Had Mr. Secretary Canning remained leader of the House of Commons under
the Duke of Wellington, all that he would have gained by the death of Lord
Liverpool was a master. Had the Duke of Wellington become Secretary of
State under Mr. Canning he would have materially advanced his political
position, not only by holding the seals of a high department in which he
was calculated to excel, but by becoming leader of the House of Lords. But
his Grace was induced by certain court intriguers to believe that the King
would send for him, and he was also aware that Mr. Peel would no longer
serve under any ministry in the House of Commons. Under any circumstances
it would have been impossible to keep the Liverpool Cabinet together. The
struggle, therefore, between the Duke of Wellington and 'my dear Mr.
Canning' was internecine, and ended somewhat unexpectedly.

And here we must stop to do justice to our friend Mr. Rigby, whose conduct
on this occasion was distinguished by a bustling dexterity which was quite
charming. He had, as we have before intimated, on the credit of some
clever lampoons written during the Queen's trial, which were, in fact, the
effusions of Lucian Gay, wriggled himself into a sort of occasional
unworthy favour at the palace, where he was half butt and half buffoon.
Here, during the interregnum occasioned by the death, or rather inevitable
retirement, of Lord Liverpool, Mr. Rigby contrived to scrape up a
conviction that the Duke was the winning horse, and in consequence there
appeared a series of leading articles in a notorious evening newspaper, in
which it was, as Tadpole and Taper declared, most 'slashingly' shown, that
the son of an actress could never be tolerated as a Prime Minister of
England. Not content with this, and never doubting for a moment the
authentic basis of his persuasion, Mr. Rigby poured forth his coarse
volubility on the subject at several of the new clubs which he was getting
up in order to revenge himself for having been black-balled at White's.