“Lord Grey—terrific: it was the vengeance of a life concentrated into one hour; it has shaken the Ministry fearfully.”
“Humph!” said Benson, rising; “I shall go to Brooks’s and hear more.”
“And I too,” said Lord Paul.
A day or two after, Benson in presenting a petition, alluded in terms of high eulogy to the masterly speech made “in another place:” and Lord Paul Plympton said, “it was indeed unequalled.”
That’s what I call handsome. Manly!
Fair!
Disinterested, by Jove!
And Canning died; his gallant soul left the field of politics broken into a thousand petty parties. From the time of his death the two great hosts into which the struggles for power were divided have never recovered their former strength. The demarcation that his policy had tended to efface was afterwards more weakened by his successor, the Duke of Wellington; and had it not been for the question of Reform that again drew the stragglers on either side around one determined banner, it is likely that Whig and Tory would, among the many minute sections and shades of difference, have lost for ever the two broad distinguishing colours of their separate factions.
Mr. Canning died; and now, with redoubled energy, went on the wheels of political intrigue. The rapid succession of short-lived administrations, the leisure of a prolonged peace, the pressure of debt, the writings of philosophers, all, insensibly, yet quickly, excited that popular temperament which found its crisis in the Reform Bill.