Everything at home seemed hopeless for the cause of {150} Liberalism. But while the demand for reform seemed to have grown weaker and its concession more remote, the aspect of foreign affairs was much more favourable. During this last period of Tory domination, which extended from the accession of George IV in 1820 to his death in 1830, the principle of nationality was steadily and courageously maintained. In capacity the members of these Tory Governments, with the exceptions of George Canning and Sir Robert Peel, were inferior to all who had held office before them since 1791. Castlereagh, the strongest of the older men, killed himself in 1822. Liverpool, who was Prime Minister from 1812 to 1827, was a respectable mediocrity. Sidmouth was rather less. Eldon, as Lord Chancellor, reigned supreme in the Lords, and nearly every measure of reform which was pushed through the Commons was overwhelmed in the Lords by his single argument. "The change now proposed was in direct contradiction to what their ancestors had supposed to be the constitution; whether they were right or not in that supposition was a matter which he would not take it upon him to decide."[188] But foreign affairs were happily outside the control of the House of Lords, and Canning, who joined the Government after Castlereagh's death, managed them in the temper of pure Liberalism. Except on the Catholic question, Canning was in domestic politics a Tory. But his zeal for the rights of nationalities was as warm as that of Fox himself, and he never failed to encourage the growth of that spirit which had finally overcome Napoleon. He became the acknowledged leader of European Liberalism. Even Castlereagh, after the great partition of Europe had been completed, had declined to interfere in foreign civil wars, or to assist in the coercion of rebellious nationalities. Canning turned the cold negations of his predecessor into warm encouragement and remonstrance.