lishmen, is strengthened by reason and reflection, and every day confirmed by experience; that it is a Constitution that we do not merely admire from traditional reverence, which we do not flatter from prejudice or habit, but which we cherish and value because we know that it practically secures the tranquillity and welfare both of individuals and the public, and provides, beyond any other frame of government which has ever existed, for the real and useful ends which form at once the only true foundation and only rational object of all political societies.

This

On this

"The season of our severe trial is at an end. is a state not of hope only but of attainment. situation and this prospect, fortunate beyond our most sanguine expectations, let me congratulate you and the House and my country, and before I conclude, let me express my earnest wish, my anxious and fervent prayer, that now in this period of our success, for the sake of the present age and of posterity, there may be no intermission in that vigilant attention by Parliament to every object connected with the revenue, the resources and the credit of the State which has carried us through all our difficulties and led to this rapid and wonderful improvement; that still keeping pace with the exertions of the legislature, the genius and spirit, the loyalty and public virtue, of a great and free people may long deserve and (under favour of Providence) may insure the continuance of this unexampled prosperity; and that Great Britain may thus remain for ages in possession of these distinguished advantages under the protection and safeguard of that Constitution to which, as we have been truly told from the throne, they are principally to be ascribed, and which is indeed the great source and the best security of all that can be dear and valuable to a nation."

THE

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE OLD TORY MINISTRY.

HE resignation of Pitt on the Catholic question may be conveniently accepted as the commencement of a new era of the internal life, and above all, the prominent figures in Parliament. The line must not, however, be drawn too hard and fast. The two periods to a great extent overlap one another. Burke, indeed, has departed from the scene, but Pitt and Fox survive till 1806. Windham, Sheridan, Tierney, Dundas have not yet ended their career. Canning, Grenville, Grey, Wellesley, Addington, Scott, Wilberforce, and many others of the new men had made their mark in Parliament before the historic milestone of 1801 had been actually passed. From this date, however, the old order changes surely, giving place to the new.

The resignation of Pitt, moreover, was followed by a rearrangement of parties in consequence of a total disruption of the old Tory party, which had supported him so faithfully through the crisis of the revolutionary war. One section, headed by Lord Grenville, gradually formed relations with Fox, which drew them in time entirely away from the side of Pitt, and definitely committed them to advanced views on Catholic Relief. Another, headed by Addington, took up the position of Tories and yet not Pittites-recalling the old intermediate attitude of the King's Friends during the first decade of George's reign, and assuming very much the same relation to the king. It was obviously inevitable that in the end the two sections of Pitt and Addington should unite once more to carry on the government on the | old lines, and the followers of Fox and Grenville should similarly coalesce into a coherent Opposition.

At first, however, disunion was rife. Grenville would not join Pitt without Fox; Addington was jealous and resentful of Pitt's superiority. Pitt's second Ministry was, therefore, necessarily a

failure, weakened as it was by the defection of Grenville, the hostility of Fox, and the treachery of Addington. The death of Pitt rendered a temporary union of All the Talents of every party necessary in order to carry on the government at all; but where the sole bond of coherence is necessity, the appearance of amity which results is necessarily hollow, and the Ministry really existed but at the sufferance of the king, and inevitably fell when they excited his hostility.

The ensuing years were a period of doubt and expectation. The Tories were seeking for a man and a Government which should be worthy of the name. The Opposition, now united under the leadership of Lords Grey and Grenville, were momentarily expecting the hour when the Tories should be finally weighed in the balance and found wanting, or when the malady of the king should commit the government into the hands of the Prince of Wales, to be delegated of course by him to his old comrades, the Whigs. The actual seizure of the king (1810) was, however, attended by very different results from those anticipated. The Prince of Wales had no special liking for Lord Grey or Lord Grenville personally, nor had they ever assumed towards him the intimate relations of his old rollicking companions, Fox and Sheridan. He now took it into his head to be offended with the amount of support they were ready to afford him in the Regency question. The result was a quarrel, which threw him over to the Tories. The Tories, moreover, by making Catholic Relief an open question, were able to get rid of a great bone of contention in their own ranks, for it was widely felt that whatever respect might have been previously due to the king's religious scruples, whatever reluctance might have existed against a course of action so calculated to re-arouse his mental disease, all such considerations were now entirely robbed of their weight by his madness, and the very general disbelief in the principles or scruples, religious or otherwise, of the Prince Regent. Under these conditions the Tory Ministry of Lord Liverpool was formed (1812), which was destined to such a long span of existence. Its chiefs were drawn from the party of Addington, but it relied in addition on the remnants of the party of Pitt,-the young men,-headed by Canning. The more liberal

principles for which Canning was afterwards celebrated were as yet in the future of his career, and it was inevitable that the Government should be conducted on the strictest Tory lines of repression and reaction. It was this same Government, with its views modified in no small measure by the ever-increasing importance of the more liberal or Canningite section of the party, and its personnel similarly altered by the irresistible hand of death or the course of natural development, which lasted under the successive premierships of Lord Liverpool, Mr. Canning, Lord Goderich, and the Duke of Wellington, right down to 1830. The Administrations of Canning and Goderich were but an interlude, however, lasting barely over a year (1827). Goderich has even the distinction of being the only Prime Minister who never met Parliament, owing to his resignation before it had assembled. The true successor of Lord Liverpool was the Duke of Welling

ton.

The great questions of the time, apart from the conduct of the war, are Catholic Relief and Parliamentary Reform-the latter will be dealt with separately in the next chapter. The former was undoubtedly the most prominent subject in Parliament during this period, and it progressed but slowly,-beginning with total suppression by the royal will, rising gradually to the position of an open question in Lord Liverpool's Ministry, obtaining at last a majority in the Commons, forcing the unwilling hands of the Lords and the Government by repeated triumphs in the Lower House backed up by a vigorous extra-parliamentary agitation, until finally, on the proposal of the Duke of Wellington's Government, the Catholics were admitted to Parliament by the Emancipation Act, 1829.

Among the leading men in Parliament during this period, the name of Addington cannot fail to strike the imagination very early, if chronological order be alone considered. Mr. Addington, afterwards Lord Sidmouth, was an excellent Speaker; he became later, however, a very inferior Prime Minister, and he filled the office of Home Secretary in a manner of which it is difficult to speak in measured terms of dispraise. He was a remarkable instance of successful mediocrity and the power of interest. early rise was due to the patronage of Pitt; his later success to

the friendship of the king. He was naturally marked out as the butt of the wags of Parliament. His father's profession furnished the nickname of the "Doctor," his own career that of the "Speaker." Probably the fact that is most generally known about him is the gibe in which Canning summed up his comparative merits

"As London is to Paddington,

So is Pitt to Addington."

The Duke of Portland occupied in two Cabinets the position which a figure-head holds on board a vessel-not expected to do anything, but supplying a name to the whole. Mr. Percival, the third in order of the Tory Prime Ministers, was a brilliant speaker and an able and patriotic statesman, who had, however, too little influence to be of much real importance. Perhaps the most noticeable event in his Ministry was his assassination by a lunatic named Bellingham while leaving the House of Commons, May, 1812. Lord Liverpool's chief claims to notice are purely official. He became Foreign Secretary to Addington in 1801, under the courtesy title of Lord Hawkesbury, by which he was known till his father's death in 1808. In 1804, he accepted the Home Office from Pitt, to which, after the interlude of the Talents Ministry, he returned in 1807. Two years later, as Secretary for War and the Colonies, he undertook the management of the Peninsular Campaigns. In 1812, he became Prime Minister, and began a career of office which is memorable in the annals of Parliament for its unusual duration, over fourteen years, though it is but just to add that Lord Liverpool was really as little responsible for the great historical events with which it is associated, as for the mistaken policy with which it attempted to govern the country. Like his father, he was not eminent in debate, and he wisely refrained from exhibiting the fact. His talents were far inferior to his virtues; and though he may be entitled to respect, it would be difficult to leave him with any feeling of admiration. Among the nominal subordinates in the Tory Ministry there is only space to briefly mention a few. Scott (Lord Eldon), like Dundas, attached himself very early to the fortunes of the younger Pitt, and later acquired such a hold on the affections of the king, that in the latter's own words he gave him the Great Seal in 1807