circumstances may render necessary. This truth was supposed to be so evident that the Grenville party never doubted its being affirmed, and supposed themselves in a majority of at least twenty, while locked out in the lobby at six in the morning. They had agreed to bring on some further resolutions, with the same bearing, that evening, when they found that they had lost the question. Its defeat was procured by appeals on behalf of the King, and threats of a dissolution, if it was carried. The King's age and conscientiousness were dwelt upon, and his zeal for the church; and his having acted on his own responsibility, without any advice from any quarter; and the awkward position he would be placed in, if waited on by a deputation, and compelled to hear the resolution, which was in fact one of censure on himself. These considerations prevailed over the indisputable truth of the resolution, and it was lost by a majority of 32 in a House of 484.

It was found necessary to dissolve parliament after all. On taking the Great Seal, Lord Eldon had said it would not be in his hands a month if there was not a dissolution; so strong were the Whigs in the Commons. The Royal Speech, of the 27th of April, is a curiosity in its way. It professed to put on trial, before the nation, the King's recent conduct, in support of religion and the throne; and appealed to the Catholics, by all the indulgences granted them during his reign, to support a sovereign so faithful to his duties, and to the cause of toleration. It surely must have been the wrong-headed Perceval who composed this singular speech. He was already the life and soul of the new ministry. Two days before the delivery of the speech, Lord Malmesbury had thus soliloquized in his Diary, about his old friend at the head of the ministry: In the course of the last three weeks, it has, from various little facts, struck me that the Duke of Portland's colleagues are swerving from him; that they take a great deal on themselves, immediately belonging to him, and treat him more as a nominal, than as a real, head of the ministry."

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The "Short Administration," as it was called, had done as much as could have been expected from it, under the

i

extremely adverse circumstances of its existence. Its chief value, however, was in the testimony which it offered to high principles of society and government. If it could not achieve continental peace, the actual security of the negro in his own land, political and commercial equality for Ireland, and religious liberty throughout our empire, it testified to all these principles, and asserted all these rights. It was the last opportunity for offering such a testimony and assertion from the places of power, for a long course of anxious years.

END OF BOOK I.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

The Portland Administration-Mr. Perceval-Aspect of public affairs -Education-Popular maintenance-Emigration-Bequests of the Grenville Ministry-Buenos Ayres expedition-Dardanelles expedition-Egyptian expedition-Napoleon and Prussia-His Berlin decree -Battle of Eylau-Apathy of England-Professions of RussiaConference at Tilsit-Treaty of Tilsit-Secret Articles-England and Denmark-Seizure of the Danish Fleet-Bombardment of Copenhagen -Russian declaration of War-King of Sweden-Swedish alliance lost-France and Portugal-Opening of the Peninsular War-Court of Spain and Napoleon-Invasion of Portugal-Departure of the Royal Family for Brazil.-[1807.]

Ir remains a wonder, to this day, that the country escaped absolute ruin from misgovernment during the critical years whose history we have now to disclose. The imbecility of the Portland Administration is no matter of dispute. In differing moods of contempt, of wrath, and of simple wonder, the fact is admitted in all the memoirs of the time. Lords Eldon and Malmesbury at one end of the political scale, and Cobbett and Burdett at the other, treat the fact as admitted. It has been seen how, in April, the Premier was neglected by his Cabinet; how they were already falling off from him, and acting on their own notions. The matter did not mend with time. As the months passed on, the Duke of Portland took more laudanum, suffered more pain, and sank more under it; sat for hours in dead silence, and as if hearing nothing, though he kept a friend or two by him, to save him from being alone; and about midnight began to revive, being in full flow of such political wisdom as he had by one or two o'clock in the morning. Endless difficulty arose from his lethargy; and in one case at least, fatal mischief. At the most critical period of the century, we had a King

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with an infirm brain, and a Prime Minister dying of torturing disease and opiates; while the family of the one, and the Cabinet of the other, offered little ground for hope or reliance. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York were now soon to show their quality. In the Cabinet were two of the weakest men then engaged in public affairs -Lords Hawkesbury and Castlereagh. Lord Chatham was soon to prove himself beneath contempt in his function, though he was the brother of William Pitt. Whatever Lord Eldon was as a lawyer, he was of the lowest order of politicians; and he now classed himself with Hawkesbury and the other weak members of the Cabinet, entertaining a virulent hatred against Canning, and some jealousy of Perceval. The talk of these men when they met was of the profits of a political position of complimenting and binding their friends by gifts of office, by seats in parliament, by consideration of one sort or another; and in the record, we find a ludicrous assumed tone of dignity, benevolence, and magnanimity, running through the whole. We read a vast deal about friendship and handsome acts," in the giving away of sinecures, and permitting pluralities of lay offices; and find that, at this date, there were fifty-three candidates for peerage, none of which the King would listen." Mr. Perceval, though not adequate to his position, was of a higher order than these. If he had had an intellect of a somewhat better quality, and the training which such an intellect would have secured for itself, he would have been an excellent man. He was strictly virtuous in the private relations of life, was absolutely honourable, very amiable, and of a generosity and disinterestedness which were the more remarkable from the absence of those qualities of the intellect with which they are usually allied. He had poor powers of reasoning, and none of imagination; and therefore his strong religious sensibilities made him a bigot, and the force of his unreasoned convictions drove him into an abusive dogmatism. He could never see what was not before his eyes; and therefore the people fared badly under his rule. (We speak already of his rule, because he was now virtually the head of the Cabinet.) He could never understand how any

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one could hold views unlike his own; and therefore, while gentle, agreeable, and well-bred towards his family and personal friends, he was grossly abusive towards opponents in parliament, and a pragmatical despot wherever he could make himself felt further abroad. His comrades complained of him as being "too parsimonious," when the object was to afford subsidies to Austria for the continental war: but the rest of his administration shows that this was from no consideration for the heavily taxed people, but probably because he could not stretch the vision of his mind so as to comprehend objects so remote. Sydney Smith has left a sketch of him "paying the strictest attention to the smaller parts of ecclesiastical government, to hassocks, to psalters, and to surplices; in the last agonies of England, bringing in a Bill to regulate Easter offerings; and adjusting the stipends of curates, when the flag of France is unfurled on the hills of Kent:" and again, walking to Hampstead church in advance of his dozen children, "with their faces washed, and their hair pleasingly combed," while all Ireland was ready to rise in exasperation at his treatment of the Catholics; and Mr. Perceval has himself left us, in certain letters to Mr. Wilberforce, evidence of his dread that the meeting of parliament on a Monday should occasion Sunday travelling among M.P.s, at a moment when he should have felt himself quite care-laden enough, without undertaking the charge of other gentlemen's Sunday morals: but this pernicious absurdity, while making him more hated by the people than rank vice would have done, arose from the narrowness of his intellectual range, and by no means from any harshness, hyprocrisy, or pride, in the temper of the man. He was beloved by all who came near him: and the stern and virtuous Romilly bears the same testimony on this point as every body else. He abstained from intercourse with him, because he did not think it right to enjoy the engaging social qualities of one whose political rule he totally abhorred. They had long maintained "a delightful intimacy;" and Perceval strove earnestly against the alienation which Romilly willed, but did not cease to regret. In regard to purpose and persistency, Perceval was among the few strong members