Part 40 (2/2)

I hope your sailing has done you a great deal of good, and that I shall have the pleasure of hearing you are quite re-established.

Ever most truly yours,

W. H. F.

THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES W. WYNN TO THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

East India Board, July 26, 1822.

MY DEAR B----,

It was yesterday determined that Lord Londonderry should attend the Congress at Vienna, upon which subject _strict secrecy_ was recommended; but it was observed that it had on Tuesday night been communicated by Lord Francis Conyngham to all the ladies at the opera-house.

We have accounts of the Prince Royal of Portugal having been addressed to take on him the t.i.tle of Perpetual Regent of Brazil, to which he graciously consents, provided it shall appear to be the will of the people. The probable consequence will be his exclusion from the throne of Portugal, which there has been already a strong disposition to p.r.o.nounce.

The Cortes of Spain, though in possession of full evidence of the King and French Minister's share in the late attempt of the Guards to effect a counter-revolution, and even of his having placed each of his Ministers in separate confinement during the whole of the night of the attack, seem to think the time not yet ripe to get rid of him, and therefore conceal everything. If they are obliged to dispose of him before the country will allow them to proclaim a republic, they are many of them disposed to propose a union of the Peninsula under the King of Portugal, as the most inefficient shadow of royalty that can be set up.

Bobus Smith the other night proposed a caricature of a private conference between Hume and Vansittart as a dialogue of penny-wise and pound-foolish.

I see no reason to doubt Canning's going to India. His writ will, I believe, be moved the last day of the session, and as the K---- is going for Scotland immediately afterwards, there will be no room left for intrigue to avert it. The Duke of Wellington is the only one who has appeared to me at all sensible of the loss we shall experience in him, and he speaks of him as being nearly useless out of the walls of the House.

The town was startled in the month of August by a terrible incident.

The Marquis of Londonderry, on the 12th of the month, terminated his existence by his own hand, at one of his residences, North Cray Farm, near Bexley, Kent, in the fifty-third year of his age. The elevated position he had filled for many years in the Government of this great empire, had made him a prominent mark for the malicious shafts of those who had, or fancied they had, an interest in opposing his policy.

During his long and most honourable career, no statesman had accomplished such a series of important services. The Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland, had it been suffered to bear the fruit which only came to perfection thirty years later, was a measure of such vital importance to the State, that its successful settlement under the extraordinary circ.u.mstances which attended its discussion, ent.i.tled him to rank with the ablest ministers of his time; but eminently sagacious and beneficial as was this measure, it was thrown into the shade by the success of subsequent calculations of Lord Castlereagh, first as Secretary-at-War, and then as Foreign Secretary, which effected the overthrow of that brilliant genius by whom his country had so long been menaced. These services appear to have called into existence hosts of political enemies, imbued with the vindictive spirit that prevailed at this period, from whose attacks he was rarely free. They included in their ranks many of a younger generation of adventurers--quite as depreciatory in their opinions, if not as malicious--who regarded his downfall as affording an opening in the direction of place and power.

Nothing could exceed the manliness of his bearing in the unequal conflict in which every session he found himself engaged, unless it is to be looked for in the inexhaustible amiability that characterized his relations with the most implacable of his foes. It is, however, evident that as his health began to fail from the long course of exhausting labours which his office imposed upon him, he became more sensitive to such provocations, and though he carefully concealed it from outward view, an increasing irritability affected his whole nervous system.

The melancholy result, though unfortunately too easily explained, excited reports as ingenious as malevolent, to account for its suddenness, but like the injustice to his memory he has received from rivals or successors, who sought to raise a reputation by advocating an adverse policy, they had but a brief existence. As a statesman, as a gentleman, as a man, the Marquis of Londonderry was the Bayard of political chivalry, _sans peur et sans reproche_, and it reflects no slight disgrace on this monument-rearing age, that neither in the land of his nativity nor in that of his adoption has any memorial been raised worthy of his fame.

The characters of few public men have been so unfairly treated; his political opponents, numbering among them many writers of great ability and influence, have allowed their judgments to be warped by party animosity, and have descended to misrepresentation to an extent truly pitiable. Thus his countrymen have received impressions of his policy and administrative capacity during his long and arduous career, totally at variance with the truth.[88] One writer of eminence has, however, recently stepped forward to uphold his fame with emphatic earnestness, and we make no apology for inserting here his estimate of this distinguished and much-maligned statesman:

[88] His best advocate will be found in ”The Castlereagh Despatches,” in twelve volumes, edited by his brother, the late Marquis.

”His whole life was a continual struggle with the majority of his own or foreign lands: he combated to subdue or to bless them. He began his career by strenuous efforts to effect the Irish Union, and rescue his native country from the incapable Legislature by which its energies had so long been repressed. His mature strength was exerted in a long and desperate conflict with the despotism of revolutionary France, which his firmness as much as the arm of Wellington brought to a triumphant issue; his latter days in a ceaseless conflict with the revolutionary spirit in his own country, and an anxious effort to uphold the dignity of Great Britain and the independence of lesser States abroad. The uncompromising antagonist of Radicalism at home, he was at the same time the resolute opponent of despotism abroad. If Poland retained after the overthrow of Napoleon any remnant of nationality, it was owing to his persevering and almost unaided efforts, and at the very time when the savage wretches who raised a shout at his funeral were rejoicing at his death, he had been preparing to a.s.sert at Verona, as he had done to the Congresses of Laybach and Troppau, the independent action of Great Britain, and her non-accordance in the policy of the Continental sovereigns against the efforts of human freedom.

”His policy in domestic affairs was marked by the same far-seeing wisdom, the same intrepid resistance to the blindness of present clamour. He made the most strenuous efforts to uphold the Sinking Fund--that n.o.ble monument of Mr. Pitt's patriotic foresight; had those efforts been successful, the whole National Debt would have been paid off by the year 1845, and the nation _for ever_ have been freed from the payment of thirty millions a-year for its interest. He resisted with a firm hand, and at the expense of present popularity with the mult.i.tude, the efforts of faction during the seven trying years which followed the close of the war, and bequeathed the const.i.tution, after a season of peculiar danger, unshaken to his successors. The firm friend of freedom, he was on that very account the resolute opponent of democracy, the insidious enemy which, under the guise of a friend, has in every age blasted its progress and destroyed its substance.

Discerning the princ.i.p.al cause of the distress which had occasioned these convulsions, his last act was one that bequeathed to his country a currency adequate to its necessities, and which he alone of his Cabinet had the honesty to admit was a departure from former error.

Elegant and courteous in his manners, with a n.o.ble figure and finely chiselled countenance, he was beloved in his family circle and by all his friends, not less than respected by the wide circle of sovereigns and statesmen with whom he had so worthily upheld the honour and dignity of England.”[89]

[89] Alison's ”History of Europe,” vol. ii. p. 526.

Lord Londonderry's colleagues entertained a similar opinion:--”Our own country and Europe,” writes one of the most sagacious of them, ”have suffered a loss, in my opinion irreparable. I had a great affection for him, and he deserved it from me, for to me he showed an uniform kindness, of which no other colleague's conduct furnished an example.”[90]

[90] Twiss's ”Life of Lord Eldon,” vol. ii. p. 73.

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