subject.  Under those circumstances the inquiry was made.  But that was not the first communication that had passed between them on the subject.  Early in the month of April, continued the Duke, he had had a conversation with Mr. Canning, in which, anticipating the possibility of his being called upon to reconstruct the government, one of his plans was to recommend that Mr. Robinson (now the Earl of Ripon) should be raised to the peerage and be made premier.  Of this plan the Duke at the time approved, and it was with this in his mind that he wrote the first answer, which gave Mr. Canning so much offence.  Precedent, also, he contended, was against Mr. Canning; for it appeared that in 1812, when Lord Liverpool, by command of the Prince Regent, waited on Mr. Canning, to know whether he would form part of the proposed administration, the first question Mr. Canning asked of the noble earl (then in the same position Mr. Canning was in now) was, “who was to be at the head of the new administration?” The Duke’s letter was written on the 10th, and Mr. Canning only kissed hands as minister on the 12th; so that, even in that point of view, the Duke’s question was, he contended, necessary.

It may be said that there is enough on the face of this communication to show that the Duke of Wellington took a narrow, and, so to speak, technical, view of the relative positions of himself and Mr. Canning; that the latter expected a more conventional and generous construction of his position and proposal from one with whom he was on terms of intimate friendship.

In answer to this, it may be as well to remind the reader that, where the slightest movements of public men may be construed into a compromise of public principles, a rigid attention to etiquette becomes a matter of duty.  Many acts of the Duke of Wellington, not merely as a civilian, but even as a military commander, have been misjudged, because this obvious principle has been overlooked.

In answer to the second charge—­that of hostility to the new administration on personal grounds—­the Duke referred to the known opinions of Mr. Canning on the Catholic question.  How could he be in office under a minister whom he must oppose on, at least, one vital question of domestic policy?  How could he give the right honourable gentleman that fair support which one member of a cabinet had a right to expect from another?  The principles of the new government could not be those of that of the Earl of Liverpool.  The principle of the latter was to maintain the existing laws; of the former, to change them in a fundamental particular.  The absurd calumny that he had threatened the king to resign, unless he were prepared to make him prime minister, hardly deserved an answer; and then came his celebrated nolo episcopari speech, which created against him in a year after, so much ridicule and rancour.  He said—­“Was it likely that he would resign the office of commander-in-chief,” a situation so consonant to his feelings and his habits,