you to make your name immortal, by doing good to millions and to your
country. But you will yawn over this, and go to some good dinner to be
agreeable, the height of ambition with the present generation.'

Meanwhile, through the influence of the Duke of Devonshire, Lord John
was elected in November for the Irish borough of Bandon Bridge, and in
February, fresh from prologue-writing for the private theatricals which
Lord Normanby was giving that winter in Florence, he took his seat in
the House of Commons. Lord Liverpool was struck down with paralysis on
February 18, and it quickly became apparent that his case was hopeless.
After a few weeks of suspense, which were filled with Cabinet intrigues,
Mr. Canning received the King's commands to reconstruct the Ministry;
but this was more easily said than done. 'Lord Liverpool's disappearance
from the political scene,' says Lord Russell, 'gave rise to a great
_debacle_. The fragments of the old system rushed against each other,
and for a time all was confusion.' Six of Canning's colleagues flatly
refused to serve under him in the new Cabinet--Peel, Wellington, Eldon,
Westmoreland, Bathurst, and Bexley--though the latter afterwards took
advantage of his second thoughts and returned to the fold. Although an
opponent of Parliamentary reform and of the removal of Nonconformist
disabilities, Canning gave his support to Catholic emancipation, to the
demand for free trade, and the abolition of slavery. Canning's accession
to power threw the Tory ranks into confusion. 'The Tory party,' states
Lord Russell, 'which had survived the follies and disasters of the
American war, which had borne the defeats and achieved the final glories
of the French war, was broken by its separation from Mr. Canning into
fragments, which could not easily be reunited.'

[Sidenote: CANNING IN POWER]

Sydney Smith--who, by the way, had no love for Canning, and failed to a
quite noteworthy extent to understand him--like the rest, took a gloomy
view of the situation, which he summed up in his own inimitable fashion.
'Politics, domestic and foreign, are very discouraging; Jesuits abroad,
Turks in Greece, "No Poperists" in England! A panting to burn B; B
fuming to roast C; C miserable that he can't reduce D to ashes; and D
consigning to eternal perdition the first three letters of the
alphabet.' Canning's tenure of power was brief and uneasy. His opponents
were many, his difficulties were great, and, to add