THE

HE session, which was thus closed, was one in which very little business had been done, but the events of which had excited more hopes and fears, and had given it a character of more lively and intense interest, than would have been called forth by the usual routine of political discussion. It had borne, in a great degree, a personal character; it was 66 to man, the soldier and his sword." It was destined to be speedily followed by an event which stretched that interest to its fullest bent, and taught one of the most impressive lessons, that the history of politics presents, of the vanity and uncertainty of ambition.

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The health of Mr. Canning had been in a very delicate state even at the commencement of the session, and the mental anxiety which followed was but little favourable to its restoration. It was not the mere ordinary contests of politics that now claimed his attention: to these he had been too long and too successfully habituated, to regard them as any thing but scenes of triumph; in that arena, there was no weapon of which he was not master, no opponent whom he could need to fear. Neither was it the cares of empire, which the triumph of his talents and his ambition had now laid upon him, that depressed his spirits, and barassed his feelings; he possessed

mind, and tact, and confidence, more than sufficient to bear the weight of them all. It was the unexpected loneliness in which he found himself, that irritated, perplexed, and exhausted. At the very moment when he reached the pinnacle of his fortunes, he found himself left almost alone by those whom he had hoped to use as coadjutors, and of whom the vulgar abuse by the rabble rout could not prevent him from knowing, that, when they left his side, they carried with them much of the confidence, and respect, and attachment, of the country. At the head of such a ministry as he had wished to form, his power would have been inexpugnable, his influence despotic, his situation enviable. As it was, he found himself forced, in some measure, to accept of favour, rather than to command-to negociate for the kind looks of ancient foes, instead of moving on, in the proud spirit of independence, surrounded by ancient friends, who in many a contest had battled by his side against these very men. He saw himself driven, as it were, into the arms of a coalition, whose very name excited jealousy and distrust, while the multifarious differences of its members might call upon him at any moment either to maintain his place by compromising his own consistency, or to leave himself defenceless, by insisting on the sacri

fice of theirs. His pride could not but be deeply wounded, when he found that his power in any degree depended upon the good pleasure of those whom it had long been his boast and his delight to confound by his eloquence, or make the laughing-stock of the country by his wit: much more must "the iron have entered into his soul," when he found that his very fate was placed in their hands. Mr. Canning, too, was a man of kindly and amiable feelings; and the rupture of old intimacies, and the necessity of conciliating old enmities, where no cordial confidence could ever be reposed, brought with it an irritation and disappointment a thousand times more annoying and exhausting, than, to such a head, the mere anxieties of government could ever have become. His care-worn appearance betrayed that the mind was ill at ease within: mind and body panted equally for repose. Soon after the rising of parliament he was visited by an attack of illness, which seemed, however, to yield to medical treatment, and he went down to the duke of Devonshire's seat at Chiswick, to seek tranquillity and enjoy a purer air. The disease returned; inflammation had commenced; it proceeded with a violence and rapidity which set art at defiance; and Mr. Canning expired at Chiswick (the same house in which Mr. Fox had breathed his last), on the morning of the 8th of August, after having been prime minister for only four months.

This unexpected event produced a much more lively sensation in the country, than the stroke which, in the beginning of the year, had driven lord Liverpool from public life. All our kindly feelings, all our respect for intellectual power, all our admiration of high and suc

cessful exertion, join in calling forth almost involuntary regrets, that one who has just gained a splendid, and a hard-earned, prize, should be snatched from it for ever, when he has scarcely been allowed to grasp it. Mr. Canning, too, possessed in his own character, enough to justify the admiration which attended him when living, and the regrets that followed him to the grave. Europe lost in him the ablest statesman, and the Commons of England the finest orator of his day.

Imbued with the very spirit of the classics, he was a most accomplished scholar; and though early introduced into public life, and almost constantly occupied, from the entrance of his manhood, in the details of official business, and the bickerings of party politics, the practical wisdom which he thus treasured up, never impeded the felicity with which, on all occasions, he brought into play the favourite subjects of his youthful studies. His fancy was elegant and prolific; his taste was exquisite; and to it, much more than to strict logic, were his orations indebted for their charms and their effect. He seldom followed closely out any regular train of argumentation; he never trammelled his reasoning in the stiff forms of the dialectician; but he caught with facility the general bearings, and striking relations of ideas: with never-failing tact he seized those views of his subject which were sure to tell most immediately upon his auditory, and his opponents; and his thoughts flowed from him in a stream of uninterrupted fluency, in periods of the most sounding and graceful declamation. Yet he was never inflated or inane; it would scarcely be possible to select from his speeches a single sample of bom

bast. Accomplished in the use of all the arms that the rhetorician wields, his wit was the most glit tering and piercing of his weapons. There he had no rival; that never failed him though it excited against him many enmities, he was indebted to it for as many triumphs. He was a matchless debater. As a practical statesman, his views were always clear and manly. He was the most unyielding opponent of all the schemes which, for more than thirty years, had thrown the world into confusion under the name of reform: and he had done his country much good service in maintaining the integrity of her existing institutions. He possessed, moreover, the high merit of never being seduced, by fondness for any set of ideas, into forgetfulness of the necessities and relations of the actual world: rich as he was in fancy, he seemed to use it only as the hand-maid to practical wisdom. The later acts of his public life, before he became minister, had, in an especial manner, strengthened his hold on the admiration and favour of the country. The spirit with which he broke loose from any suspicious connection with the Holy Alliance, the recognition of the South American republics, and, above all, the energy and manliness with which, in maintenance of the national faith, he stretched forth the national arm to the defence of Portugal, had completely fallen in with the feelings of the public, and had identified him, in some measure, with the dignity and character of the empire. On the other hand, it is true, that there were circumstances, which prevented a large and influential portion of the people from giving him as much of their confidence as they willingly gave him of their admiration

There were parts of his public life in which his steadiness of purpose and consistency of conduct might be questioned; there were others in which it might be doubted whether perfect good faith to his fellow-labourers had not been sacrificed to ambition; and the last act of his life, that coalition, by which he chose to be first, through the support of former opponents, rather than to remain second in name among former friends, was more than questionable. Mr. Canning's best and widest fame will always rest, like that of lord Chatham, on what he performed as a Foreign Secretary. Englishmen will always remember him as a public servant, who, in that capacity, proudly maintained the honour, and asserted the dignity, of the country among the nations; and they will remember him as having done that, than which the world presents no nobler exploit-as having made himself, by the mere force of talent, Prime Minister of England.

It was not unnatural to expect, that, on the removal of Mr. Canning, whose influence alone seemed to have brought, and to have kept together, the heterogeneous materials of which the cabinet was composed, its discordant elements would again fly asunder. Very few changes, however, took place, and their effect was, to bring back into office a portion of Mr. Canning's former friends. The duke of Wellington, who had felt himself personally slighted by the deceased premier in the formation of his ministry, almost immediately resumed the command of the army, but without any seat in the cabinet. Lord Goderich took the reins of government, as First Lord of the Treasury, and Mr. Huskis

son succeeded to him as colonial Secretary. That portion of the Whigs who had made their way into the cabinet under Mr. Canning, wished to strengthen their party by bringing in lord Holland; but the proposal was immediately over-ruled, and they did not think that circumstances called upon them to enforce his reception, or risk the return to power of their old opponents, by resigning. The only difficulty that was encounter ed lay in finding a chancellor of the Exchequer. The office was The office was declined by Mr. Tierney, Mr. Huskisson, and Mr. Sturges Bourne; and at last was given to Mr. Herries, who had been Secretary of the Treasury under lord Liverpool's administration, and had resigned, with his colleagues, on the appointment of Mr. Canning. The whigs of the cabinet were so little pleased at first with this nomination, that the marquis of Lansdowne waited upon his majesty to resign the seals of the Home Department. They objected to him both on political grounds, and as being a nominee of the king; for such they said was the light in which the transaction appeared to them. On its being explained,

however, that it was not the king who had recommended Mr. Herries to lord Goderich, but lord Goderich who had recommended Mr. Herries to the king, they consented to keep their places. Lord Harrowby retired from the Presidency of the council: his place was taken by the duke of Portland, and the earl of Carlisle succeeded to his Grace as lord Privy Seal. The chancellorship of Ireland, likewise, was now filled up. It was given to sir Anthony Hart; and, in his place, Mr. Shadwell was knighted, and made Vicechancellor of England.*

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This new ministry-the third which the country had seen in the space of seven months-stood out the remainder of the year. Towards the end of the year indeed, it was exhibiting evident symptoms of an approaching dissolution, and the Premier, lord Goderich, had tendered his resignation however it did see the year out, in life and in motion, although in a sickly and ricketty condition, the history of its dissolution, and of the formation of that by which it was succeeded, does not properly fall within the scope of our present volume.

First Lord of the Treasury Chancellor of the Exchequer

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Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.......

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Lord Chancellor.....

President of the Council

Lord Privy Seal......

Navy

Lord Goderich.
Mr. Herries.

Lord Dudley and Ward.
Mr. Huskisson.
Marquis of Lansdowne.
Marquis of Anglesey.
Lord Lyndhurst.
Duke of Portland.
Earl of Carlisle.
Mr. C. Grant.

Mr. C. W. Wynn.
Lord Palmerston.
Lord Bexley.
Mr. Tierney.
Mr, S. Bourne,

In the colonies no event occurred during the year deserving of particular commemoration. A foolish quarrel, in which the House of Assembly of Jamaica had involved itself with the government at home, was amicably settled. The former imagining that its rights as a colonial legislature were infringed by certain Treasury minutes ordering certain duties to be levied under an act of the British parliament, had resolved "that the allowances to the British troops shall be stopped from the first of June (1826) unless the grievance complained of by the imposition of duties without the consent of the legislature of this colony, be fully redressed before that day." Accordingly the allowances were actually stopped; and as the officers of the customs were ordered to enforce the duties in the mean time, the consequence was that the colonists found themselves compelled to pay double duties, one collected by the receiver-general under the colonial law, and another by the collectors of the Customs. This induced them to accede to a proposal of the governor, that, until the next session of parliament, the usual allowances to the troops should be continued, and all the duties be paid over to the receiver-general, an officer under the control of the colonial legislature itself, while they had no authority over the officers of his majesty's customs.

In Berbice the first instance occurred of a slave insisting on purchasing his liberty, without the consent of his master, and that new officer, the protector of slaves, appeared, for the first time, enforcing the claim. The slave was a woman; her right to purchase her freedom was denied on the VOL. LXIX.

ground that she had not gained the money by honest industry, but by following immoral courses, the proof of which was, that she had a mulatto child. The protector of slaves appeared in court in her defence; he insisted that the law gave to him alone, in his official capacity, the power of determining whether the money, with which a slave wished to purchase his liberty, had been honestly earned; and he stated he had convinced himself by proper inquiries, that, in the present case, it had been so earned. His claim was allowed; and the negress and her child were declared free on payment of a sum fixed by appraisers. It no doubt is of much importance that the prospect of manumission should not tempt slaves to accumulate money by dishonest and immoral means; but to sustain an objection founded on the species of immorality which was here alleged, in a state of society like that which exists among the negroes, would be demanding from him a great deal too much.

On the appointment of lord Goderich to the Premiership, lord William Bentinck was named to succeed lord Amherst, as governor general of India, and lord Amherst, in the mean time, was making "a progress" up the Ganges, receiving the visits of the neighbouring princes, amid the amusements and luxuries of Oriental magnificence. The relations of amity with the Burmese court, that followed the termination of the war, were cultivated by a mission to Ava, which was received by the humbled monarch with the highest marks of respect, and succeeded in concluding a commercial treaty between him and the company. By this convention, all vessels [0]