Part 13
"To what a state of degradation are we sunk, when a defendant is to be cheered into being a plaintiff; to be applauded when he assaults the sufferings of the oppressed, and arraigns the motives of men of honour and unsullied reputation! You are yourself aware, sir, that in no other assembly in England would you have been allowed to proceed, for an instant, in so gross a violation of all decencies of life as was hazarded by that speech, which found a patient and a pleased audience in the House of Commons. Can there exist in that body,--composed as it undoubtedly is of men, who, in the private relations of life, are distinguished for many good qualities,--an habitual disregard of decency, a contempt for public opinion, an absurd confidence, either individually or in mass, to which, absolving themselves from the rules of common life, they look for protection against the censures of their fellow-citizens? Were it not for such a groundless persuasion, there is not a gentleman (for such a being is not quite extinct in parliament) who would not have thought himself compromised by listening to your insolent attacks upon the national character, and to a flashy declamation, which, from beginning to end, supposed an audience devoid of all taste, judgment, spirit, and humanity.
"I am at a loss, sir, to account for the insulting policy of your colleagues in office, who, though they take their full share with you in the public hatred, are far from being equal competitors for its contempt. Those worthies must have had some motive, deeper than their avowed designs, for entrusting their defence to such 'inept hands.' Were they afraid of your partially redeeming your character by silence? Were they resolved, that if you were yet not enough known, some decisive overt act should reduce you below the ministerial level? Did they suspect, that you were again willing to rebel or betray? How was it that you were selected for the odious and TREACHEROUS task of justifying the rigorous measures of the imbecile, but unfeeling, SIDMOUTH, directed as they were against the aged, the infirm, the powerless of his own countrymen? How was it that you were required to emerge from your suspected, though prudent, silence, in behalf of him whom you had first insulted by the offer of your alliance, then by your coarse hostility, and, lastly, by the accepted tender of an insidious reconciliation?
"You know, sir, and the world should know, that when your seducer, Pitt, was tired of you, you offered yourself to this silly, vain man, who thought your keeping too dear at the proposed price, and accordingly declined the bargain. You know, and the world may remember, the immediate consequence of this slight of proffered service was your lampoons in parliament, your speeches in the papers,--I forget where they fell, but whether in one or the other, they were equally _unprepared_ and opportune; these, and other assaults, manfully directed against those whose forbearance was the sole protection of your audacity, can hardly have slipped through the meshes of the ill-woven memories of your colleagues. Perhaps, then, it was intended to reduce you to irretrievable humiliation, and to fit you for the lowest agency, by making you the loudest encomiast of the most undefensible measure of him whom you have reprobated as the 'most incapable of all ministers, the most inept of all statesmen.' You have kissed the hand that chastised you, and have lost but few opportunities of testifying your FEIGNED REPENTANCE to him who commands you from that eminence, which you were adjudged incapable to occupy, even so as to save the few appearances required from ministerial manners.
"Your submission to Lord Castlereagh, tricked out, as he appears, in those decorations of fortune which might well deceive a vulgar eye, was not surprising: it was the natural deference of meanness to success. But it was not expected, even from your condescension, that the butt of his party, the agent of that department which had, even in these times of peace, with infinite address, contrived to make the executive administration not only hateful but ridiculous, that the very minister who had no character for talents should be defended by him who had shewn himself unequal to the defence of his own. Your reply to those who spoke the language of their constituents, of unprejudiced Englishmen, of human nature itself, and who stepped forward to rescue the parliament from indelible disgrace, was such as is seldom hiccupped up from the Bacchanalian triumph of ministerial majorities.
"What, sir! one of the present cabinet dare to accuse any individual of too _much faith_ in common rumour or in proffered information? A member of that cabinet, whose _belief_ in the idle, malicious falsehoods of spies, pimps, bullies, and all the abandoned broken characters, whom their promises allured into perjury, has been proved by the verdict of juries, has been recorded in the courts, has been the object of general indignation, and, after having been the cause and excuse of a wanton attack on our liberties, has been judged by the cabinet itself so little qualified for examination that believing parliament has been instructed to indemnify the rogues who told the lies, and the fools who believed them. What! an apologist for the gulled, the gaping Sidmouth, to deprecate the indiscriminating reception of tales and tale-bearers? a defender of him who put his trust in Castles, who employed Oliver, and who, on the faith of atrocious fabrications, of which he was alike the encourager and the dupe, has persecuted and imprisoned, has fettered and fractured, and might have put to death, his fellow-countrymen, even to decimation.
"You tell us, you should have thought yourself '_a dolt and idiot_' to have listened for a moment to complaints against an agent of the home department, a runner of Bow-street, a gaoler's turnkey, or a secretary's secretary. Mighty well, sir! but let a runaway from the hulks, a convicted felon, tell you, that a bankrupt apothecary, a broken-down farmer, and a cobbler, are the centre of a widely-spread conspiracy, have formed and partially executed a plan for razing the kingdom, and for taking the Tower of London,--have provided arms, have published manifestoes; let the same respectable evidence impeach the loyalty of the nobles and gentry in particular districts, and of the lower classes in all; let this single felon assert that he is honest, and the majority of his countrymen are rogues,--you do not think YOURSELF A DOLT AND IDIOT!!! you do not think Lord Sidmouth a dolt and idiot for proceeding, chiefly upon such information, to hang, draw, and quarter the first individuals designated by this credible witness! But whatever you or your colleagues thought, the JURY did think the secretary of the home department a DOLT AND IDIOT, and shewed their opinion by their verdict. I will take leave to observe, that there is this difference between the credulity of such men as Mr. Lambton, and of such ministers as yourself and your colleagues: the former may interpose to save, but the consequence of the latter has been to destroy.
"To brand with the names of 'rebel and traitor' those whom you have been unable to prove rebellious and traitorous, is but in the ordinary course of official perseverance and incorrigible folly; but that you should presume to assail those unfortunate individuals, the victims of your own recorded credulity, by making a mockery of old age and of natural infirmities, which have been occasioned by your own injustice!!--such an outrage upon your audience--how is that to be accounted for? '_The revered and ruptured Ogden!!!_' This mad, this monstrous sally was applauded--was received with roars of laughter! and if there was a confession from some more candid lips, that such allusions were not 'quite in good taste,' an excuse was drawn from the _warmth_ of the debate, clear as it was, to those accustomed to your patchwork, that the stupid alliteration was one of the ill-tempered weapons coolly selected from your oratorical armoury.
"The little knot of dependants, who were willing to make common stock and carry themselves to market with you, have become ashamed of the trifling, oscillating buffoon, whom they mistook for the head of a party, and who accepted the first and lowest vacancy that could replace him in the precincts of power. Even the miserable chuck-farthing, Ward, who has learnt from you how to run riot on his apostacy, owns, that he hesitates between the disgrace of 'serving without wages, and of being dismissed without a character.'
"Go on, sir, I pray you; proceed with your pleasantries; light up the dungeon with the flashes of your merriment,--make us familiar, make us pleased, with the anguish of the captive; teach us how to look upon torture and tyranny as agreeable trifles; let whips and manacles become the play-things of parliament; let patriotism and principle be preserved only as vain names, the materials of a jest; and, as you have disturbed the bed of sickness with your unhallowed mirth, hasten, with appropriate mockery, the long foretold approaching _Euthanasia_ of the expiring constitution. But confine your efforts to that assembly where they have been so favourably, so thankfully received. You will find no other hearers. You are nothing but on that stage. The clerks, the candles, the heated atmosphere, the mummeries and decorations, the trained, packed paper audience, confused, belated, and jaded into an appetite for the grossest stimulants; these are the preparations indispensable to your exhibition. Thank heaven, however, the House of Commons is not the only tribunal; and it is possible, that, in spite of your extraordinary progress and probable success, there may still be, in this country, a body of men, now _dispersed_, but whom their common interest will ONE DAY COLLECT AND UNITE, FOR THE DEFENCE OF THEIR RIGHTS AND THE PUNISHMENT OF THEIR OPPRESSORS[187:A].
"Believe me, sir, not an echo of those shouts of laughter which hailed your jests upon rebellious old age and traitorous disease, not an echo has been lost in the wide circumference of the British islands. Those shouts still ring in our ears; they will never die away as long as the day of retribution is deferred; they will never die away until we are finally extirpated by your triumph, or you are annihilated by our indignation. Do not flatter yourself that, by securing the connivance of parliament, you are safe from all national censure. _Parliament does not represent the feelings of the British nation._ It would be an assault upon the character of this great, this glorious people, to suppose that their representatives were sent to the House of Commons to encourage the playful ferocity of a hardened politician. The nobler portion of the nation are certainly not members of either house: the better educated, the more enlightened, and the more wealthy, at least the more independent, are to be found _without the walls of parliament_. You are (and what ministerial man is not?) an enemy to reform. But you shall be told, sir, that the necessity of reform, and of choosing our representatives from some other classes of society, was never so decidedly shewn as in the reception of your speech. If Mr. Canning was, on a former occasion[188:A], applauded for saying, that the constitution of that assembly could not be bad, which '_worked so well in practice_' as to admit of the selection of such men as Mr. Windham and Mr. Horner, I am sure it is to be allowed me to say, that the assembly can have no feelings or opinions, in common with the rest of their countrymen, which would receive, with shouts of approving laughter, such a speech as this of Mr. Canning.
"You cannot be far from the close of your career; for, either we shall be so lost that all your farther efforts will be superfluous, or you will be so resisted as to disable you for ever from all noxious exertion. This, then, may be the time for summing up the evidence, furnished by the unbiassed, uncontradictory witnesses of your life; and for enabling your countrymen to pass the verdict.
"Let him speak who ever knew you in possession of any respectable reputation. The rag you stole from Mr. Sheridan's mantle was always too scanty to cover your nakedness: like all mimics, you caught only the meaner characteristics of your archetype; oratorical, not orator; poetaster, not poet; witling, not wit. You were never the first or best in any one line of action. You might not have been altogether inept or slow in playing second parts, but on no one occasion have you ever evinced that sincerity, either of principle or capacity, which the lowest amongst us are accustomed to require from the pretenders to excellence. Your spirit was rebuked in presence of those accomplished persons whom the followers of all parties recognized as beings of a higher order, and were willing to yield even more deference than their unambitious merit required. The chances of survivorship have left you a great man in these days of little men; but you keep true to the epic rule; you end as you began; power has conferred upon you no dignity,--elevation has not made your posture more erect. The decency of your character consists in its entire conformity to the original conception formed of you in early life. It has borrowed nothing from station, nothing from experience. IT BECOMES YOU, BUT WOULD DISGRACE ANY OTHER MAN."
[187:A] How well has part of this prediction been fulfilled by the people of 1832! May the rest be speedily accomplished!
[188:A] See motion for a new writ for the Borough of St. Mawes, in the room of Francis Horner, esq., deceased.
To a person of Mr. Canning's warmth of temper, such a production was felt most acutely; for he could not, with all his ready eloquence and talent, deny the truth of the writer's charges, or the justness of his severe censure. When men find themselves exposed, without the possibility of making out a good defence by argument, however speciously employed, it is no uncommon thing for them to abuse their accusers, by stigmatizing them with the epithets of "SLANDERER," "LIAR," "COWARD," "DOLT," "IDIOT," and similar opprobrious names, which, however, generally fall harmless on the person to whom they are applied, while they recoil, with ten-fold vigour, on the head of him who disgraces himself and his cause by their adoption. Such was precisely the case with Mr. Canning, as the following letters will testify:
MR. CANNING'S LETTER.
"_Gloucester Lodge, April 10, 1818._
"SIR,--I received early in the last week the copy of your pamphlet, which you (I take for granted) had the attention to send to me.
"Soon after I was informed, on the authority of your publisher, that you had withdrawn the whole impression from him, with a view (as was supposed) of suppressing the publication.
"I since learn, however, that the pamphlet, though not sold, is circulated under blank covers.
"I learn this from (among others) the gentleman to whom the pamphlet has been industriously attributed, but who has voluntarily and absolutely denied to me that he has any knowledge of it or its author.
"To you, sir, whoever you may be, I address myself thus directly, for the purpose of expressing to you my opinion, that,
"You are a liar and a slanderer, and want courage only to be an assassin.
"I have only to add, that no man knows of my writing to you; that I shall maintain the same reserve so long as I have an expectation of hearing from you in your own name; and that I shall not give up that expectation till to-morrow (Saturday) night.
"The same address which brought me your pamphlet will bring any letter safe to my hands.
"I am, sir, your humble servant, (Signed) "GEO. CANNING."
"N.B. Mr. Ridgway is requested to forward this letter to its destination."
THE AUTHOR'S REPLY,
_Addressed to the Editor of the Examiner._
"SIR,--You are requested to insert in your paper the reply of the Right Hon. George Canning to my public remonstrance with that gentleman on the insult he lately dared to offer to the people of England.
"I am agreeably disappointed. After ten days' deliberation, he acknowledges the tribunal, and has determined to plead.
"Whilst his judges are deciding on the merits of his defence, it shall be my care to provide the gentleman with another opportunity of displaying his taste and talents in the protection of his character.
"In the mean time, whilst Mr. Lambton is a 'dolt and an idiot,' I am content to be a 'liar and a slanderer, and an assassin,' according to the same inimitable master of the vulgar tongue.
"I am, sir, your obedient servant, "THE AUTHOR OF THE LETTER TO THE RIGHT HON. G. CANNING."
It was hard indeed for Liberty to have so ready and so ruthless an antagonist as Mr. Canning. This minister was not satisfied with those legitimate and classical weapons he was so well skilled to wield, forgot the days of the "Anti-jacobin," and vociferated against and challenged every one whose pen or voice was raised in opposition to him. Thus, whether squibbing "the Doctor," as Lord Sidmouth was called, fighting my Lord Castlereagh, cutting heartless jokes on poor Mr. Ogden, flatly contradicting Mr. Brougham, swaggering over the Holy Alliance, or quarrelling with the Duke of Wellington, he was in perpetual personal scrapes,--one of the reasons which created for him so much personal interest during the whole of his parliamentary career. No imaginative artist, fresh from reading that career, would sit down to paint him with the broad and deep forehead, the stern, compressed lip, the deeply thoughtful and concentrated air of Napoleon. As little would the idea of his eloquence or ambition call to our recollection the swarth and iron features, the bold and haughty dignity, of Strafford. We cannot fancy in his eye the volumed depth of Richelieu's, the volcanic flash of Mirabeau's, or the offended majesty of Chatham's. We should sketch him from our imagination as we see him identically before us, with a countenance rather marked by intelligence, sentiment, and satire, than meditation, passion, or sternness,--with more of the petulant than the proud, more of the playful than the profound, more of the quick irritability of a lively temperament in its expression, than of the fixed or fiery aspect which belongs to the rarer race of men, whose characters are wrought from the most inflexible and violent materials of human nature. We do not wish to deny that Mr. Canning was an orator, a wit, and a poet. Such talents and accomplishments, however, are not of pre-eminent importance to the situation which he occupied at his death. A premier ought to be the bold opposer of corruption, the solid friend of his sovereign, and the uncompromising champion of the people's rights. He should always remember that the security of the throne arises from the interest which the sovereign possesses in the hearts of his subjects, and that all attempts to stifle their voice, under a sense of grievances, must tend to alienate their affections, and inevitably lead to similar calamities which, in other countries, have been produced by arbitrary and corrupt measures. Whether Mr. Canning was such a statesman, we need only refer to his general vacillating conduct to his superiors in office, and to the return made in 1820, that this gentleman had received from the country, during his public association with government, _two hundred thousand pounds_! Upon the demise of Mr. Canning, a pension was granted, by act of parliament, to the trustees of the family, of three thousand pounds per annum, and his widow, shortly after, created a peeress!
The ensuing motley ministry, headed by Lord Goderich, (late Mr. Robinson) soon exhibited symptoms of its inefficiency to stand against the powerful phalanx of Toryism, then in array to oppose every thing like liberty. The philosopher, however, deeply deploring the many vicissitudes, the varying process, through which Opinion has to pass in order to be refined to Truth, but calmly aware that the sense of a people never ultimately retrogrades, might have observed through the clouds which, at this period, dimmed the political horizon, the sun of Liberty darting forth its smiling beams, and exhibiting signs of a speedy victory over the murky enemies of mankind,--the brighter period, when a more enlarged intelligence would necessarily triumph,--when warlike Tory despotism, founded on a feverish desire to keep the people down by the bayonet, would wear out its own harassed existence, and a system of freedom, sanctioned and confirmed by a long previous disposition of thought, would be realized, and the spirit and letter of that solemn compact, made and ratified between the crown and the people in 1688, be finally restored to the country.
No Englishman, who cherishes in his heart a love of freedom, and who is at all conversant with the history of his country from its earliest era down to the period of the revolution, can be insensible of the acquisitions procured at that eventful period,--of the accumulation of strength gained by the popular branch of the constitution, the limitation to the power of the crown, and the extension of the admitted and declared rights of the people. Before the revolution, we were the slaves of kingly despotism, and the House of Commons itself was as much subservient to the tyranny of the throne as the personal liberty of the subject. We have heard much talk about Magna Charta, and the triumph over John at Runnymede, by the people,--who, by the way, had nothing to do with the struggle, for it was the struggle of the barons and the king, the former of whom in their several domains were as despotic to those beneath them as they felt the tyranny of the king they sought to humble. It was the invasion of their own power and possessions by John that fired their resentment and animated their public spirit, and hence ensued Magna Charta. But, with the exception of the single clause that forbids arbitrary and vexatious imprisonment, it scarcely adds, either in spirit or letter, any thing to the liberties of the people. Not so, however, with the compact as settled at the revolution,--not so with the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement. The prerogative of the crown was by these measures curtailed, and the liberty of the people greatly extended and more clearly defined; the purity of the elective right was provided for, as also the short duration of parliaments, the discretionary power of the crown was prohibited, and standing armies in time of peace declared to be illegal! The pretended right of _suspending_ or of carrying into execution the laws, at the pleasure of the crown, was done away with; the levying of money for the use of the crown, by pretence of _prerogative_, without the consent of parliament, was forbidden; the right of the subject to petition the king was established; all elections of members of parliament were declared ought to be free; excessive bail and excessive fines were declared should neither be required nor enforced, nor cruel punishments inflicted; and for amending, strengthening, and preserving the laws, it was declared that parliaments ought to be held frequently. The further wise provisions and legislative enactments of that period are proofs that the liberties and happiness of the nation were the chief objects contemplated by our ancestors.