religious intolerance on the public mind was loosened, and freedom of discussion in the ministerial ranks led to the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act during the Wellington administration. It was curious through the long period of Lord Liverpool's supremacy, and for some years previously, to see statesmen sitting on the same Treasury benches dispute in public on a question of vital importance, involving the political rights and interests of many millions of English subjects. It argued little for the moral and mental soundness of leading men when the Secretary for the Home Department denounced as perilous the concessions advocated by the Irish Attorney-General; when the Secretary for Foreign Affairs came to the House on crutches to plead for that people of Ireland which its Chief Secretary described as a rabid and rebellious horde; when the minister, in fine, who had been chiefly instrumental in carrying the Union, declared, just before his elevation to the peerage, that Catholic Emancipation must pass sooner or later, and that the sooner it passed the better; while Eldon on the Woolsack shuddered at the report of such rashness, and heard from afar, in dismal foreboding, "the tramp of seven millions of men."*

It does not redound to the honour or wisdom of the Lord Chancellor and the premier that they allowed such golden opportunities of improvement as they possessed during their long tenure of office to pass by without even attempting to turn them to account. "Gattons and Old

* Hoey's "Memoir of Lord Plunket," p. 19.

66

Sarums," says a frank writer of their own school, accumulated by half-dozens in the hands of individuals, had become intolerable; and the continued refusal of members to such places as Manchester and Birmingham was not only a crime but a blunder." To rectify such evils would have cost no sacrifice of principle; but it happened strangely enough that members of the cabinet who were favourable to Catholic claims were often adverse to parliamentary reform. It was so with Castlereagh and Canning; nor was the House of Commons ever more surprised than when Plunket appeared as the defender of "the Manchester Massacre," and by one of his ablest speeches saved the ministry. His thunders (so thought his friends) blasted the wrong tree. "Had Lord Liverpool," says Mr. Gleig,† "begun to enfranchise populous places as often as small boroughs laid themselves open to disfranchisement, the country might have arrived, by degrees, at a state of things which would have obviated all risk of such a crisis as that of 1831-32. And to this, as well as to any measure calculated to effect a wise distribution of political influence throughout the country, the Duke of Wellington would have rendered all the assistance in his power." +

Lord Liverpool was early in life an opponent of Catholic claims, yet not a virulent opponent. It was rather in a *Blackwood's Magazine, September 1860, p. 268.

+ "Life of Wellington," p. 624.

See also the speech of Canning on the third night of the debate on the Reform Bill, March 1831.

friendly spirit than otherwise that he dissuaded the leading Catholics of Ireland, in 1804, from agitating the question of their rights at that moment, because he knew that Pitt had promised the King he would never again bring the subject forward, and because he felt sure that his Majesty was immutably resolved to make no concessions. His advice, however, was disregarded, and he therefore spoke, in 1805, in the House of Lords, against admitting Catholics to political privileges, in reply to Lord Grenville.

During the administration of that nobleman, Lord Hawkesbury (Liverpool) was leader of the Opposition, and in compliance with the demands of his party, supported the old exclusive system of "Church and State." Lord Grenville's ministry, as we have seen, broke up, like that of Pitt in 1801, on the question of removing Catholic disabilities; and when Grenville and Liverpool changed places-when Grenville from being premier became chief of the Opposition, and Lord Liverpool was the most prominent member of the Portland cabinet-he avowed his "conviction that a Protestant government alone was consistent with the laws and constitution of the British empire," and that Catholics ought still to be excluded from parliament and from offices of state. True to his colours, in 1812, he again opposed Emancipation. He predicted that it would lead to the disestablishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland, or to the establishment of the Catholic Church. In forming his cabinet in

1812, after the death of Mr. Perceval, though each member of the government was left free to advocate Emancipation if he chose, it was excluded as a cabinet measure, and the premier himself opposed it as before.

In 1824 he had so far relaxed his opposition that he spoke in favour of Lord Lansdowne's two bills for giving English Catholics the elective franchise, as it had been given to the Irish, and for opening to them magistracies and other inferior offices, besides allowing the Duke of Norfolk to exercise his functions as Earl Marshal. The bills were rejected, but the Duke was suffered to fulfil his hereditary office. In 1825 Lord Liverpool had in no degree altered his mind about resisting the advances of Catholics towards political power; he spoke against Emancipation, and again predicted the destruction of the Established Church in Ireland if it were carried. In 1826, however, just the year before his death, he submitted to the King an important paper, in which he reminded his Majesty that the cabinet he had framed in 1812 regarded Catholic Emancipation as an open question from the first. He declared that he could not now be a party to any other arrangement, and he humbly suggested that the King should advert to the actual state of the opinions of public men in the two houses of parliament, particuliarly of those in the House of Commons, upon the Roman Catholic question, and that he would seriously consider whether it would not be at least as impracticable as in 1812 to form an administration upon the exclusive

Protestant principle. Thus Lord Liverpool himself and his neutral, or divided, cabinet led up to Emancipation in the year after his death.

It is curious to remark what a future premier, Lord Palmerston, who had long been serving under the Tories as Secretary at War, was thinking and writing of them in the year 1826:-"I can forgive old women like the Chancellor (Eldon), spoonies like Liverpool, ignoramuses like Westmoreland, old stumped-up Tories like Bathurst; but how such a man as Peel, liberal, enlightened, and fresh-minded, should find himself running in such a pack is hardly intelligible. I think he must in his heart regret those early pledges and youthful prejudices which have committed him to opinions so different from the comprehensive and statesmanlike views which he takes of public affairs. But the day is fast approaching, as it seems to me, when this matter (Catholic Emancipation) will be settled, as it must be. . . The days of Protestant ascendancy, I think, are numbered."*

Canning did not for some time take part in Lord Liverpool's administration. He was jealous of Lord Castlereagh, and wanted the leadership of the House of Commons;† but he accepted an embassy to Lisbon, and joined the ministry at a later period. He was certainly its brightest star in point of talent; and as he became

* Letter to the Hon. W. Temple, October 21, 1826.

1858.

"Life of Wilberforce," vol. iv. p. 34; Edinburgh Review, October,