Addington resigns.—Suicide of Castlereagh.
The abortive bill against the queen had added the last straw to the unpopularity of the ministry—the best-hated cabinet that England has ever known. They felt the fact themselves: Addington resigned in 1821, and Castlereagh, the most harsh and unbending of them all, was so worn out by the stress of his responsibilities and the knowledge of the detestation in which he was held, that he cut his own throat in a fit of temporary insanity in September, 1822.
The Liverpool-Canning Ministry.
Lord Liverpool was helpless when deprived of the two men who had been the chief instigators of his reactionary measures. Abandoning his old policy, he took into partnership George Canning, the chief of the moderate Tories and the wisest disciple of Pitt. Canning took Castlereagh's place as Foreign Secretary, while Addington's place as Home Secretary was given to Robert Peel, a rising young politician with a turn for political economy and an open mind—a very different person from his case-hardened predecessor in the post. Shortly after, Huskisson, the first Free-Trader who had presided over our commercial policy since the younger Pitt, was made President of the Board of Trade.
Social tranquillity restored.
Thus the character of the Liverpool cabinet was completely changed, and for the last four years of its existence it dropped its old repressive measures, and became quite liberal in its legislation. The country at once began to grow quiet, and the old riots and risings ceased. The gradual growth of prosperity in the land, now that the effects of the great war were passing away, alleviated the violence of the social discontent. But there was a sense of impending change; the immediate domestic question was the removal of religious disabilities, but beyond this lay the questions of parliamentary and municipal reform, of freedom of trade, of simplifying law and legal procedure, and especially of humanizing the criminal law. Strange to say, the treatment of the Catholic claims to be represented in Parliament was regarded as an open question in Lord Liverpool's cabinet. Canning was in favour of the admission of the Catholics. Peel was their strenuous opponent.
Reform of the criminal law.
The rule of the Liverpool-Canning ministry was distinguished by the abolition of many old and oppressive laws, and the introduction of several reforms of great value. In 1823 Peel began the reform of the criminal law, and the reduction of that tangled mass, with its ghastly list of capital offences, to a shape more consistent with scientific order and common humanity. The old system, a monstrous survival from the Middle Ages, had worked very badly—for juries refused to convict persons who were clearly guilty, because they thought the offence did not deserve the fearful penalty of death. The abolition of capital punishment for so many minor offences put an end to this state of things, and in future the proportion of criminals escaping was marvellously reduced.
Huskisson's Free Trade policy.