should be disappointed of their expectations; but the blame of this disappointment lay with a preceding generation of statesmen, who had been too blind to see the mischief they were doing in tampering with the freedom of marriage; and not with those who were now endeavouring to restore the sanctity and stability of an institution in which the morality of society was still involved. Imprudence and carelessness in contracting marriage are a great evil; but it is less than that of playing fast and loose with an institution whose very virtue resides in its certainty and irreversibleness. Whether a time may come when society may perceive that its moral purity can be better promoted than by connecting the conjugal relation with law and arrangements of property, is a question fairly open to the speculative moralist a proper subject of individual opinion; but it was not the question now. There was no question of the institution itself, but of legal arrangements under it; and the Lords and the country' were united in considering the inviolability of marriage the first consideration in morality, and the fate of certain windfalls of property a very inferior one. So the country did not throw off its' good opinion' of the Upper House within ten days,' as the lord chancellor prophesied, but certainly thought no worse of the Lords for the large majority with which they passed the new Marriage Act of 1822.

When the session closed, on the 6th of August, the king and the legislature dispersed, to take their rest and pleasure in various ways. On the 10th, the king set off down the Thames, in great pomp, on his way to Scotland. Lord Londonderry hastened to his seat at Foot's Cray, to prepare for his mission to the Congress of Verona in October, where he was to represent England. His passage thither was sure to be attended by the curses of all the lovers of freedom along the road, and by the groans of all the secret societies over which he was to ride rough-shod, to be welcomed at the end of his journey by the sympathies of all the despots in Europe. He probably knew this. He knew that the continent was honeycombed with these secret societies; and confident as he was of his motivesimperturbable as he was in his opinions-the consciousness of the hatred that would dog his steps may have

tended to disturb his nerves, and to perplex his brain. He had been overwearied with the fatigues of the session; and he had astonished and grieved his friends of late by extraordinary tales of conspiracies against his private character-of waylayings in the parks, and threats in the street against his purse, his reputation, and his life. He repaired to his country-seat, to refresh himself by rest and change of ideas, while some of his colleagues went to Scotland in attendance upon the king. Mr. Canning meantime was gone to Liverpool, to bid farewell to his constituents before embarking for India. There, while he looked abroad upon the sea from his window at Seaforth House, he had awful news to ponder-news which met the king on his landing at Leith-news which struck the despots of Europe aghast upon their thrones-news which was hailed with clasped hands and glistening eyes by aliens in many a provincial town in England, and with imprudent shouts by conclaves of patriots abroad.

6

'I have this moment heard from Liverpool,' writes the king to his chancellor, of the melancholy death of his and my dear friend, poor Londonderry.' 'Poor Londonderry' had destroyed himself. 'In common with everybody,' writes the chancellor, 'I am oppressed and much affected by the loss of the Marquis of Londonderry.' Everybody was much affected;' but everybody was not 'oppressed.' The relief to a multitude was so extraordinary and portentous, that little children who carried the news, as children love to carry wonderful news, without knowing what it means, were astonished at the effect of their tidings, and saw, by the clasped hands and glistening eyes of aliens in English towns, that there was a meaning in the tidings beyond their comprehension. There are some now, who in mature years, cannot remember without emotion what they saw and heard that day. They could not know how the calamity of one man-a man amiable, winning, and generous, in the walk of his daily life-could penetrate the recesses of a world, not as a calamity, but as a ray of hope in the midst of thickest darkness. This man was the screw by which England had riveted the chains of nations. The screw was drawn, and the immovable despotism might now be overthrown. It was not only the

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sufferers who thought so. My great object,' continues the king to his chancellor-'my great object, my good friend, in writing to you to-night, is to tell you that I have written to Liverpool, and I do implore of you not to lend yourself to any arrangement whatever, until my return to town. This, indeed, is Lord Liverpool's own proposal; and, as you may suppose, I have joined most cordially in the proposition. It will require the most prudent foresight on my part relative to the new arrangements that must now necessarily take place. You may easily judge of the state of my mind.'

Others could judge of the state of the king's mind, nearly as well as the chancellor. He was afraid of having to accept Canning as a minister. While the crowd at Westminster Abbey greeted the removal of Lord Londonderry's coffin from the hearse with 'a shout which echoed loudly through every corner of the Abbey,' Mr. Canning was received with acclamations in the streets of Liverpool, and at a festival to which five hundred gentlemen sat down.' They had a persuasion that they should not lose him now. They could not be sure of this; for, as he told them, he did not himself know what to expect. I know as little,' he said, 'as any man that now listens to me, of any arrangements likely to grow out of the present state of things.' But every one was aware, and no one more than the king, that Mr. Canning was the only man equal to the post which was vacant, and that he must now fill it. It was a sore necessity; but circumstances were too strong for the royal and ministerial will. Yet 'it was not till the 8th of September that Lord Liverpool requested to see Mr. Canning. An interview took place on the 11th, when the foreign office was offered to him by the premier, and accepted after a struggle.' There was much of struggle in the business: struggle in the mind of the king and future colleagues who feared and disliked him; and no little struggle to him who well knew that he was entering on a career where he would ever find opposition in his front, and hatred by his side. What the struggle was to cost him was shown on a day too near for the interests of the world. But he was full of chivalrous courage; and he entered manfully on his task of liberating nations.

On the 17th of September, the Duke of Wellington set out for Verona, to attend the congress where Lord Londonderry had been expected; and Lord Amherst went to India in the place of Mr. Canning. Thus, while man had proposed, did God dispose; and the destinies of the world were thereby changed, beyond human calculation.

CHAPTER V.

Policy of Castlereagh-The Princes and Peoples of Europe-Revolutions Abroad-Policy of Canning-Congress of Verona-French Invasion of Spain-Overthrow of Spanish Revolution-South American Provinces-Appeal from Portugal-New Era of Conflict -Deaths of Potentates-Affairs of Greece-Algiers-Ashantee War-Burmese War-Oregon-Aliens.

THERE was abundant reason for the rejoicing which spread through the world on the death of Lord Londonderry; and the shout which rang through the Abbey when his coffin was taken from the hearse was natural enough, though neither decent nor humane. When a man's acts have proved him an enemy to his race, his race will not desire that he should live to continue those acts; and the case is not altered by any evidence that that man's eulogists can bring that he meant no harm; that he meant some kind of good; and that he was admired and beloved in private for certain qualities of his character. All these things may be true; as indeed they are likely to be; for the cases are rare in which men do deliberately mean harm, and propose to themselves to do things for the purpose of injuring others. The tyrant no more says to himself: Now I will oppress my people, and make them miserable,' than the liar proposes to himself: 'Now I will tell a lie;' or the sot: Now I will get drunk.' In all these cases the sin is done through a wrong habit of mind. It comes out of narrow views and selfish propensities; and not out of an express intention to do harm. The despots of Europe were not the less tyrants because they sincerely

proposed to themselves in their congress to make their alliance a mirror of the gospel, and to promote peace on earth by means which could not but drive men at one another's throats, and make the very name of a religious sanction ridiculous. The simple truth was that they did not understand the gospel they invoked, and were ignorant of the relation they held to their people. If the issue of their counsels was that the many were made miserable, it is natural enough that the many should rejoice at the withdrawal of the chief-counsellor. It was as natural that a shout should be raised in Europe, and echoed from the Andes, on the death of Londonderry, as that a groan should force its way, and tremble through the ocean to the shores of the New World, when, too soon after, Canning also disappeared from the council-board of nations.

Lord Londonderry may be called the chief-counsellor, because England certainly had the determining power as to the principles and grounds on which the policy of Europe was to proceed. If a true Englishman had been present, who would have taken for granted such things as are usually taken for granted in England, and wherever a representative system early impresses statesmen with a sense of the value of men and their welfare, the parcelling out of Europe could hardly have gone on as audaciously as it did in the first instance, or the government of nations by a cabinet of sovereigns through subsequent years. But Lord Londonderry had a mind too narrow to comprehend the constitution of the country he helped to govern, and by far too shallow to admit in its greatness the idea of the new era of peace on which the world had entered. He could not rouse or elevate the minds of the potentates who surrounded him, as England might and should have roused and elevated, at that juncture, from her disinterestedness, the better impulses of Europe. He entered for amusement, as it were, into the game which others were playing for stakes. He joined with others in fixing the boundaries of Europe, as men lay out an estate. As proprietors point out the convenience of a brook here— a rising-ground or a wood there—and consider, in their own way, the welfare of the resident serfs, this party of