Mr. Perceval, Prime Minister.—Lord Wellesley, Minister of Foreign Affairs.—King’s health necessitates regency.—The line taken by Mr. Canning upon it.—Conduct with respect to Mr. Horner’s Finance Committee.—Absurd resolution of Mr. Vansittart.—Lord Wellesley quits the Ministry.—Mr. Perceval is assassinated.—Mr. Canning and Lord Wellesley charged to form a new Cabinet, and fail.—Further negotiations with Lords Grey and Grenville fail.—Lord Liverpool becomes head of an Administration which Mr. Canning declines to join.—Accepts subsequently embassy to Lisbon, and, in 1816, enters the Ministry.—Supports coercive and restrictive measures.—Resigns office at home after the Queen’s trial, and accepts the Governor-Generalship of India.
I.
A new Administration brought Lord Wellesley to the Foreign Office, and Mr. Perceval to the head of affairs.
In 1810 the state of the King’s health came once more before the public. Parliament met in November; the Sovereign was this time admitted by his courtiers to be unmistakedly insane. A commission had been appointed, but there was no speech with which to address the Houses; no authority to prorogue them. Mr. Perceval moved certain resolutions. These resolutions were important, for they furnished a text for debate, and settled the question so much disputed in 1788-9, deciding (for no one was found to take up the old and unpopular arguments of Mr. Fox) that Parliament had the disposal of the Regency; and that the Heir-apparent, without the sanction of the Legislature, had no more right to it than any other individual. These first resolutions were followed by others, expressive of a determination to confer the powers of the Crown on the Prince of Wales, but not without restrictions. Here arose a new question, and of this question Mr. Canning availed himself. Interest and consistency alike demanded that he should stand fast to the traditions of Mr. Pitt, whose name was still the watchword of a considerable party. But Mr. Pitt had alike contended for the right of Parliament to name the Regent, and for the wisdom of fettering the Regency by limitations. Whereas Mr. Canning, though advocating the powers of Parliament to name the Regent, was not in favour of limiting the Regent’s authority. Through these confronting rocks the wary statesman steered with the skill of a veteran pilot:[116]
“The rights of the two Houses,” said he, “were proclaimed and maintained by Mr. Pitt; that is the point on which his authority is truly valuable. The principles upon which this right was affirmed and exercised are true for all times and all occasions. If they were the principles of the Constitution in 1788, they are equally so in 1811; the lapse of twenty-two years had not impaired, the lapse of centuries could not impair them. But the mode in which the right so asserted should be exercised, the precise provisions to be framed for the temporary substitution of the executive power—these were necessarily then, as they must be now, matters not of eternal and invariable principle, but of prudence and expediency. In regard to these, therefore, the authority of the opinion of any individual, however great and wise and venerable, can be taken only with reference to the circumstances of the time in which he has to act, and are not to be applied without change or modification to other times and circumstances.”[117]
II.
Thus, all that partisanship could demand in favour of an abstract principle, was religiously accorded to the manes of the defunct statesman; and a difference as wide as the living Prince of Wales could desire, established between the theory that no one any longer disputed, and the policy which was the present subject of contention. Here Mr. Canning acted with tact and foresight if he merely acted as a political schemer. The Royal personage on whom power was about to devolve had always expressed the strongest dislike, not to say disgust, at any abridgment of the Regal authority. He was likely to form a new Administration. The Whigs, it is true, were then considered the probable successors to power; but the Whigs would want assistance; and subsequent events showed that a general feeling had begun to prevail in favour of some new combination of men less exclusive than could be found in the ranks of either of the extreme and opposing parties. But it is fair to add that the course which Mr. Canning might have taken for his private interest, he had every motive to take for the public welfare.
Beyond the personal argument of the sick King’s convenience—an argument which should hardly guide the policy or affect the destinies of a mighty kingdom—Mr. Perceval had not, for the restrictions he proposed, one reasonable pretext. It might, indeed, be agreeable to George III., if he recovered from his sad condition, to find things and persons as he had left them; and to recognise that all the functions of Government had been palsied since the suspension of his own power. But if ever the hands of a sovereign required to be strongly armed, it was most assuredly in those times. They were no times of ease or peace in which a civilized people may be said to govern themselves; neither were we merely at war. The war we were waging was of life or death; the enemy with whom we were contending concentrated in his own mind, and wielded with his own hand, all the force of Europe. This was not a moment for enfeebling the Government that had to contend against him. The power given to the King or Regent in our country is not, let it be remembered, an individual and irresponsible power. It is a National power devolving on responsible Ministers, who have to account to the nation for the use they make of it.
“What,” said Mr. Canning (having assumed and asserted the right of the two Houses of Parliament to supply the incapacity of the sovereign)—“what is the nature of the business which through incapacity stands still, and which we are to find the means of carrying on? It is the business of a mighty state. It consists in the exercise o£ functions as large as the mind can conceive—in the regulation and direction of the affairs of a great, a free, and a powerful people: in the care of their internal security and external interests; in the conduct, of foreign negotiations; in the decision of the vital questions of peace and war; and in the administration of the Government throughout all the parts, provinces, and dependencies of an empire extending itself into every quarter of the globe. This is the awful office of a king; the temporary execution of which we are now about to devolve upon the Regent. What is it, considering the irresponsibility of the Sovereign as an essential part of the Constitution,—what is it that affords a security to the people for the faithful exercise of these all-important functions? The responsibility of Ministers. What are the means by which these functions operate? They are those which, according to the inherent imperfection of human nature, have at all times been the only motives to human actions, the only control upon them of certain and permanent operation, viz., the punishment of evil, and the reward of merit. Such, then, being the functions of monarchical government, and such being the means of rendering them efficient to the purposes of good government, are we to be told that in providing for its delegation, while it is not possible to curtail those powers which are in their nature harsh and unpopular, it is necessary to abridge those milder, more amiable and endearing prerogatives which bear an aspect of grace and favour towards the subject?”