4

September; and Mr. Twiss states that the inconvenience likely to result from appointing two new Equity Judges at the same time weighed so with Lord Liverpool and with the King, that Lord Eldon was urged once more to defer his resignation, and very reluctantly consented.

We are not quite convinced that his resignation had been definitely resolved in 1826:-but, whether or not, his official career was now near its close. The death of the Duke of Yorkitself a heavy blow to the Protestant cause-was rapidly followed (Feb., 1827) by the illness of Lord Liverpool, whose tact, temper, moderation, and candour had for so many years enabled him to hold together a Cabinet, within which there had all along been a decided difference of opinion on the Roman Catholic question, and which latterly, moreover, contained not a few elements of personal jealousy, mistrust, and aversion. The instant that its premier was known to be permanently disabled, it fell to pieces; but if any still adhere to the belief that the most important resignations which followed on the announcement of Mr. Canning's headship were preconcerted, this book will convince them that such was not the fact: that the Chancellor, the Commander-inChief, the Home Secretary, and the First Lord of the Admiralty, acted each as an individual, and each one of them took ground more or less peculiar to himself. Some letters to Lord Eldon, here printed, are among the most interesting documents we have read; but we must leave them to be studied in connexion with the other materials of a very curious chapter.

Among the tidings that at this epoch astonished Lord Eldon was that of a patent of precedence granted to the quondam Attorney-General of Queen Caroline. When the new Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, communicated this to his predecessor, the old Earl remarked, quietly, that he hoped the King would not now object to let Mr. Brougham be informed that he, Lord Eldon, had repeatedly during a long series of years urged on his Majesty the propriety of giving him a silk gown-that the withholding it was unjust to Mr. Brougham-injurious to the Barand unworthy of his Majesty's magnanimity. The King could not but permit the explanation thus suggested: and Mr. Brougham soon afterwards took an opportunity of expressing his regret that it came so late.

Mr. Twiss prints also some very valuable papers with reference to the short administration of Lord Goderich; but these do not much concern the ex-chancellor, nor is there any new light thrown on the formation of the Wellington cabinet in January, 1828. It was already well known that Lord Eldon had expected to be invited on that occasion to resume a place in the cabinet

the

the office he had anticipated was, it seems, that of President of the Council. Mr. Twiss drops not the slightest hint that any arrangement had been made, or even contemplated, for retaining him as a cabinet minister, had his retirement from the woolsack taken place in 1826. This increases our doubts about the resignation story;-for how painfully he felt the exclusion of 1828, is abundantly shown by his letters, of which it is sufficient for us to copy one. It is addressed to his daughter.

'London, March 3rd, 1828. 'Dear Fanny,-I begin to think that what the D. of W. said to me (that my opinions and principles were so fixed upon certain points, that it was somewhat impracticable to form an Administration with sentiments conformable with those opinions and principles) may be correctly true. He told me that P. would not accept office without Huskisson; and report uniformly represents that Huskisson would not accept office, if Lord Eldon was to be in office. This may be a clue to the truth: for if Peel would not accept office, the D. of W., I am sure, could not form an Administration, that could begin work in the Commons. But then I say we old ones should have met Parliament out of office-all of USand a very little time would have ensured the country against that sad evil," a coalition Ministry:" of that I have no doubt-and I am as much of an old fox in these matters as Mr. Tierney. As to office, I would not step across the street to be placed in it on my own account. I could get nothing by it-its emoluments, as such, are not worth my having for my pension is larger than those of any office that I could have accepted; and from the pension the emoluments of office would be to be deducted. But then they might have given me an opportunity of offering my services to the country, and relieving it from the pension, to the extent of the emoluments of office. It is not because office was not offered me that I complain-it is because those with whom I have so long acted and served did not, candidly and unreservedly, explain themselves and their difficulties to me. And they were not mine adversaries that did me this dishonour, but mine own familiar friends, with whom I had, for so many years, taken sweet counsel together.' The following fragments can need no explanation:

April, 1828.

'The Dissenters Bill is to be debated on the 17th,-we, who oppose, shall fight respectably and honourably; but victory cannot be ours. What is most calamitous of all is, that the Archbishops and several Bishops are against us. What they can mean, they best know, for nobody else can tell-and, sooner or later,-perhaps in this very yearalmost certainly in the next,—the concessions to the Dissenters must be followed by the like concessions to the Roman Catholics.'

'July 9th, 1828. 'Nothing is talked of now, which interests any body the least in the world, except the election of Mr. O'Connell [for Clare], and the mischief that it will produce among debaters in the House of Commons,

I 2

and

and the more serious mischief which it will, in all human probability, excite in Ireland. At all events, this business must bring the Roman Catholic question, which has been so often discussed, to a crisis and a conclusion. The nature of that conclusion I don't think likely to be favourable to Protestantism.'

'August, 1828.

'The King gives a grand dinner on the 12th at Windsor Castle. He has not, as one of his guests, invited a person of whom I can be bold enough to say, that the K. is more indebted to him, than he is to any other subject he ever had in a civil department, adding, by way of showing a little modesty, the old expression, "though I say it who should not say it."

We now approach the crisis and conclusion' which Lord Eldon foresaw clearly as at hand in July, 1828-but which, in fact, this book proves him to have apprehended as ultimately inevitable from a much remoter date. The Speech at the opening of the Session of 1829 announced that the day was come. Twice, however, after that decisive hour, Lord Eldon obtained audience of the King for the purpose of presenting addresses against the ministerial measure; and Mr. Twiss produces a long memorandum, minuted by the Earl himself, descriptive of these interviews-a document drawn up in a diffuse, clumsy style of language certainly, but which, nevertheless, to use the biographer's own words, portrays very graphically the fluctuations in the mind of George IV., and exhibits in a striking point of view the contrast between his character and that of his father.' The first visit was on the 28th of March; and then the memorandum reports his Majesty to have said :—

6

was

That at the time the Administration was formed, no reason given him to suppose that any measures for the relief of the Roman Catholics were intended or thought of by Ministers: that he had frequently himself suggested the absolute necessity of putting down the Roman Catholic Association-of suspending the Habeas Corpus Act to destroy the powers of the most seditious and rebellious proceedings of the members of it, and particularly at the time that Lawless made his march that instead of following what he had so strongly recommended, after some time, not a very long time before the present Session, he was applied to, to allow his Ministers to propose to him, as an united Cabinet, the opening the Parliament, by sending such a message as his Speech contained :--that, after much struggling against it, and after the measure had been strongly pressed upon him as of absolute necessity, he had consented that the Protestant members of his Cabinet, if they could so persuade themselves to act, might join in such a representation to him, but that he would not then, nor in his recommendation to Parliament, pledge himself to any thing.-He repeatedly mentioned that he represented to his Ministers the infinite pain it gave him to consent even so far as that.

'He

دو

'He complained that he had never seen the bills-that the condition of Ireland had not been taken into consideration-that the Association Bill had been passed through both Houses before he had seen it-that it was a very inefficient measure compared to those which he had in vain, himself, recommended-that the other proposed measures gave him the greatest possible pain and uneasiness-that he was in the state of a person with a pistol presented to his breast-that he had nothing to fall back upon that his Ministers had threatened (I think he said twice, at the time of my seeing him) to resign, if the measures were not proceeded in, and that he had said to them "Go on,' when he knew not how to relieve himself from the state in which he was placed :—and that in one of those meetings, when resignation was threatened, he was urged to the sort of consent he gave by what passed in the interview between him and his Ministers, till the interview and the talk had brought him into such a state, that he hardly knew what he was about when he, after several hours, said " Go on."-He then repeatedly expressed himself as in a state of the greatest misery, repeatedly saying "What can I do? I have nothing to fall back upon: " and musing for some time, and then again repeating the same expression.

In this day's audience his Majesty did not show me many papers that he showed me in the second.-I collected from what passed in the second, that his consent to go on was in writings then shown to me. After a great deal of time spent (still in the first interview), in which his Majesty was sometimes silent-apparently uneasy-occasionally stating his distress-the hard usage he had received-his wish to extricate himself that he had not what to look to-what to fall back uponthat he was miserable beyond what he could express;-I asked him whether his Majesty, so frequently thus expressing himself, meant either to enjoin me, or to forbid, considering or trying whether any thing could be found or arranged, upon which he could fall back. He said, "I neither enjoin you to do so, nor forbid you to do so; but, for God's sake, take care that I am not exposed to the humiliation of being again placed in such circumstances, that I must submit again to pray of my present Ministers that they will remain with me."-He appeared to me to be exceedingly miserable, and intimated that he would see me again. 'I was not sent for afterwards, but went on Thursday, the 9th April, with more addresses. In the second interview, the King repeatedly, and with some minutes interposed between his such repeated declarations, musing in silence in the interim, expressed his anguish, and pain, and misery, that the measure had ever been thought of, and as often declared that he had been most harshly and cruelly treated-that he had been treated as a man, whose consent had been asked with a pistol pointed to his breast, or as obliged, if he did not give it, to leap down from a five pair of stairs window-What could he do? What had he to fall back upon?

'I told him that his late Majesty, when he did not mean that a measure proposed to him should pass, expressed his determination in the most early stage of the business:-if it seemed to himself necessary to dissent, he asked no advice without dismissing his Ministers: he

made

made that his own act-he trusted to what he had to hope from his subjects, who-when he had placed himself in such circumstances, and protected them from the violence of party-if party, meaning to be violent, should get uppermost, could not leave him unsupported-that on the other hand, there could not but be great difficulties in finding persons willing to embark in office, when matters had proceeded to the extent to which the present measures had been carried,—as was supposed, and had been represented, after full explanation of them to his Majesty,*

and he had so far assented.

This led to his mentioning again what he had to say as to his assent. In the former interview it had been represented that, after much conversation twice with his Ministers or such as had come down, he had said, "Go on ;" and upon the latter of those two occasions, after many hours' fatigue, and exhausted by the fatigue of conversation, he had said, "Go on." He now produced two papers, which he represented as copies of what he had written to them, in which he assents to their proceeding and going on with the bill, adding certainly in each, as he read them, very strong expressions of the pain and misery the proceedings gave him. It struck me at the time that I should, if I had been in office, have felt considerable difficulty about going on after reading such expressions; but whatever might be fair observation as to giving, or not, effect to those expressions, I told his Majesty it was impossible to maintain that his assent had not been expressed, or to cure the evils which were consequential, after the bill, in such circumstances, had been read a second time, and in the Lords' House with a majority of 105. This led him to much conversation upon that fact-that he had, he said, been deserted by an aristocracy that had supported his fatherthat, instead of forty-five against the measure, there were twice that number of Peers for it-that every thing was revolutionary-every thing was tending to revolution—and the Peers and the aristocracy were giving way to it. They (he said more than once or twice more) supported his father; but see what they had done to him. I took the liberty to say that I agreed that matters were rapidly tending to revolution-that I had long thought that this measure of Catholic emancipation was meant to be and would certainly be a step towards producing it-that it was avowed as such with the Radicals in 1794, 5, and 6:that many of the Catholic Association were understood to have been engaged in all the transactions in Ireland in 1798-and what had they not been threatening to do if this measure was not carried, and even if it was carried? But I thought it only just to some of the Peers who voted for the bill to suppose that they had been led, or misled, to believe that his Majesty had agreed and consented to it.

'He then began to talk about the Coronation oath. On that I could only repeat what I had before said, if his Majesty meant me to say any thing upon the subject. Understanding that he did so wish, I repeated that, as far as his oath was concerned, it was matter between him, God, and his conscience, whether giving his Royal Assent to this The italics in this memorandum are, we take it for granted, those of Lord Eldon's autograph.

measure