After this triumphant course of political life, with every gift of fortune around him, and perhaps the still higher consciousness of having achieved a historic name, how can we account for the closing of such a career in suicide?
The only probable cause was the intolerable burden of public business, by his having in charge the chief weight of the home department as well as the foreign. His leadership of the House of Commons was enough to have worn him out. Canning once said—"that no vigour of mind or body can stand the wear and tear of a minister, above ten years." Castlereagh had been immersed in indefatigable toil since 1794. He had stood "the wear and tear" for thirty years. His life was wholly devoted to business. During the summer he rose at five, in winter at seven, and frequently laboured for twelve or fourteen hours in succession.
In person he was tall, with a mild and very handsome countenance in early life, of which we must regret that the portrait in the first volume of the Memoir gives but an unfavourable resemblance. The most faithful likeness is that by Sir Thomas Lawrence, in the Windsor Gallery of Statesmen, though it has the effeminate air which that admirable painter had the unlucky habit of giving to his men.
The death of Lord Castlereagh seems to have been justly attributed to mental exhaustion, with the addition of a fit of the gout, for which he had taken some depressing medicines. The state of his spirits was marked by the King, on his Majesty's departure for Scotland. At the Cabinet Council, he had been observed to remain helplessly silent, and his signature to public papers had become suddenly almost illegible. On those symptoms, he was expressly put into the hands of his physician, and sent to Foot's Cray, his villa in Kent. The physician attended him until the Monday following. Early on that day he was hastily summoned, and found his Lordship dead in his dressing-room.
A letter from the Duke of Wellington conveyed the lamentable intelligence to the present Marquis, who was then at Vienna. After some prefatory remarks, the Duke says—"You will have seen, that I witnessed the melancholy state of mind which was the cause of the catastrophe. I saw him after he had been with the King on the 9th instant, to whom he had likewise exposed it. But, fearing that he would not send for his physician, I considered it my duty to go to him; and not finding him, to write to him, which, considering what has since happened, was a fortunate circumstance.
"You will readily believe what a consternation this deplorable event has occasioned here. The funeral was attended by every person in London of any mark or distinction, of all parties; and the crowd in the streets behaved respectfully and creditably."
The Duke's remarks on "the fortunate circumstance" of applying to the physician, we presume to have meant, the vindication of the Marquis's character from the guilt of conscious suicide. For the same reason, we have given the details. They relieve the mind of the Christian and the Englishman from the conception, that the most accomplished intellect, and the highest sense of duty, may not be protective against the mingled crime and folly of self-murder.
We have now given a general glance at the matériel of those volumes. They contain a great variety of public documents, valuable to the future historian, though too official for the general reader. One, however, is too curious to be altogether passed by: it is from Lord Brougham, (dated 1812,) offering himself for employment in American affairs:—
"My Lord,—I am confident that the step which I am now taking cannot be misconstrued by your lordship. Under the present circumstances, I beg to make a tender of my services to his Majesty's government in the conduct of the negotiation with the United States, wheresoever the same may be carried on.
"I am induced to think that I might be of use as a negotiator in this affair. I trust it is unnecessary to add, that I can have no motive of a private or personal nature in making this offer. Should it be accepted, I must necessarily sustain a considerable injury in my professional pursuits," &c.