CHAPTER XIV
The advocates of Catholic Emancipation could not be expected to be content with mere social pleasures, and the ministry decided to try a diplomat in the difficult post. The duke having resigned in 1813, Lord Whitworth, an experienced diplomatist and a strong anti-Catholic, took his place. The duke and duchess, after their experience of Brussels and Waterloo, consented to govern British North America, as Canada was then termed, and in 1819 the duke died of hydrophobia in the town of Richmond.
Students of Napoleonic history will be able to recall the early career of the man chosen to foil the attempts of the popular party to force their policy of Catholic Emancipation on the Government. Whitworth, who had been born without a title or great wealth, was a self-made man as far as it was possible for one who owed his opportunities to the generosity of well-disposed patrons. He was first a soldier, and then, through the influence of the Duke of Dorset, a diplomat, representing England in Poland, Russia, and France. As Ambassador in Paris he came into contact with Napoleon, and it was Whitworth who demanded his passports from the Corsican when the Peace of Amiens was broken and all Europe plunged into war.
Lord Whitworth was a man who took advantage of his opportunities, and from 1785 to 1803 fortune was very kind to him, but following his sudden withdrawal from Paris he seemed to lose his powers, and for ten years he chafed in obscurity. In 1801 he had married the widow of his first great patron, and the Duchess of Dorset, a woman whose egotism was matched by her greed, brought him a large fortune and some influence. This was increased by the marriage of her mother to Lord Liverpool, and when that nobleman had been at the head of the Government for about a year he succumbed to the importunities of his ambitious stepdaughter and appointed her husband to succeed the Duke of Richmond.
The haughty duchess
To a woman of the temperament that distinguished the Duchess of Dorset the acme of human bliss was the impersonation of royalty. She revelled in the rites attendant upon the state the viceroy maintained, and as the haughty duchess she was known throughout the country. Lord Whitworth, past sixty and somewhat bored, was a tool in the hands of his wife, who never forgot the fact that he was her late husband's protégé and, therefore, to some extent hers also. She personally supervised the list of those who had the entrée to the Castle, and her censorship of her predecessor's list caused a vast amount of ill-feeling. Wives of respectable professional men found themselves relegated to the position occupied by their prototypes fifty years before, while the intrepid duchess even attacked those who had married into plebeian families, and, therefore, forfeited her regard. It was due to her efforts that her relative, Lord Liverpool, conferred an earldom on Whitworth, though she retained her ducal title throughout her life.
The viceregal pair were not unpopular, but Whitworth was scarcely the man to understand Irish affairs. To a large extent the ruler of the country was Sir Robert Peel, the chief Secretary until 1818. The Duchess of Dorset did not always approve of Peel, but, recognizing that he saved her husband a considerable amount of work, she delegated the task of maintaining the usual official correspondence with the ministry in London to him. Peel was a strong—soon to become the strongest—opponent of the Catholic claims. The viceroy was of the same opinion on this important matter, and, backed by an enormous English army, they defied public opinion.
