, indeed, it
must be inferred that such was the light in which these measures were
regarded by a statesman who in his general policy was proud to
acknowledge himself Mr. Pitt's pupil, as he was also the most skilful
and successful of his more immediate successors. Twenty-five years
afterward the distress caused by the reaction inevitably consequent on
the termination of twenty years of war produced a political excitement
scarcely inferior to that with which Pitt had now to deal, and seditious
societies and meetings scarcely less formidable; but, as we shall see,
Lord Liverpool, taking warning, perhaps, from the mistake into which Mr.
Pitt was led on this occasion, though compelled to bring forward new and
stern measures of repression, and even to suspend the _Habeas Corpus_
Act for a time, kept strictly within the lines of constitutional
precedent, and was careful to avoid confounding sedition with treason.

Notes:

[Footnote 73: He had been Lord-chamberlain in Lord Rockingham's
administration of 1765. He was now Lord-lieutenant of Ireland.]

[Footnote 74: In Lord Chatham's or the Duke of Grafton's ministry of
1766, and in the later administration of Lord Rockingham.]

[Footnote 75: It may be convenient to take this opportunity of pointing
out that, in this administration, Lord Shelburne altered the old, most
unreasonable, and inconvenient arrangement by which the departments of
the two Secretaries of State were distinguished by the latitude, and
called Northern and Southern. By a new division, one took charge of the
home affairs, the other of the foreign affairs. And in 1794 a third
Secretary was added for War, who, by a very singular arrangement, which
continued till very recently, had charge also of the colonies. But, in
the year 1855, the Colonial-office was intrusted to a separate minister;
and in 1858 a fifth Secretary of State, that for India, was added, on
the transfer of the government of that country from the East India
Company to the Crown. When there were only two Secretaries of State, the
rule was that one should sit in each House. At present it is not
_necessary_ that more than one should be a peer, though it is more usual
for two to be members of the Upper House. And it is usual also for the
Under-secretaries to be members of the House to which the
Chief-secretaries do not belong, though this rule is not invariably
observed.]

[Footnote 76: "Parliamentary History," xxiii., 163.]

[Footnote 77: The