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Catholic claims; some of the leading Whigs felt it impossible to join them officially; and this begot an unwillingness in those who felt no such difficulties, to become members of a Cabinet divided on so great a question, and likely to be opposed by so highly respected friends.

Happily for the country, happily for their own reputation as statesmen of firm, consistent, and manly character, those scru-ples were overcome. A Cabinet was formed, in which the liberal part of the former Ministry were cordially united with the leading men of the Opposition, and with two or three individuals not attached to the same views of policy, but whose very worst errors, as we must be allowed to call them, afforded, with their high stations, a security to the country against any rash and headlong attempts being made to bring about changes, which, if gradually effected, may yet remedy all the evils of our domestic situation.

The Session opened with much of complaint, and somewhat of menace. We love not to dwell on painful recollections. We are willing to hope that calmer reflection may render the retrospect for ever as unnecessary as it is unpleasing. In a very short time, the attacks upon the new Ministry were left in the hands of those, of whom, wishing to speak with all possible respect, we may be permitted to say, that their weight in the country, and the place they occupy in the annals of its Council, are proportioned to their intrinsic merits; and that their adversaries must always feel contentment, if they should feel little pride, in being opposed to their hostility.

The close of the Session was speedily followed by the death of the Prime Minister,-too early for his country, though not for his own fame; and the Sovereign, in strict accordance with the universal desire of his people, directed the Government to be reconstructed upon the same principle as before. One change, though not in the Cabinet, attended this event; the command of the army was again given to its most distinguished ornament, who never, in our opinion, should have for a day stooped from the loftier height he had scaled by his wisdom, his valour, and his brilliant fortune, to join in the little details and low intrigues of vulgar politics. We have said nothing of some of the Ministers who resigned; but we suspect that no very deep affliction was suffered by the country from their loss. After the very long period during which they had lived in office, their departure could hardly be deemed untimely; and though one of those veterans retired with a great name, and all of them in the full possession of their faculties, there seemed a prevailing disposition, in the public mind, to express no sorrow for the loss, un

til they saw whether they could be worse governed by their successors. They sunk gradually into a kind of watching Opposition-a corps of observation; and one thing must be admitted on all hands, whatever opinion may be entertained of the new Opposition from the recollection of their past services, that no man looked forward to much occasion for them in their new capacity, since the new Ministry stands unrivalled by any former Government in popularity with the country, and surpassed by none in favour with the Crown.

It must be evident to every person of ordinary understanding, and be admitted by any one of moderate candour, that, in the effectual assistance which some of the Opposition render to the new Government, by taking part in it officially, and the disinterested, though necessarily less efficient, support which others give it out of place, nothing is done by either class inconsistent with the strictest notions of party principle, or which, tried by the most rigorous standard of party duty, could be found wanting. Suppose the whole principles and distribution of political parties to have remained unaltered of late years, we affirm, nor indeed has it ever been in terms denied, that the late Coalition was framed on the most approved models known in the best times of our history.

The only justification of party unions has always been found in their necessity, sometimes for curbing the influence of the executive power, sometimes for promoting certain other principles held by the members of such associations in common, and deemed by them essential to the good of the country. Men have, through ambition, or avarice, or the other forms of selfishness, abused this privilege, or rather duty, of public men; they have leagued themselves together to extort better terms from their Sovereign, their opponents, or the public; they have in reality been holding out and keeping together for some personal reasons, and not because they differed from their adversaries, and agreed among themselves in holding certain opinions-but they were never yet shameless enough to avow such motives: their profligacy has always paid the homage to political virtue, of pretending to act together because they concurred in maintaining principles different from those of other parties. Even where the ground of contention seemed the most narrow, and reduced as it were to a mere personal point, they sedulously magnified this by all the powers of refining and sophistry, if

*In this country, we are often puzzled with will and shall, would, should, and could, so we don't venture to suggest any alteration.

they could put forward a larger justification, and conceal the reason. Thus, when the great body of the Whigs, in an evil hour for their public reputation and their influence in the country, joined Lord North against Lord Shelburne, and opposed the peace which they had so long been urging, they were far from admitting that the mere assumption of the Treasury by one of their number instigated them to this ill-omened step, much less that they had sacrificed their principles on the American Question to gratify their spleen against a former colleague, and obtain the highest station of power. They alleged that the new Minister had changed his principles upon the recognition of American independence; that he was resolved to screen Indian delinquency; that he owed his elevation to unconstitutional designs entertained by the Court against all the great parties of the country, for the purpose of governing more absolutely through creatures of its own. It was their adversaries who charged them with personal motives, and urged as an accusation against them, that the appointment of the Prime Minister was the real cause of their secession. Does it not follow from such principles, rather is it not a proposition of the very same purport, that when a body of men originally collected and banded against others by a political faith, in holding which it differed from them, finds all differences at an end, and former adversaries acting upon its own much cherished principles, a new line of conduct ought straightway to be pursued? Common honesty to the country, as well as a regard for consistency, requires that there should be an end of the Opposition, when there is an end of the only diversity that called for it, or indeed could justify it. Whoever would still keep aloof in such circumstances, and continue in Opposition when there is no longer any public ground of difference, plainly admits his real motives all along to have been personal and selfish, however cunningly he may have varnished them over with the pretence of principle. To this charge it is manifest the Whigs would have exposed themselves, had they held back from Mr Canning's party, whom they had no tangible ground of differing with.

But we may put the case still more strongly upon mere party grounds. Coalitions have ever been held allowable, and sometimes admitted to be the duty of statesmen, when necessary to further some great object of public good. To frame a strong Government in 1757, Lord Chatham's Ministry was formed out of every conflicting party; and it carried the country to the highest pitch of glory. This precedent was cited by Mr Fox and Mr Burke in defence of the coalition with Lord North; and though the diversity of facts did not well justify the appli

cation, there can be no doubt of the principle in proof of which it was referred to. The coalition sought by many, to be effected between Mr Fox and Mr Pitt in 1784 and 1804, could only be grounded upon the necessity of giving the country a good and vigorous Government; and the junction of Lord Grenville and the Whigs in 1804, and afterwards in office, was dictated, as it was triumphantly defended, by their agreement on some great questions, and their disposition to sacrifice lesser points of opinion, and all personal considerations, to the important object of promoting those grand principles in which they coincided. But in all these cases, and in none more than the last, there were various differences of principle; not only were Whig and Tory, Alarmist and Reformer, to coalesce; but during the war, and for the sake of carrying it on to a better issue, they who were the authors of it, were united with its constant and sturdy opponents. Yet all men approved of the union, because lesser things should yield to greater, and upon one or two great questions there was a fortunate concurrence of opinion. It would be very difficult, however, in the present case, to find the subject upon which the new allies did not agree-Catholic Question-Currency-Free Trade-Judicial Reform-Foreign Policy-South American Independence-on all these they had for years fought side by side; on all these they had been combating together against the Ministers who lately resigned; while, with the exception of Parliamentary Reform, upon which the members of the same party differed among themselves, there was not a single practical point of dissension to be descried. Any two, almost any one of those great subjects was important enough to justify a union, even had the parties differed upon most of the others; but when the agreement extended over the whole, can any man seriously maintain that it was not their duty to coalesce, if their cordial co-operation could alone secure the success of their common principles, and the exclusion from power of their common adversaries?

It has been said, that there is in the Cabinet, as now compo sed, an admixture of members unfavourable to the Catholic Claims, and reports have reached us of very strong, but not perhaps very well considered objections being taken on this head. Beside our former general argument, we shall content ourselves with two observations in reply. The first is, that three members in the whole Cabinet, and these in no way connected, either with the head of the Administration, or with the management of Irish affairs, do not alter the features of tolerance and liberality impressed upon it by the union which has created the rest of the body. The other is, that such a criticism

proceeds with a strange air from the ancient friends and associates of Mr Fox, who, in 1783, took office with Lord Shelburne, differing from him, as he afterwards avowed, on many points, and extremely reluctant ever to join him, and with Lord Thurlow, whom he had all his life been opposing upon all points, and who had held the Great Seal during the American war. But still more marvellous is such a remark from any who held office in Mr Fox's last Administration! Is it really forgotten already how the Cabinet of 1806 was composed? There was at its head Lord Grenville-the colleague and kinsman of Mr Pitt-the main promoter of the first war, and instigator to the second-the author of the letter to Bonaparte, which prolonged it from 1800-the stanch enemy of reform-the avowed friend and protector of the Wellesleys in India. Against him were to be set Mr Fox and Mr Grey, peacemakers, reformers, managers of Indian Impeachments. Then came Mr Windham and Lord Fitzwilliam, the administrators of Mr Burke's fury, as their new colleagues had often termed them, and going as much beyond the Grenvilles in hatred of peace, as they exceeded the Foxites in fondness for war. It is true, that all these great men strenuously supported the Catholic Claims; but those claims were as vehemently opposed by other members of the Cabinet, by Lord Ellenborough, and by Lord Sidmouth, whose former accession to office had been expressly grounded upon his hostility to the question. Yet the exigencies of the State induced Mr Fox and Mr Grey to form parts of this Cabinet, where the interest of Ireland was so little consulted, that by common consent the subject was not to be mentioned, unless in order to bring forward a small measure, no sooner attempted than abandoned. It is true, that one great and righteous deed was done, in spite of all the divisions which variegated the aspect of this motley piece of Cabinet making; they abolished the Slave Trade; but not because they agreed upon this any more than upon those penal laws which they left unrepealed; for Lord Sidmouth, Lord Moira, and Lord Fitzwilliam, were determined enemies of the measure, and Mr Windham was perhaps the most zealous of all its antagonists, not to be a planter.*

We have been meeting the two opposite objections made to the late coalition, by two very different classes of adversaries, the High Tories, who exclaimed against it as an unnatural and

It will not be supposed that we are painting the Administration of 1806 as we ourselves view it; we are showing in what light the facts would justify its enemies in now representing it, upon the grounds on which some of its members are opposing the present Government. VOL. XLVI. NO. 92. 2 F

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