niformly found his conduct distinguished by the same feeling and
high principle which were so strongly pourtrayed in the speech he had
just delivered; he had behaved, he said, throughout with manliness and
candour. He continued:--"The house is greatly mistaken if they imagine
my situation to be one of gratified ambition. From the beginning of
the discussions on the Catholic claims I felt that the separation of my
honourable friend and myself was inevitable, and not far remote. Would
to God I could now persuade myself that his retirement will be but for a
short time! Had the necessity which has made the retirement of one of as
inevitable been left in my hands, my decision would have been for my own
resignation, and against that of my right honourable friend. My first
object was to quit office; my next to remain in it, with all my old
colleagues exactly--exactly on the same terms as usual regarding
this very Catholic question." Mr. Canning then went into a long detail
concerning the circumstances which preceded his appointment; and he
concluded with saying,--"I sit where I now do by no seeking of my
own. I proposed at first my own exclusion: it was not accepted. Then
conditions were offered to me, which I refused, because they were
accompanied by an admission of my own disqualification, to which if I
had submitted, I should have been for ever degraded. In the year 1822
I was appointed to an office fraught with wealth, honour, and ambition.
From that office I was called, not on my own seeking, but contrary to my
own wish; and I made a sacrifice--a sacrifice, be it remembered, of no
inconsiderable nature to a poor man--and the offer of a share in the
administration was made to me without any stipulation. But if that offer
had been made with this condition, that, if the highest place in the
administration should become vacant, the opinions which I held on the
Catholic question were to be a bar to my succeeding to it, I would turn
the offer back with the disdain with which I turned back that of
serving under a Protestant premier, as the badge of my Helotism, and the
condition of my place." The only parties left to explain their conduct
were those members of opposition who had quitted their former station
and were settled beside the new ministry. This duty was discharged by
Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Brougham. Their support was defended by Sir
Francis as likely to promote enlightened principles of government both
at home and ab