remark, After me the deluge.' But he lived to see the utter destruction of his own handiwork, and the thrones which he had propped up by the bayonets of half a million of armed men topple over like a house of cards; while the Emperor of Austria was driven from his capital, and Metternich himself had to take refuge in England.

is the history of the "Holy Alliance," which, even in the partial feeling of its originator, had no other object than that of a moral demonstration, whilst in the eyes of the other persons concerned, the document had no such meaning, and therefore does not deserve the interpretation which was afterwards put on it by party spirit.' 'The most unanswerable proof,' he avers,

No apprehensions of changes or reverses, of the correctness of this statement exists however, entered the minds of the men- in the circumstances that never afterwards 'the paltry creatures,' Gentz terms them, did it happen that the "Holy Alliance” was 'who govern the world,' and were now busily made mention of before the cabinets, nor, inengaged in reconstructing the map of deed, could have been mentioned. Only the Europe. The rulers of Austria, Prussia, and parties hostile to the monarchs used it as a Russia entered into a treaty of 'Holy Al- weapon for the calumniation of the purest liance,' as they termed it, in which they intention of their opponents. The "Holy solemnly engaged to 'remain united by the Alliance" was not an institution to keep bonds of a true and indissoluble fraternity; down the rights of the people, to promote and that considering each other as fellow- absolutism or any other tyranny. It was countrymen, they will on all occasions and only the overflow of the pietistic feeling of in all places lend each other aid and assist- the Emperor Alexander, and the application ance.' Prince Metternich, however, desig- of Christian principles to politics.' Whatnates this famous treaty a 'loud-sounding ever may have been the real motives which nothing,' a union of religious and political-induced the two emperors and the king of liberal ideas, developed under the influence Prussia (all three, as Gentz remarks, noted of Frau von Krudener and Monsieur de Ber- for their 'mediocrity and ineptitude ') gasse over the Emperor Alexander. The original draft, he says, presented to him by the Czar, was nothing more than a philanthropic aspiration clothed in a religious garb, which supplied no material for a treaty between the monarchs, and which contained many phrases that might even have given rise to religious misconstructions. His views of the projected treaty, he says, coincided with those of the Emperor Francis, and when the document was shown to the king of Prussia he expressed a similar opinion regarding it. In consequence of this agreement of opinion, Metternich was charged by both monarchs to go to the Emperor Alexander as their common representative, and to submit to him their views. In a conversation of several hours he succeeded, not without great difficulty, in persuading the author of the document of the necessity of changing several sentences and omitting some passages entirely. This,' he adds,

to enter into this 'Holy Alliance,' it was generally regarded at the time and long after as a confederacy of the absolute Powers of the Continent against the rights and liberties of their subjects; and their refusal to fulfil their promises to grant constitutional privileges to their own people, and the mode in which they employed their arms to overthrow the Spanish constitution adopted by the Cortes with the approval of the king, and to support the petty rulers of the Italian duchies in their arbitrary and oppressive proceedings, showed that the general opinion as to their policy was well founded.

The ministers who at this juncture held the reins of power in Great Britain were not unnaturally elated at the triumph of the British arms at Waterloo, and the downfall of the formidable adversary who had so long threatened the security of their own country, and employed his absolute power

over the nations of the Continent to injure | he had for twelve years filled the Speaker's British commerce. These ministers had, in chair in the House of Commons, and had reality, no great title to the credit which for three years-from 1801 to 1804-held they claimed in bringing this protracted the office of prime minister. But the two conflict to a prosperous termination. But members of the ministry who had the greatthey seemed to have imbibed something of est weight within the cabinet and in Parliathe spirit of the continental sovereigns with ment were the Chancellor, Lord Eldon, and whom they had acted in concert, and to Lord Castlereagh, the leader of the House have resolved, as far as possible, to carry of Commons. Lord Eldon had held his high out a similar policy. They were soon made office, with the exception of an interval of to feel that they had made a great mistake, a single year, since 1801, and retained it both as regarded their own ability and the till 1827-a period quite unprecedented in general feeling of the country. judicial history. He sat in the cabinet as Chancellor with five prime ministers, and was throughout the mainspring of their domestic policy. He was universally admitted to be a most accomplished and excellent judge and a profound lawyer, remarkably painstaking and industrious in the discharge of his duties, and anxious to do justice. Unfortunately for his own reputation and the interests of suitors, his hesitation to give judgment led to enormous arrears, till the business of his court became hopelessly encumbered with the vast accumulation of undecided cases; and the ruinous delays of the Court of Chancery became a standing byword and a reproach. It was admitted, however, even by those who most severely blamed the chancellor's dilatory habits, that they did not arise from indolence or negligence, but from excessive caution, and an earnest desire to consider each case in all its bearings before pronouncing judgment. He was possessed of genial manners and a cheerful affectionate disposition, which endeared him to his family and his friends; but he insisted on maintaining the extreme penalty of death for the most trivial offences which, now-a-days, would be thought deserving of no higher punishment than a few weeks' imprisonment. He resisted to the utmost every attempt to remove any public abuse, or religious disability, or commercial restriction, or to intrust any share of political power to the great body of the people. He was the mainstay of the extreme Tory party in the ministry and the country, and to him more than to any other man was

The head of the Government was Robert Banks Jenkinson, second earl of Liverpool, a nobleman of highly respectable character, but of moderate abilities. He had passed the greater part of his life in the service of the public. In 1793, when he was only twenty-three years of age, he was appointed a member of the India Board, and since that time he had held under successive ministries the offices of Master of the Mint, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary, and Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. He became prime minister on the death of Mr. Perceval in 1812; but no one regarded him as the real head of the cabinet, or the main-spring of its policy. He was a sensible speaker and a good man of business; but he had no pretensions to the character of a great statesman, and no claim to the merit either of conducting the war or prescribing the terms of peace. He had no sympathy with popular claims or wishes, but employed all his influence to preserve unaltered the constitution as it existed. No repressive law was abolished, no popular change was accomplished at his own instance, during his long administration. But the authority of the executive was greatly and needlessly strengthened, the obnoxious Six Acts were passed, and arbitrary measures adopted to repress popular discontents during his tenure of office.

The important post of Home Secretary was at this time held by Viscount Sidmouth, another and even inferior mediocrity, though

satirists. But in spite of these defects Lord Castlereagh's irreproachable private character, consistency, intrepidity, and firmness of purpose, gave him great weight both in the country and in the House, and enabled him to hold his ground against the powerful debaters of the Opposition.

The other members of the cabinet, Vansittart, Bathurst, and Pole, who had seats in the House of Commons, added little weight to the Government. 'I look on Bathurst, Vansittart, Robinson, and Pole as nothing,' wrote Mr. Wilbraham to Lord Colchester. Van. does not speak much but upon his own business. Bathurst is not much listened to, and is conscious of it. Pole rarely speaks, but when he does it is always in a passion; and as to Robinson, he seems to do nothing but occasionally answer a question on trade. It is therefore cruel of the Opposition (as Walter Scott once told Morritt) to plague "poor dumb creatures." Vansittart, who filled the important office of Chancellor of the Exchequer for eleven years, was not fitted, either by his talents or his financial knowledge, to preside over the finances of the country at this critical period. He had no perception either of what taxes might properly be abolished, or which should be continued or imposed. Hence his rule at the exchequer is associated only with a futile attempt to retain obnoxious imposts which the Parliament and the country would no longer tolerate. He was an ineffective debater, and had no weight in the House :

owing the dogged resistance of the Govern- | confusion of metaphor, were the constant ment to every proposal for the reform of theme of the raillery of Moore and other the representative system, and the extension of equal rights and privileges to all sects and classes. It has been justly remarked that Lord Eldon 'confounded every abuse that surrounded the throne or grew up within the precincts of the altar with the institutions themselves, and was alike the determined enemy of all who would either invade the institution or extirpate the abuse.' Lord Castlereagh, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and the representative of the Government in the Lower House, was the eldest son of the first Marquis of Londonderry, and had been the chief instrument in carrying through the Union of Ireland with Great Britain. His intellect was narrow and his education imperfect; but he was possessed of great courage and resolution, as well as of untiring industry. He was, as Sir Walter Scott remarks, 'a man of sense, presence of mind, and fortitude, which carried him through many an affair of critical moment when finer elements would have stuck in the mire. He had been indifferently educated; and his mode of speaking being far from logical or correct, he was sometimes in danger of becoming almost ridiculous, in despite of his lofty presence, which had all the grace of the Seymours (his maternal ancestors), and his determined courage.' His reputation as an administrator did not stand high; and the Walcheren expedition, for which he was responsible, was from first to last grossly mismanaged, and not only wasted a large amount of blood and treasure, but brought ignominy on the British arms. The triumphant campaigns of Wellington in the Peninsula had by this time, however, obliterated the recollections of Walcheren, and Lord Castlereagh's influence in Parliament was now at its height. His intellectual endowments were not of a Charles Bragge Bathurst, who was Chanhigh order, his policy was generally believed cellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, had held to be of an arbitrary character, and his parlia- in succession the offices of Treasurer of the mentary oratory though fluent was disjointed Navy, Secretary of War, and Master of the in argument, and his half-formed sentences, Mint. Brother Bragge,' as Canning styled proverbial awkwardness of expression, and him, was indebted for his success in life

'Vansittart, Vansittart, for little thou fit art. wrote a contemporary satirist, and posterity has indorsed the opinion.

the same proportion valuable and sterling- tinually in opposition, with the exception a thorough acquaintance with business in of the brief period during which the Whigs its principles and details; a complete were in office in 1806, his efforts on its mastery of the science of politics, as well behalf were constantly defeated by the theoretical as practical; of later years a dense phalanx of obstructive ministerialists. perfect familiarity with political economy His unwearied labours in support of liberal and a just appreciation of its importance; principles were not limited to the question an early and most extensive knowledge of of parliamentary reform. Though both the classical literature which he improved, in- sovereign and the legislature were opposed stead of abandoning, down to the close of his to him, and the great mass of the people life; a taste formed upon these chaste models, were indifferent, he persisted in the thankand of which his lighter compositions in less task of resisting the reactionary and Greek and Latin verses bore testimony to arbitrary measures of the Government. the very last. His eloquence was of a While frankly admitting that France plain, masculine, authoritative cast, which 'groaned under a furious tyranny, to which neglected, if it did not despise ornament, the dominion of Nero and Caligula was and partook in the least possible degree of preferable,' he strove on every opportunity to fancy, while its declamation was often bring to a close the war between Great Britain equally powerful with its reasoning and and that country. He made an earnest, its statement.' It was universally admitted, though of course fruitless attempt, in 1794, however, that Lord Grenville's manners to obtain an inquiry into the conduct of were somewhat haughty and reserved, and the ministry in bringing foreign troops into that his firmness was apt to degenerate into the country without the consent of Parliaobstinacy-defects which detracted from ment. He resisted the suspension of the his popularity, though they did not greatly Habeas Corpus Act and the bill of 1796 to diminish his influence among his brother restrain public meetings; and he exposed in peers. glowing terms the wasteful expenditure of the Government and their unconstitutional conduct in applying public money to other purposes than those to which it had been voted by the House of Commons. But all his motions, though supported by facts which were undeniable and by most conclusive arguments, were rejected by overwhelming majorities. In November, 1807, on the death of his father, he succeeded to the peerage, and in conjunction with Lord Grenville led the opposition in the House of Lords. Repeated overtures were made to these distinguished statesmen to join the administration in 1809 and 1810; but the offers were unhesitatingly rejected. After the tragical death of Mr. Perceval in 1812, Lords Grenville and Grey were requested by the Prince Regent to undertake the formation of a new ministry, but in such

Lord Grey was the leader of the more advanced section of the Whigs. He was four years younger than Lord Grenville, and unlike him, had been a reformer from his entrance into public life as member for Northumberland, before he had attained the age of twenty-one; and his long career, from its commencement to its close, was one of unswerving consistency and unblemished integrity. He supported Mr. Pitt's proposals for parliamentary reform, and with the support of that minister brought the question before the House of Commons in 1792 and 1793. Four years later he introduced a measure for the enfranchisement of copy-holders and of lease-holders in counties, and for establishing household suffrage in boroughs, which, mainly in consequence of the opposition of Mr. Pitt, was rejected by a large majority. Lord circumstances and under such restrictions Grey's name was henceforth identified with the cause of Reform; but as he was con

as to show that the proposal was not sincere, and it was at once declined.