XVII
During the eventful years over which this narrative has been rapidly gliding, the Heiress to the crown, who had already possessed herself of the affections of the British people, had expired (it was in Nov. 1817); and in 1820, as the Ministers, fatigued by their laborious efforts to excite alarm, began to allow the nation to recover its tranquillity, George III. (two years after his young and blooming grandchild) died also. The new King’s hatred, and Queen Caroline’s temper, rendering a more decent and moderate course impossible, occasioned the unhappy trial which scandalized Europe.
Nor was the question at issue merely a question involving the Queen’s innocence or guilt. The people, comparatively calm, as well on account of the recent improvement in trade, as in consequence of the cessation of that system of conspiracy-making or finding, which had so long kept them in a state of harassed irritation, were still for the main part thoroughly disgusted with the exhibition of fear, feebleness, and violence which, under the name of Lord Liverpool, and through the influence of Lord Castlereagh, had for the last three years been displayed. They detested the ministers of the Crown, and they were alienated from the Crown itself, which had been perpetually arrayed against them in prosecutions and almost as often stigmatised by defeat.
It was thus that Queen Caroline appeared as a new victim—as another person to be illegally assailed by the forms of law, and unjustly dealt with in the name of justice. Besides, she was a woman, and the daughter of a Royal house, and the mother of that ill-fated princess, whose early death the nation still deeply mourned. The people, then, took up her cause as their own, and rallied at once round a new banner against their old enemies.
On the other hand, the Government, urged by the wounded pride and uncontrollable anger of the Sovereign, consented to bring the unfortunate lady he denounced before a public tribunal, and were thus committed to a desperate career, of which it was impossible to predict the result.
Mr. Canning had long been the unhappy Queen’s intimate friend; but in adopting her cause, he must, as we have been showing, have adopted her party—the party of discontent, the party of reform—a party against which he had, during the last few years, been fiercely struggling. Here, as far as the public can judge from the information before it, lies the only excuse or explanation of his conduct; for it was hardly sufficient to retire (as he did) from any share in the proceedings against a friend and a woman, in whose innocence he said that he believed, when her honour and life were assailed by the most powerful adversaries, and by charges of the most degrading character.
He refused, it is true, to be her active accuser; but neither was he her active defender. He remained silent at home or stayed abroad during the time of the prosecution, and resigned office when, that prosecution being dropped, the Cabinet had to justify its proceedings.
The following letter to a constituent contains the account he thought it necessary to give of his conduct:
“Tuddenham, Norfolk, Dec. 22, 1820.
“My dear Sir,
“I left town on Wednesday, a few minutes after I had written to you, not thinking I should be quite so soon set at liberty to make you the communication promised in my letter of that morning. I had hitherto forborne to make the communication, in order that I might not in any way embarrass others by a premature disclosure; and I sincerely expected in return due notice of the time when it might suit them that the disclosure should be made. I have no doubt that the omission of such notice has been a mere oversight. I regret it only as it has prevented me from anticipating with you, and the rest of my friends at Liverpool, the announcement in a newspaper of an event in which I know your kind partiality will induce you to feel a lively interest. The facts stated in the Courier of Wednesday evening, are stated in substance correctly. I have resigned my office. My motive for separating myself from the Government (however reluctantly at a conjuncture like the present) is to be found solely in the proceedings and pending discussions respecting the Queen. There is (as the Courier justly assumes) but this one point of difference between my colleagues and myself. Those who may have done me the honour to observe my conduct in this unhappy affair from the beginning, will recollect that on the first occasion on which it was brought forward in the House of Commons, I declared my determination to take as little part as possible in any subsequent stage of the proceedings. The declaration was made advisedly. It was made, not only after full communication with my colleagues, but as an alternative suggested on their part for my then retirement from the Administration. So long as there was a hope of amicable adjustment, my continuance in the Administration might possibly be advantageous; that hope was finally extinguished by the failure of Mr. Wilberforce’s address. On the same day on which the Queen’s answer to that address was received by the House of Commons, I asked an audience of the King, and at that audience (which I obtained the following day) after respectfully repeating to his Majesty the declaration which I had made a fortnight before in the House of Commons, and stating the impossibility of my departing from it, I felt it my duty humbly to lay at his Majesty’s feet the tender of my resignation. The King, with a generosity which I can never sufficiently acknowledge, commanded me to remain in his service, abstaining as completely as I might think fit from any share in the proceedings respecting the Queen, and gave me full authority to plead his Majesty’s express command for so continuing in office. No occasion subsequently occurred in Parliament (at least no adequate occasion) for availing myself of the use of this authority, and I should have thought myself inexcusable in seeking an occasion for the purpose; but from the moment of my receiving his Majesty’s gracious commands, I abstained entirely from all interference on the subject of the Queen’s affairs. I did not attend any meetings of the Cabinet upon that subject; I had no share whatever in preparing or approving the Bill of Pains and Penalties. I was (as you know) absent from England during the whole progress of the bill, and returned only after it had been withdrawn.
“The new state in which I found the proceedings upon my return to England, required the most serious consideration; it was one to which I could not conceive the King’s command in June to be applicable. For a minister to absent himself altogether from the expected discussions in the House of Commons, intermixed as they were likely to be with the general business of the session, appeared to me to be quite impossible. To be present as a minister, taking no part in these discussions, could only be productive of embarrassment to myself, and of perplexity to my colleagues; to take any part in them was now, as always, out of the question.
“From these difficulties I saw no remedy except in the humble but earnest renewal to my Sovereign of the tender of my resignation, which has been as graciously accepted, as it was in the former instance indulgently declined.
“If some weeks have elapsed since my return to England, before I could arrive at this practical result, the interval has been chiefly employed in reconciling, or endeavouring to reconcile, my colleagues to a step taken by me in a spirit of the most perfect amity, and tending (in my judgment) as much to their relief as to my own.
“It remains for me only to add that having purchased, by the surrender of my office, the liberty of continuing to act in consistency with my original declaration, it is now my intention (but an intention perfectly gratuitous, and one which I hold myself completely free to vary, if I shall at any time see occasion for so doing) to be absent from England again until the agitation of this calamitous affair shall be at an end.
“I am, Sir, &c.,
“George Canning.”
Thus in the years 1821-22, Mr. Canning took little part in the business of the House of Commons, residing occasionally near Bordeaux or in Paris.
He came to England, however, to speak on Mr. Plunkett’s motion for a committee to consider the Catholic claims (February 28, 1821), and in 1822 also he made two memorable speeches—one on Lord John Russell’s motion for Parliamentary Reform, and another in support of his own proposition to admit Catholic peers into the House of Lords.
These last speeches were made in the expectancy of his speedy departure from England; the Directors of the East India Company, in testimony of their appreciation of the zeal and intelligence with which he had discharged his duties as President of the Board of Control, having selected him as Governor-General of India, a situation which he had accepted.