490- The Political Slate of [Nov. 



deed which will fix his name at a memorable height among the rash 

 guides of empire. This act was the treaty of London ! 



Since the first hour when human council was made the jest of man- 

 kind, diplomatic folly never produced such a treaty. If there was one 

 principle more solemnly engraven than another on the great political 

 record of England, it was the protection of the Porte. If there was one 

 power on earth whose aggrandisement threatened to press with fatal 

 weight against the interests of England, it Avas Russia. Yet, by the 

 hand of an English minister, a bond was entered into, binding us to the 

 cause of Russia, and against the Porte. The motives to this suicidal act 

 are still inconceivable. The earliest declarations of that great man, in 

 whose school the minister was trained — that Gamaliel, at whose feet the 

 young disciple imbibed submissive knowledge, and whose panegyric 

 was perpetually on his lips — were, that Russia must not be suffered to 

 overwhelm a power, not less the ancient ally of England, than the soli- 

 tary obstacle to an ambition which knew no bounds but the length of the 

 spear. ]\Ir. Pitt had thought it worth the while of England to disturb 

 her peace, and rouse her whole slumbering strength, to resist the 

 seizure of a petty fortress on the obscure shore of an inhospitable sea. 

 The British fleet was ordered for the defence of Oczakow, when Russia 

 was still a barbarian, almost hidden in the wilderness. It was with Rus- 

 sia, invested in the double pomps of European and Asiatic empire, with 

 the mace in her hand which had smote down Poland and Persia, with 

 enormous and highly-practised military means, excited to their full 

 development by the exidtation of recent victory over the greatest master of 

 the art of war since Csesar, that the English minister now found it safe to 

 connect the fortunes of his country. The beginnings of Russian strength 

 alone were the object of fear ; the full gro^vth of its vigour and the open 

 display of its ambition extinguished the danger, and justified the whole 

 rapture of ministerial confidence. If this monstrous perversion of every 

 maxim of policy had been exhibited in any other country of Europe, we 

 must have inquired for its grounds among the baser temptations of our 

 nature. In England we must rest with the single word, infatuation ! 

 Such was the dying gift of the pro-papist minister to his Protestant 

 country. 



Lord Goderich's cabinet followed, as if only to show how ridiculous 

 the highest employments of public life might be made, by falling into 

 ridiculous hands. The robe of office never hung so lank upon the 

 human understanding before. The highwaji^s and hedges had been 

 swept to bring in guests to the ministerial banquet, until even poli- 

 tical pauperism was ashamed of its associates. The public laughed, in 

 bitterness, at this practical burlesque of a system which they hated. 

 Every absurdity of the past cabinet was represented in the present, 

 divested of the speciousness that had been thrown round it by the wit 

 and eloquence of Canning. The whole was unrelieved dulness ; the 

 only variety was from blunder to blunder. The unfortunate minister 

 found the only fruit of his elevation in the moi'e palpable exposure of his 

 deficiencies. His measures were taken out of his hands, and tossed to 

 and fro among the parties of both Houses, for their mutual diversion. 

 Finally, his cabinet was broken up by a pretended quarrel between two 

 Clerks; his own supremacy was foundered by a parliamentary sneer; and 

 he was stripped of office while he was on the road between London and 

 Windsor, inquiring whether he was or was not minister .^ 



