THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON MINISTER. 183

XVIII.

Ir Mr. Canning really set the Court of St. James' in a posture so new as to alarm the votaries of high authority, at all events there was an early opportunity given to it for resuming its ancient propriety. For when Parliament met in 1828 it was addressed in the King's name by a Tory minister, the Duke of Wellington, who with Mr. Peel, the ablest of the Tories, had stood aloof, in lofty distrust, from Mr. Canning's Ministry. One expects then to find the Liverpool and Castlereagh policy restored, and the King forgiven by his brother kings. But this did not come to pass.

The Duke had, when out of the Cabinet, served on a mission to St. Petersburg for arranging the pacification of Greece; by thus serving his king he incident. ally helped the very minister whom he distrusted; by negotiating in behalf of the insurgents he so far aided the Russian as to be thereafter qualified for checking him if he pressed too hard on the sovereign of the insurgents. This looks like the ingenuity of a trimmer; it probably was nothing but plain directness and the unconscious enjoyment of moderation.

During his lifetime the Duke allowed it to be believed, and it is not easy now to shake the belief, that he was, like powerful statesmen of the Tudor and of the Stuart dynasty, a doggedly faithful servant of the monarch, subordinating all interests to the main

184

THE DUKE'S TREATMENT OF PRINCES.

tenance of the Sovereignty. Yet it was known before he died, that he did not in his loyalty revere his master's eldest brother; for he elbowed him out of the Admiralty as coolly as he kept Mr. Huskisson out of the Colonial Office; knowing that George must soon make room for William, he did not, like Mr. Canning, propitiate William by letting him manage the navy. His papers, published many years after his death, show that he resented, without letting it be known to the newspapers, the meddlesome and malign activity of a far more unsatisfactory Royal Duke, the Duke of Cumberland; it would have made him popular at a time when he needed a little popularity, had it been known that he stood out against the intrigues of this man. Now there have been many Tories, who would in like manner have ceased to be courtiers in dealing with a King's brother; it is safe to aver, that hardly any Tory, that has had the advantage of coming into power since Mr. Pitt made the Court a mere appendage to the Cabinet, would have truckled to a Clarence or a Cumberland. But the Duke of Wellington had a harder task than any other Tory Minister.

At a time of broken and feeble administration, in which Parliament seemed to have slipped out of Treasury management; when 'fashion' was extremely powerful, and the fountain of honour was choked with weeds; when great lords and still greater ladies had to be offended; when almost all the clever men were either scheming with Mr. Brougham, or moping over the tomb of Mr. Canning; when there were great dangers

THE DUKE'S TREATMENT OF GEORGE IV. 185

known to the Secretaries of State, but none so publicly known as to make people cry for a dictator, the Duke, without flattery, and without threatening to resign, sternly guided that self-indulgent King, who, after much epicurean acquiescence, was found after all to have a conscience, a scruple, a passion of remorseful fear, and a perception of his own opportunities.1 Mr. Pitt had waived his own convictions in deference to George III.; and Mr. Pitt was the indisputable leader of the nation. George IV. stood on his father's footsteps and would have died before yielding to any of the rival leaders of Parliament; he gave way to the majestic prudence of the soldier who was not thought even by himself fit to be the minister. This is the great triumph of the old Tory principles, the Duke's success in saving a real monarchy for the heirs of him who, had he fallen under the scourge of the Whigs, would have been openly humbled. The principle of grave respect for the Crown is held no doubt by Whigs, and enables them to bear with much personal weakness. But no Whig has respectfully controlled a sovereign whom he entirely despised. George IV. was despised by the last of the old Tory ministers ; through more than two years of sour senility he reigned harmlessly, and died in some show of honour, because the good Tory bore with him, veiled his infirmity, and fortified him against poisonous intrigues.2

1 English ministers in modern times have a trick of offering to resign and a nervous apprehension about being thought to cling to office. Even Earl Grey lowered his rare dignity by a foible for resigning. Modern histories of England take too much notice of resignations inchoate, complete, or retracted.

2 How undignified and perplexed a king can be has been betrayed to

186

THE AFFAIRS OF GREECE. 1828-32.

courses.

XIX.

THE triple alliance, which was formed to rescue from devastation the Morea and a few other districts, passed without any breach of amity into three diverse The English minister sanctioned, and even aided, the encampment of French troops in Greece. It was apparently easier for France, being the patron of Egypt, to keep Egyptians out of Greece without violence than it would have been for any other nation, and the French army by this time required another expedition. A few of the Greeks, not yet distributed amongst purchasers, were rescued from Egypt; it was thought too late to undo the whole of the evil done by the Egyptian slave-ships; though Mr. Peel in the English Cabinet pleaded for the redemption of the captives.

Nicholas of Russia, besides having a quiet and profitable quarrel with Persia, was allowed to fight the Turks in Armenia without being suspiciously watched by Englishmen ; on the European side of the waters which divided Turkey he waged, with somewhat more spirit than usual, one of those plausible crusades against the Sultan which English policy

mankind by Lord Eldon's garrulous record of his interviews with George IV. in 1829. Those who disapprove of sovereignty inherited and granted for life can find a solid argument in the evidence given by such monarchists as Lord Eldon and the Duke of Wellington. A really devout Tory should be silent, even in posthumous memoirs, about the inside of his idol.

THE DUKE AND TURKISH TROUBLES.

187

had sometimes favoured, sometimes stopped by mediation.

The Duke of Wellington, employing first a Foreign Secretary bequeathed by Mr. Canning, then one of his own following, and not betraying any great anxiety in the Eastern courts, looked on without dismay at calamities which seemed, but were not, sufficient to break the Ottoman dominion and thereby to dislocate the State system.1 He could not without the help of Austria hope, even if he wished, to keep back the Russians from the lower valley of the Danube; and he was not the man to contrive a new partnership with M. Metternich after the severance effected at Verona. That the Czar's army should reach the waters which flow into the Egean Sea was a novelty; and if Austria and France took fright the Duke would have felt it to be his duty to cheer them up, and with their concurrence to secure the balance of power; and all men in Europe who thought at all about such things would have agreed in saying, that so daring and strong a monarch as Nicholas was not to be trusted with the gates of the Euxine and the Egean. A liberal politician would have competed with the Czar in patronising nascent States, perhaps in the name of Christianity, whenever there was a fair chance of defending them from the tyranny against

1 An English Prime Minister fit for his place is the master of the Foreign Office at all times, and of the War Office when there are serious hostilities; being First Lord of the Treasury, he generally trusts the Treasury to the Chancellor of the Exchequer; if he is a peer he has leisure for diplomacy and armaments, being to a great extent relieved of finance.