lords had by the prince's desire prepared a reply to the address from the houses of parliament, preparatory to the regency bill. Grenville had voted in favour of the restriction on the creation of peers, and it is therefore not surprising that the reply which he and Grey drafted appeared to the prince too weak in its protest against the limitations. He therefore adopted in its stead another reply which Sheridan had composed for him. The two lords thereupon addressed to the prince a remonstrance, which practically claimed for themselves the right of responsible ministers to be the sole advisers of their prince. This remonstrance provoked the ridicule of Sheridan, and certainly did not please the prince, who since the fall of the Grenville ministry had refused to be regarded as a "party man". The regent, accordingly, gave Perceval to understand that he intended to retain his present ministers, but solely on the ground that he was unwilling to do anything which might retard his father's recovery, or distress him when he should come to himself. This reason was probably genuine. The king appeared to be recovering; he had had several interviews with Perceval and Eldon, and had made inquiries as to the prince's intentions. Soon, however, the malady took a turn for the worse, and the physicians came to the conclusion that it was permanent.41
Before February, 1812, when the restrictions expired, and a permanent regency bill was passed, the prince drifted further away from his former advisers, and had been pacified by the loyal attitude of Perceval and Eldon. Further overtures were conveyed to the whig lords through a letter from the prince regent to the Duke of York, in which he declared that he had "no predilections to indulge or resentments to gratify," but only a concern for the public good, towards which he desired the co-operation of some of his old whig friends, indicating Grenville and Grey. They declined in a letter to the Duke of York, alleging differences on grounds of policy too deep to admit of a coalition. Eldon, on his part, expressed a similar conviction, but the regent never fully forgave what he regarded as their desertion. Wellesley, who was strongly opposed to Perceval's policy of maintaining the catholic disabilities, resigned the secretaryship of foreign affairs, protesting against the feeble support given to his brother in the Peninsula, and was succeeded by Castlereagh. In April Sidmouth became president of the council in place of Camden, who remained in the cabinet without office; and in the next month, on May 11, Perceval was assassinated in the lobby of the house of commons by a man named Bellingham, who had an imaginary grievance against the government.
A very general and sincere tribute of respect was paid by the house to Perceval's memory, for, though his statesmanship was of the second order, he was far more than a tory partisan; he was an excellent debater, and a thoroughly honest politician, and his private character was above all reproach or suspicion. The cabinet was bewildered by his death, and a fresh attempt was made to strengthen it by the simple inclusion of Canning as well as Wellesley. Wellesley stipulated that the catholic question should be left open, and that the war should be prosecuted with the entire resources of the country, while Canning declined co-operation on the ground of the catholic question alone. No agreement being found possible, the house of commons stepped in and addressed the regent, begging him to form a strong and efficient administration, commanding the confidence of all classes. He replied by sending for Wellesley, offering him the premiership and entrusting him with the formation of a comprehensive ministry; but Wellesley soon found that Liverpool and his adherents would not serve under him at all, while Grenville and Grey, who secretly condemned the Peninsular war, would only serve on conditions which he could not grant. Once more, the regent treated directly with these haughty whigs, now including Moira, to whom he committed the task of forming an administration. Grenville and Grey raised difficulties about the appointments in the royal household, which they wished to include in the political changes, and the negotiation was broken off. The regent at last fell back on Liverpool, a capable and conciliatory minister, who adopted Perceval's colleagues, and a spell of tory administration set in which remained unbroken for no less than fifteen years. Had more tact been shown on all sides, had the whigs been less peremptory in their demands, and had the trivial household question never arisen, the course of the war, if not of European history, might, whether for good or evil, have been profoundly modified.
SOCIAL REFORMS.
During the later period of Perceval's administration, from 1811 to 1812, the strife of politics had been mainly concentrated on the regency question, the chance of ministerial changes, and the fortunes of the war in Spain. But it must not be supposed that social questions were neglected, even in the darkest days of the war, however meagre the legislative fruits may appear. Session after session, Romilly pressed forward reforms of the criminal law, the institution of penitential houses in the nature of reformatories, and the abolition of state lotteries. Others laboured, and with greater success, to remedy the delays and reduce the arrears in the court of chancery. Constant efforts were made to expose defalcations in the revenue, to curtail exorbitant salaries, and to put down electioneering corruption. In 1809 Erskine introduced a bill for the prevention of cruelty to animals. In 1810 there were earnest, if somewhat futile, debates on spiritual destitution, the non-residence and poverty of the clergy, and the scarcity of places of worship. Moreover, early in 1811, a premonitory symptom of the repeal movement caused some anxiety in Ireland. It took the form of a scheme for a representative assembly to sit in Dublin, and manage the affairs of the Roman catholic population, under colour of framing petitions to parliament, and seeking redress of grievances. It was, of course, to consist of Roman catholics only, and to include Roman catholic bishops. The Irish government wisely suppressed the scheme, and Perceval justified their action, on the ground that a representative assembly in Dublin, with such aims in view, bordered upon an illicit legislature.
Except for the war in the Spanish peninsula, and the war between Russia and the Porte on the Danube, the year 1810 was marked by undisturbed peace throughout the continent of Europe. France continued to make annexations, but they were at the expense of her allies, not of her enemies. Her supremacy was signalised in a striking way by the marriage of her parvenu emperor, whose divorce the pope still refused to recognise, with Maria Louisa, daughter of the Emperor of Austria. Though thirteen out of twenty-six cardinals present in Paris declined to attend it, this marriage was a masterstroke of Talleyrand's diplomacy; it secured the benevolent neutrality of Austria for the next three years, and weakened the counsels of the allies during the negotiations of 1814-15. But it went far to estrange the Tsar of Russia, who, though he had courteously declined Napoleon's overtures for the hand of his own sister, was greatly offended on discovering that another matrimonial alliance had been contracted by his would-be brother-in-law before his reply could be received.
It was only within the limits of the French empire that Napoleon's authority had been sufficient to enforce the rigorous exclusion of British goods. His allies, including Sweden, which closed her ports to British products in January, 1810, and declared war on Great Britain in the following November, had adopted the continental system; but administrative weakness, and the obvious interest that every people had in its infraction, rendered its operation partial. Napoleon, determined to enforce the system in spite of every obstacle, met this difficulty by placing in immediate subjection to the French crown the territories where British goods were imported. The first ally to suffer was his own brother, Louis, King of Holland. His refusal to enforce Napoleon's orders against the admission of British goods was followed at once by a forced cession of part of Holland to France and the establishment of French control at the custom houses, and shortly afterwards by the despatch of French troops into Holland and its annexation to France on July 9, 1810. In December the French dominion over the North Sea coast was extended by the annexation of a corner of Germany, including the coast as far as the Danish frontier, and the town of Lübeck on the Baltic. As a result of this annexation, the duchy of Oldenburg, held by a branch of the Russian imperial family, ceased to exist. The act was a conspicuous breach of the treaty of Tilsit, which Napoleon considered himself at liberty to disregard, as Russia had shown by her conduct during the campaign of 1809 that she was no longer more than a nominal ally of France. At last, on January 12, 1811, Russia asserted her independence in fiscal matters by an order which declared her ports open to all vessels sailing under a neutral flag, and imposed a duty on many French products. Still the course of French annexation crept onwards, and quietly absorbed the republic of Vallais in Switzerland, which had been a great centre of smuggling.
THE
For the whole crisis see Walpole,
