575
levelled to the ground," he added, "blood will be
shed, and the people of England will never forgive
you." Subdued by this alarming view of the case,
the princess yielded, and consented to return on
condition that she should be allowed to write a
document expressing her resolution never to many
a prince of Orange, that all present should attest it,
and that the custody of the document should be
assigned to Mr. Brougham. On the 9th of August
the Princess Caroline left England for the Continent.
It was an ill-advised step, as royal personages of the
female sex cannot thus travel at large, especially
without the permission of their husbands, with im-
punity. It would lay her open to foreign espionage
and foreign scandal, which it would not be easy to
refute at home; and by this act she seemed to aban-
don her rights as the wife of the prince-regent, and
the future Queen of England. For this her impru-
dent proceeding her counsellor Mr. Brougham was
greatly blamed; but succeeding events showed how
little his opposition would have availed with one so
accustomed to act upon her own impulses.
In 1816 Mr. Brougham was returned to parlia-
ment for the borough of Winchelsea, and this time
also it was through the influence of the Earl of Dar-
lington. Although he continued to represent that
borough until 1830, during the interval on three
several occasions—at the general elections of 1818,
1820, and 1826—he contested the county of West-
moreland against the Tory and family influence
which then predominated there, but without effect.
This interval between 1816 and 1830 was the period
of Brougham's highest political celebrity. On his
re-entering parliament the great continental war had
ended, the fever of the public mind occasioned by
the triumph of success had cooled down, and the
nation was bethinking itself of what all these wars
and victories had cost. A legislative reform was
also necessary for the old abuses which had been left
untouched, and a new crop had sprung up. The
session demanded a powerful eloquent tribune, and
such it found'in Mr. Brougham. The series of par-
liamentary speeches which he delivered during this
period were scarcely below the number of 300, and
with these he thundered and lightened over that
august assembly during fourteen years. While he
was thus upon the whole the most frequent, he was
also the most eloquent speaker in the house, while
his eloquence assumed every variety of character and
shade, from  the sublime to the comic—from the merci-
less, trenchant, sarcastic, to that of gentle playful-
ness. His chief misfortune as an orator was, that
while certain peculiarities of his youth were aban-
doned, others were too strong to be relinquished,
while his personal appearance and manner were such
as somewhat to detract from the effect of his elo-
quence, especially when he had recourse to impas-
sioned pleading. While the ear was enthralled, the
eye could not be blind to the long ungainly form,
grotesque countenance, flexile nose or trunk, and
fierce ungraceful gesticulations of the speaker, which
formed equally   the subjects of political lampoon
and poetical caricature; and in one of the former he
was described as having
"A meagre form, a face so wondrous thin
That it resembles Milton's Death and Sin;
Long arms that saw the air like windmill sails,
And tongue whose force and fury never fails."
The history of Mr. Brougham's parliamentary
career during this period may be best indicated by
an enumeration of the principal topics in which
he bore an influential part, and this has been
given in the following brief list by one of his bio-
graphers: "In 1816 (the year of his readmission
to parliament) he took a leading part in the de-
bates on the reduction of the army estimates, the
repeal of the property-tax, the distresses of the agri-
cultural interest, and other topics natural at a time
of sudden transition from war to peace; and in the
same session he commenced his long labours in the
cause of popular education, by moving and obtaining
the appointment of a committee to inquire into the
education of the poor in the metropolis. In 1817
he made a speech on the distresses of the manufac-
turing classes, recurring to the question of the edu-
cation of the poor in the metropolis, and attacking
the foreign policy of the ministry. In 1818 he spoke
on the tithe-laws and parliamentary reform, recurred
again to the subject of metropolitan education, and
succeeded in obtaining the appointment of a com-
mission, since so famous, for inquiring into the
abuses of the public charitable foundations of the
kingdom connected with education. He was not
himself nominated on this commission, but he con-
tinued to watch its proceedings with the greatest
interest, and to keep public attention fixed on it.
Thus, in 1818 he published a Letter to Sir Samuel
Romilly upon the Abuse of Public Charities, which
was so popular that it ran through ten editions in a
few months. In 1819, besides his other appearances
in parliament, he defended the education committee
against certain charges of Sir Robert Peel. During
the years 1820, 1821, his time was chiefly occupied
in proceedings connected with the case of Queen
Caroline. . . . Here, whilst burdened with business
as the queen's attorney-general, he had not ceased
to take part in debates on education, admiralty re-
forms, the state of Ireland, and other topics. In the
session of 1823, when Canning's foreign ministry
was beginning a new era in our relations with foreign
powers, Mr. Brougham, who had in 1816 stood
almost alone in the house in denouncing the holy
alliance, and calling on the British government to
pursue another policy in foreign affairs than that of
the alliance, was able to return to the topic under
much more favourable auspices, in a speech attack-
ing the alliance for their armed interference through
France with the liberties of the Spanish nation.
Canning, though not going so far, may be supposed
on this occasion to have sympathized to some extent
with his parliamentary rival; but on another occasion,
during the same session, the two orators came to a
personal quarrel. It was on a debate on Catholic
emancipation, and the scene was one of the most
memorable that ever occurred in the house. Mr.
Brougham, charging Canning with faithlessness to
his previous declarations in behalf of emancipation,
pressed the charge in a speech of extraordinary in-
vective, which he wound up by pointing to Canning
as having been guilty 'of the most monstrous truck-
ling for office that the whole history of political ter-
giversation could present.' Canning, goaded out of
all power of self-control, started up and cried, ' It is
false !' and the speaker had to interpose and arrange
the matter in parliamentary form by enforcing mutual
explanations. In the same session Mr. Brougham
spoke on colonial slavery and on delays in chancery.
In 1824 his greatest effort was a speech on a motion
censuring the Demerara authorities for their proceed-
ings in the case of the Rev. John Smith, an Inde-
pendent missionary, who, on suspicion of having
incited the slaves to revolt, was tried in a very illegal
manner, and while under sentence of death expired
in prison. In 1825 the expulsion of a missionary
from Barbadoes furnished a text of the same kind;
and in that and the following session colonial slav-
ery, the Catholic claims, chancery reform, and the
corn-laws were the chief topics of Mr. Brougham's