Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/425

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The death of Lord Castlereagh in 1822, and the advance ment of Canning to the office of Foreign Secretary, materi ally changed the character of Lord Liverpool s Govern ment. Canning and Brougham sat on opposite benches the one a follower of Pitt, the other of Fox ; and they were constantly pitted against each other. Sometimes their rhetorical conflicts assumed an intense violence, as when Brougham accused the minister of &quot; the most monstrous truckling for the purpose of obtaining office that the whole history of political tergiversation could furnish.&quot; Canning indignantly exclaimed, &quot;It is false ;&quot; and the quarrel was with some difficulty appeased, though Brougham was not supposed to be very ready to employ any weapon sharper than his tongue. But Canning and Brougham were in truth rivals rather than antagonists ; and the more liberal influence of the former in the ministry had almost brought them into union upon the leading questions of the day, always excepting that of parlia mentary reform. Had Canning lived and maintained himself in power, it might have fallen to his lot to carry Catholic Emancipation and a more moderate measure of parliamentary reform. But if, as is believed, Earl Grey was excluded from Mr Canning s Government by an ex press stipulation of the king, it follows a fortiori that the attorney-general of Queen Caroline could never be a minister of George IV. That sovereign had shown on several occasions that the attacks made on him by Brougham were never forgotten or forgiven; and Canning, whose own position at court was difficult enough, had certainly not the power to overcome the king s resentment. Brougham, however, promised and gave his shortlived administration an independent support unlike Lord Grey, who fiercely and ungenerously attacked it.

To this period of his life belong two occurrences which cannot be passed over in silence. In 1825 the first steps were taken, under the auspices of Brougham, for the establishment of a university in London, absolutely free from all religious or sectarian distinctions, a scheme which has grown and ripened in half a century into no unworthy rival of the other universities of northern and southern Britain. In 1827 Brougham contributed to found the &quot; Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,&quot; an S. D. U. K. association which gave an immense impulsion to sound popular literature. Its first publication was an essay on the &quot; Pleasures and Advantages of Science,&quot; written by himself. One can hardly imagine at the present time with what avidity this paper was read, for it had no novelty of substance and no great merit of style. But a thirst for knowledge seemed suddenly to have seized the nation. It broke forth in mechanics institutes and every form of instruction. To use his own language on a cele brated occasion &quot; the schoolmaster was abroad ;&quot; and the excitement he had contrived to kindle on these subjects tended to hasten a great crisis in our political life. In the following year (1828) he delivered his great speech on &quot; Law Reform,&quot; which lasted six hours in the delivery in a thin and exhausted House, a marvellous effort, which embraced every part of the existing system of judicature, and concluded with one of his noblest perorations. &quot; It was the boast of Augustus,&quot; he said, &quot; and it formed part of the glory in which his early perfidies were lost, that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble, a praise not unworthy of a gre^t prince, and to which the present reign 