486 The Political State of [Nov. 



to be the openei' of the golden gates of this magnificent futurity. Those 

 feelings were justified, for the prosperity of England mas magnificent in 

 those days ; the prospect was boundless ; and standing at the head of 

 Europe in military renown and in political influence, she possessed 

 within her own dominions, a freedom, a spirit, and a knowledge, the 

 true substance of a grandeur, which would have disdained a rival in the 

 circuit of the globe. 



We ask rio man to take this picture from our colouring ; let him look 

 to the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1825, and discover 

 there language more expressive and exulting than we have ventured to 

 use. Now let him mark the moral. 



In 1825, Mr. Canning, after long coquetting with the papists, suffered 

 their question to be brought forward with a strong alliance in the 

 cabinet. It was rumoured that even Lord Livei-pool was prepared to 

 betray the cause that he had so long and so unhesitatingly upheld. The 

 rimnour was so strong that he found himself, immediately before the de- 

 bate, constrained to take the humiliating step of defending his character 

 in the newspapers. But without impeaching the memory of a nobleman, 

 who had long exerted such ability as nature had given him, for the pub- 

 lic good, it is painfully true, that he had, for the last three years, suffered 

 Mr. Canning to gain an ascendency over his declining intellect, which 

 left him scarcely a free agent. Unhappily, to Lord Liverpool, as to all 

 men bred in the routine of office, the possibility of existing onl of place 

 seemed utterly Utopian. Place had given him rank : it had given him in- 

 fluence. He had been from his boyhood an aspirant through the gradations 

 of the ministry : now an imder secretary of the Foreign department, now 

 of the Home ; now sitting at the Admiralty, now auditing accoimts at the 

 Treasury ; his whole life had been a transit from one desk to another, 

 a signing of dockets for his quarter's salary, a succession of memorials to 

 get a better thing than the last, and a regular deposit of the public pay 

 in his escrutoir. Lord Liverpool, during many a long year, received for 

 his services the ample remuneration of thirteen thousand pounds ster- 

 ling, paid with quarterly punctuality. He loved money, and died, 

 leaving an addition of upwards of one hundred thousand pounds of 

 public money to a paternal fortune, every shilling of which was made in 

 precisely the same way. He loved place, and he held it until it was 

 torn from him by the grasp of an incurable and most melancholy 

 disease. To this man the idea of quitting office was like the idea of 

 quitting existence. Power, patronage, monej% every thing was included 

 in the name, and to office he clung, long after the drooping frame and 

 the lack-lustre eye told every stranger that his years were numbered. 



We can have no anger with the memory of this decorous but feeble 

 statesman. But we ow>i to Lord Liverpool's love of office the " Atrocious 

 Bill." To secure himself in place, he suffered the cabinet to be pos- 

 sessed by men, whose value for Protestanism was like their value for all 

 other forms of belief. Liberalism was found to be no disqualification, 

 ^*here it secured votes for the Treasury bench. A divided cabinet was 

 formed — the ministry of England was authorized to have two opinions, 

 whether tlie Protestant religion should, or should not, be polluted by the 

 presence of popery in the Legislature .-' — A question, as vital as whether 

 a man should, or should not, drink poison, was, by compact, left to be 

 settled by the several consciences of the cabinet ; and of this fatal com- 

 promise, this first taint of the ulcer that will yet eat to the heart of the 



