CHAPTER VI.

In looking back to the time of Mr. Canning's entrance upon Changes in office, in the autumn of 1822, it is clear made clear the Ministry. by the light of subsequent events that a new period in the domestic history of the country was opening. Many persons must have been aware of this at the time, if we may judge by the satisfaction expressed in various ways at the appointment of Mr. Robinson as Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the place of Mr. Vansittart, who left office with the title of Lord Bexley; and at Mr. Huskisson's becoming president of the Board of Trade, in January, 1823. Enough of the old elements was left to keep the timid and unobservant quiet, in the hope that things would go on pretty much as before, while Lord Liverpool was the head of the administration, and Lord Eldon was a fixture; and the Duke of Wellington represented England abroad, and the King was surrounded by so many of his favorite class of statesmen; and the Duke of York took a solemn oath occasionally against countenancing any attempt to relax the disabilities of the Catholics. It was a misfortune, to be sure, that the government of the country could not go on without Canning; with out a man who was irretrievably pledged to the cause of Catholic emancipation; and that Mr. Huskisson was admitted into the cabinet, with his troublesome and dangerous notions about impairing the protection to native industry; but it was hoped that native industry was safe in the fostering bosom of the English nation; and some expressions of Mr. Canning's were laid hold of expressions about the apparent impossibility of carrying Catholic emancipation under any government that could be devised — as affording an assurance that, though the new minister was obliged to talk about the matter, he would never be able to do anything in it; and thus the tedium and loss of time in talking would be the extent of the evil. Besides, the two obnoxious men were "political adventurers," low-born, and therefore vulgar; and their influence would be kept down accordingly by their more aristocratic political connections. Such appears to have been the view of the ministerial party, at this time, throughout the country, from the King himself to the little country shop

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NEW PERIOD OPENING.

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keeper of Tory politics. The light of subsequent events show us, however, that the case did not stand exactly thus. The King was growing morbid in temper and spirits more addicted to a selfish and inglorious seclusion, and less interested about public affairs from year to year. The Duke 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 polities and philosophy of a new period. And Lord Liverpool himself was already so uneasy 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 favor, and not worthy to be called statesmen, and coming down to later times, when political function had become a personal honor independently of royal grace, it was inevitable that English statesmen should be derived from a class to whom personal honors were most an object, and whose circumstances of birth and fortune set them at liberty for political action and occupation. Many influences favored 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 show 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

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THE CABINET OF 1823.

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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 him this fresh view of statesmanship presses upon him he 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 questions of importance since enter ing 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

Mr. Peel

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 patronizingly by Lord Sidmouth, and never forgetting 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 shows this. It is painful to dwell on these features of the lot of statesmanship, almost shocking when we consider how far the honors of the position transcend any honors 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,

Mr. Canning and Mr. Huskisson.

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 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 rumor, 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

;