OVERTURES FROM WELLINGTON.

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social as well as a political transformation, which he condemned with the mind of a man bred up in ideas altogether different from those then coming into fashion.

The following extract from Lord Palmerston's autobiography, and a letter to his brother, will relate the steps which were taken to obtain support :

In July, 1830, an overture was made to Melbourne from the Duke to join the Government, and he was given to understand that no objection would be made to Grant and myself. His answer was, that he could not join without Huskisson and Lord Grey. The Duke's reply was, that he might perhaps consent to take back Huskisson, but that he could not act with Lord Grey, who had spoken of him in such unmeasured terms both in Parliament and private.

Huskisson died September, 1830. At the end of September I received a letter from Lord Clive, dated from Powis Castle, saying he had been requested by the Duke of Wellington to propose to me to return to the Cabinet, and that he (Lord Clive) was coming purposely to speak to me on the subject, and would come either to Broadlands or London, according to a letter which he begged me to write to him to Salisbury.

I was just starting for London when I received this letter, and appointed Clive to meet me in Stanhope Street, but said that in no case could I join the Duke's Government singly. Clive called at Apsley House with my letter before he came to me, and was desired by the Duke to ask who were my friends. I said the friends with whom I was politically acting were Melbourne and Grant; but that, to say the truth, I should be unwilling, and I believed they would be so too, to join the Duke unless Lansdowne and Grey were to form part of his Government. We knew that we differed on many points with those who were then in office, and we could have no security that our opinions would have due weight unless Grey and Lansdowne were in the Cabinet. Clive protested against this as an unreasonable demand, amounting to a surrender on the part of the Duke; but said that there would be no objection to Melbourne and Grant, and that Goderich was understood to be a friend of mine, and would be taken in also if we liked. I said I had not lately had any political communication with Goderich, and could not by any means consider him as an equivalent for Grey and Lansdowne. To cut the matter short, and to avoid further communica

tions, I set off immediately for Paris, to spend the fortnight previous to the meeting of Parliament.

Stanhope Street: Friday, October 9, 1830.

My dear William,-I have heard nothing more from the Duke, but from others I hear that there is an intention of proposing to me Melbourne, Grant, and Goderich. I do not think this would do; Goderich would be of no more use to us than Dudley was. He would give way to the Duke, and his concession would make our scruples appear like obstinacy and cabal. The more I think of the state of parties in and out of the House of Commons, and the state of affairs in Europe, the more I feel it would be necessary to have some men in who, either by their personal weight or party connections, were of sufficient importance to deter the Duke from lightly risking the turning of them out again. With respect to us, he is playing over again the game of January, 1828. He wants us, to help him to go on; and if by-and-by, when he has got on by our aid, he should be able to stand alone, he would get rid of us again with as little ceremony as before. In the meantime I think it would be very useful to me to spend a week at Paris and that I should pick up there in a few days much information important at the present moment.

The affairs of Belgium make an important crisis, and other things in prospect occupy the Cabinets of Europe. I believe the fact to be that Russia, Austria, and Prussia want England to join in a new alliance to put down revolutions and curb France. That France on the other hand wants England to come to a fair understanding with her upon terms mutually advantageous to both parties, or rather, consistent with a due regard to their mutual interests. Between these two the Duke has to choose, and he wants parliamentary strength to enable him to take the first-mentioned alternative. The consequence of which would soon be a second edition of the French war.

The Journal then continues :

A few days after my return from Paris I got a note from the Duke, asking me to step to him at Apsley House. I went immediately. He said he wished to speak to me on the subject on which Lord Clive had seen me-1 -that he had understood that I had talked about friends, and he wished to know who were my friends. I said as before, Melbourne and Grant, but that even with them I should be disinclined to enter unless his Cabinet was to be reconstructed. He said that he thought that for

APPOINTED SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 213

Melbourne and Grant he could find room, but that it was not so easy to get people out of a Cabinet as to put them in; and as to a larger change of his Cabinet, that did not enter into his intentions, and would be attended with too many difficulties.

I said on leaving him—which I did at the end of the six minutes which our interview occupied-that what I had intended to say was, that I was flattered by his proposal, and was obliged to him for it, but that it would not suit me to join him unless he meant to reconstruct his administration, and that I purposely abstained from mentioning the names of any persons whom I might have in view in saying so.

Croker called on me a few days afterwards, to try to persuade me to reconsider the matter. After talking for some time, he said: 'Well, I will bring the question to a point. Are you resolved or are you not to vote for Parliamentary Reform?' I said, 'I am.' 'Well, then,' said he, there is no use in talking to you any more on this subject. You and I, I am grieved to see, will never sit again on the same bench together.'

Melbourne, the two Grants, Binning, Littleton, Graham, Warrender, Denison, and one or two others, had met at my house a few days before to consider what we should do on the motion that Brougham was to make in favour of Parliamentary Reform, and I and the Grants and Littleton had quite determined to vote for it.

As soon as Lord Grey was commissioned to form a Government he sent to me.

Thus the total failure of the negotiation with the Duke turned, as it would appear, on Lord Palmerston's declaration that he should vote for reform in Parliament. It was not of course known what reform, but the declaration was sufficient to show that the colours of the Canningites were changed with the times. They came into power with the Whigs, and were confounded with them ever after. Lord Palmerston was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. A short note written to his brother-in-law characteristically manifests the situation of a man plunging for the first time into that laborious department, the Foreign Office.

Stanhope Street: December 22, 1830. I send you the note you wish for; I have been ever since my appointment like a man who has plumped into a mill-race,

scarcely able by all his kicking and plunging to keep his head above water.

In closing this period it may not be amiss to remark, that the main endeavour throughout it has been to bring before the reader the man with his individual characteristics. We shall now have before us the statesman who exercised for so many years an important influence on public events, and whose life becomes almost an European history. We shall thus be led into a fuller discussion of European affairs; and it so happens that the first of those affairs is the creation of that prosperous little kingdom, the independence and neutrality of which England has lately manifested its determination to defend.

UNSETTLED STATE OF EUROPE IN 1830.

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CHAPTER VII.

CREATION OF THE BELGIAN MONARCHY.

LORD PALMERSTON received the seals of the Foreign Office at a moment when the policy of Europe was assuming a new aspect. The revolution which overturned the Bourbon throne in France affected naturally the course which its occupants had pursued. The Spanish War and the Holy Alliance were the results of a system which was to preserve sovereigns from the control of their people; the triumph of the citizens and the press against the soldiery of Charles X. was the signal of a reaction amongst the people against arbitrary and unpopular sovereigns. On all sides crowns were falling into the gutter. The insurrection by which we were most affected was the Belgian one. We had sufficiently learned the danger and the cost of having to watch, and defend ourselves against, an enemy possessing the long line of coast by which we had been hostilely confronted during the reign of Napoleon. We had desired at his fall to take all possible precautions against being again exposed to similar dangers; and our main object at the Congress of Vienna was to guard the Netherlands from future invasion. We had imagined that we had done so by uniting Holland with Belgium, hoping thus to have created a powerful kingdom, of which we had protected the frontier by fortresses raised under our inspection and in some degree at our expense. A variety of causes, however, had long made the Belgians discontented with a ruler who was one of those clever men who constantly