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LORD LIVERPOOL.

THE eminent individual whom we have just been surveying* never rose to the place of ostensible Prime Minister, although for the last ten years of his life he exercised almost all the influence of that office, and was the ministerial leader of the House of Commons. But Lord Liverpool was the nominal chief, at least, under whom he served. He presided over the councils of England for a longer time than any other, excepting Walpole and Pitt, and for a period incomparably more glorious in all that is commonly deemed to constitute national renown. He was Prime Minister of England for fifteen years, after having filled in succession almost every political office, from under-secretary of state upwards; and passed his whole life, from the age of manhood, in the public service, save the single year that followed the death of Mr. Pitt. So long and so little interrupted a course of official prosperity was never, perhaps, enjoyed by any other statesman.

But this was not his only felicity. It happened to him, that the years during which the helm of the state, as it is called, was intrusted to his hands, were those of the greatest events, alike in negotiation, in war, in commerce, and in finance, whichever occurred to illustrate or to checker the annals of Europe. He saw the power of France attain a pitch altogether unexampled, and embrace the whole of the continent, except Russia alone, hitherto believed safe in her distant position and enormous natural strength; but he saw her, too, invaded, her numerous armies overthrown, her almost *Lord Castlereagh.

inaccessible capital destroyed. Then followed the insurrection of conquered Germany-the defeat of victorious France-the war pushed into her territory— the advance of the allies to the capital-the restoration of the ancient dynasty. By a singular coincidence, having signalized his outset in public life by a supposition which he propounded as possible—a march to Paris-this was then deemed so outrageous an absurdity that it became connected with his name as a standing topic of ridicule; yet he lived to see the impossibility realized, was Prime Minister when the impossible event actually happened, and did not survive the dynasty which he had mainly contributed to restore. Peace was thus brought back, but without her sister, plenty; and intestine discord now took the place of foreign war. He saw the greatest distress which this country had ever suffered in all the departments of her vast and various industry; agriculture sunk down, manufactures depressed to the earth, commerce struggling for existence, an entire stop put to all schemes for lightening the load of the public debt, and a convulsion in the value of all property, in the relations of all creditors and all debtors, in the operation of all contracts between man and man-the inevitable effects of a sudden and violent alteration of the currency, the standard of which his colleagues, twenty years before, had interfered to change. Gradually he saw trade, and agriculture, and industry in all its branches, again revive, but public discontent not subsiding. Both in Ireland, which he mainly helped to misgovern, and in England, where he opposed all political improvement, he witnessed the tremendous effects of a people becoming more enlightened than their rulers; and the last years of his life were spent in vain efforts to escape from a sight of the torrent which he could not stem. It made an interlude in this long and varied political scene, that he consented to the worst act ever done by any English monarch, the persecution of his Queen for

acts of hers and for purposes of his own, connected with a course of maltreatment to which the history of conjugal misdemeanor furnishes no parallel.

Yet, prodigious as is the importance, and singular as the variety of these events, which all happened during his administration,-and although party ran higher and took a far more personal turn during those fifteen years than at any other period of our political history,-no minister, nay, few men in any subordinate public station, ever passed his time with so little ill-will directed towards himself, had so much forbearance shown him upon all occasions, nay, few engaged uniformly so large a share of personal esteem. To what did he owe this rare felicity of his lot? How came it to pass that a station, in all other men's cases the most irksome, in his was easy-that the couch, so thorny to others, was to him of down? Whence the singular spectacle of the Prime Minister-the person primarily answerable for anything which is done amiss, and in fact often made to answer for whatever turns out unluckily through no possible fault of his own, or indeed of any man-should, by common consent, have been exempted from almost all blame; and that whoever attacked most bitterly all other public functionaries, in any department, should have felt it no business of his to speak otherwise than respectfully, if not tenderly, or if not respectfully, yet with mild forbearance of him, who, having been all his life in high office, a party to every unpopular and unfortunate proceeding of the government, and never a changeling in any one of his political opinions, even in the most unpopular of all, was now for so many long years at the head of the national councils, and in the first instance, by the law of the constitution and in point of fact, answerable for whatever was done or whatever was neglected?

This question may, perhaps, be answered by observing that the abilities of Lord Liverpool were far more solid than shining, and that men are apt to be jealous,

perhaps envious, certainly distrustful, of great and brilliant genius in statesmen. Respectable mediocrity offends nobody. Nay, as the great bulk of mankind feel it to be their own case, they perhaps have some satisfaction in being correctly represented by those who administer their affairs. Add to this, that the subject of these remarks was gifted with extraordinary prudence, displaying, from his earliest years, a rare discretion in all the parts of his conduct. Not only was there nothing of imagination, or extravagance, or any matter above the most ordinary comprehension, in whatever he spoke (excepting only his unhappy flight about marching to Paris, which for many years seemingly sunk him in the public estimation)—but he spoke so seldom as to show that he never did so unless the necessity of the case required it; while his life was spent in the business of office, a thing eminently agreeable to the taste, because closely resembling the habits, of a nation composed of men of business. "That's a good young man, who is always at his desk," the common amount of civic panegyric to a virtuous apprentice, was in terms, no doubt, often applied to Mr. Robert Jenkinson. "Here comes a worthy minister, whose days and nights have been passed in his office, and not in idle talking," might be the slight transformation by which this early eulogy was adapted to his subsequent manhood and full-blown character. Nor must it be forgotten that a more inoffensive speaker has seldom appeared in Parliament. He was never known to utter a word at which any one could take exception. He was besides (a much higher praise) the most fair and candid of all debaters. No advantage to be derived from a misrepresentation, or even an omission, ever tempted him to forego the honest and the manly satisfaction of stating the fact as it was, treating his adversary as he deserved, and at least reciting fairly what had been urged against him, if he could not successfully answer it. In all these respects, Mr. Canning furnished a contrast

which was eminently beneficial to Lord Liverpool, with whom he was so often, absurdly enough, compared, for no better reason than that they were of the same standing, and began life together and in the same service. But, in another respect, he gave less offence than his brilliant contemporary. A wit, though he amuses for the moment, unavoidably gives frequent umbrage to grave and serious men, who don't think public affairs should be lightly handled, and are constantly falling into the error that, when a person is arguing the most conclusively, by showing the gross and ludicrous absurdity of his adversary's reasoning, he is jesting and not arguing; while the argument is in reality more close and stringent, the more he shows the opposite position to be grossly ludicrous, that is, the more effective the wit becomes. But though all this is perfectly true, it is equally certain that danger attends such courses with the common run of plain men. Hence all lawyers versed in the practice of Nisi Prius, are well aware of the risk they run by being witty, or ingenious and fanciful, before a jury; unless their object be to reduce the damages in an absurd case, by what is called laughing it out of court; and you can almost tell, at a great distance, whether the plaintiff or the defendant's counsel is speaking to the jury, by observing whether he is grave, solemn, and earnest in his demeanour, or light and facetious. Nor is it only by wit that genius offends; flowers of imagination, flights of oratory, great passages, are more admired by the critic than relished by the worthy men who darken the porch of Boodle's-chiefly answering to the names of Sir Robert and Sir John; and the solid traders,-the very good men who stream along the Strand from 'Change towards St. Stephen's Chapel, at five o'clock, to see the business of the country done by the Sovereign's servants. A pretty long course of observation on these component parts of Parliamentary audience, begets some doubt if noble passages (termed "fine flourishes") be not

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