IX
There will always be a mystery hanging over the transaction to which I have just referred,—a mystery difficult to explain in a manner entirely satisfactory to the character of the King and his minister. One can only presume that the King was willing to let the Union be carried, on the strength of the Premier’s promises, which he did not think it necessary to gainsay until he was asked to carry them into effect; and that the Minister counted upon the important service he would have rendered if the great measure he was bringing forward became law, for the influence that would be necessary to make his promises valid. It cannot be denied that each acted with a certain want of candour towards the other unbecoming their respective positions, and that both behaved unfairly towards Ireland. Mr. Pitt sought to give consistency to his conduct by resigning; but he failed in convincing the public of his sincerity, because he was supposed to have recommended Mr. Addington, then Speaker of the House of Commons, and the son of a Doctor Addington, who had been the King’s physician (to which circumstance the son owed a nickname he could never shake off), as his successor; and Mr. Addington was only remarkable for not being remarkable either for his qualities or for his defects, being just that staid, sober sort of man who, respectable in the chair of the House of Commons, would be almost ridiculous in leading its debates.
Thus an appointment which did not seem serious, perplexed and did not satisfy the public mind; more especially as the seceding minister engaged himself to support the new Premier, notwithstanding their difference of opinion on the very question on which the former had left office. The public did not know then so clearly as it does now that the King, who through his whole life seems to have been on the brink of insanity, was then in a state of mind that rendered madness certain, if the question of the Catholics, on which he had morbid and peculiar notions, was persistingly pressed upon him; and that Mr. Pitt thus, rightly or wrongly, thought it was his duty, after sacrificing office, to stop short of driving the master he had so long served into the gloom of despair. This, however, was a motive that could not be avowed, and consequently every sort of conjecture became current. Was the arrangement made on an understanding with the King, and would Mr. Pitt shortly resume the place he had quitted? Did Mr. Pitt, if there was no such arrangement, really mean to retain so incapable a person as Mr. Addington, at so important a time, at the head of the Government of England, or was his assistance given merely for the moment, with the intention of subsequently withdrawing it?
At first the aid offered to the new Premier by the old one was effective and ostentatious; but a great portion of the Opposition began also to support Mr. Addington, intending in this way to allure him into an independence which, as they imagined, would irritate his haughty friend, and separate the protégé from the patron. The device was successful. The Prime Minister soon began to entertain a high opinion of his own individual importance, Mr. Pitt to feel sore at being treated as a simple official follower of the Government, which he had expected unofficially to command, and ere long he retired almost entirely from Parliament. He did not, however, acknowledge the least desire to return to power.
In this state of things, the conduct of Mr. Canning seemed likely to be the same as Mr. Pitt’s, but it was not so. He did not, even for a moment, affect any disposition to share the partiality which the late First Lord of the Treasury began by testifying for the new one. Sitting in Parliament for a borough for which he had been elected through government influence, his conduct for a moment was fettered; but obtaining, at the earliest opportunity, a new seat (in 1802) by his own means—that is, by his own money—he then went without scruple into the most violent opposition.
His constant efforts to induce Achilles to take up his spear and issue from his tent, are recorded by Lord Malmesbury, and though not wholly disagreeable to his discontented chief, were not always pleasing to him. He liked, no doubt, to be pointed out as the only man who could direct successfully the destinies of England, and enjoyed jokes levelled at the dull gentleman who had become all at once enamoured of his own capacity; but he thought his dashing and indiscreet adherent passed the bounds of good taste and decorum in his attacks, and he disliked being pressed to come forward before he himself felt convinced that the time was ripe for his doing so. Too strong a show of reluctance might, he knew, discourage his friends; too ready an acquiescence compromise his dignity, and give an advantage to his enemies.
He foresaw, indeed, better than any one, all the difficulties that lay in his path. The unwillingness of the Sovereign to exchange a minister with whom he was at his ease, for a minister of whom he always stood in awe; the unbending character of Lord Grenville, with whom he must of necessity associate, if he formed any government that could last, and who, nevertheless, rendered every difficulty in a government more difficult by his uncompromising character, his stately bearing, and his many personal engagements and connections. More than all, perhaps, he felt creeping over him what his friends did not see and would not believe—that premature decrepitude which consigned him, in the prime of life, to the infirmities of age. Thus, though he felt restless at being deprived of the only employment to which he was accustomed, he was not very eager about a prompt reinstatement in it, and preferred waiting until an absolute necessity for his services, and a crisis, on which he always counted, should float him again into Downing Street, over many obstacles against which his bark might otherwise be wrecked.
His real feelings, however, were matter of surmise; many people, not unnaturally, imagined that Mr. Canning represented them; and the energetic partisan, mixing with the world, derived no small importance from his well-known intimacy with the statesman in moody retirement. His marriage, moreover, at this time with Miss Joan Scott, one of the daughters of General Scott, and co-heiress with her sisters, Lady Moray and Lady Titchfield, brought him both wealth and connection, and gave a solidity to his position which it did not previously possess.