then returned from Constantinople.

Parliament was opened by commission on the 29th of January, four days

after the formation of the Wellington Ministry. The Royal Speech

referred chiefly to the affairs of the East, to the rights of neutral

nations violated by the revolting excesses of the Greeks and Turks, to

the battle of Navarino with the fleet of an ancient ally, which was

lamented as an "untoward event;" but hopes were expressed that it might

not lead to further hostilities. The Speech alluded to the increase of

exports and the more general employment of the people as indications of

returning prosperity. The phrase "untoward" was objected to by Lords

Lansdowne and Goderich. Lord Holland denied that our relations with

Turkey were those of an alliance; but the Duke of Wellington contended

that the Ottoman empire was an ancient ally of Great Britain, that

it formed an essential part of the balance of power, and that the

maintenance of its independent existence was more than ever necessary

as an object of European policy.

The Duke of Wellington had some difficulty in producing due

subordination among the members of his Government at the outset. At

Liverpool, Mr. Huskisson, in addressing his constituents, by way of

apology for serving under a Tory chief, said that in taking office

he had obtained guarantees for the future Liberal course of the

Government. The Duke resented this assertion, and in the House of

Lords, on the 11th of February, with some warmth, contradicted the

statement, and declared that pledges had neither been asked nor given,

and that if they had been asked, they would have been indignantly

refused. Mr. Huskisson explained, in the Commons, that by guarantees he

had meant only that the past conduct and character of his colleagues

furnished pledges for the future course of the Ministry. Another

cause of misunderstanding arose, on the 19th of the same month, with

reference to the disfranchisement of East Retford. A Bill had been

brought in for that purpose. A portion of the Cabinet were for the

enlargement of the constituency by taking in the neighbouring hundred

of Bassetlaw; but the constituency had obtained permission to be heard

by counsel before the Lords, and they produced such an impression that

the Duke of Wellington hesitated about the propriety of the measure.

Another party were for transferring the members to Birmingham. The

course Mr. Huskisson is represented to have taken on this question

seems so tortuous that it is not easy to account for it. The Duke

of Wellington and Mr. Peel were understood to have advocated in the

Cabinet the disfranchisement of East Retford, and the transference of

its members to Birmingham. Mr. Huskisson, conceiving that he was in

honour bound to adhere to an arrangement that Mr. Canning had made,

voted for throwing open the franchise, and carried his point. They

produced their Bill accordingly, and were met, as in the kindred case

of Penryn, with a counter-proposal for transferring the members to

Birmingham. Against this Mr. Huskisson argued, as tending to weaken too

much and too suddenly the agricultural interest. The second reading

was proposed on the 19th of May, and an animated debate ensued, in

which the chief speakers on the Ministerial side were Mr. Peel and

Mr. Huskisson. Nobody appeared to suspect that Mr. Huskisson did not

intend to support with his vote the measure which as a speaker he

had recommended. Such, however, proved to be the fact. A division

took place, and Mr. Huskisson and Lord Palmerston, very much to

the astonishment of all parties, went into the lobby against the

Ministerial proposal. At two o'clock that night Mr. Huskisson wrote a

letter to the Duke, which his Grace received at ten in the morning, in

which he said, "I owe it to you, as the head of the Administration,

and to Mr. Peel, as leader of the House of Commons, to lose no time

in affording you an opportunity of placing my office in other hands."

The Duke very naturally took this as a resignation, but Mr. Huskisson

denied that it was so meant. An irritating correspondence ensued, and

Mr. Huskisson left the Cabinet, as he affirmed, against his will.

All the followers of Mr. Canning went with him--namely, Lord Dudley

from the Foreign Office, Lord Palmerston from the War Office, and

Mr. C. Grant from the Board of Control. They were succeeded by Lord

Aberdeen as Foreign Secretary, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald at the Board

of Control, and Sir Henry Hardinge as Secretary at War. Such was

the constitution of the Government, with all its Liberalism thus

expurgated, which repealed the Test and Corporation Acts, and carried

Catholic Emancipation. The king was particularly anxious to have a

strong Government. He was still firm in his resistance to Catholic

Emancipation. The very mention of the subject by his Ministers produced

a degree of excitement and irritation which made their intercourse with

him occasionally unpleasant. The Duke of Wellington seemed, of all men,

the least likely to give way on the subject. In the debate on the Test

and Corporation Acts, he said, "There is no person in this House whose

feelings and sentiments, after long consideration, are more decided

than mine are with respect to the Roman Catholic claims; and I must say

that, until I see a great change in that question, I must oppose it."

On the 28th of February Lord John Russell proposed and carried a

resolution that the House of Commons should go into committee to

inquire into the operation of the Test and Corporation Acts, with a

view to their repeal. From the very foundation of the Established

Church at the Reformation the most stringent measures were adopted to

put down Nonconformity, to render the Church and State identical in

their constituent elements, and to preserve the uniformity and secure

the perpetuity of the faith which had been established. The Dissenters,

however, maintained that the Act of Uniformity had utterly failed to

accomplish its object. They observed that at first the Reformed Church

was Calvinistic in its articles, its clergy, and its preaching; that

it then became Arminian and overcharged with ceremony under Laud;

that it was latitudinarian in the days of William and Anne; that in

more modern times it had been divided into "High Church," and "Low

Church," and "Broad Church;" that subscription did not prevent the

greatest variety and even the most positive contrariety of doctrine

and religious opinion, referring, for illustration, to the rise and

progress of the "Evangelical" and the "Anglican" parties. They further

contended that the Act had failed in one of its main objects--namely,

in keeping all Protestants within the pale of the Church, as, so far

as actual membership or communicants were concerned, the adherents to

the Establishment were now in a minority. In vain, then, were 2,000

clergymen ejected from their parishes, followed by 60,000 earnest

Protestants, who, by fines, imprisonment, or voluntary exile, suffered

on account of their Nonconformity. This persecution had an effect the

opposite of what had been anticipated. If, as Hume remarked, every

martyrdom in the Marian persecution was worth to Protestantism and

liberty a hundred sermons against Popery, so every act of persecution

against the Nonconformists was of value to the religious life of the

nation. In consequence of the development of that life, the Toleration

Act became a necessity; and from the accession of George II. an annual

Indemnity Act was passed.

Sanguine though the Dissenters had been respecting the growth of the

principles of civil and religious liberty, of which the seeds had been

sown in tears by the early Puritan confessors, they did not anticipate

that the harvest was at hand. As their claims were not embarrassed by

any question of divided allegiance or party politics, many members of

Parliament who had not supported the relief of the Roman Catholics

found themselves at liberty to advocate the cause of the Protestant

Nonconformists; while almost all who had supported the greater measure

of Emancipation felt themselves bound by consistency to vote for the

abolition of the sacramental test. Yet the victory was not achieved

without a struggle. Lord John Russell said:--"The Government took

a clear, open, and decided part against us. They summoned their

followers from every part of the empire. Nay, they issued a sort of

'hatti-sheriff' for the purpose; they called upon every one within

their influence who possessed the faith of a true Mussulman to follow

them in opposing the measure. But, notwithstanding their opposition in

the debate, their arguments were found so weak, and in the division

their numbers were found so deficient, that nothing could be more

decided than our triumph."

[Illustration: BATTLE OF NAVARINO: THE "ASIA" ENGAGING THE SHIPS OF THE

CAPITAN BEY AND MOHURREM BEY. (_See p._ 262.)]

Lord John Russell, who introduced the measure, Lord Althorp, Mr. Smith

of Norwich, and Mr. Ferguson pleaded the cause of the Dissenters

with unanswerable arguments. They showed that the Church was not now

in danger; that there was no existing party bent on subverting the

Constitution; that in the cases where the tests were not exacted during

the last half century there was no instance of a Dissenter holding

office who had abused his trust; that though the Test Act had been

practically in abeyance during all that time, the Church had suffered

no harm. Why, then, preserve an offensive and discreditable Act upon

the Statute Book? Why keep up invidious distinctions when there was no

pretence of necessity for retaining them? Why, without the shadow of

proof, presume disaffection against any class of the community? Even

the members of the Established Church of Scotland might be, by those

tests and penalties, debarred from serving their Sovereign unless

they renounced their religion. A whole nation was thus proscribed

upon the idle pretext that it was necessary to defend the church of

another nation. It was asked, Did the Church of England aspire, like

the Mussulmans of Turkey, to be exclusively charged with the defence

of the empire? If so, let the Presbyterians and Dissenters withdraw,

and it would be seen what sort of defence it would have. Take from the

field of Waterloo the Scottish regiments; take away, too, the sons

of Ireland: what then would have been the chance of victory? If they

sought the aid of Scottish and Irish soldiers in the hour of peril,

why deny them equal rights and privileges in times of peace? Besides,

the Church could derive no real strength from exclusion and coercion,

which only generated ill-will and a rankling feeling of injustice.

The Established Church of Scotland had been safe without any Test and

Corporation Acts. They had been abolished in Ireland half a century

ago without any evil accruing to the Church in that country. It was

contrary to the spirit of the age to keep up irritating yet inefficient

and impracticable restrictions, which were a disgrace to the Statute

Book.

Mr. Peel urged that it is dangerous to touch time-honoured institutions

in an ancient monarchy like this, if the Dissenters did not feel the

tests as a grievance; if they did, it would be a very strong argument

for a change. "But," he asked, "are the grievances now brought forward

in Parliament really felt as such by the Dissenters out of doors? So

far from it, there were only six petitions presented on the subject

from 1816 to 1827. The petitions of last year were evidently got up

for a political purpose." He quoted from a speech of Mr. Canning's,

delivered, in 1825, on the Catholic Relief Bill, in which he said,

"This Bill does not tend to equalise all the religions in the State,

but to equalise all the Dissenting sects of England. I am, and this

Bill is, for a predominant church, and I would not, even in appearance,

meddle with the laws which secure that predominance to the Church of

England. What is the state of the Protestant Dissenters? It is that

they labour under no practical grievances on account of this difference

with the Established Church; that they sit with us in this House, and

share our counsels; that they are admissible into the highest offices

of State, and often hold them. Such is the operation of the Test and

Corporation Acts, as mitigated by the Annual Indemnity Act; this much,

and no more, I contend, the Catholics should enjoy." With regard to

Scotland Mr. Peel appealed to the facts that from that country there

was not one solitary petition; that there was not any military or naval

office or command from which Scotsmen were shut out; that, so far

from being excluded from the higher offices of Government, out of the

fourteen members who composed the Cabinet, three--Lord Aberdeen, Lord

Melville, and Mr. Grant--were Scotsmen and good Presbyterians. Even in

England the shutting out, he said, was merely nominal. A Protestant

Dissenter had been Lord Mayor of London the year before. The Acts had

practically gone into desuetude, and the existing law gave merely a

nominal preponderance to the Established Church, which it was admitted

on all hands it should possess.

The restrictions, however, if not to any great extent a practical

grievance, were felt to be a stigma utterly undeserved, and the

necessity for an annual Indemnity Act continually reminded a large,

influential, intelligent, energetic portion of the nation of their

inferiority to the rest of the king's subjects. The Government felt

that public opinion was against them. They therefore allowed the Bill

to go into committee without opposition, and there they adopted it as

their own by carrying certain amendments. It passed the Commons by a

majority of 44, the numbers being 237 to 193. From the tone of the

debate in the Commons it was evident that the Government was not sorry

to be left in a minority. In the House of Lords the measure encountered

more opposition. Lord Eldon, exasperated with the treatment he had

received from the Ministers, denounced it with the utmost vehemence.

When he heard of its success in the Lower House, he was in a state of

consternation.

The prejudiced old man fought with desperation against the measure

in the Lords. He was tremendously severe on the Government. He said,

much as he had heard of the march of mind, he did not believe that

the march could have been so rapid as to induce some of the changes

of opinion which he had witnessed within the last year. His opinions

are now among the curiosities of a bygone age. His idea of religious

liberty may be seen from the following:--"The Sacramental Act, though

often assailed, had remained ever since the reign of Charles II., and

the Annual Indemnity took away all its harshness. The obnoxious Act

did not interfere with the rights of conscience, as it did not compel

any man to take the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of

England, and only deprived him of office if he did not." He concluded

by solemnly saying, "From his heart and soul, 'Not Content.'" He was

effectually answered by the Duke of Wellington, and the Bill was read

a second time, without a division, on the 17th of April. On the 21st

he proposed an amendment to exclude Roman Catholics from the benefit

of the measure by inserting in the declaration the words, "I am a

Protestant." The amendment was negatived by 117 to 55; but so eager

was he to have it adopted, that he renewed it on the third reading

of the Bill, when the Contents were 52, Not Contents 154. Still he

entered on the Journals a violent protest against the Bill, in which

he was joined by the Duke of Cumberland and nine other peers. As soon

as the measure was carried, all the world acknowledged the Duke of

Wellington's sagacity in declining the offer of Lord Eldon to return to

office; for if that sturdy adherent to ancient prejudices had been Lord

Chancellor or President of the Council, the Government must either have

been speedily dissolved by internal dissensions or overthrown by a vain

resistance to the popular voice.

This Act, which repealed the Test Act, provided another security in

lieu of the tests repealed:--"And whereas the Protestant Episcopal

Church of England and Ireland, and the Protestant Presbyterian Church

of Scotland, and the doctrine, discipline, and government thereof

respectively are by the laws of this realm severally established

permanently and inviolably, I., A., B., do solemnly and sincerely,

in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare, upon the true

faith of a Christian, that I will never exercise any power, authority,

or influence which I may possess by virtue of the office of ----, to

injure or weaken the Protestant Church, as it is by law established

in England, or to disturb the said Church, or the bishops and clergy

of the said Church, in the possession of any rights and privileges to

which such Church, or the said bishops and clergy, are or may be by law

entitled."

On the 18th of June a public dinner, to commemorate the abolition of

the Sacramental Test, was given at Freemasons' Hall, when the Duke

of Sussex occupied the chair. The friends of the cause felt that

to secure a meeting of the most opulent, talented, and influential

Dissenters from all parts of the empire was a measure of no common

policy, and it was evident that the illustrious and noble guests felt

at once surprised and gratified to witness the high respectability

and generous enthusiasm of that great company. Mr. William Smith, as

deputy chairman, proposed, in an interesting and appropriate speech,

"the health of the Duke of Sussex, and the universal prevalence of

those principles which placed his family upon the throne." The health

of the archbishops, bishops, and other members of the Established

Church who had advocated the rights of the Dissenters was proposed by

a Baptist minister, the Rev. Dr. Cox. The health of "the Protestant

Dissenting ministers, the worthy successors of the ever memorable two

thousand who sacrificed interest to conscience," having been proposed

by the royal chairman, the Rev. Robert Aspland returned thanks. Another

commemoration of the full admission of Nonconformists to the privileges

of the Constitution was a medal struck by order of the united

committee. The obverse side exhibits Britannia, seated on the right,

presenting to a graceful figure of Liberty the Act of Repeal, while

Religion in the centre raises her eyes to heaven with the expression of

thankfulness for the boon. The inscription on this side is "Sacramental

Test Abolished, May 9th, 1828." The reverse side presents an open

wreath, enclosing the words, "Truth, Freedom, Peace, and Charity."

CHAPTER VII.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE IV. (_concluded_).

Opinions of the Irish Government on the Catholic Question--Renewal

of the Catholic Claims by Burdett--Vesey Fitzgerald accepts

the Board of Trade--O'Connell opposes him for Clare--His

Reputation--His Backers--Father Murphy's Speech--O'Connell

to the Front--The Nomination--O'Connell's Speech--The

Election--Return of O'Connell--Anglesey's Precautions--Peel's

Reflections on the Clare Election--Anglesey describes the State

of Ireland--Peel wishes to resign--The Duke wavers--Anglesey

urges Concession--Insurrection probable--Wellington determines

on Retreat--Why he and Peel did not resign--The Viceroy's

Opinion--Military Organisation of the Peasantry--The Brunswick

Clubs--Perplexity of the Government--O'Connell's "Moral Force"--The

Liberator Clubs--Dawson's Speech--"No Popery" in England--The

Morpeth Banquet--The Leinster Declaration--Wellington's Letter

to Dr. Curtis--Anglesey's Correspondence with O'Connell--The

Premier Censures the Viceroy--Anglesey dismissed--He is succeeded

by Northumberland--Difficulties with the King and the English

Bishops--Peel determines to remain--His Views communicated

to the King--The King yields--Opening of the Session--Peel

defeated at Oxford University--Suppression of the Catholic

Association--The Announcement in the King's Speech--Peel

introduces the Relief Bill--Arguments of the Opposition--The

Bill passes the Commons--The Duke's Speech--It passes the Lords

by large Majorities--The King withdraws his Consent--He again

yields--His Communication to Eldon--Numbers of the Catholics

in Britain--The Duke's Duel with Winchilsea--Bill for the

disfranchisement of "the Forties"--O'Connell presents himself

to be sworn--He refuses to take the Oaths--He is heard at the

Bar--Fresh Election for Clare--O'Connell's new Agitation--The Roman

Catholic Hierarchy--Riots in the Manufacturing Districts--Attempt

to mitigate the Game Laws--Affairs of Portugal--Negotiations

with the Canningites--Pitched Battles in Ireland--Meeting

of Parliament--Debate on the Address--Burdett's Attack on

Wellington--The Opposition proposes Retrenchments--The Duke's

Economies--Prosecution of Mr. Alexander--Illness and Death of

George IV.

The state of opinion among the members of the Government from the early

part of 1828 may be traced in the "Memoirs" of Sir Robert Peel, which

comprise the confidential correspondence on the subject. The Marquis

Wellesley had retired from the Government of Ireland, and was succeeded

by the Marquis of Anglesey. The former nobleman would have given more

satisfaction to the Irish Roman Catholics; but he was overruled, as

they believed, by Mr. Goulburn, his Chief Secretary. His popularity

and the confidence reposed in him were much increased by the fact that

the marchioness was a Roman Catholic, which, however, proportionably

rendered him an object of suspicion to the Orange party.

The noble marquis was regarded by Mr. Peel with the most sincere

respect and esteem, which were cordially reciprocated. In a letter

dated January 30th, 1828, Lord Wellesley wrote to him thus:--"Your most

acceptable letter of the 29th instant enables me to offer to you now

those assurances of gratitude, respect, and esteem which, to my sincere

concern, have been so long delayed. Although these sentiments have not

before reached you in the manner which would have been most suitable to

the subject, I trust that you have not been unacquainted with the real

impressions which your kindness and high character have fixed in my

mind, and which it is always a matter of the most genuine satisfaction

to me to declare. I am very anxious to communicate with you in the same

unreserved confidence so long subsisting between us on the state of

Ireland."