Liverpool's disappearance from the political scenes may be said to mark an epoch in the later history of England. Though only fifty-six years of age, he had been continuously in office for twenty years, and prime minister for fifteen, a tenure of power which none of his predecessors had exceeded except Walpole and Pitt. His lot was cast in the most critical period of the great war, and in the long night of adversity and anxiety which ushered in the "thirty years' peace". As foreign secretary he conducted the negotiations for the peace of Amiens; as home secretary he led the house of lords and was responsible for the government of Ireland; as secretary for war and the colonies he gave Wellington a steady, if not ardent, support in those apparently barren campaigns which strained the national patience; as prime minister he guided the ship of state in all the difficulties of foreign and domestic affairs which arose between 1812 and 1827. Castlereagh may have been the most influential minister in the earlier years of his administration, and Canning in the later, but he was never the mere tool of either; on the contrary, it Is certain that he was treated with respect and deference by all his numerous colleagues. In general capacity and debating power he was inferior to few of them; in temper, judgment, and experience he was superior to all.
He may be said to have lived and died without "a policy," in so far as he forebore to identify himself with any of the great questions then pressing for solution. His real policy both at home and abroad was one of moderation and conciliation; he looked at party divisions almost with the eyes of a permanent official who can work loyally with chiefs of either party; and he succeeded in keeping together in his cabinet ambitious rivals who never would have co-operated under any other leader. This is not the road to fame, neither is it the course which men of imperious character like Castlereagh, or Canning, or Wellington, in his place, would have adopted. But Canning and Wellington actually proved themselves incapable of winning the confidence which Liverpool so long retained, and the whig government which followed them fell to pieces in two years. Moderation in statesmanship does not always imply mediocrity of ability; and if Liverpool failed to see how many institutions needed radical amendment, he was not so blind as some of his more celebrated associates. Not only was he more liberal in his views than Eldon and Castlereagh, but he was less opposed to free trade than most of his cabinet, to parliamentary reform than Canning, and to catholic emancipation than Wellington or Peel. His fault was that he did not act upon his own inward convictions with sufficient promptitude, or assert his own authority with sufficient energy. Had he done so, the beneficial measures of the last years of his administration might have been anticipated, and the country might have been spared much of the misery which darkened the close of George III.'s reign.
FOOTNOTES:
[68] Lord Londonderry in Twiss, Life of Eldon, ii., 432.
[69] Harriet Martineau, History of England During the Thirty Years' Peace, i., 274.
[70] Letters to Copleston, p. 295.
[71] Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times (edit. 1903), pp. 756-59. Compare Dicey, Law and Opinion in England, pp. 190-200.
[72] The graphic description of this crisis in Harriet Martineau's History of the Thirty Years' Peace, i., 355-66, deserves to be studied and remembered as a masterpiece of social portraiture by a contemporary.
[73] Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times, p. 823.
[74] Walpole's History of England, vol. ii., p. 187.