recruits added little strength to the Liverpool government, and Holland well said that "all articles are now to be had at low prices, except Grenvilles". [Pageheading: _THE DEATH OF CASTLEREAGH._] But Liverpool gained far more powerful coadjutors in the Marquis Wellesley, Peel, and Canning. In December, 1821, Wellesley undertook the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, which had relapsed into so disturbed a state that it had been proposed to make Wellington both viceroy and commander-in-chief. The significance of this selection was increased by the appointment of Plunket as attorney-general. Sidmouth, while retaining his seat in the cabinet, retired, by his own wish, from the office of home secretary, with a sense of having pacified the country, and was succeeded by Peel. Castlereagh, now Marquis of Londonderry, remained foreign secretary, but on August 12, 1822, as he was on the point of setting out for the congress of Verona, he died, like Whitbread and Romilly, by his own hand. His suicidal act was clearly due to a morbid fit of depression, under the stress of anxieties protracted over more than twenty years; and the disordered state of his mind had been observed, not only by Wellington, but also by the king. His successor was Canning, who also became leader of the house of commons. The characters and political aims of these rival statesmen have often been contrasted by historians of a later age, who have seldom done justice to Castlereagh. It is remembered that he was the author of the Walcheren expedition; it is forgotten that he was the advocate of sending a powerful force to the Baltic coast at the critical moment between Jena and Eylau, that he was not altogether responsible for the delays which rendered the Walcheren expedition abortive or for the choice of its incompetent commander, that his prime object was to strike a crushing blow at Napoleon's naval power, and that, if his instructions had been obeyed, this would have been effected by a rapid advance upon Antwerp when nearly all the French troops had been withdrawn from the Netherlands. It is remembered that he was at the war office when the operations of Wellington in the Peninsula were crippled for want of supplies; it is forgotten that it was he who selected Wellington, and that he loyally strained every nerve to keep him supplied with troops, provisions, and specie, when few but himself believed in the policy of the Peninsular war, and Sir John Moore had assured him that if the French dominated Spain, they could not be resisted in Portugal. It is remembered--or rather it is assumed--that he was the eager promoter of coercive and reactionary legislation at home; it is forgotten, or ignored, that he was among the earliest and staunchest advocates of catholic emancipation, and that a despotic temper is belied by the whole tone of his speeches. Above all, he is unjustly credited, in the face of direct evidence to the contrary, with