against one of its authors: and two persons, who had entered the house friends, left it with feelings of alienation.

The health of lord Liverpool was by this time in a hopeless state. Seized with paralysis in February, he partially recovered; but had a relapse more severe than his first illness. From the middle of February to the 28th of March, no step was taken to supply his place at the head of the government. On the 28th of March, Mr. Canning was summoned to Windsor by the king. Mr. Canning, knowing and deferring to the king's opinion on the Catholic claims, proposed that the administration should be constituted upon the principle of lord Liverpool's; viz. that the Catholic should not be a cabinet question. The king further required that a peer holding the opinions of lord Liverpool on the Catholic claims should supply his place. Mr. Canning, whose pretensions would thus be passed over, declared, that if an opinion favourable to the Catholics was to be a disqualification for the office of prime minister, he would not be the individual in whose person that principle of exclusion should be established, and advised the king to form an antiCatholic administration. The king dissented, and Mr. Canning took his leave.

The house of commons and the public voice were still more decisively in favour of Mr. Canning's succession to lord Liverpool in 1827, than of his succession to lord Castlereagh in 1822. His foreign administration had, in the mean time, obtained him, over living statesmen, an European supremacy, and

restored the ancient lustre of English counsels which his predecessor had tarnished. Every improvement, legislative or administrative, in the economy of trade and other sources of public wealth, was counselled in the cabinet, and carried in parliament, by Mr. Canning and his immediate friends. Mr. Canning, then, had every claim of talent, service, and estimation, to take the vacant place at the head of the government. He had not even a rival in the field; but the opposition to him was, notwithstanding, envenomed and strong: it proceeded not from those to whom he had been systematically opposed for years, but from his colleagues in the cabinet, and from the party of which he had so long been the redeeming ornament and support. The borough oligarchy, the bench of bishops, and that portion of the government which had the same horror of freedom in religion and in trade, looked forward to the appointment of Mr. Canning with dismay, and laboured to prevent it. This party could supply but two names having the shadow of pretension Mr. Peel and the duke of Wellington.

Mr. Peel was qualified by talents, character, and intolerance; but — the son of a manufacturer whose conspicuous wealth and social vicinage provoked still more the jealousies of caste both in the oligarchy and in the king — his blood had not yet descended to a sufficient distance from the fountainhead of commercial industry. The duke of Wellington; then, was the only candidate; - but so glaring were his disqualifications, that his name

was studiously kept back. The opinion and feeling of the public would revolt against the proposal to intrust the complex rights and delicate principles of a jealous civil constitution to the hands of a man accustomed to the obedience, and affecting the rudeness, of the camp, and in preference to a statesman whose claims were transcendant.

Intrigue, however, was not idle in the duke's behalf. His immediate satellites, male and female, caballed and calumniated for him in political coteries, and within whispering distance of the royal ear; whilst the duke of Newcastle, furnished, it was said, with powers of attorney from the dukes of Rutland and Northumberland, and other oligarchs, in a formal audience threatened the king with his boroughs and his displeasure, if Mr. Canning should be appointed. Meetings took place between the duke of Wellington and Mr. Canning, with the professed object of removing the impression upon Mr. Canning's mind, of the hostile spirit of the duke and his friends; but with the real and secret view of drawing from Mr. Canning, in the course of long conferences on the same topic, the expression of a wish" that the duke should take the government.” * The manœuvre failed; and Mr. Peel, on the 9th of April, by command of the king, saw Mr. Canning for the purpose of naming one "whose appointment would solve all difficulties," the duke of Wellington. The bold plunge proved as fruitless

* Mr. Stapleton's supplementary volume.

+ The duke of Wellington all this time declared to Mr. Canning that he was wholly out of the question. Mr. Can

as the experimental manœuvre. Mr. Canning peremptorily objected to a military premier; and, on the following day, the king commissioned him to propose a plan for the re-construction of the administration."

A ministry on the principle of conceding the Catholic claims was impracticable: the no-popery party was too strong, and the king too reluctant. Mr. Canning, therefore, applied to his former colleagues,, proposing to them an adherence to the principles of lord Liverpool's government. Mr. Peel had declared to Mr. Canning, some days before, with a frankness which Mr. Canning acknowledged and applauded in the house of commons, that with Mr. Canning, or any other friend of the Catholics, prime minister, the principle of lord Liverpool's government would be destroyed, the Catholic

ning, in one of his letters to the duke, says, -"Your grace emphatically says that your being at the head of the government was wholly out of the question.' I learned this opinion of your grace with sincere pleasure. The union of the whole power in the state, civil and military, in the same hands (for your grace as prime minister could never have effectually divested yourself of your influence over the army), would certainly, in my opinion, have constituted a station too great for any subject, however eminent, or however meritorious; and one incompatible with the practice of a free constitution. Nothing would have induced me to serve under such a form of government; and I am rejoiced to find that your grace's opinion was always against such an arrangement. But I con

fess I am surprised that, such being your grace's fixed opinion, it should nevertheless have been proposed to me, as it was more than once, and up to the 9th of April inclusive, to concur in placing your grace at the head of the government.”

claims would have gained and he, as their oppoanent, should therefore decline office. Lord Eldon said he was long anxious to resign, from his advanced age, and wished to remain in office only about four months, to wind up the business of his court. Lord Bathurst said he wished to confer with Mr. Canning. Lord Melville's answer was not decisive. Lord Bexley accepted. Lord Westmoreland would not pledge himself until he knew who were to be his colleagues. The duke of Wellington asked who was to be the head of the government: Mr. Canning in reply said, that, as usual, the person intrusted with the king's commands would be the head of the administration. The duke, in rejoinder, desired to be excused from being included in the new arrangements.

It was the 11th of April; parliament would adjourn on the 12th; and some decisive arrangement was to be previously communicated to the house of commons. Mr. Canning, on the morning of the 12th, went to the king's closet with the resignations of the duke of Wellington, lord Westmoreland, lord Bexley, and Mr. Peel, already sent in; and was not long with the king when he received those of lords Eldon and Bathurst. This looked like confederacy to intimidate it completely failed; the king confirmed the appointment of Mr. Canning. In the evening a new writ was moved for the borough of Harwich, vacated by Mr. Canning, on his appointment as first lord of the treasury; and the announcement was cheered again and again by the great majority of the house of commons.

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