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of York was to die before him, and now in no long time. The lord chancellor was to find himself less influential, henceforth, in the cabinet and in the House of Lords. The Duke of Wellington was to prove himself as pliable before political necessity, as inflexible in military duty. Mr Peel was to prove himself capable of education in the politics and philosophy of a new period. And Lord Liverpool himself was already so uncasy about the position of the Catholics that he did not, and could not, conceal from his intimate friends his conviction that their emancipation was only a question of time. He was now within five years of the date when, as is well known, he was making up his mind to resign his post to another who would carry the emancipation of the Catholics; which purpose was intercepted by the fatal seizure which withdrew him from public life.

As for the two 'political adventurers' whom it was so disagreeable to be obliged to admit into the cabinet, their present position was enough to mark, to the observant thinker, the change in the times. A new period must be opening when men of a new order are so indispensable at the council-board of the empire as that they are found seated there without effort of their own, and against the will of their colleagues. A new period was opening. Let us look at some of its features.

A time of war is a season of abeyance of social principles. Amidst the disturbance of war, the great natural laws of society are obscured and temporarily lost. An exceptional state is introduced, during which the principles of social rule retire and hide themselves behind the passions and exigencies of the time. During such a season, the statesmen required are such as can employ, as substitutes for large principles of social rule, a strong and disinterested will, commanding a clear understanding and a ready apprehension. In such a season, the man is everything. He truly rules, if he has the requisite power of will, whether his aims and his methods be better or worse. Statesmanship is a post which in war, as in a despotism, may well make giddy all but the strongest heads-may relax any nerves but those turned to steel by the fire of an unquenchable will. A statesman in such times is required above all things to be consistent. Consistency-which then means an adherence to an avowed plan or system-is the one indispensable virtue of a statesman who rules during an obscuration of great social laws. There is no reason for vacillation or change when he acts from internal forces, and not under the direction of external laws conflicting with faculty put to a new school. While statesmanship was of this character-as long as the British nation lived under rule which had more or less of despotism in it, and while it was engaged in war-that is, during almost the whole of its existence-British statesmen were naturally, almost necessarily, of the aristocratic class. Leaving behind, out of notice, the administrators who were mere creatures of royal favour, and not worthy to be called statesmen, and coming down to later times, when political function had become a personal honour independently of royal grace, it was

inevitable that English statesmen should be derived from a class to whom personal honours were most an object, and whose circumstances of birth and fortune set them at liberty for political action and occupation. Many influences favoured this choice of statesmen from the aristocratic orders: class habits of intercourse-class views and class interests. A lawyer's birth is forgotten in his eminence; so that low-born lawyers might rise, by the bar, to high political office; but otherwise a man must be, if not in some way noble, highly aristocratic before he could be a statesman, under penalty of being called a 'political adventurer.' After the peace, a different set of conditions gradually developed themselves. When war is over-the critical period which admits the rule of the statesman's will-an organic state succeeds, wherein all individual will succumbs to the working of general laws. The statesman can then no longer be a political hero, overruling influences, and commanding events. He only can be a statesman in the new days who is the servant of principles-the agent of the great natural laws of society. The principles which had gone into hiding during the period of warfare now shew themselves again, and assume, amidst more or less resistance, the government of states. Administrators who will not obey must retire, and make way for a new order of men. Amidst the difficulty and perplexity of such changes, a whole nation may be heard calling out for a great political hero, and complaining that all its statesmen have grown small and feeble; but it is not that the men have deteriorated, but that the polity is growing visibly organic; and a different order of men is required to administer its affairs.

When these new men come in, the old requisitions are still made-the old tests applied; and great is the consequent turmoil and disappointment on all hands. Everybody is troubled, except a philosopher here and there, who sees further than others. Consistency is talked of still, as the first virtue requisite in a statesman; and perhaps the man himself considers it so, and pledges himself fearlessly to consistency. But he soon finds himself no master of the principles of government, but a mere agent of laws which work themselves out whether he will or no; a mere learner under the tutelage of time and events. If he is a statesman from ambition, he must change the ground of his ambition; not exulting in framing and carrying out a political theory or system, but investing his pride in the enterprise of carrying out in the safest manner changes which must be made; doing in the best manner work which must, in one way or other, be done. As this new necessity opens before himthis fresh view of statesmanship presses upon himhe suffers more perhaps than all whom he disappoints. He is in an agony for his consistency, till he has become fully convinced that the highest praise of a statesman under the new order of things is that he can live and learn; and long after he has himself obtained a clear view of this truth, he is annoyed by inquiries after his lost consistency. A little time, however, justifies him. On looking round, he finds that there is no politician of worth in any party, who has not changed his opinion on one or more

CHAP. VI.]

PEEL-CANNING-HUSKISSON.

questions of importance since entering upon political life; and that the only consistent' men--the only men who think and say precisely what they thought and said at the beginning-are the political bigots who cannot live and learn.

Under a new period like this, new men must come up-men who discern the signs of the times earlier and more clearly than politicians who are closed in by class limits and governmental traditions. Such new men would hardly escape criticism from their colleagues, even if belonging to the order from which statesmen are usually derived. Their being brought in as a sign of new times is a ground of jealousy in itself. But the new men must, from the very nature of the case, be from a class placed in a different position; and they have much to encounter. If wealthy, so as to be, in regard to fortune, independent of office, they are looked upon as upstarts. If without fortune, they are called adventurers. No matter how great their genius, how conspicuous their honesty, how unquestionable their disinterestedness, or even, how aristocratic their tendencies; if they live on the proceeds of office, and make statesmanship the business of their lives, they are 'adventurers.'

All the varieties referred to were found in the cabinet of 1823. There were some members of old and high families. There were some of middle-class origin who had risen by means of university connection and high Toryism, at a time when the war made a wider road to statesmanship than the natural laws of society permit in seasons of peace. Lord Eldon was of what his colleagues would have called low origin, if they had cared about it; but he had risen by the way of the law, and was exempt from criticism on that score. Mr Peel was the son of a cotton-spinner; but his father, besides being enormously rich, was a vigorous Tory; and the son was quiet and modest, submitting to be commended patronisingly by Lord Sidmouth, and never forget-❘ ting or concealing the fact of his origin. There can be no doubt that, though Mr Peel has managed the fact with all prudence and honesty, and has long risen above the need of any adventitious advantages, he has felt the awkwardness of being the son of a cotton-spinner innumerable times in the course of his career. There is something in the way of his occasionally referring to the fact which shews this. It is painful to dwell on these features of the lot of statesmanship-almost shocking when we consider how far the honours of the position transcend any honours of birth. But it is necessary to historical truth to mark clearly the features of a new period of society; and this period seems to be the one when the hold of the aristocratic classes on the function of statesmanship was first loosened-the first opening made into the prospect of a future time when men of the people will be admitted, and must be welcomed, to a share in the management of the affairs of the whole people. The first who entered the government under this incipient change were sure to suffer; and to suffer on a point on which men of their kind are peculiarly sensitive. The men who had thus to suffer were Canning and Huskisson.

Canning was one of whom it might be said, according to ordinary notions, that he ought to have been

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a nobleman. High-spirited, confident, gay, genial, chivalrous, and most accomplished-he had the attributes of nobility, as they are commonly conceived of; and a nobleman he was-for he had genius. He held high rank in nature's peerage. But this was not distinction enough in the eyes of some of his colleagues, and the majority of their party. His father had been poor, though of gentlemanly birth; and after his father's death, his mother had become an actress. Not only was there an abiding sense of these facts in the minds of his colleagues, his party, and his opponents, but some spread a rumour, which met him from time to time in his life, that his birth was illegitimate. The same was said in the case of Mr Huskisson; and in both cases it was false.

Mr Huskisson was the son of a gentleman of restricted fortune, who possessed a small estate in Staffordshire. The greater part of the property was entailed upon him; and he might have led the life of a country gentleman, if his talents and inclinations had not led him into another walk of life. As it was, he became private secretary to Lord Gower, the British ambassador at Paris, in 1790, when he was only twenty years of age. Not long afterwards, he was requested by Mr Dundas, in the name of the cabinet, to accept the office of administering the Alien Bill-his knowledge of foreign languages and customs, and his gentlemanly manners, fitting him to conduct in the best mode the affairs of the immigrants landing in our ports. The Staffordshire estate descending to him about this time, considerably burdened with charges on account of the younger members of the family, he chose his way of life, declined that of a country gentleman, cut off the entail, and devoted himself to the public service. In his twenty-sixth year he became undersecretary of state for war and the colonies, under Mr Dundas.

As for Mr Canning, he was descended from an ancient family of gentry, one branch of which-that from which the statesman was descended-went to Ireland two centuries before his time, to live on lands presented to them by James I. Mr Canning's father was called to the bar, but he never practised. Literature beguiled him from the pursuit of law; and he died early. Under the pressure of debt, he had consented to cut off the entail of the Irish estate, which he soon saw settled on his younger brother. He married a beautiful young lady of eighteen, of good family-Miss Costello; and their son, the statesman, was born on the 11th of April 1770, when the friend and colleague of his afteryears, Mr Huskisson, was exactly a month old. The father was wretched at the thought of having made his son landless; his cares had long preyed upon his health; and he died on his child's first birthday, leaving the young widow wholly destitute; and it was then that, seeing no other resource for a maintenance, she went upon the stage. It is not going aside from our purposes to relate these particulars of family history. The cry against the origin of Mr Canning and Mr Huskisson was so vehement, and so earnestly echoed by the people themselves, when given out by the aristocracy, that

there is clearly some strong significance in it, which makes it a sign of the times. The aristocracy ought not to have complained of the birth of either of these men; and the people ought not to have been discontented at the spectacle of men without hereditary fortune devoting themselves to the public service, while complaining of the influence of hereditary fortune in unfitting politicians for popular sympathy. What the people ought to have felt under such an incident of government, Mr Canning indicated in one of his Liverpool speeches, after his election in 1816; a speech for which certain aristocratic families never forgave him, and for which they made his sensitive spirit suffer to his latest day. There is,' said Mr Canning to his Liverpool constituents, 'yet a heavier charge than either of those that I have stated to you. It is, gentlemen, that I am an adventurer. To this charge, as I understand it, I am willing to plead guilty. A representative of the people, I am one of the people; and I present myself to those who choose me only with the claims of character-be they what they may-unaccredited by patrician patronage, or party recommendation. Nor is it in this free country, where, in every walk of life, the road of honourable success is open to every individual-I am sure it is not in this place, that I shall be expected to apologise for so presenting myself to your choice. I know there is a political creed which assigns to a certain combination of great families a right to dictate to the sovereign, and to influence the people; and that this doctrine of hereditary aptitude for administration is, singularly enough, most prevalent among those who find nothing more laughable than the principle of legitimacy in the crown. To this theory I have never subscribed. If to depend directly upon the people, as their representative in parliament; if, as a servant of the crown, to lean on no other support than that of public confidence-if that be to be an adventurer, I plead guilty to the charge; and I would not exchange that situation, to whatever taunts it may expose me, for all the advantages which might be derived from an ancestry of a hundred generations.'

It is easy to see why, after this avowal, his aristocratic comrades and foes dwelt much on what they called the lowness of his origin.' The question is, why so many of the people were for ever taunting him with it, and with being an adventurer. It was not only, in this case, from that strong infusion of the aristocratic spirit into the English character which makes the town footman, the country shopkeeper, and the labourer in the hamlet, value the claims of birth as highly as any nobleman in the peerage. Mr Canning and Mr Huskisson were too well born to be subject to popular scorn on this ground. It was because they were not, till latterly, on the popular side. Men of the people, their tendencies were aristocratic; and they were seen in company, and supposed in league, with the Eldons and the Wellingtons-with the comrades of Sidmouth and Castlereagh. As time passed on, and disclosed the great truth that a new period had begun, the jealousy and dislike of the aristocratic observers of

these two men became aggravated-mixed up as it was with fear of change; and, from the same cause, their footing with the nation improved; till the popular confidence in the case of Huskisson reached the point of calm trust and gratitude for eminent services; and in the case of Canning, a pitch of high enthusiasm which caused the news of his death to be received with an universal groan.

What dismay the introduction of the new men caused among the old is shewn, with a sort of ludicrous pathos, in the correspondence of the lord chancellor at this time. He was always talking of retiring, on account of the disgrace the government was incurring by its advancing liberalism. At every new step taken, he threatened to retire; but he did not do it. He opposed and groaned over every proposition made by his colleagues; and it seems as if even the premier, his old friend, had grown tired of consulting him; and especially about the appointment of men whose measures and conduct he would be sure to disapprove as they developed themselves. The behaviour seems cavalier; but it must really have been difficult to know what to do with a man who would neither act heartily with his colleagues nor leave them. The Courier of last night,' writes the lord chancellor to his brother, announces Mr Huskisson's introduction into the cabinet-of the intention or the fact I have no other communication. Whether Lord Sidmouth has or not, I don't know; but really this is rather too much. Looking at the whole history of this gentleman, I don't consider this introduction, without a word said about the intention, as I should perhaps have done with respect to some persons that have been, or might be, brought into cabinet; but turning out one man, and introducing another in the way all this is done, is telling the chancellor that he should not give them the trouble of disposing of him, but should-not treated as a chancellor-cease to be a chancellor. What makes it worse is, that the great man of all has a hundred times most solemnly declared that no connection of a certain person's should come in.' (Lord Liverpool had declared that no friend of Canning's should come in.) There is no believing one word anybody says; and what makes the matter still worse is, that everybody acquiesces most quietly, and waits in all humility and patience, till their own turn comes.' It is plain that the world was rolling past the steadfast old chancellor, and carrying everybody with it but himself. The wind that it made chilled him as it swept by; and he was troubled at the void that it left about him. He called out, sometimes angrily and sometimes piteously, to the world, to come back and stand where it did before; but the world was fairly on its way now, and could not stop to listen to him: so the old man had to cheer himself with the comforts of his consciencethat most comfortable conscience which never gave him any trouble, but always so much solace! Perhaps this conscience of his would have stirred so far as to make him retire, if he could, amidst his many prophesyings, have foreseen how soon it would be said of the man now in question: 'Of Mr Huskisson, in particular, against whom every species of ribald abuse has been cast, we have no hesitation in saying,

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serving any party purpose, but solely because he believed, and most justly, that these measures were sound in principle, and calculated to promote the real and lasting interests of the public.' A new period had indeed set in. The combination of great families' had been conscientious in their way; in discharging their responsibility to their 'party,' and toiling and endeavouring to achieve its 'purposes.' Now, here was a man out of their pale-and therefore an adventurer'-who ruled in his province for the real and lasting interests of the public.' When William Huskisson and his period came in, it was certainly time for Lord Chancellor Eldon to go out, for his period was indisputably expiring.

And now for the coming in of Huskisson's times. During the war, when manufactures and commerce

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were in an artificial state, the British people had paid an amount of taxes, which now appears scarcely credible. What should we think of having to pay now, in taxes and loans, never less, and usually more, than a hundred millions a year. Yet this is what

was paid from 1805 to 1818. In 1813, the amount paid in was £176,346,023. And in raising this amount of proceeds, great injury was done by the method of collection, which was expensive and burdensome to excess. Mr Vansittart did not understand his business; and no one seems to have been able to teach it to him, or anxious to bid him learn it. He seems never to have perceived that to double a tax is not to double its proceeds. He did not consider that the lower ranks of society are the largest in number; and that numbers lessen with

increase of rank, either of birth or money. He never could see that if a tax was doubled-a tax on any commodity or usage-a certain number of persons would give up the commodity or usage, from inability to pay the heavy tax; and that those who would cease to pay would be the poorer—that is, the larger class. If Mr Vansittart wanted more money, he doubled a tax, reckoned on double the former amount of proceeds, prepared and presented his estimates on this supposition-was, of course, disappointed, and had recourse to loans, or resorted to the sinking-fund; or in some way plunged deeper, till he could induce the House to increase some other tax. Such was the method of administration which gave advantage to seditious declaimers, and enabled Mr Cobbett to carry with triumph, on the hustings at Norwich, resolutions in favour of applying the funds of the church and the crownlands to the payment of the debt, abolishing all pensions, and suspending almost every kind of income, for purposes of relief from taxation. It was clear that the pressure of taxation was now too great to be borne; and that something must be done to arrest the demoralising discussion of the question, whether the debt could not somehow be got rid of.

Those days appear to us not very remote; yet it is difficult to believe how little remote they are when we call to mind the way in which the debt was talked over. A large number of gentlemen contrived to convince themselves and one another that the debt was a source of public wealth--a name or imagination which capitalists could trade in for mutual advantage, and for a share in which rich foreigners would pay hard cash into the country. Such men would not, of course, have the debt diminished. An opposite, and daily increasing party, which was not confined to those who found it hard to live, wanted to sweep it away altogether. It was not uncommon, in those days, to meet with persons who called themselves politicians, who would say openly: 'Ah! you know, after all that can be said, we must come to the sponge.' The Cobbetts, Hunts, and Wolseleys of those days-the shrewd, the ignorant, and the weak leaders of the people, not only spoke strongly-as they might reasonably doof the hardship of the annual payment of the interest of the debt, but misled multitudes as to the origin and nature of the debt itself. They not only exposed the badness of the principle of mortgaging the industry of future generations; and shewed the mischief of diverting annually from productive purposes so many millions as go to pay the fundholder; and ridiculed the sinking-fund: all this was fair enough; but they went so far as to represent the debt as incurred by the aristocracy, for personal objects hostile to the national interest; and they clamoured for a confiscation of the property of the crown, and the church, and the aristocracy; and failing these, for an expunging of the debt, throwing the support of the fundholders wholly on the aristocracy. There were others who understood the origin and progress of the debt rightly enough; and who saw that, however indefensible was the great increase of it during the wars of the last century,

the most vast and rapid increase of it took place during the present century, when this prodigious expenditure had become indispensable to our national existence. While mourning over the American war, and other unhappy conflicts, which raised the debt from 129 millions in 1775, to 360 at the Peace of Amiens in 1802, they remembered that the vital struggle which ensued, between 1803 and the overthrow of Napoleon in 1815, added 420 millions to the capital of the debt-an addition for which it seems impossible to blame, with any show of reason, any class or party at home. But those who understood accurately the origin of the debt fell into strange errors about the means of its liquidation. Some trusted to the sinking-fund, even up to this date and beyond it. They did not see the double mischief connected with the sinking-fund: that while there was in reality any surplus revenue applicable to its purposes, the government would, almost of course, help itself to the money, under any temporary embarrassment, to avoid proposing new taxes while the people found it more and more difficult to pay the old; and then, that the commissioners of the sinking-fund would borrow to make up the deficiency. Absurd as it appears in the case of an individual, that a man should borrow in one direction to pay a debt in another-paying perhaps higher interest to his new creditor than to the oldand should then call for congratulations on the decrease of his first debt, this is exactly what was done by the government, prior to this date. Mr Pitt no doubt honestly believed that the money accruing to the sinking-fund would be allowed to accumulate untouched; but Mr Vansittart declared in 1813, that the sum produced by the sinking-fund 'would be an instrument of great force in the hands of parliament, which might lead to the most important results;' and Lord Londonderry, just before his death, avowed that he had never represented the sinking-fund as a saving to be held sacred, but as a mode of placing a large sum at the disposal of parliament, to be by them disposed as might be thought most equitable, whether for the relief of a pressing exigency of the present day, or for the security of posterity.' While this extraordinary laxity of profession was used by members of the government, there was no less laxity in the actual management of the so-called fund. The operations were curious enough in many ways; but the result was the most curious of all. While ministers were announcing that the sinking-fund had paid off nearly twenty-five millions of the debt since 1817, the public were wondering how it was that the interest of the debt was heavier by £700,000. By borrowing, with all manner of ingenious and costly devices, on the one hand, to pay on the other, the managers had actually increased the debt by seven millions and a half since 1817, and had added £700,000 to the interest. Since the close of the war, the increase was upwards of eleven millions. Something must be done.

One process which had been begun in 1808 for the liquidation of the debt has acted well, as far as it has gone; and it is probable that whenever any effectual reduction of the debt takes place, it will be

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