"from his heart." He filled the high office of Lord Chancellor on two successive occasions-the last period extending over twenty years, during the whole of which he proved himself the irreconcilable and most dangerous opponent of every project of reform mooted in Parliament. Earl Bathurst was Foreign Secretary between the years 1809-1812, after which he went to the War and Colonial Office, and remained there till 1827; but in neither capacity did he show enough administrative talent to rescue him from the Slough of Despond, in which all the "old stumped-up Tories" lie. Mr. Vansittart, during his career at the Exchequer,1 earned the unenviable distinction of being the worst financier that ever brought forward a budget. His successor, Mr. Robinson (afterwards Lord Goderich and Earl of Ripon), whose extraordinary cheerfulness in the face of the most unfavourable revenue statements gained him the nickname of "Prosperity," was hopelessly feeble at the Exchequer. Nor was the brief period of "Goody Goderich's" Ministry remarkable for anything except the fact of its existence and the rapidity of its termination. Vesey Fitzgerald (afterwards Lord Fitzgerald and Vesey) will probably be remembered for his rejection at the Clare Election in 1828, and the impetus which this event gave to the Catholic Relief movement, long after the merits which caused his elevation to the Board of Trade, and consequent necessity for re-election, have been forgotten.

Mr.

The Whig Opposition was neither a strong nor a compact body. Its natural leaders, after the death of Fox, were Lords Grey and Grenville, who both suffered under the disadvantage of being in the House of Lords. William Wyndham Lord Grenville (son of George Grenville) began his parliamentary career as a supporter of Pitt in the struggle with the Coalition, 1783, and was rewarded with the Foreign Office in Pitt's Ministry. The Catholic question shook his ancient loyalty, and drew him over to the side of Fox. The part that he played in Parliament from this time was not very important; and it has been aptly remarked that his refusal to join Pitt in 1804 practically placed his new party on the shelf for over a quarter of a century, with the exception of the

1 1812-23.

brief year of his Ministry of All the Talents. Lord Grey, after his transference to the House of Lords, took very little active part in politics for some time; and, indeed, in the face of the overwhelming Tory majority which was the result of Pitt's lavish creations, any vigorous action was for some time impossible. Except Lord Grey, the Opposition had no leader fit to inaugurate a policy or lead a party. Mr. Tierney and Mr. Ponsonby were the nominal chiefs in the House of Commons; but Mr. Tierney's views were too moderate for many of the Liberal sections; and Mr. Ponsonby, on one occasion, avowed at a meeting of the whole party that he neither knew what proposal the Government intended to make, nor what course it would be advisable to pursue.

Disunited, however, as the Opposition might be, it contained in its ranks many distinguished men-Sir Samuel Romilly, celebrated for his philippics on the slave-trade and the criminal laws; Mr. Joseph Hume, the leader of the parliamentary Radicals, who, with indefatigable industry, perseverance, and ability, devoted himself to attacking the reckless financial policy of Lord Liverpool's Government; Mr. Horner, whose name is also associated with the question of economical and currency reform; Mr. Wilberforce, the zealous champion of freedom, the leader of the crusade against the slave-trade; Sir Francis Burdett, who sustained the whole weight of the Parliamentary Reform movement, during the period of its greatest discredit and absence of hope; Lord Henry Petty, afterwards the celebrated Marquis of Lansdowne; Mr. Whitbread, the able coadjutor of Wilberforce in the campaign for the release of the slaves; Earl Fitzwilliam, a true representative of the old Whig grandees, who, having begun life amid the traditions of the Whig aristocracy, lived to be reckoned in the ranks of the reformers. Mr. Brougham was beginning to make a great name in Parliament, though his time had not yet fully come. Mr. Holborne, Mr. Denman, and many others, must be disposed of with the barest allusion.

The most interesting figure and most prominent statesman on the Tory side before 1822 is Lord Castlereagh. His career embodies the parliamentary and political history of the time.

Robert Steward, Lord Castlereagh, afterwards Marquis of Londonderry, held various offices in the different Tory Cabinets.

As Foreign Secretary, under Lord Liverpool, he rose to the position of real leader of the whole party, and his name is identified with the repressive policy which formed the mainspring of government till his death in 1822. He was an obscure orator, and what was still more remarkable in an Irishman, a dull one. He appeared neither to know the way to his meaning, nor to possess the power of conveying it to others; he rarely attempted. to illustrate or adorn his argument by classical quotation or historical example; his metaphors were, as a rule, extremely confused. He took three-quarters of an hour in telling the House of Commons that he did not intend to make any motion on the Treaties of Vienna, but that any private member was at liberty to do so; though another man would have occupied some five minutes at most. On another occasion, in the midst of a long and unintelligible oration on some unknown topic, he stopped suddenly and exclaimed, "So much, Mr. Speaker, for the law of nations." He once declared to the House that he had "now proved that the Tower of London is a common law principle," and he committed himself in perfect good faith to the following remarkable historical estimate of the condition of Spain:-" That the pendulum had swung so far on the side of Jacobinism, that it afterwards swung quite as far on the side of anti-Jacobinism, which had prevented its settling in a middle point." In the excitement of a moment he entreated the country gentlemen not to turn their backs on themselves; and it is even asserted that he accomplished the incomprehensible feat of concluding one of his speeches with the monosyllable "its."

With regard to the two great questions of the day he held divided views. He was a firm opponent of Parliamentary Reform, and, indeed, of all measures which had the faintest democratic origin or tendency; but he was favourable to the claims of the Catholics. He took a prominent share in introducing the Six Acts, 1819, saying with his usual boldness, "I rise for the purpose of proposing to the House measures of severe coercion." He obstructed, and successfully obstructed, all the efforts of Sir Samuel Romilly for the reform of the criminal law and the suppression of the slave-trade; and he listened unmoved to the accusation of buying colonies at the Treaty of Vienna with "the

blood of Africa." As long as he lived he formed an insuperable barrier across the path of progress; his death marks an epoch in the history of Lord Liverpool's Cabinet, of Parliament, and the world. Yet one of his warmest opponents, Grattan, the old Irish patriot, on his death-bed said to his friends, "Don't be hard on Castlereagh he loves our country."

His suicide, in 1822, transferred the reins of power to his great rival, Canning, and began a period which was remarkable not only for a considerable change in home and foreign policy, but also for the brilliance of the oratory in the House of Commons. George Canning was a shining wit and an orator of the most dazzling type. The speech in which he explained that a few days had sufficed for the decision, preparation, and despatch of the armament to Portugal to resist the designs of Spain, is, perhaps, the one which produced the greatest effect on his contemporaries; but his declaration that, by acknowledging the independence of the South American Republics, he had "called in the New World to redress the balance of the Old," has become almost an idiom in the English language. He had begun life in Parliament as the friend of Pitt, and clung to the latter's fortunes till his death. He took office in the Portland Ministry, but his quarrel with Castlereagh ended in his resignation, and practically condemned him to parliamentary insignificance till 1822.

On the resignation of Lord Liverpool, he was pointed out as the natural successor, and yet no man could have been more unfitted for that position. He was personally unpopular with the great mass of the Tory party; his views were regarded by most of his then colleagues with intense suspicion of their progressive character; his own party was too small to be of much value; his ideas were scarcely advanced enough to enable him to unite with the Opposition. As soon as his acceptance of office was known, six of his colleagues resigned. This wrung from him a bitter declaration to the House that his "position was not that of gratified ambition," and that he would never consent to be a mere helot," executing the orders of some man who was his real inferior. The result was that his Cabinet was necessarily recruited by a number of moderate Liberals, and that Canning himself, during the short space of his Ministry, became the butt of Parlia

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ment, baited by both Tories and Liberals with a savage ferocity which recalls the memory of the fierce debates on the American war, and which exercised a terrible-nay, fatal-effect on Canning's excitable nature. Like Burke, he saw "Blanche, Tray, and Sweetheart, all barking at him," and it needed Lord North's sweet temper and somniferous character to bear the fearful strain. Easily exasperated by the most insignificant gad-fly, howled at by the Tories as a renegade, distrusted by many of his own party, thwarted continually by the king, it is no wonder that his temper and his health gave way, and he sank into his grave-literally killed by Parliament.

This period was also graced by two orators of remarkable power. Mr. Brougham, afterwards Lord Brougham, and Chancellor in the Reform Ministry, well earned his great reputation. "With prodigious force of argument," says a contemporary, "he struck down any common adversary, pouring fiery sarcasm and unsparing, overwhelming refutation upon his head, and leaving him an object of ridicule or of pity, crushed beneath the weight of accumulated epithets, and a burning mass of invective."

Of the three principal stars of Parliament, Mr. Plunket has the pre-eminence for the most perfect oratory, the most thorough command of his fancy, the greatest skill in elucidating and adorning his argument. As a rule, he spoke chiefly on the Catholic question; but Earl Russell declares that his defence of his own conduct, in answer to Mr. Brownlow, was a great triumph of oratorical art; and his answer to Brougham, on the proposal to make a provision for the Roman Catholic clergy, is deservedly celebrated.

The substitution of Mr. Peel for Lord Sidmouth at the Home Office, in 1822, was almost as important an advance on the Tory side as the succession of Canning to Castlereagh. The adoption of the Reform question by Lord John Russell relieved it in a great measure from the odium which had clung round it while in the hands of Burdett. The growing importance of Copley was to provide the Tories with a successor to Lord Eldon (1827) in the person of Lord Lyndhurst. Long years of service as Secretary at War were preparing Lord Palmerston for higher things when the Reform period should be overpast. All four belong really to