XI
The vessel of the state in these sudden squalls requires that those at the helm should govern it with a calm heart and a steady hand. Anger and fear are equally to be avoided, for they lead equally to violent measures, and the excitement of one party only feeds the excitement of the other.
Lord Castlereagh, the leading spirit at this time in the Cabinet, vapid and incorrect as an orator, inefficient as an administrator, was still, as I have elsewhere said, not without qualities as a statesman—for he was cool and he was courageous; and, therefore, if we now see him acting as if under the influence of the most slavish apprehension, we must look for some reasonable motive for his appearing to entertain fears which he could not have really felt.
Now, the fact is, that he had but two things to do—to satisfy the discontented as aggrieved, or to rally the majority of the country against them as disaffected. The first policy would not keep his party in power; the second, therefore, was the one he preferred. The terrors of the timid were to be awakened; the passions of the haughty were to be aroused; the designs of the malcontents were to be darkened—their strength increased—in short, to save the Ministry, it was essential that the State should be declared in danger. This is an old course; it has been tried often: it was tried now.
Thus Government opened the Session of 1817 with a “green bag.” This bag, a true Pandora’s box, contained threats of every mischief—assassination, incendiarism, insurrection, in their most formidable and infuriated shapes. One conspiracy, indeed, was a model that deserves to be set apart for the use of future conspirators or—statesmen. It comprehended the storming of the Bank and the Tower, the firing the different barracks, the overthrow of everybody and everything, even the great and massive bridges which cross the Thames, and which were to be blown up as a matter of course; but the traitors were pious and brave men, relying almost wholly on Providence and their courage, so that only two hundred and fifty pikes and some powder in an old stocking had been provided to secure the success of their undertaking.