It was during Mr. Perceval's tenure of office that the famous Currency Question came forward: Canning's speeches in the course of it are pronounced by Lord Brougham to be of all his efforts the most brilliant and the most happy. Ten years before, in 1797, in consequence of the heavy drain of gold from the Bank of England, an Act of Parliament had been passed, making the £1 note a compulsory legal currency. Of late the original phenomenon had recurred, and the market value of gold over paper had been so great, that a gold guinea, denominationally worth a £1 note and one shilling, could not be purchased for less than a £1 note and five shillings. Two explanations of this were given, and the parties upholding them were known as Bullionists and Antibullionists. The Bullionists asserted that the depreciation in Paper was due to the excess of Paper in circulation; the Antibullionists declared not that Bank notes had fallen, but that gold had risen in value. The Bullionists consequently proposed, that cash payments should be at once resumed; the Anti-bullionists that they should not be resumed till six months after the conclusion of peace. The dispute turns upon a single word was or was not the Paper currency 'depreciated? A currency is said to be depreciated when it becomes less valuable than that of foreign countries. If the English sovereign were to be debased by being mixed with one-third of copper alloy, it would buy both in England and abroad goods less by one-third than a pure equivalent gold coin; and, consequently, all English commodities would rise in price; in every department of commerce goods which formerly cost a sovereign would cost 26/8. Tried by this test, the English Paper money of that date was certainly not depreciated. True, a £1 note would buy only 15 shillings in London; but 15 shillings, which could buy 321bs. of coffee in London, could buy only 5lbs. of coffee on the Continent; while 32 lbs. of coffee carried to the Continent would actually sell for 90 shillings; and these transmitted to London would buy six £1 notes in return for the one expended. Depreciated then our currency was not, since a large class of English goods fell instead of rising in price along with the

diminished market value of our Paper.

Bullionists and Antibullionists alike overlooked the fact that this fall in price was partial; and just in that fact lay the solution of the problem. Hemp, timber, corn, wine, articles which we imported for our own use, rose exorbitantly; sugar, coffee, wool, cotton, hardware, articles which we produced ourselves, or procured from America for export to the Continent, fell as remarkably; and the double fact was due to the pressure of the Berlin decrees. A Liverpool merchant of to-day, buying a shipload of hemp at Amsterdam, sends in exchange a shipload of cotton goods; a balance is struck between the value of the two cargoes, and a very small amount of cash passes. In 1808, the activity of our cruisers so far evaded Napoleon's decrees as to buy goods in Amsterdam for Liverpool; but it was so difficult to smuggle goods in return, that the Dutch merchant demanded and obtained gold for his commodities, because of its superior utility as a clandestine remittance :-gold passed out of the country and became costly; native products remained in the country and remained cheap ;-to resume cash payments would have embarrased or ruined traders without checking the demand for gold. Canning did not see-none could then see the whole state of the case as we see it in looking back; but his ayxwvoía guided him right in speeches which may take rank with the budget orations of Peel and Gladstone, he made a complicated subject luminous and even alluring, and persuaded the House to leave things as they were until after peace should have been made. The result justified his inspiration; no sooner was the war at an end, and the Continental restrictions were removed, than commerce righted itself, imports fell in price, exports rose, gold poured into the country in payment for them, the exchange rose to par, and the Mint and market price of gold rose again to within a fraction of each other.

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It was as an independent member that Canning spoke in these debates; in the same capacity he took part in the Regency Bill on the final eclipse of the King's reason; laboured in Committee on the renewal of the East India Company's Charter, and

delivered in 1812 a grand speech in aid of Catholic Emancipation. In the same year he was invited to stand for Liverpool, and was returned with increased majorities at each successive election until his death. The assassination of Mr. Perceval produced a change of ministry; the Tories again held power, with Lord Liverpool at their head; and all men looked to see Canning Leader of the House of Commons: but to the amazement of the public, and of posterity, the place was taken by Lord Castlereagh. What Canning was men by this time knew; except high birth, patrician manners, unfailing courage, Lord Castlereagh had nothing. His capacity was limited, his acquirements, were meagre, the tediousness of his speaking was only relieved by its felicitous absurdities. The features of the clause'-'the mask of corruption torn away and discovering the cloven hoof'-gentlemen 'turning their backs upon themselves '-'the constitutional principle wound up in the bowels of the monarchy'-'the Herculean labour of the honourable member, who will find himself disappointed when he has brought forth his Hercules (a slight confusion between two kinds of labour not altogether identical)—are scraps from the century of solæcisms handed down to us as having justified the choice of the Tory party: and their preference of such a man as Castlereagh over such a man as Canning can be explained only by Lord Brougham's benevolent suggestion, that they had a devil.' If Canning had remained in England, it is probable, and he owned as much in after years, that Castlereagh would have been compelled to give way to him; but the delicate health of his eldest son took him away from home, and the two crowded years of 1814 and 1815 were spent by him in retirement at Lisbon. He returned in 1816 to become President of the Board of Control, and to take his share in a course of legislation from which Englishmen turn away in deep disgust. The suppression of the Habeas Corpus, the Six Acts, the Peterloo massacre, reveal a dreadful gulf between the Governed and the Governors; blind, inarticulate, most pardonable hatred on the one side; unfeeling, violent, most unpardonable repression on the other.

mental condition of the Governors is easily discernible; with the keen instinct of a privileged class they sighted afar off the beginnings of democracy, and believed that they could crush them out as they had crushed out sympathy with revolution twenty years before. In Canning's lofty and unselfish mind the malady took the form of Constitution-worship; amid the wide spread ruin of monarchies and empires England alone had braved the storm ; braved it, as he believed, by native vigour due to the perfect mould in which her system of Government was cast. A popular House of Commons would, he seems to have been convinced, sweep away Crown and Peerage; he opposed himself heart and soul, not only to proposals of Reform, but to all ideas and movements tending to Reform, to all aspirations and demands which bore the newly coined name of "Radical." Liberal on other points, he was inflexible in this; and yet this very inconsistency suited him to a time of change; enabled him to call into life a Middle Party, conservative in its hostility to Reform, progressive in its acceptance of Free Trade and Catholic Emancipation, a Party whose mission was to bridge the gulf which separated the old times from the new.

In 1820 George III died; and with the accession of the new king came the scandal of his Queen. The wife of George IV. must, in any case have been an unhappy woman; but the selection made need not have been so miserably unfortunate as it was. A discreet lady, with tact and self-command, knowing how to be blind, refined in mien and person, tolerant, soft, caressing, might with much sacrifice of personal feeling, and much laceration of womanly self-respect, have in fluenced, gained, in some sort held, the selfish, worthless roué to whom she permitted herself to be united. The lady chosen was a goodnatured chattering bouncing hoyden, of vulgar manners, in conversation always indiscreet, sometimes indelicate; knowing nothing of the world beyond the petty gossip and intrigue of a small German palace. The poor thing was married to the Prince's Proxy, Lord Malmesbury, after a fashion now obsolete; and through the sagacious eyes of that cool veteran we read her character and foresee her ruin. Pretty in

face he pronounced her to be on his first introduction; figure ungraceful; good hands and teeth; 'impertinent shoulders.' From the outset he lectures her anxiously and kindly; recommends reserve, discretion, silence, careful abstinence from politics, wary behaviour to her ladies: he tells her that she talks too much; bids her again and again to think before she speaks, to attend to appearances, to remember her rank. They set out for England; he shows her how to give money and presents en Princesse, reproves her for giggling at cards, on board ship cautions her not to talk publicly of being sick, warns her lastly-in what terms we are not informed that her morning toilette is too rapid for English fastidiousness, and notes with satisfaction in his diary on the morning after this lecture, that the Princess came down to breakfast "well washed all over." The voyage and journey over, the First Gentleman in Europe was introduced to his Bride. She knelt, he raised and kissed her; said no word; retired to a distant corner of the room, and called to Lord Malmesbury with an oath for a glass of brandy. The marriage in the Chapel followed; the Prince drank freely at supper, came to her room too drunk to stand, and fell into the grate, 'where,' she told Lady Charlotte Bury, "I left him." What an Epithalamium! "Give me an ounce of civet good Apothecary, to sweeten my imagination! Her life at Montague House was a banishment, with spies set to watch her. She knew not how to get through her time; played at blind man's buff and forfeits with the ladies, ran about snowballing in the grounds, ate onions and drank ale. Suddenly her whole household was swept off to be examined before a Committee of the Lords, that misconduct might be proved against her. They unanimously acquitted her; the old king wished her to come to Court; her husband would not suffer it. She left England, and the Prince's spies followed her. She unquestionably fell into guilt, with a carelessness which made proof easy. Presently she found herself Queen Consort, and prepared to return to England. Her husband demanded a divorce; his ministers warned him that the notorious scandals of his own life made such a step impossible; on which