by the Duke's proximity to the throne. A good deal of objection was made to this in the Commons, but none in the Lords. The great distress of the people, whose condition had just been made the subject of a royal letter to the bishops, and the inconvenience of the precedent, were the grounds of opposition; and these were met by the plea, that the maintenance of royal dignity was an object which must not give way to temporary pressure, and that the sum proposed was only a portion of what would be saved to the country by the death of the Duke of York. Up to this time, the income of the Duke and Duchess of Clarence had been 26,500l. By the death of the elder brother, an addition of 3,000l. a year would now accrue; and it was proposed that Parliament should grant 9,000l. more, - namely, 3,000l. to the Duke, and 6,000l. to the Duchess, by which their joint income would be raised to 38,500l. After much opposition and debating, it was thus settled. It was on Thursday, the 15th of February, that this royal message was presented; and it was taken into consideration the next evening, Friday. Lord Liverpool brought forward the subject in the Upper House, and spoke upon it. He was never seen to be better or more cheerful. The next morning, Saturday, his servant was surprised at not hearing the bell, as usual, Illness of Lord Liverpool. 1 after breakfast, and went into his master's study, where he found Lord Liverpool lying on the floor in an apoplectic fit. Whether he would live was for some time doubtful; but it was quite certain that his political career was ended. His colleagues wrote in their private letters, "Heaven knows who will succeed him." Some felt it “ a tremendous blow under present circumstances." The principal of these circumstances was the universal expectation a state of doubtful expectation about the proposed Corn Bill, and some legislation about the Catholics. The King was at Brighton; and Mr. Peel went down to inform him of the event. Mr. Canning was at Brighton, confined to his bed by the illness caught at the funeral; and Mr. Huskisson was confined to the house in London from the same cause. Mr. Canning had charge of the Corn Bill, and he was awaiting with extreme anxiety the approaching discussion of the Catholic question. At such a moment as this, the Premier was struck down; and the two friends could neither meet, nor wait upon the King. We have the Lord Chancellor's first impressions on the occasion: "If other things made it certain that he would otherwise succeed him, I should suppose Canning's health would not let him undertake the labor of the situation. But," he adds, in his usual temper towards Canning, "ambition will attempt any thing."" Two days after, the Chancellor became very 2 Life of Lord Eldon, ii. p. 583. 1 Hansard, xvi. p. 517. oracular, as was natural, when it was certain that there was nothing to be known. "This, at any time," he says, "would be an event of importance; so immediately after the Duke of York's death, and upon the eve of the days when the great questions of the corn-trade and Catholic emancipation are to be discussed and decided, it is of importance so great, that nobody can be certain whether it is not of so much importance as to render almost certain wrong decisions upon these vital questions." If we can make out any meaning here, it is that Lord Eldon now supposed a liberal policy sure to prevail, and believed that Lord Liverpool had been the only security against the dreaded "changes in our institutions." The letter proceeds: "Nobody knows, and nobody can conjecture with probability, how soon the illness of the Minister will, as it seemingly must, dissolve the Administration, or how another is to be formed and composed. Speculation as to this is very busy, and politicians are all at work. The opposition are in high spirits, and confidently expecting to enjoy the loaves and the fishes. They may, but they also may not, be disappointed." The first thing decided upon was to wait awhile, for the chance of Lord Liverpool recovering sufficiently to send in his resignation. Week after week, as it passed away, showed this to be less and less probable; and, by the end of March, it was found necessary to set about appointing his successor. Set- Lord Liverting aside their political relations, the loss of Lord pool and Mr. Liverpool was very affecting to Mr. Canning. Through Canning. life, the two had been close personal friends, from the time of their first meeting at college. They were born in the same year they were inseparable at Christ Church, where they laughed at one another's whims, Jenkinson's brown coat, with buttons bearing the initials of the great orators, and Canning's gloriously nonsensical verses; and where, in the intervals of their mirth, they discussed the gravest subjects of human interest, with the earnestness belonging to the genius of the one, and the integrity of the other. They entered Parliament at the same time, under Mr. Pitt, and were never separated in their private regards by the differences on public matters which occasionally arose. This is highly honorable to them both. It must be a strong friendship which could enable the man of the world to bear with the views of the man of genius, when those views were too large for his comprehension; and which would enable the man of genius to bear with the negative qualities of the médiocre man of the world, in times which demanded all the energies of every statesman. In political life, each was largely indebted to the other; as is more apparent to us now than perhaps it ever was to them. 1 Life of Lord Eldon, ii. p. 584. Lord Liverpool was not, apparently, fully aware that it was Canning who had of late years made his government illustrious in the eyes of the world; but every one now knows that it was so. And Canning could hardly estimate at the time the influence of Lord Liverpool's presence in securing him a field for the exercise of his statesmanship. If he had entered the Cabinet, he could hardly have remained there, during the last four years, under any other Premier of the same politics as Lord Liverpool. It was no time for weighing these considerations, when the news of his friend's seizure came to him as he lay fevered in his bed. He had but just returned from visiting Lord Liverpool at Bath, where he had gone, after the Duke's funeral, to improve his health. He had come back worse than he went; and, in the depth of his illness, this news reached him. The effects of grief, anxiety, and sickness were visible enough when he appeared in the House to bring forward the measures he had in charge, and to encounter the onslaught of persecution, which was never mitigated by any touch of reverence, sympathy, or even common humanity, till it had laid him low. ister. The country was not the worse for the loss of Lord Liverpool, Lord Liver- though his official life had been useful in its way, at pool as Min- certain periods of his career. He was a good balancewheel when the movements of parties might otherwise be going too fast. He had no striking ability, either in action or in speech. He was diligent, upright, exceedingly heavy, and, as his friends well knew, extremely anxious under his sense of responsibility. He could not throw off his cares for a day or an hour, either in the free air of Wimbledon, or in his trips to Bath; and it ended in his cares throwing off his life. He declared, in private, that on no one day for twenty-five years of official life had he seen his heap of letters on the table, without a sharp pang of apprehension, and a sense of reluctance to break the seals, so strong did he feel the probability to be every day that something was going wrong in some part of the world. appears strange that a man of his cast, merely respectable in abilities and characteristics, should have held office so long, the premiership for fifteen years, - in times of such stir and convulsion; but the fact was, his highest ability was that of choosing and conciliating able men, and keeping them together in sufficient harmony to get through their work, if nothing more. Nobody quarrelled with him; and he set his whole weight against his colleagues quarrelling with each other; so that the Eldons and the Cannings, the Bexleys and the Huskissons, met in council, week after week, for years together, inwardly despising and disliking each other, but outwardly on decent terms, and all working in their own way, in their own offices. This could not It go on for ever; and, as we have seen, Lord Liverpool himself knew it could not go on much longer. He meant to retire presently, to leave the way open for some settlement of the Catholic question. Thus, the nation did not sustain much loss by the brief shortening of his term; nor was there the affectation of mourning a great political loss. There was decorous regret that such a penalty on toil and conscientiousness should have overtaken so meritorious a public servant; and then ensued extreme eagerness to know what influence would next be in the ascendant. This could not be ascertained till the following April. The Corn Bill. In the meantime, the Corn Bill must first be brought forward. It was committed to Mr. Canning's care, as leader in the Commons. He was extremely anxious about it, as it was the elaborate work of his two friends, Lord Liverpool and Mr. Huskisson; and the subject was not one that he felt at home in. His diffidence was aggravated by the misfortune, that he and Mr. Huskisson were kept apart by illness, in London and Brighton, and were thus precluded from personal conference about the Bill.1 The only thing that could be done was to send a confidential friend backwards and forwards, till each Minister was in possession of the mind of the other. If the conclusion of the matter could have been foreseen, or the causes of that ending have been made known as they ought to have been, the trouble and anxiety might have been in great part spared. The Duke of Wellington made an end of the measure, by heading the opposition in the House of Lords, and carrying an amendment which vitiated the Bill too seriously to allow it to be proceeded with; the very Bill which had been prepared by the Premier, and fully sanctioned by the Cabinet, of which the Duke was, at the time, a member.2 It was not till the 1st of March that Mr. Canning was well enough to bring forward the measure; which he did in the form of a set of resolutions, intended to be the foundation of a new corn-law. According to the resolutions, foreign corn might always be imported, free of duty, to be warehoused; and it might always be let in for home consumption on payment of certain duties for instance, the duty on wheat was to be 1s. when wheat was at 70s., and to increase 2s. with every decrease of 1s. in price; and so on, in different proportions, with other kinds of grain. The resolutions were well received and supported; the House rejecting, by a majority of three to one, on an average, the amendments proposed on behalf of the landed interest. Bill the new corn-law as it was supposed to be was brought in on the 2d of April, and passed on the 12th, before the House adjourned for the Easter holidays.3 When Parliament re-assem2 Hansard, xvi. p. 772. : 1 Memoir of Huskisson's Speeches, p. 129. A bled, Mr. Canning was Premier, and the conduct of the Bill in the Upper House devolved upon Lord Goderich (Mr. Robinson, under his new title). Under some extraordinary misconception, the Duke of Wellington declared, that he believed the amendment he had to propose would be acceptable to the government; whereas it went to establish the principle of prohibition, which it was the main object of the measure to cast aside.1 His amendment proposed, that "foreign corn in bond should not be taken out of bond until the average price of corn should have reached 66s." The government was left in a minority of eleven, in the vote on this clause, on the 12th of June; and the bill was therefore abandoned.2 Catholic question. The debate on the Catholic question came on on the 5th of March, and continued two days. The anti-Catholic speakers, who mustered strong in this new Parliament, wandered away from the consideration of the motion before the House into the whole set of old topics, back to the treaty of Limerick, and wide among the doings of the priests at the late elections; and Mr. Canning had to bring them back to the question of the night, which was: "That this House is deeply impressed with the expediency of taking into consideration the laws imposing civil disabilities on His Majesty's Roman-Catholic subjects." Mr. Canning's speech was deeply impressive to the House; but it would have been more so, and have been received as an oracle by the Catholics, if it could have been known that these were his last words on the subject which he had at heart during the whole of his career. The danger of neglect, of letting things alone in such a crisis as had arrived, was his last topic on this last occasion. After stating that " After stating that "one bugbear was fairly disposed of," the coronation oath, he said, "What are the other dangers which exist at this eleventh hour, I have yet to learn; but a singular fate has attended this question. The question is, 'Will you do as we propose? or will you do nothing? or what will you do?' And, secondly, 'What dangers do you apprehend?' Now, to the question: Will you do as we propose? or will you do nothing? or will you do something else?' the answer is clear enough: 'We will not do as you propose.' But to the two remaining branches of the question no answer is, given. And when we ask, 'What dangers do you apprehend from the passing of a Bill similar to that of 1813?' we are also unable to get any answer. I conjure the House to reflect, that the motion is merely a declaration, on the part of the House, that the state of Ireland and of the Roman-Catholic population is such as to demand the consideration of the House. To this 1 Hansard, xvii. p. 1097. 6 2 Hansard, xvii. p. 1258. |