party necessarily and permanently ini- | person who was commissioned to promical to our Protestant constitution, cure the King's consent to the measure both in church and state. It is absurd to did not understand the extent to which suppose this concession would do any- it was to be carried. thing towards satisfying the Catholics -it would only lead them to make fresh demands, and empower them to urge them with additional weight; and the consequence of the measure could be nothing else, in the end, but to bring Catholic bishops into the House of Lords. Was it surprising that the King paused on the threshold of such a question, striking, as it evidently did, at the root of the tenure by which his own family held their right to the throne ? 85. "Having thus been misled, whether designedly or inadvertently it mattered not, in so vital a particular by his ministers, was it surprising that the King should have required from them a pledge that they would not again harass him on the same subject? Undoubtedly no minister should give a pledge to fetter the exercise of his own judgment on future occasions; but that was not here required; for if circumstances in future might render a renewal of the measure necessary, they 84. "In demanding a pledge that might at once resign. The King resuch a proposal should not be renewed, garded this measure as a violation of he acted without any adviser, upon the his coronation oath, as destructive to unaided dictates of his own masculine the Protestant church in Ireland, and understanding, aided by the conscien- as likely in its ultimate effects to entious scruples of his unsophisticated danger our whole Protestant constituheart. All the talent of the cabinet tion. Unquestionably it was to be recould not blind him to the evident and gretted that on any occasion the priinevitable, though possibly remote, con- vate opinion of the sovereign should be sequences of such a fatal precedent as brought forward apart from that of his was now sought to be forced upon him. constitutional advisers; but for this evil It is a palpable mistake to say he drew those must answer who, by forcing on back in the later stages of the nego- a rash and unnecessary measure, comtiation from what he had previously pelled him to rely on his own judgment agreed to: he first gave a reluctant con- alone. And it is some consolation to sent to the extension of the Irish Act reflect, that, in proportion as the soveof 1793 to Great Britain, in the firm reign has been made more constitubelief that this was all that was re- tionally responsible in his own person, quired of him, so the proposed mea- he must become better known to his sure was explained to and understood people; and the soundness of judgby him; and that he was not singular ment, promptness and vivacity of inin this belief is proved by the fact, that tellect, which have enabled him to bear the Irish Secretary had his doubts up alone against the united weight of upon it, and that the Irish Chancellor the cabinet, have only evinced, in the of the Exchequer, in answer to a ques- more striking manner, how worthy he tion as to the second reading of the is to fill the throne which his family bill, said there was no particular reason attained by the principle he has now so for the Irish members being present on manfully defended." Upon a division, that occasion, as they were already ac- there appeared two hundred and fiftyquainted with the measure. Three eight for the new ministers, and two cabinet ministers, viz. the Lord Chan-hundred and twenty-six for the oldcellor, Lord Sidmouth, and Lord Ellen- leaving a majority of thirty-two for the borough, refused to concur in the mea- existing government.* sure, when they understood how far it was to be carried; the Chancellor was not even summoned to the council at which it was to be discussed, though he was in a peculiar manner the keeper of the king's conscience; and even the 86. This majority, though sufficient * In 1829, when the Catholic Relief Bill was introduced by Sir Robert Peel, Lord Eldon said in parliament-"If I had a voice of the empire, I would re-echo the principle, that if ever a Roman Catholic is perinitted to that would resound to the remotest corner to enable ministers to conduct the public business during the remainder of that session, was not adequate to carry on the government during the arduous crisis which awaited them in the administration of foreign affairs. They resolved, therefore, to strengthen themselves by a dissolution of parliament; and the event decisively proved that the King had not miscalculated the loyalty and religious feeling of the English people in this trying emergency. Parliament was prorogued on the 27th April, and soon after dissolved by royal proclamation. The utmost efforts were made by both parties on this occasion to augment their respective forces; to the usual heats and excitement of a general election were superadded the extraordinary passions arising from the recent dismissal of an administration from office, and consequent elevation of another in their stead. All the usual means of exciting popular enthusiasm were resorted to without scruple on both sides. The venality and corruption of the Tories, alleged to be so strikingly evinced in their recent elevation of Lord Melville, after the stain consequent on the 10th report of the commissioners, were the subject of loud declamation from the Whigs; the scandalous attempt to force the King's conscience, and induce a popish tyranny on the land, yet wet with the blood of the Protestant martyrs, was as vehemently re-echoed from the other. "No Peculation," "No Popery," were the war-cries of the respective parties; and amidst banners, shouts, and universal excitement, the people were called on to exercise the most important rights of free citizens. To the honour of the empire, however, this great contest was conducted without bloodshed or disorder in any quar ter; and the result decisively proved that, in taking his stand upon the inviolate maintenance of the Protestant constitution, the King had a great majority of all classes throughout the empire on his side. Almost all the counties and chief cities of Great Britain returned members in the interest of the new ministry; defeat after defeat, in every quarter, told the Whigs how far they had miscalculated the spirit of the age; and on the first division in the ensuing parliament they were overthrown by a great majority in both houses—that in the Peers being ninety-seven, in the Commons no less than one hundred and ninety-five.* 87. Though this important step of form part of the legislature of this country, and whatever calamities may befall the na- VOL. VI. Majority, 67 164 97 155 for the Tories, 350 Majority, 195 -Ann. Reg. 1807, 238-239. 2 B table establishment in Newcastle, to below. That case made his fortune. which the sons of burgesses in that He was soon after taken into the great town were entitled, free of cost. John case of the Clitheroe election, before a Scott there met a boy of equally ob-committee of the House of Commons, scure parentage-Cuthbert Colling- and, from the admirable appearance wood, afterwards Lord Collingwood, he made there, rapidly rose to the the worthy companion of Nelson and head of his profession. His secret for St Vincent in the brightest days of doing so was energetically expressed England's glory. From such humble by himself in a few words, "To live origin did the future rulers and states- like a hermit, and work like a horse," men of England at that period take -a rule which will probably insure their rise ! success, even to ordinary abilities, in other professions besides the bar. In 1783 he received a silk gown from the coalition administration, and in the same year was elected member of par was appointed solicitor-general, and knighted. In 1793 he was elevated to the rank of attorney-general, and in that capacity conducted the memorable treason trials of Hardy and Horne Tooke in the succeeding year. Finally, in 1801, on the resignation of Lord Loughborough, he was appointed Lord Chancellor by the title of Lord Eldon. 88. William Scott, the elder brother, early evinced such extraordinary abilities, that, at the age of sixteen, his parents were induced to put him forward as a candidate for a scholarship at Ox-liament for Weobly. In 1788 he ford, for the diocese of Durham, which he obtained in 1761. This laid the foundation of the fortunes both of himself and his younger brother John, who at the age of sixteen followed him to that celebrated seat of learning in 1766. William Scott soon obtained a fellowship, and gave lectures, which were much admired, on public law. John Scott took his degree in 1772, made a runaway marriage in the same year, which imposed on him the necessity of exertion, and in 1774 and 1775 gave lectures on law as deputy for Robert Chambers, professor of law, for which he was glad to receive £60 a-year. In 1775 he was called to the bar; and although he experienced the usual amount of disappointment which almost invariably, in that profession, precedes eminence, yet such was the vigour of his mind, and the unconquer able perseverance of his character, that it soon became evident to his friends that opportunity only was wanting to make him rise to the highest eminence. The opportunity came earlier to him than it does to many others with equal powers and anxiety to do well. After four years of severe labour and no progress, he fortunately obtained an op-racteristic of both. Neither had very portunity of being heard in a question of disputed succession,* in which his learning ultimately prevailed with Lord Chancellor Thurlow, though the decision had been adverse in the court 89. Lord Eldon enjoyed a larger share of the confidence of George III. and the great majority of the royal family, than any other minister after the death of Mr Pitt; and his views influenced in a material degree the conduct of that monarch on many important occasions, and on none more than in the stand he made against the Catholic claims in 1806. Similarity of character, identity of principles, was the cause of this strong prepossession and daily increasing influence. Lord Eldon was in the cabinet what the king was on the throne. Both were thoroughly English in their ideas and character. They had the virtues equally with the failings, the excellencies and the defects of that temperament. Moral courage, fearless determination in council, was the grand cha extensive information out of the circle of their professional habits, (if such a word can fitly be applied to a sovereign), but both had a large share of that strong good sense, practical sagacity, and clear perception, which so often, in the real business of life, obtain the mastery both of knowledge, genius, and accomplishments. "Church and King" was Eldon's motto, and adherence to the constitution in all points his ruling principle. He was the last of the sturdy old patriots of former and more quiescent days, and stands forth in history as the "ultimus Romanorum"-the latest relic of a race which, by their firmness and resolution, created the British empire. As a lawyer, his learning was unbounded, his understanding sound, his memory prodigious; and although the strength of his conscientious feelings in deciding cases in the court of last resort often led to distressing delays, yet his judgments, when they were pronounced, were almost always right, and have attained a weight which belongs to none others in Westminster Hall. 90. On reviewing the external measures of the Whig administration, it is impossible to deny that their removal from office at that period was a fortunate event for the British empire in its ultimate results, and proved eminently favourable to the cause of freedom throughout the world. Notwithstanding all their talent-and they had a splendid array of it in their ranks, notwithstanding all their philanthropy -and their domestic measures were generally dictated by its spirit;-they could not at that period have long maintained the confidence of the English people; and their unfortunate shipwreck on the Catholic question only accelerated a catastrophe already prepared by many concurrent causes. External disaster, the reproaches of our allies, the unbroken progress of our enemies, must ere long have occasioned their fall. The time was not suited, the national temper not then adapted, for those domestic reforms on which the wishes of their partisans had long been set, and which in pacific times were calculated to have excited so powerful a popular feeling in their favour. The active and ruling portion of the nation had grown up to manhood during the war with France; the perils, the glories, the necessities of that struggle were universally felt; the military spirit had spread, with the general arming of the people, to a de gree hitherto unparalleled in the British Islands. Vigour in the prosecution of the contest was then indispensably necessary to obtain general support; capacity for warlike combination the one thing needful for lasting popularity. In these particulars the Whig ministry, notwithstanding all their talents, were eminently deficient ; and the part they had taken throughout the contest disqualified them from conducting it to a successful issue. They had so uniformly opposed the war with France, that they were by no means equally impressed, as the nation was, either with its dangers or its inevitable character: they had so strenuously on every occasion deprecated the system of coalitions, that they could hardly, in consistency with their former principles, take a suitable part in that great confederacy by which alone its overgrown strength could be reduced. Their system of warfare, accordingly, was in every respect adverse to that which the nation then desired, founded upon a secession from all alliances, when the people passionately desired to share in the dangers and glories of a Continental struggle; calculated upon a defensive system for a long course of years, when the now aroused spirit of the empire deemed it practicable, by a vigorous and concentrated effort, to bring the contest at once to a successful termination. 91. The foreign disasters, which attended their military and naval enterprises in all parts of the world, profoundly affected the British people, more impatient than any in Europe both of the expense of warlike prepara tion and of defeat in warlike adventure. The capitulation at Buenos Ayres, the flight from Constantinople, the catastrophe in Egypt, succeeding one another in rapid succession, were felt the more keenly that they occurred on the theatres of our greatest triumphs by land and sea, or blasted hopes the most extravagant of commercial advantage. And yet it is now abundantly evident that defeat on the shores of the La Plata and the banks of the Nile was more to be desired than victory; and that no calamity could have been so great as the successful issue of these expeditions. They were conceived in the most inconsiderate manner, and aimed at objects which, if gained, must have paralysed the strength of the empire. At the moment when the armies of Napoleon were crossing the Thuringian forests, ten thousand English soldiers embarked for South America: when the scales of war hung even on the fields of Poland, five thousand men were sent to certain destruction amidst the cavalry of Egypt. Their united force, if thrown into the scale at Eylau, might have driven the French Emperor to a disastrous retreat across the Rhine, and induced, seven years before they occurred, the glories of Leipsic and Waterloo. What could be more impolitic than, after Russia had given such decisive proof of its extraordinary resolution and devotion to the cause of Europe, in February 1807, to send out a miserable little expedition to Alexandria in March following, too large for piracy, too small for conquest, and the success of which could have no other effect but that of riveting the hostility of Turkey to Russia and its allies, and thereby securing to Napoleon the inestimable advantage of a powerful diversion on the side of the Danube? What more impolitic than, when the finances of that great power were exhausted by the extraordinary expenses of the contest, to refuse to the Emperor not only a subsidy, but even the British guarantee to a loan which he was desirous of contracting in the British dominions, unless accompanied by the cession of custom-house duties in Russia in security ?--dealing thus with the greatest potentate in Europe, at the very moment when he was perilling his very crown in what was our cause, as well as his own, in the same manner as a Jewish pawnbroker does with a suspicious applicant for relief. 92. The battle of Eylau should have been the signal for contracting the closest alliance with the Russian government-for the instant advance of loans to any amount, and the marching of sixty thousand English soldiers to the nearest points of embarkation. This was the crisis of the war: the imprudent confidence of Napoleon had drawn him into a situation full of peril. For the first time in his life he had been overmatched in a pitched battle; and hostile nations, besetting three hundred leagues of communication in his rear, were ready to intercept his retreat. No effort on the part of England could have been too great in order to turn to the best account so extraordinary a combination of favourable circumstances; no demonstration of confidence too unreserved to an ally capable of such sacrifices. Can there be a doubt that such a vigorous demonstration would at once have terminated the hesitation of Austria, revived the spirit of Prussia, and, by throwing a hundred thousand men on each flank of his line of communication, driven the French Emperor to a ruinous retreat? Is it surprising that when, instead of such co-operation, Alexander, after the sacrifices he had made, met with nothing but refusals to his repeated and most earnest applications for assistance, and saw the land force of England wasted on useless distant expeditions, when every bayonet and sabre was of value on the banks of the Alle, he should have conceived a distrust of the English alliance, and formed the resolution of extricating himself as soon as possible from the hazardous conflict in which he was now exclusively engaged?* "In the foreign office," said Mr Canning, when minister of foreign affairs in 1807, "are to be found not one but twenty letters from the Marquis of Douglas, ambassador at St Petersburg, intimating in the strongest terms, that unless effectual aid was sent to the Emperor of Russia, he would abandon the contest." Ample proof of this exists in the correspondence relating to that subject which was laid before parliament. On 28th November 1806, the Marquis wrote to Lord Howick, afterwards Earl Grey, from St Petersburg"General Budberg lately told me that his imperial majesty had expressly directed him to urge the expediency of partial expeditions on the coast of France and Holland, for the purpose of distracting the attention of the enemy, and impeding the march of the French reserves. The extraordinary ex penses arising from the disasters of Prussia indispensable, which his imperial majesty is have rendered a loan of six millions sterling exceedingly desirous should be negotiated in |