Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/884

854 LONDONDERRY minister of police, and heartily co-operated with the wise measures of Lord Cornwallis, by which the rebellion was soon brought to an end. He was equally useful to Corn wallis in the second part of his mission to Ireland, namely, the union with England, The measure was to be carried ; the means were bribery whether in honours or in money. The details of the passage of the measure through the House can be studied in the correspondences of Corn wallis and Castlereagh, in which appear clearly the utter disgust of Cornwallis at the work he was doing and the country he was in, and Castlereagh s pride in his success ful manipulation of men. The Union carried (1800), then came the fulfilment of promises made to secure support or disarm opposition, and first in importance those to the Catholics. It was thoroughly understood between Pitt, Cornwallis, and Castlereagh that full rights of citizenship were to be given to the Catholics as a reward for the loyal behaviour of the greater men during the rebellion, and to induce them not to oppose the Union. But the promise was not fulfilled. Pitt had indeed pro mised to carry the measure ; but the king s conscience was worked upon by Lord Loughborough, and to Pitt s surprise and disgust his resignation was accepted, and im mediately followed by that of the abler half of the cabinet, and necessarily of Cornwallis and Castlereagh. With his resignation ends the first epoch of Castlereagh s political life. On very many occasions in his correspondence Corn wallis mentions him with warm praise of his " talents, temper, and judgment," and only qualifies his opinion in one place, when he says, on July 3, 1800, that " Littlehales very much surpasses Lord Castlereagh in the private management of mankind from his good humour and kind attention to everybody." Here Cornwallis touches the greatest political fault of Castlereagh, which destroyed his popularity and ruined his reputation his want of sympathy for human weaknesses. Castlereagh was sworn of the English privy council in December 1799, and returned to the first united parliament for the county of Down. He had no intention of per manently losing office by his advocacy of the Catholic claims, and therefore, instead of going into violent opposi tion like Canning and others of the late administration, he supported the weak Addington ministry, and in June 1802 was appointed president of the Board of Control. On Pitt s return to power in December 1804 he kept Castlereagh in office, and in 1805 made him secretary of state for war and the colonies, as well as president of the Board of Control. For the six months he held the war office he was Pitt s right hand in administration, as Canning was in debate. He now prepared a great expedition of thirty thousand men, who were to land in Hanover and make a diversion in northern Germany in favour of the Russians and Austrians. The expedition was too late to be of any use, but it deserves notice as illustrating Castlereagh s favourite idea that England should carry on "grande guerre," which was to appear to a greater extent later. His present tenure of office was but short, for Pitt s Government resigned on his death in January 1806. When Pitt died, Castlereagh was prime mover in the attempt to make Lord Hawkesbury premier, and when that failed, sooner than give up all hope of place, he declared that he and his friends " looked to " Lord Grenville. Grenville, however, formed his ministry of " all the talents " out of the sections which followed Fox, Windham, and Sidmouth. The opposition was led in the House of Commons by Castlereagh and Canning. Now began the close association of these two celebrated men, each of whom hoped to lead the Tory party, and who did so in turn, both Irishmen from the same county of Londonderry, both in the prime of life, and distinguished the one for his surpassing eloquence, the other for his administrative powers. Each rival despised the other : Castlereagh, conscious of his high birth and noble con nexions, looked down on the son of the actress ; Canning, conscious on his side of his great talents for debate, looked down on the clumsy debater and laborious parliamentary tactician, who looked to governing the country rather by a careful manipulation of boroughs and patronage than by eloquence and statesmanship. Castlereagh again, proud of his position as an ex-cabinet minister, pretended to lead Canning, who had held but inferior posts ; while Canning, in his ardent devotion to the memory of Pitt, sneered at the man who had taken a seat in Addington s cabinet. This rivalry was increased almost to personal dislike by the marriage of Castlereagh s sister to the son and heir of that uncle of Canning s, Paul, in whose favour his own father had been disinherited, and who some years later was made Lord Garvagh. The rivals were not long in opposition, the new ministry resigning in 1807. The duke of Portland formed a new administration on strictly anti-Catholic principles, in which Castlereagh and Canning, both advocates of the Catholic claims, were secretaries of state, the former for war and the colonies, the latter for foreign affairs. During the two years they remained in office together each chafed at the other. The chief events connected with the war office during this tenure of office were the expeditions to Copenhagen, the Penin sula, and Walcheren. Of the Copenhagen expedition the chief credit or discredit must rest with Canning, but the merits of its execution rest entirely with Lord Castlereagh, who showed himself a war minister far superior to Dundas and Windham, and despatched in perfect secrecy a large military and naval expedition, which was swiftly and entirely successful. On the subject of the Portuguese expedition and the assistance to be afforded to the Spanish insurgents, the two secretaries were of different opinions. Canning sent the Spaniards officers, money, and arms in profusion, but was reluctant to send a great army, while Castlereagh planned the Portuguese expedition, chose Sir A. Wellesley to command it, and deserves the credit of Vimiera. Napier in his Peninsular War proves how wrong Canning was, how impossible it was to organize out of the Spaniards a force able to resist Napoleon, and how right Castlereagh was in believing in the efficacy of a British army. The Walcheren expedition went far utterly to ruin Castlereagh s reputation, and completed the difference between Canning and himself, Yet the conception was good. Castlereagh prepared the expedi tion with skill and secrecy, though with slight regard for men s lives, as appeared in his choice of the unhealthy island of Walcheren for debarkation, in his refusal to send enough doctors or hospital ships, and in his appointment of Lord Chatham to command in chief. In this appoint ment of Chatham appears the radical vice of his war administration : he looked before giving a command on active service to parliamentary influence, not tried ability. The failure of the expedition brought about a crisis in the cabinet. In April 1809 Canning had sent in his resigna tion to the duke of Portland, declaring that he could no longer serve with Castlereagh, but the matter was put off from time to time, and at length Canning consented to wait till the Walcheren expedition was over. In September he insisted once for all that something must be done, and then for the first time Castlereagh heard that his dismissal had been determined on for some months. He was naturally indignant, and, being unable to challenge Lord Camden, his benefactor, who had really behaved worst to him, or the old duke of Portland, he challenged Canning, who had throughout protested against the manner in which Castlereagh had been treated. On September 21 they met