The circumstances of the time were especially favourable to such an undertaking. Those years were the commencement of what is called the Eldonine period. The cold and haughty Pitt had gone down to the grave in circumstances singularly contrasting with his prosperous youth, and he had carried along with him the inner essence of half-liberal principle, which had clung to a tenacious mind from youthful associations, and was all that remained to the Tories of abstraction or theory. As for Lord Eldon, it is the most difficult thing in the world to believe that there ever was such a man. It only shows how intense historical evidence is, that no one really doubts it. He believed in everything which it is impossible to believe in—in the danger of Parliamentary Reform, the danger of Catholic Emancipation, the danger of altering the Court of Chancery, the danger of altering the Courts of Law, the danger of abolishing capital punishment for trivial thefts, the danger of making landowners pay their debts, the danger of making anything more, the danger of making anything less. It seems as if he maturely thought, ‘Now I know the present state of things to be consistent with the existence of John Lord Eldon; but if we begin altering that state, I am sure I do not know that it will be consistent.’ As Sir Robert Walpole was against all committees of inquiry on the simple ground, ‘If they once begin that sort of thing, who knows who will be safe?’—so that great Chancellor (still remembered in his own scene) looked pleasantly down from the woolsack, and seemed to observe, ‘Well, it _is_ a queer thing that I should be here, and here I mean to stay.’ With this idea he employed, for many years, all the abstract intellect of an accomplished lawyer, all the practical _bonhomie_ of an accomplished courtier, all the energy of both professions, all the subtlety acquired in either, in the task of maintaining John Lord Eldon in the cabinet, and maintaining a cabinet that would suit John Lord Eldon. No matter what change or misfortunes happened to the Royal house,—whether the most important person in court politics was the old King or the young King, Queen Charlotte or Queen Caroline—whether it was a question of talking grave business to the mutton of George the Third, or queer stories beside the champagne of George the Fourth, there was the same figure. To the first he was tearfully conscientious, and at the second the old northern circuit stories (how old, what outlasting tradition shall ever say?) told with a cheerful _bonhomie_, and a strong conviction that they _were_ ludicrous, really seem to have pleased as well as the more artificial niceties of the professed wits. He was always agreeable, and always serviceable. No little peccadillo offended him: the ideal, according to the satirist, of a ‘good-natured man,’ he cared for nothing until he was himself hurt. He ever remembered the statute which absolves obedience to a king _de facto_.