Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/197

 1827.] Death of Castlereagh to Canning's Premiership. 183 in which it was raised was an attack by Government upon the Association. The King's speech had stated, after referring to other Irish matters, " It is, therefore, the more to be regretted that associations should exist in Ireland which have adopted proceedings irreconcilable with the spirit of the Constitution, and calculated, by exciting alarm and exasperating animosities, to endanger the peace of society and to retard the course of national improvement. His Majesty relies upon your wisdom to consider without delay the means of applying a remedy to this evil." When the speech was under discussion, Brougham declared that at every stage of the proposed bill, on the first reading nay, on the introduction of papers "he for one would take his stand, and offer every opposition which he could to what appeared to him to be an enormous mischief, bottomed in the grossest injustice." In his reply to this speech, Canning made use of some very remarkable expressions. Brougham had invited him, with respect to the Catholic and the South American questions, to cut himself off from the illiberal members of the Government. " What," he asked, " had a minister to fear, with t'his House, these benches, the country, all England at his back ? " Canning could not deny the existence of differences in the Cabinet, but he said that Brougham was wrong as to their character. The line which was frequently drawn between the supposed Liberals and Illiberals of the Cabinet council was by no means a straight, but a serpentine line. As regarded the Catholic question, it was nearly straight and direct ; but whereVer habit did not arbitrarily prevail, or personal honour was not pledged, the members brought their minds to the discussion totally disengaged. " The project of breaking up the Cabinet and forming a completely new one from the different benches of that House, would be found not very easy in practice." He was before long to find the task terribly difficult impossible, indeed, except at a cost of anxiety and labour which broke down his powers and ended only with his life. That he was induced now to speak of it at all, was a proof that his thoughts were exercised as to his future position, and his