of effecting a revolution, it was not obviously beyond their power to excite an insurrection, or riots at all events on so large a scale as to plunge the country into confusion, and expose many ignorant and credulous persons to death or ruin. The detected plot for assassinating all the ministers in Lord Harrowby's dining-room shows of what these men were capable. Canning accordingly supported the precautionary measures adopted by the government, and had the satisfaction of seeing the old liberal tories, who had hitherto stood aloof under Lord Grenville, once more reunited with their former associates in defence of the public safety. Canning's speech on the subject is the best explanation of his conduct. Lord Liverpool's government has frequently been blamed, and Canning as a member of it, for the unnecessary severity of the Six Acts. But whether the return of tranquillity which follows the introduction of repressive measures would equally have succeeded without them is one of those unpractical questions to which no satisfactory answer can by any possibility be given.
In 1820 occurred the affair of Queen Caroline, when the ministry were overpersuaded by the king to introduce a divorce clause into the bill which they wished to confine to the exclusion of her majesty from England; the agreement to be that she was to be paid 50,000l. a year as long as she resided abroad. To a bill so limited Canning was not opposed, but as he had been on very friendly terms with the queen he wished to take no part in the proceedings against her, and therefore tendered his resignation. The king, however, declined to accept it, and in August 1820 Canning, who had been much distressed by the death of his eldest son in the previous March, again went abroad for the autumn. The queen's trial lasted from 17 Aug. to 10 Nov., when the bill being carried in the House of Lords by the small majority of nine only, Lord Liverpool at once withdrew it. Immediately afterwards Canning returned to England, but it was only to retire from the government on the ground that he could not be absent from parliament any longer, and that he could not be a party even to the unobjectionable measures which the government had still to carry out in connection with the queen. On the queen's death in August 1821 Lord Liverpool wished to bring him back, but the king, offended not so much with Canning as with the part taken by his friends in the House of Commons, declined to receive him, and after another brief trip to the continent he in 1822 accepted the governor-generalship of India. Before he could set sail, however, Lord Castlereagh, now Lord Londonderry, destroyed himself, and this time both Lord Liverpool and the Duke of Wellington told George IV that Canning must fill his place at the foreign office. Early in the autumn of 1822 accordingly he returned to that long-regretted post, and at the same time exchanged his seat at Liverpool for Harwich.
We now enter on the last and most important stage of Canning's life. When, after thirteen years' absence, Canning again took his seat at the foreign office, the aspect of affairs in Europe had entirely changed. Napoleon was dead. The reign of conquest and aggression was over. Yet it seemed to the European monarchies that they had only exchanged one enemy for another, and that the Jacobinism which on the removal of Napoleon's iron hand had sprung to life again, could be combatted only by the same means which had overthrown imperialism. The English statesmen who had stood side by side with the kings and emperors of the continent in their life-and-death struggle naturally fell in with this train of ideas. They had not deposed a European dictator to enthrone a European democracy. And though Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington refused to be parties either to the Holy alliance or to the much more practical and formidable understanding which eventually grew out of it, they did not, perhaps they felt they could not, express any marked disapproval of its measures.
In the settlement of Europe effected by the treaty of Vienna (9 June 1815) Canning had no part. He is said to have condemned it; but how far the end justified the means is too long a question to examine in these pages. The object in view was such a reconstruction of Europe as should offer the strongest barrier to the revival of the Napoleonic system. The means adopted were the incorporation of minor states with larger ones, and the partition of the two countries which had alone joined the standard of Napoleon, Saxony and Poland. This last arrangement was concerted between Russia and Prussia, the latter receiving a large slice of Saxony in return for handing over to Russia the duchy of Warsaw, which had been formed out of Prussian Poland after the treaty of Tilsit in 1809. England, France, and Austria were extremely indignant at the transaction, but ultimately accepted it rather than run the risk of another European war. The disregard of national feeling, and in some cases of actual pledges, which attended this great pacification, gave a handle to the opponents of the English ministry, of which they freely
