to all, his health
was failing. 'My position,' was his own confession, 'is not that of
gratified ambition.' His Administration only lasted five months, for at
the end of that period death cut short the brilliant though erratic and
disappointed career of a statesman of courage and capacity, who entered
public life as a follower of Pitt, and refused in after years to pin his
faith blindly to either political party, and so incurred the suspicions
alike of uncompromising Whigs and unbending Tories.

During the Canning Administration, Lord John's influence in the House
made itself felt, and always along progressive lines. When the annual
Indemnity Bill for Dissenters came up for discussion, he, in answer to a
taunt that the Whigs were making political capital out of the Catholic
question, and at the same time neglecting the claims of the
Nonconformists, declared that he was ready to move the repeal of
restrictions upon the Dissenters as soon as they themselves were of
opinion that the moment was ripe for action. This virtual challenge, as
will be presently seen, was recognised by the Nonconformists as a call
to arms. Meanwhile cases of flagrant bribery at East Retford and
Penryn--two notoriously corrupt boroughs--came before the House, and it
was proposed to disenfranchise the former and to give in its place two
members to Birmingham. The bill, however, did not get beyond its second
reading. Lord John, nothing daunted, proposed in the session of 1828
that Penryn should suffer disenfranchisement, and that Manchester should
take its place. This was ultimately carried in the House of Commons;
but the Peers fought shy of Manchester, and preferred to 'amend' the
bill by widening the right of voting at Penryn to the adjacent Hundred.
This refusal to take occasion by the hand and to gratify the political
aspirations of the most important unrepresented town in the kingdom, did
much to hasten the introduction of a wider scheme of reform.

Power slipped for the moment on the death of Canning into the weak hands
of Lord Goderich, who tried ineffectually to keep together a Coalition
Ministry. Lord John's best friends appear to have been apprehensive at
this juncture lest the young statesman, in the general confusion of
parties, should lapse into somewhat of a political Laodicean. 'I feel a
little anxious,' wrote Moore, 'to know exactly the colour of your
politics just now, as from the rumours I hear of some of your brother
"watchmen,"