Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/885

 LONDONDERRY 855 on Putney Heath, when Canning was slightly wounded in the thigh, and Castlereagh had a button shot off his coat. After this duel both resigned, and remained out of office two years, but Castlereagh did not intend to remain so, and through the influence of his aunt, old Lady Hertford, with the prince regent he was, after the refusal of Canning, offered the secretaryship of state for foreign affairs in March 1812 in the room of Lord Wellesley. On Perceval s assassination in May 1812, the leadership of the House of Commons was given to Castlereagh. The first ten years of Lord Liverpool s administration were the palmy days of the Tory aristocracy, and during them Lord Castlereagh was the guiding spirit of foreign policy in the cabinet, and the faithful interpreter of Lord Sidmouth s home policy in the House of Commons. Once in power, he perceived that Napoleon must be beaten in Germany, and that, though Lord Wellington s army in Spain must be supported to maintain the credit of English soldiers, and occupy as many French troops as possible, the important point was for the Russian and Prussian monarchs to be joined by the Austrian emperor, and follow up the blow Napoleon had dealt himself in his invasion of Russia. To bring Austria into the field, manage the crown prince of Sweden, maintain the alliance of the great powers and the harmonious work ing of their armies and policies, Castlereagh gave the English ambassadors at the courts of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, full powers to correspond with each other, and follow the allied forces. The ability with which these instructions were carried out is to be read in the history of the whole campaign of 1813, and of the congresses of Mannheim and Frankfort. When the allies entered France, Castlereagh himself left England to attend the congress of Chatillon. He remained with armies of the allies, entered Paris with them, and signed the preliminaries of peace. Great was the applause he received on his return from the people, and above all in the House of Commons. The prince regent made him a Knight of the Garter, an honour which had only been conferred on two commoners, Sir R. Walpole and Lord North, for the last two hundred years, and when the allied sovereigns visited London they treated him with marked favour, so that it was no wonder, when he started to take his seat as British plenipotentiary at the congress of Vienna, he believed himself to be a great diplomatist. That he was mistaken in this was conclu sively proved by that congress where, as Von Gentz said, England could have done anything, and did nothing. Throughout he supported Metternich, partly because Metternich s nature had mastered him, but more because he had imbibed a blind distrust of Russia. When the return of Napoleon from Elba put an end to the quarrels which were nearly ending in a general war between Prussia and Russia on the one side and England, France, and Austria on the other, and united all parties against him, Castlereagh returned to England, and expressed his confidence in a speedy termination of the new struggle, which indeed was closed at Waterloo. He signed the second peace of Paris on behalf of England, and on his return his father was created marquis of Londonderry. From this tine his career can be sketched very shortly. At home the grand harvest of 1815 was followed by very bad ones, and great discontent existed both among the agricultural and manufacturing classes. The Government pursued the same tactics which had in 1793 united nearly all the upper classes in a fever of reaction ; they established a secret committee which declared the existence of a wide spread conspiracy, and it was often their spies who threw into the meetings of the discontented sufficient politics to make them look like conspiracies. The bad feeling existing came to a climax with the Peterloo massacre, and Lord Sidmouth introduced his Six Acts to check a network of conspiracies which mostly did not exist. Castlereagh had to introduce the Six Acts in the House of Commons, and as usual spoke of the people with the air of hauteur and contempt which made him so particularly obnoxious to them. His foreign policy during these years was chiefly inspired by a real desire to maintain the peace of Europe, which he believed was only to be preserved by the harmony of all the monarchs and their foreign ministers, and to preserve this harmony he was so loth to differ from them on any subject that it was commonly believed among the people that he had signed the Holy Alliance. At the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818 it was for this reason that he recommended that France should be freed from the army of occupation. The death of George III. in January 1820 made no difference to Castlereagh, who was greatly in the favour of the new king, and who had no difficulty in supporting the Bill of Pains and Penalties against the queen. Scarcely was the excitement of the queen s trial and the king s coronation over, when Lord Londonderry, for he had succeeded to that title in this very year, accompanied the king to Hanover in October 1821 to discuss the revolutions in Greece and Spain with Metternich. The interviews which then took place are fully described in Metternich s Autobiography (vol. iii. pp. 552-560), and exhibit clearly the paramount influence of Metternich over Lord Londonderry, whom he persuaded to take part in a congress at Verona in the following year. While he was making preparations to start, he became possessed by many strange delusions, which clearly indicated that his mind was unhinged by over work, as it had been once before after the passing of the L^nion with Ireland. This soon became obvious to every one ; the king noticed it ; and the duke of Wellington sent a physician down to Foots Cray to see him. The doctor found him suffering from melancholia, and ordered his I razors to be taken away, but in spite of all precautions he procured a penknife and committed suicide on August 12, 1822. His body was conveyed to London to be buried in Westminster Abbey, and just as it was being lowered into the grave a cry of exultant hatred arose from that rabble he had so despised. Castlereagh s character illustrates the strange difference which in corrupt times can exist between public and private morality. In private life he was a strictly honourable and affectionate man ; he was a good husband, a good son, a good brother, and a good master ; but even in his private relations that want of warmth which made Cornwallis declare he was utterly unlike an Irishman, and Wilberforce liken him to a fish, seems to have existed, and seems to have been part of his temperament. In public life he played quite a different part, and, though he had one or two firm political principles, as appears in his steady advocacy of Catholic emancipation, he seems as a rule to have regarded politics as a game, in which all means were fair to win, and very extraordinary some of his means appear to be. Though a very bad and confused speaker, he was very successful as a parliamentary leader, from the care with which he used his patronage, and the amount of votes he won by it. While not a great diplomatist, as the mastery Metternich obtained over him clearly proved, as an administrator ho deserves the highest praise, steadily punctual to his work, never allowing arrears to accumulate, and never neglecting a detail; but his parlia mentary necessities stood in his way : every appointment was given from a party point of view, and if, as in the case of Sir A. Wellesley, chance sometimes led him right, jobbing more often led him wrong. But the chief interest which centres in Lord Londonderry is that he was the last leader of an extinct class. The old aristocrats who lived by politics, and thought all means fair in politics, are gone