Lord Liverpool[210] was not, like Lord Londonderry, the principal minister; but he was the most influential and the most respected minister. He enjoyed that reputation of a religious man and a good man which does so much for him who possesses it; one comes to such a man with the confidence which one has for a father; no action seems good if it is not approved by that godly person, invested with an authority far superior to that of talent. Lord Liverpool was the son of Charles Jenkinson, Baron Hawkesbury, Earl of Liverpool[211], the favourite of Lord Bute[212]. Almost all the English statesmen have begun with the literary career, with pieces of poetry more or less good, or with articles, generally excellent, inserted in the reviews. A portrait remains of this first Earl of Liverpool when he was private secretary to Lord Bute; his family is greatly distressed by it: this vanity, puerile at all times, is doubtless much more so to-day; but we must not forget that our most ardent revolutionaries took their hatred of society from natural disgraces or social inferiorities.
It is possible that Lord Liverpool, who was inclined towards reforms, and to whom Mr. Canning owed his last ministry, was influenced, despite the rigour of his religious principles, by some dislike of recollections. At the time when I knew Lord Liverpool, he had almost reached a Puritan illumination. Habitually he lived alone with an old sister, some miles out of London. He spoke little; his countenance was melancholy; he often bent an ear and seemed to be listening to something sad: one would have said that he was hearing his years fall, like the drops of a winter's rain upon the pavement. For the rest, he had no passions and he lived according to God.
Mr. Croker[213], Secretary to the Admiralty, famous as a speaker and as a writer, belonged, like Mr. Canning, to the school of Mr. Pitt; but he was more sophisticated than the latter. He occupied, at Whitehall, one of those gloomy apartments from which Charles I. had passed through a window to walk on the same level to the scaffold. One is astonished, in London, on entering the habitations where sit the directors of those establishments whose weight makes itself felt to the ends of the earth. A few men in black frock-coats sitting at a bare table: that is all you see; yet those are the directors of the British Navy, or the members of that company of merchants, the successors of the Mogul emperors, who number two-hundred millions of subjects in India.
Mr. Croker came to visit me, two years ago, at the Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse. He pointed out to me the similarity of our opinions and of our destinies. Events separate us from the world; politics make solitaries, even as religion makes anchorites. When man dwells in the desert, he finds within himself some distant image of the Infinite Being who, living alone in immensity, sees the revolutions of the worlds accomplish themselves.
*
In the course of the months of June and July, the affairs of Spain began seriously to occupy the Cabinet of London. Lord Londonderry and the majority of the ambassadors displayed a ludicrous anxiety and almost dread in talking of these affairs. The Ministry feared lest, in case of a rupture, we should get the better of the Spaniards; the ministers of the other Powers trembled lest we should be beaten: they still saw our army taking the tricolour cockade.
Dispatch on Spanish affairs.
In my dispatch of the 28th of June, No. 35, the dispositions of England are faithfully stated:
No. 35.
"London, 28 June 1822.
"Monsieur le vicomte,
"It has been more difficult for me to tell you what Lord Londonderry thinks, relative to Spain, than it will be easy for me to penetrate the secret of the instructions given to Sir W. A'Court[214]; however, I will leave nothing undone to procure you the information for which you ask me in your last dispatch, No. 18. If I have correctly estimated the policy of the English Cabinet and the character of Lord Londonderry, I am persuaded that Sir W. A'Court has taken with him scarcely anything in writing. They will have charged him verbally to observe the parties without mixing in their quarrels. The Cabinet of St. James does not love the Cortes, but it despises Ferdinand. It will certainly do nothing for the Royalists. Besides, it will be enough that our influence should be exercised in favour of one opinion for the English influence to support the other. Our reviving prosperity inspires a lively jealousy. It is true that there is here, among the statesmen, a certain vague fear of the revolutionary passions which are agitating Spain; but this fear is silent in the presence of private interests: so much so that if, on the one hand, Great Britain could exclude our wares from the Peninsula and if, on the other, she could recognise the independence of the Spanish Colonies, she would easily resign herself to events and console herself for the misfortunes which might overwhelm the Continental monarchies anew. The same principle that prevents England from withdrawing her ambassador from Constantinople makes her send an ambassador to Madrid: she severs herself from the common destinies and attends only to what she may be able to make out of the revolutions of the empires.
"I have the honour to be, etc."