rated under any other
leader. This is not the road to fame, neither is it the course which men
of imperious character like Castlereagh, or Canning, or Wellington, in
his place, would have adopted. But Canning and Wellington actually
proved themselves incapable of winning the confidence which Liverpool so
long retained, and the whig government which followed them fell to
pieces in two years. Moderation in statesmanship does not always imply
mediocrity of ability; and if Liverpool failed to see how many
institutions needed radical amendment, he was not so blind as some of
his more celebrated associates. Not only was he more liberal in his
views than Eldon and Castlereagh, but he was less opposed to free trade
than most of his cabinet, to parliamentary reform than Canning, and to
catholic emancipation than Wellington or Peel. His fault was that he did
not act upon his own inward convictions with sufficient promptitude, or
assert his own authority with sufficient energy. Had he done so, the
beneficial measures of the last years of his administration might have
been anticipated, and the country might have been spared much of the
misery which darkened the close of George III.'s reign.

FOOTNOTES:

[68] Lord Londonderry in Twiss, _Life of Eldon_, ii., 432.

[69] Harriet Martineau, _History of England During the Thirty Years'
Peace_, i., 274.

[70] _Letters to Copleston_, p. 295.

[71] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern
Times_ (edit. 1903), pp. 756-59. Compare Dicey, _Law and Opinion in
England_, pp. 190-200.

[72] The graphic description of this crisis in Harriet Martineau's
_History of the Thirty Years' Peace_, i., 355-66, deserves to be studied
and remembered as a masterpiece of social portraiture by a contemporary.

[73] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern
Times_, p. 823.

[74] Walpole's _History of England_, vol. ii., p. 187.

CHAPTER X.

PROBLEMS IN SOUTHERN EUROPE.

The events of the year 1820 subjected the European concert to a severe
strain. An insurrection broke out in Spain on January 1, and on March 9
the king was forced to swear fidelity to the obsolete constitution of
1812. The result was to plunge the country into disorder, as both the
clerical party and the extreme revolutionists refused to accept the
constitution. Meanwhile the assassination by a working man of the Duke
of Berry, who d