VI
There was as much bad taste as impolicy in these attacks; and the long-pending struggle terminated at last in favour of Lord Liverpool, who on June 8, 1812, declared himself Prime Minister. Why did Mr. Canning, who was solicited at the close of the session to join Lord Liverpool’s Administration, decline to do so? Not because he was personally hostile to Lord Liverpool: he was warmly attached to that nobleman; not because the Administration was exclusive, and only admitted those who were hostile to the Catholic Question; for he subsequently says (May 18, 1819): “I speak with perfect confidence when I assert that those who gave their support to the present Ministry on its formation, did so on the understanding that every member of it entered into office with the express stipulation that he should maintain his own opinion in Parliament on the Catholic Question.”
Mr. Stapleton says it was because his friends thought that to the Foreign Office, which he was offered, ought to have been added the lead in the House of Commons, which Lord Liverpool would not withdraw from Lord Castlereagh. But Mr. Canning eventually became a member of the Government whose fate he now declined to share, leaving to Lord Castlereagh the lead in the House of Commons. How, then, are we to account for this difference of conduct at two different epochs?
An explanation may thus be found: During the years 1810 and 1811, our continental policy had still remained unfortunate. True it was that, by the unexpected skill and unexampled energy of our new commander, we gained, during 1811, the possession of Portugal, driving from that country a general who had hitherto been equally conspicuous for his talents and his fortune. But the whole of the Spanish frontier, and the greatest part of Spain itself, was held by the French armies; while the victory of Wagram, the revolution in Sweden, the marriage of Napoleon, the birth of the King of Rome, had greatly added to the weight and apparent stability of the French empire.
Our differences with the United States had also continually increased; and in 1812, war, which had long been impending, was declared and justified in an eloquent and able statement by Mr. Madison.
In the meantime Napoleon, surrounded by that luminous mystery which gave a kind of magic to his actions, was marching in all the pomp of anticipated triumph against the remote and solitary state which alone, on the humbled and subjugated continent, had yet the means and the courage to dispute his edicts and defy his power. Up to the 14th of September, when he entered Moscow, his career was more marvellous, his glory more dazzling than ever.