however, that Canning did not receive Castlereagh's challenge till the
morning of the 20th (see his letter in _Annual Register_, _loc. cit._,
505, also his detailed statement to Camden, _ibid._, 525), and therefore
the duel cannot have taken place till the 21st. Lord Folkestone in a
letter dated the 21st refers to the duel as having been fought at "7
o'clock this morning" (_Creevey Papers_, i., 96).

CHAPTER IV.

PERCEVAL AND LIVERPOOL.

The administration of Perceval, covering the period from October, 1809,
to May, 1812, coincided with a lull in the continental war save in the
Peninsula, though it saw no pause in the progress of French annexation.
Nor was it marked by many events of historical interest in domestic
affairs. When parliament was opened on January 23, 1810, it was natural
that attention should chiefly be devoted to the Walcheren expedition,
which the opposition illogically and unscrupulously contrived to use to
disparage the operations of Sir Arthur Wellesley, now Viscount
Wellington, in Spain. Grenville, who argued with some reason that 40,000
British troops could have been employed to far better purpose in North
Germany, would have been on stronger ground if he had complained that
for want of them the British army had been unable to occupy Madrid.
Castlereagh, indeed, had confessed to Wellesley that he could not spare
the necessary reinforcements, after the reserves had been exhausted in
Walcheren; but it is by no means certain that Wellesley could have
collected provisions enough to feed a much larger force, or specie
enough to pay for them. Liverpool was driven in reply to Grenville to
magnify the value of the capture of Flushing, as the necessary basis of
the naval armaments which Napoleon had intended to launch against
England from the Scheldt. The government was also defended by the young
Robert Peel, lately elected to parliament. As the calamity was
irreparable, a committee of the whole house spent most of its time on a
constitutional question, regarding a private memorandum placed before
the king by Chatham in his own defence. So irregular a proceeding was
properly condemned, and Chatham resigned the mastership of the ordnance,
but the policy of the Walcheren expedition was approved by a vote of the
house of commons. Mulgrave received the office Chatham had vacated, and
was himself succeeded by Yorke at the admiralty.

Parliament was