CANNING, THE BRILLIANT MAN.
Part I.
FROM BIRTH AND EDUCATION TO DUEL WITH LORD CASTLEREAGH.
Proper time for writing a biography.—Mr. Canning born (1770).—Education at Eton and Oxford.—Early literary performances.—Brought into Parliament by Mr. Pitt.—Politics he espoused.—His commencement as a speaker.—Writes for the Anti-Jacobin.—Quits office with Mr. Pitt.—Opposes Mr. Addington.—Returns to office with Mr. Pitt.—Distinguishes himself in opposition to “All the Talents.”—Becomes Minister of Foreign Affairs on their fall.—Foreign policy.—Quarrel with Lord Castlereagh, and duel.
I.
There is no period at which an eminent person is so little considered, so much forgotten and disregarded, as during the few years succeeding his decease. His name, no longer noised above that of others by the busy zeal of his partisans, or the still more clamorous energies of his opponents, drops away suddenly, as it were, from the mouths of men. To his contemporaries he has ceased to be of importance—the most paltry pretender to his place is of more;—while posterity does not exist for him, until the dead are distinctly separated from the living; until the times in which he lived, and the scenes in which he acted, have become as a distant prospect from which the eye can at once single out from amidst the mass of ordinary objects, those which were the memorials of their epoch, and are to become the beacons of after-generations.
The French, who are as fond of putting philosophy into action as we are coy of connecting theory with practice, marked out, at one moment, a kind of intermediate space between the past and the present, the tomb and the pantheon; but the interval of ten years, which they assigned for separating the one from the other, is hardly sufficient for the purpose.
We are, however, now arrived at the period that permits our considering the subject of this memoir as a character in history which it is well to describe without further procrastination. Every day, indeed, leaves us fewer of those who remember the clearly-chiselled countenance which the slouched hat only slightly concealed,—the lip satirically curled,—the penetrating eye, peering along the Opposition benches,—of the old parliamentary leader in the House of Commons. It is but here and there that we find a survivor of the old day, to speak to us of the singularly mellifluous and sonorous voice, the classical language—now pointed into epigram, now elevated into poesy, now burning with passion, now rich with humour—which curbed into still attention a willing and long-broken audience.
The great changes of the last half-century have, moreover, created such a new order of ideas and of society, that the years preceding 1830 appear as belonging to an antecedent century; and the fear now is—not that we are too near, but that we are gliding away too far from the events of that biography which I propose to sketch. And yet he who undertakes the task of biographical delineation, should not be wholly without the scope of the influences which coloured the career he desires to sketch. The artist can hardly give the likeness of the face he never saw, nor the writer speak vividly of events which are merely known to him by tradition.
II.
It is with this feeling that I attempt to say something of a man, the most eminent of a period at which the government of England was passing, imperceptibly perhaps, but not slowly, from the hands of an exclusive but enlightened aristocracy, into those of a middle class, of which the mind, the energy, and the ambition had been gradually developed, under the mixed influences of a war which had called forth the resources, and of a peace which had tried the prosperity, of our country;—a middle class which was growing up with an improved and extended education, amidst stirring debates as to the height to which the voice of public opinion should be allowed to raise itself, and the latitude that should be given, in a singularly mixed constitution, to its more democratic parts.
Mr. Canning was born on the 11th of April, 1770, and belonged to an old and respectable family originally resident in Warwickshire.[110] A branch of it, obtaining a grant of the manor of Garvagh, settled in Ireland in the reign of James I., and from this branch Mr. Canning descended; but the misfortunes of his parents placed him in a situation below that which might have been expected from his birth.
His father, the eldest of three sons—George, Paul, and Stratford—was disinherited for marrying a young lady (Miss Costello) without fortune; and having some taste for literature, but doing nothing at the bar, he died amidst the difficulties incidental to idle habits and elegant tastes.
Mrs. Canning, left without resources, attempted the stage, but she had no great talents for the theatrical profession, and never rose above the rank of a middling actress. Her son thus fell under the care of his uncle, Mr. Stratford Canning, a highly respectable merchant, and an old Whig, much in the confidence of the leaders of the Whig party and possessing considerable influence with them. A small inheritance of 200l. or 300l. a year sufficed for the expenses of a liberal education, and after passing through the regular ordeal of a private school, young Canning was sent to Eton, and subsequently to Christ Church, Oxford. At Eton no boy ever left behind him so many brilliant recollections. Gay and high-spirited as a companion, clever and laborious as a student, he obtained a following from his character, and a reputation from his various successes. This reputation was the greater from the schoolboy’s triumphs not being merely those of school. Known and distinguished as “George Canning,” he was yet more known and distinguished as the correspondent of “Gregory Griffin;”—such being the name adopted by the fictitious editor of the Microcosm, a publication in the style of the Spectator, and carried on solely by Eton lads. In this publication, the graver prose of the young orator was incorrect and inferior to that of one or two other juvenile contributors, but some of his lighter productions were singularly graceful, and it would be difficult to find anything of its kind superior to a satirical commentary upon the epic merits of an old ballad:
“The queen of hearts
She made some tarts
All on a summer’s day,” &c[111]
“I cannot leave this line,” says the witty commentator, “without remarking, that one of the Scribleri, a descendant of the famous Martinus, has expressed his suspicions of the text being corrupted here, and proposes, instead of ‘All on,’ reading ‘Alone,’ alleging, in the favour of this alteration, the effect of solitude in raising the passions. But Hiccius Doctius, a High Dutch commentator, one nevertheless well versed in British literature, in a note of his usual length and learning, has confuted the arguments of Scriblerus. In support of the present reading, he quotes a passage from a poem written about the same period with our author’s, by the celebrated Johannes Pastor (most commonly known as Jack Shepherd), entitled, ‘An Elegiac Epistle to the Turnkey of Newgate,’ wherein the gentleman declares, that, rather indeed in compliance with an old custom than to gratify any particular wish of his own, he is going
“‘All hanged for to be
Upon that fatal Tyburn tree.’
“Now, as nothing throws greater light on an author than the concurrence of a contemporary writer, I am inclined to be of Hiccius’ opinion, and to consider the ‘All’ as an elegant expletive, or, as he more aptly phrases it, ‘elegans expletivum.’”
The other articles to which the boyish talent of the lad, destined to be so famous, may lay claim, are designated in the will of the supposed editor, Mr. Griffin (contained in the concluding number of the Microcosm), which, amongst special bequests assigns to “Mr. George Canning, now of the college of Eton, all my papers, essays, &c., signed B.”
III.
It is needless to observe that an Eton education is more for the man of the world than for the man of books. It teaches little in the way of science or solid learning, but it excites emulation, encourages and gratifies a love of fame, and prepares the youth for the competitions of manhood. Whatever is dashing and showy gives pre-eminence in that spirited little world from which have issued so many English statesmen. It developed in Canning all his natural propensities. He was the show boy at Montem days with master and student.
“Look, papa,—there, there;—that good-looking fellow is Canning—such a clever chap, but a horrible Whig. By Jupiter, how he gives it to Pitt!”
Nor was this wonderful. The youthful politician spent his holidays with his uncle, who only saw Whigs; and then, what clever boy would not have been charmed by the wit and rhetoric of Sheridan—by the burning eloquence of Fox?
The same dispositions that had shown themselves at Eton, carried to Oxford, produced the same distinctions. Sedulous at his studies, almost Republican in his principles, the pride of his college, the glory of his debating society, the intimate associate of the first young men in birth, talents, and prospects, young Canning was thus early known as the brilliant and promising young man of his day, and thought likely to be one of the most distinguished of those intellectual gladiators whom the great parties employed in their struggles for power; struggles which seemed at the moment to disorder the administration of affairs, but which, carried on with eloquence and ability in the face of the nation, kept its attention alive to national interests, and could not fail to diffuse throughout it a lofty spirit, and a sort of political education.
IV.
From the University Canning went to Lincoln’s Inn. It does not appear, however, that in taking to the study of the law he had any idea of becoming a Lord Chancellor. There was nothing of severity in his plan of life—he dined out with those who invited him, and his own little room was at times modestly lit up for gatherings together of old friends, who enjoyed new jokes, and amongst whom and for whom were composed squibs, pamphlets, newspaper articles, in steady glorification of school and college opinions, which the Oxonian, on quitting the University, had no doubt the intention to sustain in the great battles of party warfare.
But events were then beginning to make men’s convictions tremble under them; and, with the increasing differences amongst veteran statesmen, it was difficult to count on youthful recruits.
At all events, it is about this time that Mr. Canning’s political career begins. It must be viewed in relation to the particular state of society and government which then existed.
From the days of Queen Anne there had been a contest going on between the two aristocratic factions, “Whig” and “Tory.” The principles professed by either were frequently changed. The Tories, such as Sir William Windham, under the guidance of Bolingbroke, often acting as Reformers; and the Whigs, under Walpole, often acting as Conservatives. The being in or out of place was in fact the chief difference between the opposing candidates for office, though the Whigs generally passed for being favourable to popular pretensions, and the Tories for being favourable to Royal authority.
In the meantime public opinion, except on an occasional crisis when the nation made itself heard, was the opinion of certain coteries, and public men were the men of those coteries. It not unfrequently happened that the most distinguished for ability were the most distinguished for birth and fortune. But it was by no means necessary that it should be so. The chiefs of the two conflicting armies sought to obtain everywhere the best soldiers. Each had a certain number of commissions to give away, or, in other words, of seats in Parliament to dispose of. They who had the government in their hands could count from that fact alone on thirty or forty. It matters little how these close boroughs were created. Peers or gentlemen possessed them as simple property, or as the effect of dominant local influence. The Treasury controlled them as an effect of the patronage or employments which office placed in its hands. A certain number were sold or let by their proprietors, and even by the Administration; and in this manner men who had made fortunes in our colonies or in trade, and were averse to a public canvass, and without local landed influence, found their way into the great National Council. They paid their 5000l. down, or their 1000l. a year, and could generally, though not always, find a seat on such terms. But a large portion of these convenient entries into the House of Commons was kept open for distinguished young men, who gave themselves up to public affairs as to a profession. A school or college reputation, an able pamphlet, a club, or county meeting oration, pointed them out. The minister, or great man who wished to be a minister, brought them into Parliament. If they failed, they sank into insignificance; if they succeeded, they worked during a certain time for the great men of the day, and then became great men themselves.
This system had advantages, counterbalanced by defects, and gave to England a set of trained and highly educated statesmen, generally well informed on all national questions, strongly attached to party combinations, connected by the ties of gratitude and patronage with the higher classes, having a certain contempt for the middle: keenly alive to the glory, the power, the greatness of the country, and sympathising little with the habits and wants of the great masses of the people.
They had not a correct knowledge of the feelings and wants of the poor man,—they understood and shared the feelings of the gentleman. Bread might be dear or cheap, they cared little about it; a battle gained or lost affected them more deeply. A mob might be massacred without greatly exciting their compassion; but the loss of a great general or of a great statesman they felt as a national calamity.
Such were the men who might fairly be called “political adventurers:” a class to which we owe much of our political renown, much of our reputation for political capacity, but which, in only rare instances, won the public esteem or merited the popular affections. Such were our political adventurers when Mr. Pitt sent for Mr. Canning, a scholar of eminence and a young man of superior and shining abilities, and offered him a seat in the House of Commons.
The following is the simple manner in which this interview is spoken of by a biographer of Mr. Canning:[112]
“Mr. Pitt, through a private channel, communicated his desire to see Mr. Canning; Mr. Canning of course complied. Mr. Pitt immediately proceeded, on their meeting, to declare to Mr. Canning the object of his requesting an interview with him, which was to state that he had heard of Mr. Canning’s reputation as a scholar and a speaker, and that if he concurred in the policy which the Government was then pursuing, arrangements would be made to bring him into Parliament.”
The person to whom this offer was made accepted it; nor was this surprising.
I have already said that events were about this period taking place, that made men’s convictions tremble under them; and in fact the mob rulers of Paris had in a few months so desecrated the name of Freedom, that half of its ancient worshippers covered their faces with their hands, and shuddered when it was pronounced.
But there were also other circumstances of a more personal nature, which, now that young Canning had seriously to think of his entry into public life, had, I have been assured, an influence on his resolutions.
The first incident, I was once told by Mr. John Allen, that disinclined Mr. Canning (who had probably already some misgivings) to attach himself irrevocably to the Whig camp, was the following one: Lord Liverpool, then Mr. Jenkinson, had just made his appearance in the House of Commons. His first speech was highly successful. “There is a young friend of mine,” said Mr. Sheridan, “whom I soon hope to hear answering the honourable gentleman who has just distinguished himself: a contemporary whom he knows to possess talents not inferior to his own, but whose principles, I trust, are very different from his.”
This allusion, however kindly meant, was disagreeable, said Mr. Allen, to the youthful aspirant to public honours. It pledged him, as he thought, prematurely; it brought him forward under the auspices of a man, who, however distinguished as an individual, was not in a position to be a patron. Other reflections, it is added, followed. The party then in opposition possessed almost every man distinguished in public life: a host of formidable competitors in the road to honour and preferment, supposing preferment and honour to be attainable by talent. But this was not all. The Whig party, then, as always, was essentially an exclusive party; its preferments were concentrated on a clique, which regarded all without it as its subordinates and instruments.
On the other side, the Prime Minister stood almost alone. He had every office to bestow, and few candidates of any merit for official employments. Haughty from temperament, and flushed with power, which he had attained early and long exercised without control, he had not the pride of rank, nor the aristocratic attachments for which high families linked together are distinguished. His partisans and friends were his own. He had elevated them for no other reason than that they were his. By those to whom he had once shown favour he had always stood firm; all who had followed had shared his fortunes; there can be no better promise to adherents.
These were not explanations that Mr. Canning could make precisely to the Whig leaders, but he had an affection for Mr. Sheridan, who had always been kind to him, and by whom he did not wish to be thought ungrateful. He sought, then, an interview with that good-natured and gifted person. Lord Holland, Mr. Canning’s contemporary, was present at it, and told me that nothing could be more respectful and unreserved than the manner in which the ambitious young man gave his reasons for the change he was prepared to make, or had made; nothing more warm-hearted, unprejudiced, and frank, than the veteran orator’s reception of his retiring protégé’s confession: nor, indeed, could Mr. Sheridan help feeling the application, when he was himself cited as an example of the haughtiness with which “the great Whig Houses” looked down on the lofty aspirations of mere genius. The conversation thus alluded to took place a little before Mr. Pitt’s proposals were made, but probably when they were expected. Mr. Canning, his views fairly stated to the only person to whom he felt bound to give them, and his seat in Parliament secured, placed himself in front of his old friends, whom Colonel Fitz-Patrick avenged by the following couplet:
“The turning of coats so common is grown,
That no one would think to attack it;
But no case until now was so flagrantly known
Of a schoolboy turning his jacket.”
V.
There was little justice in Colonel Fitz-Patrick’s satire. Nine-tenths of Mr. Fox’s partisans, old and young, were deserting his standard when Mr. Canning quitted him. The cultivated mind of England was, as it has been said in two or three of these sketches, against the line which the Whig leader persisted to take with respect to the French Revolution—even after its excesses; and it is easy to conceive that the cause of Liberty and Fraternity should have become unfashionable when these weird sisters were seen brandishing the knife, and dancing round the guillotine. Admitting, however, the legitimacy of the horror with which the assassins of the Committee of Public Safety inspired the greater portion of educated Englishmen, it is still a question whether England should have provoked their hostility; for, after the recall of our ambassador and our undisguised intention of making war, the Republic’s declaration of it was a matter of course.
“Where could be the morality,” said Mr. Pitt’s opponents, “of bringing fresh calamities upon a land which so many calamities already desolated? Where the policy of concentrating and consolidating so formidable an internal system by an act of foreign aggression? And if the struggle we then engaged in was in itself inhuman and impolitic, what was to be said as to the time at which we entered upon it?
“The natural motives that might have suggested a French war, were—the wish to save an unhappy monarch from an unjust and violent death; the desire to subdue the arrogance of a set of miscreants who, before they were prepared to execute the menace, threatened to overrun the world with their principles and their arms. If these were our motives, why not draw the sword, before the Sovereign whose life we wished to protect had perished? Why defer our conflict with the French army until, flushed with victory and threatened with execution in the event of defeat, raw recruits were changed into disciplined and desperate soldiers? Why reserve our defence of the unhappy Louis till he had perished on the scaffold—our war against the French Republic until the fear of the executioner and the love of glory had made a nation unanimous in its defence? Success was possible when Prussia first entered on the contest: it was impossible when we subsidized her to continue it.”
The antagonists of the First Minister urged these arguments with plausibility. His friends replied, “that Mr. Pitt had been originally against all interference in French affairs; that the conflict was not of his seeking; that the conduct of the French government and the feelings of the English people had at last forced him into it; that he had not wished to anticipate its necessity; but that if he had, the minister of a free country cannot go to war at precisely the moment he would select; he cannot guard against evils which the public itself does not foresee. He must go with the public, or after it; and the public mind in England had, like that of the Ministers, only become convinced by degrees that peace was impossible.
“As to neutrality, if it could be observed when the objects at stake were material, it could not be maintained when those objects were moral, social, and religious.
“When new ideas were everywhere abroad, inflaming, agitating men’s minds, these ideas were sure to find everywhere partisans or opponents, and to attempt to moderate the zeal of one party merely gave power to the violence of the other.
“It was necessary to excite the English people against France, in order to prevent French principles, as they were then called, from spreading and fixing themselves in England.”
Such was the language and such the opinions of many eminent men with whom Mr. Canning was now associated, when, after a year’s preliminary silence, he made his first speech in the House of Commons.
VI.
This first speech (January 31, 1794), like many first speeches of men who have become eminent orators, was more or less a failure. The subject was a subsidy to Sardinia, and the new member began with a scoff at the idea of looking with a mere mercantile eye at the goodness or badness of the bargain we were making. Such a scoff at economy, uttered in an assembly which is the especial guardian of the public purse, was injudicious. But the whole speech was bad; it possessed in an eminent degree all the ordinary faults of the declamations of clever young men. Its arguments were much too refined: its arrangement much too systematic: cold, tedious, and unparliamentary, it would have been twice as good if it had attempted half as much; for the great art in speaking, as in writing, consists in knowing what should not be said or written.
This instance of ill success did not, however, alienate the Premier; for Mr. Pitt, haughty in all things, cared little for opinions which he did not dictate. In 1795, therefore, the unsubdued favourite was charged with the seconding of the address, and acquitted himself with some spirit and effect.
The following passage may be quoted both for thought and expression:
“The next argument against peace is its insecurity; it would be the mere name of peace, not a wholesome and refreshing repose, but a feverish and troubled slumber, from which we should soon be roused to fresh horrors and insults. What are the blessings of peace which make it so desirable? What, but that it implies tranquil and secure enjoyment of our homes? What, but that it will restore our seamen and our soldiers, who have been fighting to preserve those homes, to a share of that tranquillity and security? What, but that it will lessen the expenses and alleviate the burdens of the people? What, but that it explores some new channel of commercial intercourse, or reopens such as war had destroyed? What, but that it renews some broken link of amity, or forms some new attachment between nations, and softens the asperities of hostility and hatred into kindness and conciliation and reciprocal goodwill? And which of all these blessings can we hope to obtain by a peace, under the present circumstances, with France? Can we venture to restore to the loom or to the plough the brave men who have fought our battles? Who can say how soon some fresh government may not start up in France, which may feel it their inclination or their interest to renew hostilities? The utmost we can hope for is a short, delusive, and suspicious interval of armistice, without any material diminution of expenditure; without security at home, or a chance of purchasing it by exertions abroad; without any of the essential blessings of peace, or any of the possible advantages of war: a state of doubt and preparation such as will retain in itself all the causes of jealousy to other states which, in the usual course of things, produce remonstrances and (if these are answered unsatisfactorily) war.”
VII.
In 1796, Parliament was dissolved, and Mr. Canning was returned to Parliament this time for Wendover. He had just been named Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; and it has been usual to refer to this appointment as a proof of his early parliamentary success. He owed the promotion, however, entirely to the Prime Minister’s favour; for though his late speech, better than the preceding one, had procured him some credit, there was still a careless impertinence in his manner, and a classical pedantry in his style, which were unsuitable to the taste of the House of Commons. Indeed, so much had he to reform in his manner, that he now remained, by, as it is said, Mr. Pitt’s advice, silent for three years, endeavouring during this time to correct his faults and allow them to be forgotten.
It does not follow that he was idle. The Anti-Jacobin, started in 1797, under the editorship of Mr. Gifford, for the purpose which its title indicates, was commenced at the instigation and with the support of the old contributor to the Microcosm, and did more than any parliamentary eloquence could have done in favour of the anti-Jacobin cause.
“Must wit,” says Mr. Canning, who had now to contend against the most accomplished humorists of his day, “be found alone on falsehood’s side?” and having established himself as the champion of “Truth,” he brought, no doubt, very useful and very brilliant arms to her service. The verses of “New Morality,” spirited, exaggerated, polished, and virulent, satisfied the hatred without offending the taste (which does not seem to have been at that time very refined) of those classes who looked upon our neighbours with almost as much hatred and disgust as were displayed in the verses of the young poet; while the “Friend of Humanity and the Knife-grinder”—almost too trite to be quoted, and yet too excellent to be omitted—will long remain one of the happiest efforts of satire in our language:
“Imitation Sapphics.
“THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GRINDER.
“Friend of Humanity:
“Needy Knife-grinder, whither are you going?
Rough is the road,—your wheel is out of order;
Bleak blows the blast,—your hat has got a hole in’t,
So have your breeches.
“Weary Knife-grinder, little think the proud ones,
Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike
Road, what hard work ’tis crying all day, ‘Knives and
Scissors to grind, O!’
“Tell me, Knife-grinder, how came you to grind knives?
Did some rich man tyrannically use you?
Was it the squire, or parson of the parish,
Or the attorney?
“Was it the squire, for killing of his game? or
Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining?
Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little
All in a lawsuit?
“Have you not read the ‘Rights of Man,’ by Tom Paine?
Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids,
Ready to fall as soon as you have told your
Pitiful story.
“Knife-Grinder:
“Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, sir;
Only last night, a-drinking at the ‘Chequers,’
These poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were
Torn in a scuffle.
“Constables came up for to take me into
Custody; they took me before the justice:
Justice Aldmixon put me in the parish
Stocks for a vagrant.
“I should be glad to drink your honour’s health in
A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence;
But, for my part, I never love to meddle
With politics, sir.
“Friend of Humanity:
“I give thee sixpence? I’ll see thee damn’d first.
Wretch, whom no sense of wrong can rouse to vengeance!
Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,
Spiritless outcast!”
[Exit, kicking over the wheel, in a
fit of universal philanthropy.]
An instance of the readiness of Mr. Canning’s Muse may be here related.
When Frere had completed the first part of the “Loves of the Triangles,” he exultingly read over the following lines to Canning, and defied him to improve upon them:
“Lo! where the chimney’s sooty tube ascends,
The fair Trochais from the corner bends!
Her coal-black eyes upturned, incessant mark
The eddying smoke, quick flame, and volant spark;
Mark with quick ken, where flashing in between,
Her much-loved smoke-jack glimmers thro’ the scene;
Mark how his various parts together tend,
Point to one purpose,—in one object end;
The spiral grooves in smooth meanders flow,
Drags the long chain, the polished axles glow,
While slowly circumvolves the piece of beef below.”
Canning took the pen, and added:
“The conscious fire with bickering radiance burns,
Eyes the rich joint, and roasts it as it turns.”
These two lines are now blended with the original text, and constitute, it is said, the only flaw in Frere’s title to the sole authorship of the first part of the poem, from which I have been quoting: the second and third parts were both by Canning.
In prose I cite the report of a peroration by Mr. Erskine, whose egotism could hardly be caricatured, at a meeting of the Friends of Freedom.
“Mr. Erskine concluded by recapitulating, in a strain of agonizing and impressive eloquence, the several more prominent heads of his speech: He had been a soldier, and a sailor, and had a son at Winchester School; he had been called by special retainers, during the summer, into many different and distant parts of the country, travelling chiefly in post-chaises; he felt himself called upon to declare that his poor faculties were at the service of his country—of the free and enlightened part of it, at least. He stood here as a man; he stood in the eye, indeed in the hand, of God—to whom (in the presence of the company, and waiters) he solemnly appealed; he was of noble, perhaps royal blood; he had a house at Hampstead; was convinced of the necessity of a thorough and radical reform; his pamphlet had gone through thirty editions, skipping alternately the odd and even numbers; he loved the Constitution, to which he would cling and grapple; and he was clothed with the infirmities of man’s nature; he would apply to the present French rulers (particularly Barras and Reubel) the words of the poet:
“‘Be to their faults a little blind;
Be to their virtues ever kind,
Let all their ways be unconfined,
And clap the padlock on their mind!’
and for these reasons, thanking the gentlemen who had done him the honour to drink his health, he should propose ‘Merlin, the late Minister of Justice, under the Directory, and Trial by Jury.’”
I refer those who wish to know more of the literary merits of Mr. Canning to an article, July, 1858, in the “Edinburgh Review,” in which article the accomplished writer has exhausted the subject he undertook to treat.
Nor was Mr. Canning’s reputation for wit, at this time, gained solely by his pen. Living with few, though much the fashion, who could be more charming in his own accomplished circle—when, the pleasant thought lighting up his eye, playing about his mouth, and giving an indescribable charm to his handsome countenance, he abandoned himself to the inspiration of some happy moment, and planned a practical joke, or quizzed an incorrigible bore, or related some humorous anecdote? No one’s society was so much prized by associates; no one’s talents so highly estimated by friends; and his fame in the drawing-room, or at the dining-table, was at least as brilliant as that which he subsequently acquired in the senate.
This, indeed, was the epoch in his life at which perhaps he had the most real enjoyment; for though he felt conscious that his success in Parliament had not yet been complete, the feeling of certainty that it would become so, now began to dawn upon him, and the triumphs that his ardent nature anticipated went probably even beyond those which his maturer career accomplished.
VIII.
On the 11th of December, 1798, Mr. Tierney made a motion respecting peace with the French Republic. The negotiations at Lille, never cordially entered into, were at this time broken off. We had formed an alliance with Russia and the Porte, and were about to carry on the struggle with new energies, though certainly not under very encouraging auspices. The coalition of 1792-3 was completely broken up. Prussia had for three years been at peace with France; nor had the Cabinet of Vienna seen any objection to signing a treaty which, disgracefully to all parties, sacrificed the remains of Venetian liberty.
France, in the meanwhile, distracted at home, had, notwithstanding, enlarged her empire by Belgium, Luxemburg, Nice, Savoy, Piedmont, Genoa, Milan, and Holland. There were many arguments to use in favour of abandoning the struggle we had entered upon: the uncertain friendship of our allies; the increased force of our enemy; and the exhausting drain we were maintaining upon our own resources. In six years we had added one hundred and fifty millions to our debt, by which had been created the necessity of adding to our annual burdens eight millions, a sum equal to the whole of our expenditure when George III. came to the throne.
But the misfortunes which attend an expensive contest, though they necessarily irritate and dissatisfy a people with war, are not always to be considered irrefutable arguments in favour of peace. This formed the substance of the speech which Mr. Canning delivered on Mr. Tierney’s motion. Defective in argument, it was effective in delivery, and added considerably to his reputation as a speaker.
In the meantime, our sworn enmity to France and to French principles, encouraged an ardent inclination to both in those whom we had offended or misgoverned. The Directory in Paris and the discontented in Ireland had, therefore, formed a natural if not a legitimate league. The result was an Irish rebellion, artfully planned, for a long time unbetrayed, and which, but for late treachery and singular accidents, would not have been easily overcome.
Mr. Pitt, taking advantage of the fears of a separation between Great Britain and the sister kingdom, which this rebellion, notwithstanding its prompt and fortunate suppression, had created, announced, in a message from the Crown, a desire still further to incorporate and consolidate the two kingdoms. Whatever may have been the result of the Irish Union, the promises under which it was passed having been so long denied, so unhappily broken, there was certainly at this period reason to suppose that it would afford the means of instituting a fairer and less partial system of government than that under which Ireland had long been suffering.
As for the wail which was then set up, and which has since been re-awakened, for the independent Legislature which was merged into that of Great Britain, the facility with which it was purchased is the best answer which can be given to the assertions made of its value.
The part, therefore, that Mr. Canning adopted on this question (if with sincere and honest views of conferring the rights of citizenship on our Irish Catholic fellow-subjects, and not with the intention, which there is no reason to presume, of gaining their goodwill and then betraying their confidence) is one highly honourable to an English statesman. But another question now arose. That Catholic Emancipation was frequently promised as the natural result of the Union, has never been disputed. As such promises were made plainly and openly in Parliament, the King could not be supposed ignorant of them. Why, then, if his Majesty had such insuperable objections to their fulfilment, did he allow of their being made? And, on the other hand, how could his Ministers compromise their characters by holding out as a lure to a large majority of the Irish people a benefit which they had no security for being able to concede? Mr. Canning’s language is not ambiguous:
“Here, then, are two parties in opposition to each other, who agree in one common opinion; and surely if any middle term can be found to assuage their animosities, and to heal their discords, and to reconcile their jarring interests, it should be eagerly and instantly seized and applied. That an union is that middle term, appears the more probable when we recollect that the Popery code took its rise after a proposal for an union, which proposal came from Ireland, but which was rejected by the British government. This rejection produced the Popery code. If an union were therefore acceded to, the Popery code would be unnecessary. I say, if it was in consequence of the rejection of an union at a former period that the laws against Popery were enacted, it is fair to conclude that an union would render a similar code unnecessary—that an union would satisfy the friends of the Protestant ascendency, without passing new laws against the Catholics, and without maintaining those which are yet in force.”[113]
The Union, nevertheless, was carried; the mention of Catholic Emancipation, in spite of the language just quoted, forbidden. Mr. Pitt (in 1801) retired.
IX.
There will always be a mystery hanging over the transaction to which I have just referred,—a mystery difficult to explain in a manner entirely satisfactory to the character of the King and his minister. One can only presume that the King was willing to let the Union be carried, on the strength of the Premier’s promises, which he did not think it necessary to gainsay until he was asked to carry them into effect; and that the Minister counted upon the important service he would have rendered if the great measure he was bringing forward became law, for the influence that would be necessary to make his promises valid. It cannot be denied that each acted with a certain want of candour towards the other unbecoming their respective positions, and that both behaved unfairly towards Ireland. Mr. Pitt sought to give consistency to his conduct by resigning; but he failed in convincing the public of his sincerity, because he was supposed to have recommended Mr. Addington, then Speaker of the House of Commons, and the son of a Doctor Addington, who had been the King’s physician (to which circumstance the son owed a nickname he could never shake off), as his successor; and Mr. Addington was only remarkable for not being remarkable either for his qualities or for his defects, being just that staid, sober sort of man who, respectable in the chair of the House of Commons, would be almost ridiculous in leading its debates.
Thus an appointment which did not seem serious, perplexed and did not satisfy the public mind; more especially as the seceding minister engaged himself to support the new Premier, notwithstanding their difference of opinion on the very question on which the former had left office. The public did not know then so clearly as it does now that the King, who through his whole life seems to have been on the brink of insanity, was then in a state of mind that rendered madness certain, if the question of the Catholics, on which he had morbid and peculiar notions, was persistingly pressed upon him; and that Mr. Pitt thus, rightly or wrongly, thought it was his duty, after sacrificing office, to stop short of driving the master he had so long served into the gloom of despair. This, however, was a motive that could not be avowed, and consequently every sort of conjecture became current. Was the arrangement made on an understanding with the King, and would Mr. Pitt shortly resume the place he had quitted? Did Mr. Pitt, if there was no such arrangement, really mean to retain so incapable a person as Mr. Addington, at so important a time, at the head of the Government of England, or was his assistance given merely for the moment, with the intention of subsequently withdrawing it?
At first the aid offered to the new Premier by the old one was effective and ostentatious; but a great portion of the Opposition began also to support Mr. Addington, intending in this way to allure him into an independence which, as they imagined, would irritate his haughty friend, and separate the protégé from the patron. The device was successful. The Prime Minister soon began to entertain a high opinion of his own individual importance, Mr. Pitt to feel sore at being treated as a simple official follower of the Government, which he had expected unofficially to command, and ere long he retired almost entirely from Parliament. He did not, however, acknowledge the least desire to return to power.
In this state of things, the conduct of Mr. Canning seemed likely to be the same as Mr. Pitt’s, but it was not so. He did not, even for a moment, affect any disposition to share the partiality which the late First Lord of the Treasury began by testifying for the new one. Sitting in Parliament for a borough for which he had been elected through government influence, his conduct for a moment was fettered; but obtaining, at the earliest opportunity, a new seat (in 1802) by his own means—that is, by his own money—he then went without scruple into the most violent opposition.
His constant efforts to induce Achilles to take up his spear and issue from his tent, are recorded by Lord Malmesbury, and though not wholly disagreeable to his discontented chief, were not always pleasing to him. He liked, no doubt, to be pointed out as the only man who could direct successfully the destinies of England, and enjoyed jokes levelled at the dull gentleman who had become all at once enamoured of his own capacity; but he thought his dashing and indiscreet adherent passed the bounds of good taste and decorum in his attacks, and he disliked being pressed to come forward before he himself felt convinced that the time was ripe for his doing so. Too strong a show of reluctance might, he knew, discourage his friends; too ready an acquiescence compromise his dignity, and give an advantage to his enemies.
He foresaw, indeed, better than any one, all the difficulties that lay in his path. The unwillingness of the Sovereign to exchange a minister with whom he was at his ease, for a minister of whom he always stood in awe; the unbending character of Lord Grenville, with whom he must of necessity associate, if he formed any government that could last, and who, nevertheless, rendered every difficulty in a government more difficult by his uncompromising character, his stately bearing, and his many personal engagements and connections. More than all, perhaps, he felt creeping over him what his friends did not see and would not believe—that premature decrepitude which consigned him, in the prime of life, to the infirmities of age. Thus, though he felt restless at being deprived of the only employment to which he was accustomed, he was not very eager about a prompt reinstatement in it, and preferred waiting until an absolute necessity for his services, and a crisis, on which he always counted, should float him again into Downing Street, over many obstacles against which his bark might otherwise be wrecked.
His real feelings, however, were matter of surmise; many people, not unnaturally, imagined that Mr. Canning represented them; and the energetic partisan, mixing with the world, derived no small importance from his well-known intimacy with the statesman in moody retirement. His marriage, moreover, at this time with Miss Joan Scott, one of the daughters of General Scott, and co-heiress with her sisters, Lady Moray and Lady Titchfield, brought him both wealth and connection, and gave a solidity to his position which it did not previously possess.
X.
In the meantime the Addington administration went on, its policy necessarily partaking of the timid and half-earnest character of the man directing it. Unequal to the burden and the responsibility of war, he had concocted a peace, but a peace of the character which Mr. Canning had previously described: “a peace without security and without honour:” a peace which, while it required some firmness to decline, demanded more to maintain, since the country was as certain to be at first pleased with it as to be soon ashamed of it. No administration would have had the boldness to surrender Malta; few would have been so weak as to promise the cession.
Indeed, almost immediately after concluding this halcyon peace, we find the Secretary of War speaking of “these times of difficulty and danger,” and demanding “an increased military establishment.” Nor was it long before an additional 10,000 men were also demanded for our naval service. On both these occasions Mr. Canning, supporting the demand of the Minister, attacked the Administration; and after stating his reasons for being in favour of the especial measure proposed, burst out at once into an eloquent exhibition of the reasons for his general opposition:
“I do think that this is a time when the administration of the Government ought to be in the ablest and fittest hands. I do not think the hands in which it is now placed answer to that description. I do not pretend to conceal in what quarter I think that fitness most eminently resides. I do not subscribe to the doctrines which have been advanced, that, in times like the present, the fitness of individuals for their political situations is no part of the consideration to which a Member of Parliament may fairly turn his attention. I know not a more solemn or important duty that a Member of Parliament can have to discharge than by giving, at fit seasons, a free opinion upon the character and qualities of public men. Away with the cant of measures, not men—the idle supposition that it is the harness, and not the horse, that draws the chariot along. No, sir; if the comparison must be made—if the distinction must be taken—measures are comparatively nothing, men everything. I speak, sir, of times of difficulty and danger—of times when systems are shaken, when precedents and general rules of conduct fail. Then it is that not to this or that measure, however prudently devised, however blameless in execution, but to the energy and character of individuals a state must be indebted for its salvation. Then it is that kingdoms rise and fall in proportion as they are upheld, not by well-meant endeavours (however laudable these may be), but by commanding, overawing talent—by able men. And what is the nature of the times in which we live? Look at France, and see what we have to cope with, and consider what has made her what she is—a man! You will tell me that she was great, and powerful, and formidable before the date of Bonaparte’s government—that he found in her great physical and moral resources—that he had but to turn them to account. True; and he did so. Compare the situation in which he found France with that to which he has raised her. I am no panegyrist of Bonaparte; but I cannot shut my eyes to the superiority of his talents—to the amazing ascendency of his genius. Tell me not of his measures and his policy. It is his genius, his character, that keeps the world in awe. Sir, to meet, to check, to curb, to stand up against him, we want arms of the same kind. I am far from objecting to the large military establishments which are proposed to you. I vote for them with all my heart. But, for the purpose of coping with Bonaparte, one great commanding spirit is worth them all!”[114]
Mr. Canning was right. No cant betrays more ignorance than that which affects to undervalue the qualities of public men in the march of public affairs. However circumstances may contribute to make individuals, individuals have as great a share in making circumstances. Had Queen Elizabeth been a weak and timid woman, we might now be speaking Spanish, and have our fates dependent on the struggle between Prim and Narvaez. Had James II. been a wise and prudent man,—instead of the present cry against Irish Catholics, our saints of the day would have been spreading charges against the violence and perfidy of some Puritan Protestant, some English, or perhaps Scotch, O’Connell. Strip Mirabeau of his eloquence, endow Louis XVI. with the courage and the genius of Henry IV., and the history of the last eighty years might be obliterated.
Mr. Canning, I repeat, was right; the great necessity in arduous times is a man who inspires other men; and the satirist, in measuring the two rivals for office, was hardly wrong in saying:
“As London to Paddington,
So Pitt is to Addington.”
XI.
Well-adapted ridicule no public man can withstand, and there seems to have been something peculiar to Mr. Addington that attracted it. Even Mr. Sheridan, his steady supporter to the last (for the main body of the Whigs, under Mr. Fox, when they saw a prospect of power for themselves, uniting with the Grenvillites, went into violent opposition)—even Mr. Sheridan, in those memorable lines:
“I do not love thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not love thee, Doctor Fell”:
quoted in defence of the Minister whom so many attacked without saying why they disapproved, furnished a nickname that too well applied to him, and struck the last nail into the coffin that a mingled cohort of friends and enemies bore—a smile on their faces—to the tomb.
Previous to this, the war, which had been suspended by mutual bad faith, was recommenced, each party complaining of the other.
The man to whom Mr. Canning had been so long pointing now came into power, but was not precisely the man, in spite of Mr. Canning’s eulogium, for the sort of crisis in which he assumed it. There was, indeed, a singular contrast in the life of Lord Chatham and that of his son. The first Pitt was essentially a war minister; he seemed to require the sound of the clarion and trumpet and of the guns proclaiming victory from the Tower, to call forth the force and instincts of his genius. In peace he became an ordinary person. The second Pitt, on the contrary, was as evidently a peace minister. In quiet times his government had been eminently successful. Orderly, regular, methodical, with a firm and lofty soul, and the purest motives for his guides, he had carried on the business of the country, steadily, prudently, and ably—heedless of the calumnies of envy, or the combinations of factions: but he wanted that imagination which furnishes resources on unexpected occasions. The mighty convulsion which made the world heave under his feet did not terrify him, but it bewildered him; and nothing could be more unfortunate, or even more wavering, than his conduct when he had to deal with extraordinary events. Still, in one thing he resembled his father—he had unbounded confidence in himself. This sufficed for the moment to give confidence to others; and his stately figure, standing, in the imagination of the nation, by the side of Britannia, added to the indomitable courage of our mariners, and shed a kindred influence over the heroic genius of their chief. But though Mr. Pitt had in a supreme degree the talent of commanding the respect of his followers and admirers, he had not the genial nature which gives sway over equals; and Mr. Fox had of late won to himself many eminent persons who by their opinions and antecedents were more naturally disposed to join his rival. The Premier felt this difficulty, and being wholly above jealousy, would have coalesced with Mr. Fox, and formed a ministry strong in the abilities which at that critical time were so required. But George III., with a narrowness of mind that converted even his good qualities into defects, said, “Bring me whom you please, Mr. Pitt, except Fox.” This exception put an end to the combination in view; for, in spite of Fox’s disinterested remonstrances, or, perhaps, in consequence of them, none of his friends would quit his side.
Nevertheless, proud, accustomed to power, careless of responsibility, defying all opponents, inspiring awe by his towering person and sonorous voice, as well as by the lofty tone of his eloquence and the solitary grandeur of his disposition, alone in front of a stronger phalanx of adversaries than ever, perhaps, before or since, were marshalled against a minister,—Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Windham, the Grenvilles, Mr. Grey, Mr. Tierney—as daring and undaunted in appearance as in the first flush of his youthful glory, stood this singular personage, honoured even in his present isolation with the public hopes. But Fortune, which in less eventful moments had followed, chose this fatal moment for deserting him. In vain he turned to his most able supporter for assistance; that early friend, more unfortunate than himself, stood disabled, and exposed to a disgraceful impeachment. The struggle was too severe; it wore out a spirit which nothing could bend or appal. On the 23rd of January, 1806, immediately after the news of the fatal battle of Austerlitz, which chilled the remains of life within him, and on the anniversary of the day on which, twenty-five years before, he had been returned to Parliament, Mr. Pitt died.
XII.
Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox (the King’s antipathy was this time overborne by necessity) formed the new Ministry, in which Lord Sidmouth (late Mr. Addington), who, Mr. Canning said, “was like the small-pox, since everybody must have him once in their lives,” was also included.
During the short time that Mr. Canning had lately held office, his situation as Treasurer of the Navy had invested him with the defence of Lord Melville, a defence which he conducted with much tact and ability, and to this his parliamentary labours had been confined. The employment of “All the Talents” (as the new Administration, comprising men of every party, was called) now left him almost alone amongst the parliamentary debaters in opposition. This position was a fortunate one.
In the most formidable and successful attacks against Lord Ellenborough’s seat in the Cabinet, which was indefensible—against Mr. Windham’s Limited Service Bill, of which party spirit denied the merits—he led the way. His success on all these occasions was great, and the style of his speaking now began to show the effects of care and experience. A less methodic mode of arguing, a greater readiness in replying, had removed the unprepossessing impression of previous study; while an artful rapidity of style permitted that polish of language which is too apt, when unskilfully employed, to become prolix, monotonous, and languid. It was this peculiar polish, accompanied by a studied though apparently natural rapidity, which, becoming more and more perfect as it became apparently more natural, subsequently formed the essential excellence of Mr. Canning’s speaking; for his poetical illustrations required the charm of his delivery, and his jokes, imitated from Mr. Sheridan, were rarely so good as their model; although, even in his manner of introducing and dealing with these, we may trace, as he advanced, a very marked improvement.
The coalition between parties at one time so adverse as those enlisted under the names of Fox, Grenville, and Addington, could only be maintained by the ascendency of that master-spirit which had been so long predominant in the House of Commons. But when Mr. Fox undertook the arduous duties of the Foreign Office, his health (that treasure which statesmen often spend with improvidence, and which he had wasted more than most men) was already beginning to fail, rendering heavy the duties of public life; and in 1806—while our diplomacy at Paris was making a last attempt to effect that honourable peace which had so long been the object of the worn-out minister’s desires—that great statesman, whose generous and noble heart never deceived him, but whose singular capacity in debate was often marred by a remarkable want of judgment in action, followed his haughty predecessor to an untimely grave.
The Grenville Administration, after the death of Mr Fox, was no more the former Administration of Lord Grenville than the mummy, superstitiously presumed to preserve the spirit of the departed, is the real living body of the person who has been embalmed. It avoided, however, the ignominy of a natural death, by being the first Administration which, according to Mr. Sheridan, “not only ran its head against a wall, but actually built a wall for the purpose of running its head against it.” This instrument of suicide was the well-known bill “for securing to all his Majesty’s subjects the privilege of serving in the Army and Navy.” A measure which, by permitting Irish Catholics to hold a higher military rank than the law at that time allowed them, showed the Whig government to be true to its principles, but without tact or ability in carrying them out; for this bill, brought forward honourably but unadvisedly, withdrawn weakly, alarming many, and never granting much, dissatisfied the Catholics, angered the Protestants, and gave the King the opportunity of sending a ministry he disliked about their business, on a pretext which there was sufficient bigotry in the nation to render popular. A dissolution amidst the yell of “No Popery!” took place; and it was by this cry that the party with which Mr. Canning now consented to act reinstalled itself in power.
XIII.
A person well qualified to know the facts of that time, once told me that, not very long before the dissolution of the Ministry to which he succeeded, at a time certainly when that dissolution was not so apparent, Mr. Canning had privately conveyed to Lord Grenville, who had previously made him an offer, his wish to secede from opposition, and had even received a promise that a suitable place (Mr. Windham’s dismissal was at that time arranged) should be reserved for him. Reminded of this when affairs had become more critical, he is said to have observed, “it was too late.” Whatever may be the truth as to this story—and such stories are rarely accurate in all their details—one thing is certain, the brilliant abilities of the aspiring orator, though then and afterwards depreciated by the dull mediocrity which affects to think wit and pleasantry incompatible with the higher and more serious attributes of genius, now became apparent, and carried him through every obstacle to the most important political situation in the country.
LIST OF MINISTERS.
It is remarkable enough that in the Whig or popular cabinet there was only one person (Mr. Windham)—a gentleman of great landed property, as well as of remarkable ability—who was not a lord or a lord’s son. In the Tory cabinet Mr. Canning formed the only similar exception.
The principles on which the new Government stood in respect to the Irish Catholics were soon put to the test by Mr. Brand, afterwards Lord Dacre, who moved:
“That it is contrary to the first duties of the confidential servants of the Crown to restrain themselves by any pledge, expressed or implied, from offering to the King any advice which the course of circumstances may render necessary for the welfare and security of any part of his Majesty’s extensive empire.”
This motion was caused by the King having required the late Government to pledge itself not to bring forward any future measure of Catholic relief, and having dismissed it when it refused thus to fetter its judgment.
Mr. Canning rose amidst an unwilling audience. The imputations to which his early change of principles had exposed him were rather vividly confirmed by the recklessness with which he now appeared to be rushing into office amongst colleagues he had lately professed to despise, and in support of opinions to which he was known to be opposed. The House received him coldly, and with cries of “Question,” as he commenced an explanation or defence, marked by a more than usual moderation of tone and absence of ornament. The terms on which he had been with the former Administration were to a great degree admitted in the following passage:
“For myself, I confidently aver that on the first intimation which I received, from authority I believed to be unquestionable, of the strong difference of opinion subsisting between the King and his Ministers, I took the determination of communicating what I had learnt, and I did communicate it without delay to that part of the late Administration with which, in spite of political differences, I had continued, and with which, so far as my own feelings are concerned, I still wish to continue in habits of personal friendship and regard. I communicated it, with the most earnest advice and exhortation, that they should lose no time in coming to such an explanation and accommodation on the subject at issue as should prevent matters from going to extremities.”
This statement, it is acknowledged, was perfectly correct; but it leaves untouched the tale just alluded to, and which represented the Minister, who was then making his explanations, as having been ready to join an Administration favourable to the Catholic claims, previous to his joining an Administration hostile to those claims. But though I have related this tale as I heard it, I do not pretend to vouch for its accuracy. But without denying or vouching for the truth of this tale (though the authority on which it rests is highly respectable), I may observe, it may be said that “no coalition can take place without previous compromise or intrigue,” and that almost every Administration is formed or supported by coalition.
How, indeed, had the Administration which now gave way been originally composed? Of Mr. Windham, the loudest declaimer for war; of Mr. Fox, the most determined advocate of peace; of Lord Sidmouth, the constant subject of ridicule to both Mr. Windham and Mr. Fox. There was Mr. Sheridan, the champion of annual Parliaments; Lord Grenville, opposed to all reform! Besides, it was at that time accepted as an axiom by a large number of the supporters of the Catholics, that the Sovereign’s health created a justifiable reason for leaving the Catholic question in abeyance, and that the attempt to push it forward at an untimely moment would not really tend to its success.
Nor did Lord Castlereagh, who had always shown himself an honest champion of the Catholic cause, evince more scruples on this matter than the new Foreign Secretary. But if Mr. Canning’s friends made excuses for him, Mr. Canning himself, always saying “that a thrust was the best parry,” felt more disposed to attack the enemy than to defend himself; and many of the political squibs which turned the incapable Administration of “All the Talents” into ridicule, were attributed to his satirical fancy. From 1807 to 1810, he remained in office.
XIV.
The period just cited was marked by our interference in Spain, our attack on Copenhagen, and that expedition to the Scheldt, which hung during two years over the debates in Parliament, like one of the dull fogs of that river.
Our foreign policy, though not always fortunate, could no longer at least be accused of want of character and vigour. As to the intervention in Spain, though marked by the early calamity of Sir John Moore, it was still memorable for having directed the eye of our nation to the vulnerable point in that Colossus whom our consistency and perseverance finally brought to the ground.
The Danish enterprise was of a more doubtful character, and can only be judged of fairly by carrying our minds back to the moment at which it took place. That moment was most critical; every step we took was of importance. Before the armies of France, and the genius of her ruler, lay the vanquished legions of the north and south of Germany. From the House of Hapsburg the crown of Charlemagne was gone; while the throne of the Great Frederick was only yet preserved in the remote city of Königsberg. In vain Russia protracted an inauspicious struggle. The battle of Friedland dictated peace. There remained Sweden, altogether unequal to the conflict in which she had plunged: Denmark protected by an evasive neutrality, which it was for the interest of neither contending party to respect. On the frontiers of Holstein, incapable of defence, hung the armies of France. Zealand and Funen, indeed, were comparatively secure, but people do not willingly abandon the most fertile of their possessions, or defy an enemy because there are portions of their territory which will not sink before the first attack.
Ministers laid some stress on their private information, and it is said that Sir R. Wilson, returning, perhaps it may be said escaping, with extraordinary diligence from Russia after the Peace of Tilsit, brought undeniable intelligence as to the immediate intentions of our new allies. But private information was useless. We do not want to know what a conqueror intends to do, when we know what his character and interests imperatively direct him to do. It would have been absurd, indeed, not to foresee that Napoleon could not rest in neutral neighbourhood on the borders of a country, the possession of which, whether under the title of amity or conquest, was eminently essential to his darling continental system, since through Tonningen were passed into Germany our manufactures and colonial produce. Had this, indeed, been disputable before the famous decree of the 21st of November,[115] that decree removed all doubts.
Denmark, then, had no escape from the mighty war raging around her, and had only to choose between the tyrant of the Continent or the mistress of the seas. If she declared against us, as it was likely she would do, her navy, joined to that of Russia, and, as it soon would be, to that of Sweden, formed a powerful force—not, indeed, for disputing the empire of the ocean; there we might safely have ventured to meet the world in arms; but for assisting in those various schemes of sudden and furtive invasion which each new continental conquest encouraged and facilitated—encompassed, as we became, on all sides by hostile shores. But if the neutrality of the Danes was impossible, if their fleet, should they become hostile to us, might add materially to our peril, was it wrong to make them enter frankly into our alliance, if that were possible, or to deprive them of their worst means of mischief, if they would not?
After all, what did we say to Denmark?—“You cannot any longer retain a doubtful position; you must be for us, or we must consider you against us. ‘If a friend, you may count on all the energy and resources of Great Britain.’” Denmark had offered to sell a large portion of her marine to Russia, and we offered to purchase it manned. It was required, she said, to defend Zealand; we offered to defend Zealand for her.
But our negotiation failed, and finally we seized, as belonging to a power which was certain to become an enemy, the ships with which she refused to aid us as an ally. A state must be in precisely similar circumstances before it can decide whether it ought to do precisely a similar thing.
Some blamed our conduct as unjust, whilst others praised it as bold. What perhaps may be said is, that if unjust at all, it was not bold enough. War once commenced, Zealand should have been held; the stores and supplies in the merchant docks not left unnoticed; the passage of the Sound kept possession of. In short, our assault on Copenhagen should have been part of a permanent system of warfare, and not suffered to appear a mere temporary act of aggression.
Still it showed in the Minister who planned and stood responsible for it, three qualities, by no means common: secrecy, foresight and decision.
XV.
But if our conduct towards the Danes admits of defence, luckily for Mr. Canning the odium of that miserable expedition against Holland—in which
“Lord Chatham, with his sword undrawn,
Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan;
Sir Richard, longing to be at ’em,
Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham;”
an expedition equally disgraceful to ministers and commanders—fell chiefly on his colleague, who had originated and presided over it, having himself been present at the embarkation.
It is necessary here to say a word or two concerning that statesman, who, though agreeing with Mr. Canning upon the principal question of their time, was never cordially united with him. Lord Castlereagh joined to great boldness in action,—great calm and courtesy of manner, long habits of official routine, and a considerable acquaintance with men collectively and individually. He lived in the world, and was more essentially a man of the world than his eloquent contemporary; but, on the other hand, he was singularly deficient in literary accomplishments, and this deficiency was not easily pardoned in an assembly, the leading members of which had received a classical education, and were as intolerant to an ungrammatical phrase as to a political blunder. His language—inelegant, diffuse, and mingling every variety of metaphorical expression—was the ridicule of the scholar. Still the great air with which he rose from the Treasury Bench, threw back his blue coat, and showed his broad chest and white waistcoat, looking defiance on the ranks of the Opposition, won him the hearts of the rank and file of the government adherents. In affairs, he got through the details of office so as to satisfy forms, but not so as to produce results: for if the official men who can manufacture plans on paper are numerous, the statesmen who can give them vitality in action are rare; and Lord Castlereagh was not one of them.
There was never, as I have just said, any great cordiality or intimacy between two persons belonging to the same party and aspiring equally to play the principal part in it. The defects of each, moreover, were just of that kind that would be most irritating to the eye of the other; but they would probably have gone on rising side by side, if they had not now been thrown together and almost identified in common action. The success of most of Mr. Canning’s schemes as Minister of Foreign Affairs depended greatly upon the skill with which Lord Castlereagh, as Minister of War, carried them into execution; any error of the latter affected the reputation of the former; thus the first difficulty was sure to produce a quarrel. Mr. Canning indeed was constantly complaining that every project that was conceived by the Foreign Office miscarried when it fell under the care of the War Office; that all the gold which he put into his colleague’s crucible came out, somehow or other, brass; and these complaints were the more bitter, since, involuntarily influenced by his rhetorical predilections, he could not help exaggerating the consequences of mistakes in conduct, which were aggravated by mistakes in grammar.
Nevertheless, wishing, very probably, to avoid a public scandal, he merely told the head of the Government privately that a change must take place in the Foreign or in the War Department, and, after some little hesitation, the removal of Lord Castlereagh was determined on; but some persons from whom, perhaps, that statesman had no right to expect desertion, anxious to keep their abandonment of him concealed as long as possible, requested delay; and the Duke of Portland, a man of no resolution, not daring to consent to the resignation of one of the haughty gentlemen with whom he had to deal, was glad to defer the affront that it was intended to put on to the other. Such being the state of things, Mr. Canning was prevailed upon to allow the matter to stand over for a while, receiving at the same time the most positive assurances as to his request being finally complied with. At the end of the session and the conclusion of the enterprise (against Flushing) already undertaken, some arrangement was to be proposed, “satisfactory, it was hoped, to all parties.” Such is the usual hope of temporising politicians. But, in the meantime, the Secretary of War was allowed to suppose that he carried into the discharge of the duties of his high post, all the confidence and approbation of the Cabinet.
This was not a pleasant state of things to discover in the moment of adversity; when the whole nation felt itself disgraced at the pitiful termination of an enterprise which had been very lavishly prepared and very ostentatiously paraded. Yet such was the moment when Mr. Canning, fatigued at the Premier’s procrastination, disgusted by the calamity which he attributed to it, and resolved to escape, if possible, from a charge of incapacity, beneath which the whole Ministry was likely to be crushed, threw up his appointment, and the unfortunate Secretary of War learnt that for months his abilities had been distrusted by a majority of the Cabinet in which he sat, and his situation only provisionally held on the ill-extorted acquiescence of a man he did not like, and who underrated and disliked him. His irritation vented itself in a letter which produced a duel—a duel that Mr. Canning was not justly called upon to fight; for all that he had done was to postpone a decision he had a perfect right to adopt, and which he deferred expressly in order to spare Lord Castlereagh’s feelings and at the request of Lord Castlereagh’s friends. But the one of these gentlemen was quite as peppery and combative as the other, though it appeared he was not quite so good a shot, for Mr. Canning missed his opponent and received a disagreeable wound, though not a dangerous one; the final result of the whole affair being the resignation of the Premier and of the two Secretaries of State, the country paying twenty millions (the cost of the late barren attempt at glory) because the friends of a minister had shrunk from saying anything unpleasant to him until he was prostrate.
Part II.
FROM MR. PERCEVAL’S ADMINISTRATION TO ACCEPTANCE OF THE GOVERNOR-GENERALSHIP OF INDIA.
Mr. Perceval, Prime Minister.—Lord Wellesley, Minister of Foreign Affairs.—King’s health necessitates regency.—The line taken by Mr. Canning upon it.—Conduct with respect to Mr. Horner’s Finance Committee.—Absurd resolution of Mr. Vansittart.—Lord Wellesley quits the Ministry.—Mr. Perceval is assassinated.—Mr. Canning and Lord Wellesley charged to form a new Cabinet, and fail.—Further negotiations with Lords Grey and Grenville fail.—Lord Liverpool becomes head of an Administration which Mr. Canning declines to join.—Accepts subsequently embassy to Lisbon, and, in 1816, enters the Ministry.—Supports coercive and restrictive measures.—Resigns office at home after the Queen’s trial, and accepts the Governor-Generalship of India.
I.
A new Administration brought Lord Wellesley to the Foreign Office, and Mr. Perceval to the head of affairs.
In 1810 the state of the King’s health came once more before the public. Parliament met in November; the Sovereign was this time admitted by his courtiers to be unmistakedly insane. A commission had been appointed, but there was no speech with which to address the Houses; no authority to prorogue them. Mr. Perceval moved certain resolutions. These resolutions were important, for they furnished a text for debate, and settled the question so much disputed in 1788-9, deciding (for no one was found to take up the old and unpopular arguments of Mr. Fox) that Parliament had the disposal of the Regency; and that the Heir-apparent, without the sanction of the Legislature, had no more right to it than any other individual. These first resolutions were followed by others, expressive of a determination to confer the powers of the Crown on the Prince of Wales, but not without restrictions. Here arose a new question, and of this question Mr. Canning availed himself. Interest and consistency alike demanded that he should stand fast to the traditions of Mr. Pitt, whose name was still the watchword of a considerable party. But Mr. Pitt had alike contended for the right of Parliament to name the Regent, and for the wisdom of fettering the Regency by limitations. Whereas Mr. Canning, though advocating the powers of Parliament to name the Regent, was not in favour of limiting the Regent’s authority. Through these confronting rocks the wary statesman steered with the skill of a veteran pilot:[116]
“The rights of the two Houses,” said he, “were proclaimed and maintained by Mr. Pitt; that is the point on which his authority is truly valuable. The principles upon which this right was affirmed and exercised are true for all times and all occasions. If they were the principles of the Constitution in 1788, they are equally so in 1811; the lapse of twenty-two years had not impaired, the lapse of centuries could not impair them. But the mode in which the right so asserted should be exercised, the precise provisions to be framed for the temporary substitution of the executive power—these were necessarily then, as they must be now, matters not of eternal and invariable principle, but of prudence and expediency. In regard to these, therefore, the authority of the opinion of any individual, however great and wise and venerable, can be taken only with reference to the circumstances of the time in which he has to act, and are not to be applied without change or modification to other times and circumstances.”[117]
II.
Thus, all that partisanship could demand in favour of an abstract principle, was religiously accorded to the manes of the defunct statesman; and a difference as wide as the living Prince of Wales could desire, established between the theory that no one any longer disputed, and the policy which was the present subject of contention. Here Mr. Canning acted with tact and foresight if he merely acted as a political schemer. The Royal personage on whom power was about to devolve had always expressed the strongest dislike, not to say disgust, at any abridgment of the Regal authority. He was likely to form a new Administration. The Whigs, it is true, were then considered the probable successors to power; but the Whigs would want assistance; and subsequent events showed that a general feeling had begun to prevail in favour of some new combination of men less exclusive than could be found in the ranks of either of the extreme and opposing parties. But it is fair to add that the course which Mr. Canning might have taken for his private interest, he had every motive to take for the public welfare.
Beyond the personal argument of the sick King’s convenience—an argument which should hardly guide the policy or affect the destinies of a mighty kingdom—Mr. Perceval had not, for the restrictions he proposed, one reasonable pretext. It might, indeed, be agreeable to George III., if he recovered from his sad condition, to find things and persons as he had left them; and to recognise that all the functions of Government had been palsied since the suspension of his own power. But if ever the hands of a sovereign required to be strongly armed, it was most assuredly in those times. They were no times of ease or peace in which a civilized people may be said to govern themselves; neither were we merely at war. The war we were waging was of life or death; the enemy with whom we were contending concentrated in his own mind, and wielded with his own hand, all the force of Europe. This was not a moment for enfeebling the Government that had to contend against him. The power given to the King or Regent in our country is not, let it be remembered, an individual and irresponsible power. It is a National power devolving on responsible Ministers, who have to account to the nation for the use they make of it.
“What,” said Mr. Canning (having assumed and asserted the right of the two Houses of Parliament to supply the incapacity of the sovereign)—“what is the nature of the business which through incapacity stands still, and which we are to find the means of carrying on? It is the business of a mighty state. It consists in the exercise o£ functions as large as the mind can conceive—in the regulation and direction of the affairs of a great, a free, and a powerful people: in the care of their internal security and external interests; in the conduct, of foreign negotiations; in the decision of the vital questions of peace and war; and in the administration of the Government throughout all the parts, provinces, and dependencies of an empire extending itself into every quarter of the globe. This is the awful office of a king; the temporary execution of which we are now about to devolve upon the Regent. What is it, considering the irresponsibility of the Sovereign as an essential part of the Constitution,—what is it that affords a security to the people for the faithful exercise of these all-important functions? The responsibility of Ministers. What are the means by which these functions operate? They are those which, according to the inherent imperfection of human nature, have at all times been the only motives to human actions, the only control upon them of certain and permanent operation, viz., the punishment of evil, and the reward of merit. Such, then, being the functions of monarchical government, and such being the means of rendering them efficient to the purposes of good government, are we to be told that in providing for its delegation, while it is not possible to curtail those powers which are in their nature harsh and unpopular, it is necessary to abridge those milder, more amiable and endearing prerogatives which bear an aspect of grace and favour towards the subject?”
III.
There was no answer to Mr. Canning, but a very practical one. Mr. Perceval thought that the King would shortly recover and keep him in office—and that the Regent, if his Royal Highness had but the power, would forthwith turn him out of it. Such an argument might satisfy a more scrupulous minister. In vain, therefore, was it urged, “If the powers of a monarch are not necessary now, they are never necessary. In consulting the possible feelings of the sick King, you are injuring the certain interests of kingly authority.”
The passions or interests of a faction will ever ride high over its principles; and for a second time within half a century the theory of monarchy received the greatest practical insult from a high Tory minister. That the House of Commons thought a new era at hand was seen by its divisions. On the motion of Mr. Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne) against the “Restrictions,” the majority in favour of Government was but 224 to 200.
A variety of circumstances, however, to which allusion will presently be made, prevented the general expectation from being realized. The Government remained, but it was not a Government that seemed likely to be of long duration. On one important question Mr. Canning almost immediately opposed it.
IV.
The report of a committee, distinguished for its ability, had attributed the depreciation in the value of bank-notes to their excessive issue, and recommended a return, within two years, to cash payments. Mr. Canning had belonged to this committee, and had given the subject, however foreign to his customary studies, much attention. The view which he took upon the sixteen resolutions moved by Mr. Horner, May 8, 1811, was, perhaps, the best. To all those resolutions, which went to fix as a principle that a real value in metal should be the proper basis for a currency—a general landmark, by which legislation should, as far as it was practicable, be guided—he assented; that particular resolution, which, under the critical circumstances of the country, went to fetter and prescribe the moment at which this principle should be resumed, he opposed.
Such opposition was unavailing; and History instructs us, by the resolution which Mr. Vansittart then proposed, that no absurdity is so glaring as to shock the eye of prejudiced credulity.
“May 13, 1811.
“Resolution III.—‘That it is the opinion of this committee (a committee of the whole House) that the promissory notes of the company (the Bank) have hitherto been, and are at this time, held in public estimation to be equivalent to the legal coin of the realm, and generally accepted as such.’”
The Chancellor of the Exchequer thus called upon the House of Commons to assert, that the public esteemed, a twenty shilling bank-note as much as twenty shillings; and it had just been necessary to frame a law to prevent persons giving more than £1 and 1 shilling for a guinea, and all the guineas had disappeared from England. It had just been found expedient to raise the value of crown-pieces from 5s. to 5s. 6d. (which was, in fact, to reduce £1 in paper to the value of 18s.), in order to prevent crown-pieces from disappearing also. Persons were in prison for buying guineas at a premium; whilst pamphlets and papers were universally and daily declaring that the notes of the company were not at that time held in public estimation to be equivalent to the legal coin of the realm.
“When Galileo,” said Mr. Canning, “first promulgated the doctrine that the earth turned round the sun, and that the sun remained stationary in the centre of the universe, the holy father of the Inquisition took alarm at so daring an innovation, and forthwith declared the first of these propositions to be false and heretical, and the other to be erroneous in point of faith. The holy office pledged itself to believe that the earth was stationary and the sun movable. But this pledge had little effect in changing the natural course of things: the sun and the earth continued, in spite of it, to preserve their accustomed relations to each other, just as the coin and the bank-note will, in spite of the right honourable gentleman’s resolution.”—[Report of Bullion Committee.]
But if the opposition had the best of the debate, the minister triumphed in the division; nevertheless so equivocal a success, whilst lowering the character of Parliament, did not heighten that of the Ministry.
Mr. Perceval, indeed, though possessing the quick, sharp mind of a lawyer, and the small ready talent of a debater, was without any of those superior qualities which enable statesmen to take large views. Great as an advocate, he was small as a statesman. Lord Wellesley at last revolted at his supremacy, and, quitting the government, observed that “he might serve with Mr. Perceval, but could never serve under him again.”
V.
About this time expired the period during which the Regency restrictions had been imposed; and not long after, the Premier (being confirmed in office by new and unsuccessful attempts to remodel the Administration) was assassinated by a madman (11 May, 1812).
The cabinet, which with Mr. Perceval was weak, without Mr. Perceval seemed impossible; and all persons at the moment were favourable to such a fusion of parties as would allow of the formation of a Cabinet, powerful and efficient.
Lord Wellesley, a man who hardly filled the space in these times for which his great abilities qualified him (co-operating with Mr. Canning, who was to be leader in the House of Commons), was selected as the statesman through whom such a Cabinet was to be formed. But Lord Liverpool, from personal reasons, at once declined all propositions from Lord Wellesley. Another negotiation was then opened, the basis proposed for a new ministry being that four persons should be returned to the Cabinet by Lord Wellesley and Mr. Canning; four (of whom Lord Erskine and Lord Moira were two) by the Prince Regent; and five by Lords Grey and Grenville, whilst the principles agreed to by all, were to be the vigorous prosecution of the war, and the immediate conciliation of the Catholics. The vigorous prosecution of the war and the conciliation of the Catholics were assented to; nor was it stated that the other conditions were inadmissible, though it was suggested that there would be a great inconvenience in making the Cabinet Council a debating society, and entering it with hostile and rival parties. Lord Wellesley returned to the Regent for further orders. But his Royal Highness deemed it expedient to consider that Lord Wellesley’s attempt had been a failure, and the task which had been given to him was transferred to Lord Moira. This nobleman, vain, weak, and honest, undertook the commission, and a new treaty was commenced with Lords Grey and Grenville, whose conduct at this time, it must be added, seems at first sight unintelligible; for they were granted every power they could desire in political matters. But there were various personal and private reasons which rendered all arrangements difficult. In the first place, Lord Grey is said to have despised, and never to have trusted the Prince, who, as he believed, was merely playing with the Whig party. In the next, Lord Grenville could not make up his mind to resign the auditorship of the exchequer, a certain salary for life, nor to accept a lower office than that of First Lord of the Treasury, while the union of the two offices, the one being a check upon the other, was too evident a job to escape observation; indeed, Mr. Whitbread had positively said that he could never support such a combination.
Thus, a variety of petty interests made any pretext sufficient to interfere with the completion of a scheme which every one was eager to counsel, no one ready to adopt. The most ungracious pretext, that of dictating the Regent’s household, was chosen for a rupture; but it happened to chime in with the popular cry, which was loud against the influence of Hertford House; as may be seen by the speeches of the day, and particularly by a speech from Lord Donoughmore, in which he talks of the Marchioness of Hertford, to whose veteran seductions the Regent was then supposed to have fallen a victim, as “a matured enchantress” who had by “potent spells” destroyed all previous prepossessions, and taken complete possession of the Royal understanding.
VI.
There was as much bad taste as impolicy in these attacks; and the long-pending struggle terminated at last in favour of Lord Liverpool, who on June 8, 1812, declared himself Prime Minister. Why did Mr. Canning, who was solicited at the close of the session to join Lord Liverpool’s Administration, decline to do so? Not because he was personally hostile to Lord Liverpool: he was warmly attached to that nobleman; not because the Administration was exclusive, and only admitted those who were hostile to the Catholic Question; for he subsequently says (May 18, 1819): “I speak with perfect confidence when I assert that those who gave their support to the present Ministry on its formation, did so on the understanding that every member of it entered into office with the express stipulation that he should maintain his own opinion in Parliament on the Catholic Question.”
Mr. Stapleton says it was because his friends thought that to the Foreign Office, which he was offered, ought to have been added the lead in the House of Commons, which Lord Liverpool would not withdraw from Lord Castlereagh. But Mr. Canning eventually became a member of the Government whose fate he now declined to share, leaving to Lord Castlereagh the lead in the House of Commons. How, then, are we to account for this difference of conduct at two different epochs?
An explanation may thus be found: During the years 1810 and 1811, our continental policy had still remained unfortunate. True it was that, by the unexpected skill and unexampled energy of our new commander, we gained, during 1811, the possession of Portugal, driving from that country a general who had hitherto been equally conspicuous for his talents and his fortune. But the whole of the Spanish frontier, and the greatest part of Spain itself, was held by the French armies; while the victory of Wagram, the revolution in Sweden, the marriage of Napoleon, the birth of the King of Rome, had greatly added to the weight and apparent stability of the French empire.
Our differences with the United States had also continually increased; and in 1812, war, which had long been impending, was declared and justified in an eloquent and able statement by Mr. Madison.
In the meantime Napoleon, surrounded by that luminous mystery which gave a kind of magic to his actions, was marching in all the pomp of anticipated triumph against the remote and solitary state which alone, on the humbled and subjugated continent, had yet the means and the courage to dispute his edicts and defy his power. Up to the 14th of September, when he entered Moscow, his career was more marvellous, his glory more dazzling than ever.
VII.
Such was the state of foreign affairs when Mr. Canning and his friends refused to connect themselves with a feeble and self-mistrusting administration. But the year following things were strangely altered. The retreat from Russia had taken place; the battle of Leipsic had been fought. Russians, Austrians, Saxons, Swedes, Bavarians, Spaniards, Portuguese, the people of those various nations, who had formerly to defend their own territory, were now pouring into France.
The first gleams of victory shone over the gloomy struggle of twenty years. An accident yet unexplained—the burning of a city on the farthest confines of the civilized world—had changed the whole face of European affairs. “The mighty deluge,” to use Mr. Canning’s poetical language, “by which the Continent had been so long overwhelmed, began to subside. The limits of nations were again visible, and the spires and turrets of ancient establishments began to re-appear from beneath the subsiding wave.”[118]
From this moment Mr. Canning began to show confidence in a ministry which he had hitherto more or less despised. The desire of sustaining it in this crisis of the terrible conflict in which we were engaged, had no doubt some influence over his conduct; but I venture to add that there are natures which, without being instigated by low and vulgar motives, have a propensity to harmonize with success. Mr. Canning’s nature was of this description. It loved the light to shine on its glittering surface; and he began to feel a sympathy for the Government, bright with the rays of anticipated fortune, which in darker moments he had shrunk from with antipathy and mistrust.
VIII.
Napoleon fell shortly afterwards, and Mr. Huskisson, the most celebrated of Mr. Canning’s followers, was gazetted as Commissioner of Woods and Forests; Mr. Canning himself (who at the last general election had been honoured by the unsolicited representation of Liverpool) accepting an embassy to Lisbon. His acceptance of this office was one of the actions of his life for which he was most attacked; it was considered a job; for an able minister (Mr. Sydenham), on a moderate salary, was recalled, in order to give the eminent orator, whose support the Government wished to obtain, the appointment of ambassador on a much larger salary: and although, when Mr. Lambton (afterwards Lord Durham) brought forward a motion on the subject, Mr. Canning made a triumphant reply to the specific charges brought against his nomination, and although he was altogether above the accusation of accepting any post for the mere sake of its emoluments, it was nevertheless clear that it was because he was going to Lisbon for the health of his son, and that it was more agreeable to him to go in an official position than as a simple individual, that he had been employed, and his predecessor removed. It is needless to add he would have acted more wisely had he not accepted a post in which little credit was to be gained and much censure was to be risked.
On his return from Portugal he entered the Cabinet at the head of the Board of Control.
During his absence many events had occurred to characterize the Administration he joined. Peace finally established on the prostrate armies of France, which at Waterloo had made their last struggle, left the war which we had pursued with so lavish an expenditure, and so desperate a determination, to be estimated by its results. Whatever the necessity of this war at its commencement, the cause under which it had been continued for the last fourteen years was sacred.
A military chief at the head of a valorous soldiery, had during this time trampled on the rights and feelings of almost every people in Europe. The long-established barriers of independent states had been shifted or pulled down like hurdles, to make them fit the increasing or diminishing drove of cattle which it suited the caprices of the French ruler that they should contain. The inhabitants of such states, treated little better than mere cattle, had been seized, sold, bartered, given away. It was no marvel, then, that the conquerors became in the end the conquered; for the struggle was one which commenced by all the kings marching against one people, and concluded by every people marching against one warrior. They invoked—these new assailants—what is best in philosophy, morality, policy; they conquered, and what did philosophy, morality, policy gain? Were rights and natural sympathies respected? Were old landmarks restored?
The peace alluded to was said to be a peace founded on justice, and justice never deserts the weak; yet Genoa was gone; Venice was no more; Poland remained partitioned; Saxony had been plundered by Prussia with as unsparing a hand as that by which she herself had been despoiled during the conquests of France. Norway, by a treaty, which Mr. Canning had said, in 1813, when still unshackled by office, “filled him with shame, regret, and indignation,” was become the unwilling recompense to Sweden for the loss of a province of which a mightier power had taken possession. A struggle of the fiercest nature had been steadily maintained merely for the sake of restoring things to their old condition; and no nation not pre-eminent in power got back its own, except Spain, which recovered the Inquisition.[119] Even Holland was not re-invested with her ancient liberties, her old noble republican name. Stripped of her glorious history, and weakened by the addition of four millions of discontented subjects, the statesmen of the day fancied her more august and more secure. The errors committed at this time were those of a system; for there were two courses to pursue in the re-settlement of Europe. Had it appeared that, after a conflict of nearly thirty years, during which violence had held unlimited sway, everything which was dear to the people it concerned, and which still stood forth vivid in history, was endowed with a new reality; that at the overthrow of wrongful power, the right of the meanest was everywhere weighed, and the right of the weakest everywhere established: had it appeared that the mightiest captain of modern times had only been vanquished by a principle—which, if the general interest could predominate, would regulate the destinies of the world—then indeed a lesson, of which it is impossible to calculate the effects, would have been given to all future ambitious disturbers of mankind: while the lovers of peace and virtue in every portion of the globe, even in France, would have seen something holy in the triumph which had been gained, and gathered round the cause of the allies. But if this was one policy, there was also another, and that other was adopted.
IX.
As Bonaparte had cut up and parcelled out nations for the purpose of enlarging the boundaries and strengthening the dominions of France, so the conquerors of Bonaparte spoiled and partitioned with equal zeal, in order to control the boundaries and restrain the dominion of the warlike people they had defeated. The limits imposed by right, justice, antiquity, custom, were all disregarded, and an attempt, by preference, made to throw up against all future schemes of conquest the patchwork barrier of ill-united and discordant populations.
Such had been the termination of affairs in Europe; but our contest with America was also over. We had made a treaty with that Power—a treaty so contrived that it did not settle a single one of those questions for which we had engaged in war. Nor were the circumstances under which this singular arrangement was completed such as compelled us to accede to it. The whole force of the British empire was disengaged; we could no longer say that our fleets were not invincible in one quarter of the world because their strength was exerted in another; whilst, if we meant to keep the dominion of the seas—more important to us than the whole of that continent we had been subsidizing and contending upon—there was every peril to apprehend from leaving unchecked the spirit of a rising rival, who had lately fought and frequently vanquished us on our own element, and who during a long peace would have the opportunity to mature that strength of which she was already conscious and proud. In short, the peace of Europe affected our character for morality, that of America weakened the belief in our power.
Mr. Canning would hardly have joined an Administration which had so mismanaged our foreign affairs, if the glory of our arms had not gilded in some degree the faults of our diplomacy. But the part which that diplomacy had played on the Continent was not without its effect upon things at home. We had become each year more and more alienated from our military allies, who having triumphed by the enthusiasm of their people, seemed disposed to govern by the bayonets of their troops. The Holy Alliance—that singular compact, invented partly by the superstition, partly by the policy of the Emperor Alexander—an alliance by which three sovereigns, at the head of conquering armies, swore in very mystical language to govern according to the doctrines of Christian charity, swearing also (which was more important) to lend each other assistance on all occasions, and in all places—this alliance, which no one could clearly understand, and which our Government refused to join, excited all the suspicion and all the apprehension which mystery never fails to produce, and made Englishmen, while they were rejoicing at having subdued an overgrown and despotic tyranny in one quarter of the world, doubt whether they might not have created as dangerous a one in another.
X.
Nor was this all. They who begin to be dissatisfied with the fruits of victory, soon grow more and more dissatisfied with what victory has cost. Moreover, this period, from a variety of circumstances, some of them inseparable from the sudden transition from active war to profound peace, was one of great uncertainty and distress; whilst the public mind, no longer excited by military conflict, was the more disposed to political agitation. A demand for diminished imposts, and a demand for political reform, are always to be expected at such moments. Our form of government led more naturally to these demands, for the theory of the constitution was at variance with its practice; the one saying that Englishmen should be taxed by their representatives, the other proving that they were in many instances taxed by persons who represented a powerful patron or a petty constituency, and not the people of England. The evils complained of were exaggerated; there were exaggerations also as to the remedies for which the most violent of the clamorous called. But the thoughts of the nation were directed to economy as a relief from taxation, and to parliamentary reform as a means of economy. Public meetings in favour of parliamentary reform were held; resolutions in favour of parliamentary reform were passed; petitions praying for it were presented; the energies of a free people, who thought themselves wronged, were aroused: great excitement prevailed.
XI.
The vessel of the state in these sudden squalls requires that those at the helm should govern it with a calm heart and a steady hand. Anger and fear are equally to be avoided, for they lead equally to violent measures, and the excitement of one party only feeds the excitement of the other.
Lord Castlereagh, the leading spirit at this time in the Cabinet, vapid and incorrect as an orator, inefficient as an administrator, was still, as I have elsewhere said, not without qualities as a statesman—for he was cool and he was courageous; and, therefore, if we now see him acting as if under the influence of the most slavish apprehension, we must look for some reasonable motive for his appearing to entertain fears which he could not have really felt.
Now, the fact is, that he had but two things to do—to satisfy the discontented as aggrieved, or to rally the majority of the country against them as disaffected. The first policy would not keep his party in power; the second, therefore, was the one he preferred. The terrors of the timid were to be awakened; the passions of the haughty were to be aroused; the designs of the malcontents were to be darkened—their strength increased—in short, to save the Ministry, it was essential that the State should be declared in danger. This is an old course; it has been tried often: it was tried now.
Thus Government opened the Session of 1817 with a “green bag.” This bag, a true Pandora’s box, contained threats of every mischief—assassination, incendiarism, insurrection, in their most formidable and infuriated shapes. One conspiracy, indeed, was a model that deserves to be set apart for the use of future conspirators or—statesmen. It comprehended the storming of the Bank and the Tower, the firing the different barracks, the overthrow of everybody and everything, even the great and massive bridges which cross the Thames, and which were to be blown up as a matter of course; but the traitors were pious and brave men, relying almost wholly on Providence and their courage, so that only two hundred and fifty pikes and some powder in an old stocking had been provided to secure the success of their undertaking.
XII.
Many schemes equally plausible were attributed to, and perhaps entertained by, a few unhappy men in the manufacturing districts; while the well-known doctrines of an enthusiast named Spence[120]—doctrines which inculcate the necessity of property being held in common, and which under different names have been continually put forward at every period of the world—found amongst the poor and starving, as they will ever find in times of distress and difficulty, a ready reception. “These doctrines,” said Lord Castlereagh, “contain in themselves a principle of contradiction;” but he was not willing to trust to this principle alone!
Various laws were passed, tending to limit the right of discussion: men were forbidden to co-operate or correspond for the purpose of amending the existing constitution. Public meetings were placed at the disposal of a magistrate, who could prevent or disperse them as he thought proper. Finally, the “Habeas Corpus” Act was suspended.
Nothing could be more wanton or absurd than this last outrage on public freedom. The Ministers who were calling upon the country to defend our institutions, were for sweeping away their very foundations. In vain did Lord Grey, with even more than his usual eloquence, exclaim, “We are warned not to let any anxiety for the security of liberty lead to a compromise of the security of the State; for my part, I cannot separate these two things; the safety of the State can only be found in the protection of the liberties of the people.”
Having entered upon a career of terror, a new violence is daily necessary in order to guard against the consequences of the last; nor was the addition of 3,000,000l. of taxes, imposed at the close of 1819, well adapted to soothe popular irritation. In the meantime the meeting at Manchester, foolishly got up, and foolishly and barbarously put down, aroused a cry which only the utmost severity could hope to quell. Such severity was adopted in the Acts which prevented public and parish meetings; which punished offences of the press with transportation; which exposed the houses of peaceable inhabitants to midnight search, and deprived an Englishman of what was once considered his birthright—the right of keeping arms for his own defence. At the same time the bulk of the nation was declared to be sound and loyal, the country prosperous; and as a note which may perhaps be considered somewhat explanatory of these different declarations, came a demand for 10,000 additional troops. It was of no use to argue that the nation was quiet, and resolved only on constitutional means of redress. “Yes, sir,” said the figurative seconder of the Address (1819)—“yes, sir, there has undoubtedly been an appearance of tranquillity, but it is the tranquillity of a lion waiting for his prey. There has been the apparent absence of danger, but it is that of a fire half-smothered by the weight of its own combustible materials.” “The meeting at Manchester,” argued Lord Lansdowne (Nov. 30, 1819), “if it had not been disturbed by the magistrates, would have gone off quietly.” “Perhaps,” replied an orator who defended the Government, “that might have been the case; but why? in the contemplation of things to come, the peaceable and quiet demeanour of the disaffected, instead of lessening the danger, ought to aggravate the alarm—ipsa silentia terrent.”
XIII.
So because people assembled at a meeting which was likely to disperse peaceably might at some future time (and this was conjecture) act less peaceably, they were to be charged and sabred; while their constitutional conduct neither at this nor at any other period could be of the least avail; heat of language was not even necessary to procure them the treatment of rebels; for if men met and were silent, if they met and never uttered a word, their very silence, under the classical authority of three Latin words, was to be considered full of awful treason. Jury after jury denounced the conduct of the Government by returning verdicts which were accusations against it. Still the same system was persevered in. Ministers went through the country with a drag net, hauling up—not one or two influential persons (such, indeed, they could not find)—but whole classes of men. Spies also, as it appeared from the different trials, acted as incendiaries, contributing in no small degree to the marvellous plots that they discovered. In one instance, a fellow of the name of Oliver had gone about to all whom he imagined ill disposed, presenting Sir Francis Burdett’s compliments; a circumstance the more remarkable, since the only decent colour ever attempted to be given to these notions of insurrection was, that the names of respectable persons had been used in connection with them. In another case a government creature, by the name of Edwards, actually advanced money to a gentleman who may be considered the arch-traitor of the epoch, since he was the author of that famous conspiracy which included in its programme cutting off all the ministers’ heads.
This conspiracy—of which Mr. Thistlewood, supported by the aforesaid Mr. Edwards, Mr. Davidson, a man of colour, and Messrs. Tidd and Brunt, two shoemakers, were the leaders—closed the series of those formidable plots for putting an end to King, Lords, and Commons, which for three years disturbed the country; the Ministers affecting to consider that the wisdom of the policy they pursued was proved by the folly of those wretched men whom they delivered to the executioner.
Another circumstance is to be remarked in reviewing these times, and attempting to portray their spirit. The Government had not only been tyrannical at home, it had afforded all the assistance in its power to foreign tyrants. First was passed the Alien Bill; a measure which might have been defended in 1793, when France was sending out her revolutionary apostles; which might, with a certain plausibility, have been asked for in 1814, when, if the war were concluded, peace could hardly be considered as established; but which in 1816 could have no other pretext than that of enabling the minister of the day to refuse a refuge to any unhappy exile from the despotism of the Continent.
Shortly afterwards (1819) came the Foreign Enlistment Bill. That which Queen Elizabeth refused to Spain when Spain was in the height of her power, was conceded to Spain, now fallen into the lowest state of moral as well as political degradation. It was true that during the Administration of Sir Robert Walpole, and under the natural fears of Jacobite armies, formed on foreign shores, laws had been passed prohibiting British subjects, except upon special permission, from engaging in foreign service; and the pretext now put forward was insomuch plausible, that it pretended to place service in the armies of recognised and unrecognised states on the same footing—no law existing in respect to the last. But the law in existence had not been enforced. Spain, which had been hasty in recognising the independence of the United States, could not ask us to defeat rebellion in her own colonies. Those colonies had, in fact, been first instigated by us to revolt. The regulation, professing to be impartial, would only operate in reality against one of the parties; and with that party all our commercial interests were connected.
XIV.
It is impossible to look back to these years, and to consider the conduct of Mr. Canning without deep regret. The most eloquent and plausible defences of the un-English policy which prevailed were made by him. In his speech in favour of the Seditious Meetings Bill (Feb. 24, 1817), may be seen wit supplying the place of argument; argument rendered attractive by the graces of rhetoric, and forcible by the appearance of passion. He had now, indeed, nearly attained the perfection of his own style, a style which, as it has been said, united the three excellences of—rapidity, polish, and ornament; and it was the first of these qualities, let it be repeated, which, though perhaps the least perceivable of his merits, was the greatest.
“What is the nature of this danger? Why, sir, the danger to be apprehended is not to be defined in one word. It is rebellion; it is treason, but not treason merely; it is confiscation, but not confiscation within such bounds as have usually been applied to the changes of dynasties, or the revolution of states; it is an aggregate of all these evils; it is that dreadful variety of sorrow and suffering which must invariably follow the extinction of loyalty, morality, and religion; the subversion, not only of the constitution of England, but of the whole frame of society. Such is the nature and extent of the danger which would attend the success of the projects developed in the report of the committee. But these projects would never have been of importance, it is affirmed, had they not been brought into notice by persecution. Persecution! Does this character belong to the proceedings instituted against those who set out on their career in opposition to all law; and who, in their secret cabals, and midnight counsels, and mid-day harangues, have been voting for destruction of every individual, and every class of individuals, which may stand in their way? But the schemes of these persons are visionary. I admit it. They have been laid by these twenty years without being found to produce mischief. Be it so. Such doctrines when dormant may be harmless enough, and their intrinsic absurdity may make it appear incredible that they should ever be called up into action. But when the incredible resurrection actually takes place, when the votaries of these doctrines actually go forth armed to exert physical strength in furtherance of them, then it is that I think it time to be on my guard—not against the accomplishment of such plans (that is, I am willing to believe, impracticable), but against the mischief which must attend the attempt to accomplish them by force.”
Throughout the whole of this passage it can hardly be said that there is a full stop. However studiously framed, not a period lingers; a rush of sentences gives the audience no time to pause. Abruptly framed, rapidly delivered, the phrases which may have been for hours premeditated in the Cabinet, could not, in the moment of delivery, have the least appearance of art. The oratory of Mr. Canning was also remarkable for a kind of figurative way of stating common-places, which good taste may not approve, but which, nevertheless, is well calculated to strike and inflame a popular assembly.
“The honourable gentleman,” Mr. Canning says of Mr. Calcraft (March 14, 1817), “attempts to ridicule these proceedings. He is in truth rather hard to be satisfied on the score of rebellion; to him it is not sufficient that the town had been summoned [N.B. it had been summoned by one man], it ought to have been taken; the metropolis should not merely have been attacked, but in flames. He is so difficult in regard to proof that he would continue to doubt until all the mischief was not only certain but irreparable. For my part, however, I am satisfied when I hear the trumpet of rebellion sounded; I do not think it necessary to wait the actual onset before I put myself on my guard. I am content to take my precautions when I see the torch of the incendiary lighted, without waiting till the Bank and the Mansion House are blazing to the sky.”
XV.
But if there was much of eloquence, there was more of sophistry, in these pointed and painted harangues. The designs on foot were represented as so formidable that they required the utmost rigour to suppress them; and yet they were the designs of a few, of a very few, against whom millions were arrayed. These few were to be struck down at all hazards and by all means, in order that the millions might be in security. The anti-revolutionary statesman was simply borrowing from the revolutionary apostle. “What are a few aristocrats,” would Danton say, “to the safety of a nation? Strike! strike! It is only terror that can save the Republic!” For such principles, destructive of all liberty, peace, and order, every just man must entertain the deepest horror; and the dark shadow of those days still hangs over the party to whose excesses they are attributable, and obscures this part of the career of the statesman who defended them.
I do not, however, think that Mr. Canning acted on the cool systematic calculation by which I do think Lord Castlereagh might have been guided. Looking at all affairs with the excitable disposition of the poet and the orator, and having his attention more called by his office to the affairs of India than to those at home, it is not improbable that he allowed himself to be carried into the belief of dangers which the Government he belonged to had in a certain degree created, and in an enormous degree exaggerated; whilst the manner in which even calm and sensible men had their heads confused and their judgment biassed by the alarming reports put in circulation, and the constant arrests that were taking place, reacted upon the Government itself, and made it fancy that the fictions reflected from its fear were truths established by facts. At all events, whatever were the real opinions and convictions of Mr. Canning, as he was the most eloquent supporter of the policy in vogue, he gathered round himself the greatest portion of the unpopularity that attended it. Nor, though he assumed the air of defying this unpopularity, was he pleased with it.
XVI.
The very bitterness, indeed, which he manifested towards his opponents at this time, shows that he was ill at ease with himself. Linked with a set of men whom in general he despised, and by whom he was in a certain degree mistrusted, and accused, as he well knew, of accepting this alliance merely for the love of “office,” which the vulgar made to signify the mere “emoluments of place;”—possessing a mind, which, elevated by education, was inclined to liberality; careless of the praise of the fanatics of his own party, and careless also of the applause of those timorous spirits amongst the nation with whom he could feel no sympathy;—knowing he was detested by the great masses of the people, whose applause he could not with his temperament refrain from coveting;—knowing also that though supported by the love and admiration of a few able friends, he was confided in by no great political party, and that even if his duties imposed on him the necessity of struggling against existing difficulties, those difficulties might have been avoided or palliated by a more conciliatory and prudent policy; writhing under all these circumstances and agitated by all these feelings,—this able, ambitious, and excitable man may now be seen listening with ears almost greedy of a quarrel, for reproaches he could retort, and insults he could avenge. Mr. Hume, not very cautious in these matters, was called to account: Sir Francis Burdett, who had spoken disrespectfully, was made to explain; while to the author of an anonymous libel, in which the style and invectives of “Junius” were copied with doubtful success, was sent a note, eminently characteristic of the galled feelings and gallant spirit of the writer:
“Sir,
“I received early in the last week the copy of your pamphlet, which you, I take for granted, had the attention to have forwarded to me. Soon after I was informed, on the authority of your publisher, that you have withdrawn the whole impression from him, with the view (as was supposed) of suppressing the publication. I since learn, however, that the pamphlet, though not sold, is circulated under blank covers. I learn this from (among others) the gentleman to whom the pamphlet is industriously attributed, but who has voluntarily and absolutely denied to me that he has any knowledge of it or its author.
“To you, sir, whoever you may be, I address myself thus directly for the purpose of expressing my opinion that you are a liar and a slanderer, and want courage only to be an assassin. I have only to add that no man knows of my writing to you, and that I shall maintain the same reserve as long as I have an expectation of hearing from you in your own name.”
To this letter there was no reply.
XVII.
During the eventful years over which this narrative has been rapidly gliding, the Heiress to the crown, who had already possessed herself of the affections of the British people, had expired (it was in Nov. 1817); and in 1820, as the Ministers, fatigued by their laborious efforts to excite alarm, began to allow the nation to recover its tranquillity, George III. (two years after his young and blooming grandchild) died also. The new King’s hatred, and Queen Caroline’s temper, rendering a more decent and moderate course impossible, occasioned the unhappy trial which scandalized Europe.
Nor was the question at issue merely a question involving the Queen’s innocence or guilt. The people, comparatively calm, as well on account of the recent improvement in trade, as in consequence of the cessation of that system of conspiracy-making or finding, which had so long kept them in a state of harassed irritation, were still for the main part thoroughly disgusted with the exhibition of fear, feebleness, and violence which, under the name of Lord Liverpool, and through the influence of Lord Castlereagh, had for the last three years been displayed. They detested the ministers of the Crown, and they were alienated from the Crown itself, which had been perpetually arrayed against them in prosecutions and almost as often stigmatised by defeat.
It was thus that Queen Caroline appeared as a new victim—as another person to be illegally assailed by the forms of law, and unjustly dealt with in the name of justice. Besides, she was a woman, and the daughter of a Royal house, and the mother of that ill-fated princess, whose early death the nation still deeply mourned. The people, then, took up her cause as their own, and rallied at once round a new banner against their old enemies.
On the other hand, the Government, urged by the wounded pride and uncontrollable anger of the Sovereign, consented to bring the unfortunate lady he denounced before a public tribunal, and were thus committed to a desperate career, of which it was impossible to predict the result.
Mr. Canning had long been the unhappy Queen’s intimate friend; but in adopting her cause, he must, as we have been showing, have adopted her party—the party of discontent, the party of reform—a party against which he had, during the last few years, been fiercely struggling. Here, as far as the public can judge from the information before it, lies the only excuse or explanation of his conduct; for it was hardly sufficient to retire (as he did) from any share in the proceedings against a friend and a woman, in whose innocence he said that he believed, when her honour and life were assailed by the most powerful adversaries, and by charges of the most degrading character.
He refused, it is true, to be her active accuser; but neither was he her active defender. He remained silent at home or stayed abroad during the time of the prosecution, and resigned office when, that prosecution being dropped, the Cabinet had to justify its proceedings.
The following letter to a constituent contains the account he thought it necessary to give of his conduct:
“Tuddenham, Norfolk, Dec. 22, 1820.
“My dear Sir,
“I left town on Wednesday, a few minutes after I had written to you, not thinking I should be quite so soon set at liberty to make you the communication promised in my letter of that morning. I had hitherto forborne to make the communication, in order that I might not in any way embarrass others by a premature disclosure; and I sincerely expected in return due notice of the time when it might suit them that the disclosure should be made. I have no doubt that the omission of such notice has been a mere oversight. I regret it only as it has prevented me from anticipating with you, and the rest of my friends at Liverpool, the announcement in a newspaper of an event in which I know your kind partiality will induce you to feel a lively interest. The facts stated in the Courier of Wednesday evening, are stated in substance correctly. I have resigned my office. My motive for separating myself from the Government (however reluctantly at a conjuncture like the present) is to be found solely in the proceedings and pending discussions respecting the Queen. There is (as the Courier justly assumes) but this one point of difference between my colleagues and myself. Those who may have done me the honour to observe my conduct in this unhappy affair from the beginning, will recollect that on the first occasion on which it was brought forward in the House of Commons, I declared my determination to take as little part as possible in any subsequent stage of the proceedings. The declaration was made advisedly. It was made, not only after full communication with my colleagues, but as an alternative suggested on their part for my then retirement from the Administration. So long as there was a hope of amicable adjustment, my continuance in the Administration might possibly be advantageous; that hope was finally extinguished by the failure of Mr. Wilberforce’s address. On the same day on which the Queen’s answer to that address was received by the House of Commons, I asked an audience of the King, and at that audience (which I obtained the following day) after respectfully repeating to his Majesty the declaration which I had made a fortnight before in the House of Commons, and stating the impossibility of my departing from it, I felt it my duty humbly to lay at his Majesty’s feet the tender of my resignation. The King, with a generosity which I can never sufficiently acknowledge, commanded me to remain in his service, abstaining as completely as I might think fit from any share in the proceedings respecting the Queen, and gave me full authority to plead his Majesty’s express command for so continuing in office. No occasion subsequently occurred in Parliament (at least no adequate occasion) for availing myself of the use of this authority, and I should have thought myself inexcusable in seeking an occasion for the purpose; but from the moment of my receiving his Majesty’s gracious commands, I abstained entirely from all interference on the subject of the Queen’s affairs. I did not attend any meetings of the Cabinet upon that subject; I had no share whatever in preparing or approving the Bill of Pains and Penalties. I was (as you know) absent from England during the whole progress of the bill, and returned only after it had been withdrawn.
“The new state in which I found the proceedings upon my return to England, required the most serious consideration; it was one to which I could not conceive the King’s command in June to be applicable. For a minister to absent himself altogether from the expected discussions in the House of Commons, intermixed as they were likely to be with the general business of the session, appeared to me to be quite impossible. To be present as a minister, taking no part in these discussions, could only be productive of embarrassment to myself, and of perplexity to my colleagues; to take any part in them was now, as always, out of the question.
“From these difficulties I saw no remedy except in the humble but earnest renewal to my Sovereign of the tender of my resignation, which has been as graciously accepted, as it was in the former instance indulgently declined.
“If some weeks have elapsed since my return to England, before I could arrive at this practical result, the interval has been chiefly employed in reconciling, or endeavouring to reconcile, my colleagues to a step taken by me in a spirit of the most perfect amity, and tending (in my judgment) as much to their relief as to my own.
“It remains for me only to add that having purchased, by the surrender of my office, the liberty of continuing to act in consistency with my original declaration, it is now my intention (but an intention perfectly gratuitous, and one which I hold myself completely free to vary, if I shall at any time see occasion for so doing) to be absent from England again until the agitation of this calamitous affair shall be at an end.
“I am, Sir, &c.,
“George Canning.”
Thus in the years 1821-22, Mr. Canning took little part in the business of the House of Commons, residing occasionally near Bordeaux or in Paris.
He came to England, however, to speak on Mr. Plunkett’s motion for a committee to consider the Catholic claims (February 28, 1821), and in 1822 also he made two memorable speeches—one on Lord John Russell’s motion for Parliamentary Reform, and another in support of his own proposition to admit Catholic peers into the House of Lords.
These last speeches were made in the expectancy of his speedy departure from England; the Directors of the East India Company, in testimony of their appreciation of the zeal and intelligence with which he had discharged his duties as President of the Board of Control, having selected him as Governor-General of India, a situation which he had accepted.
Part III.
FROM DEATH OF LORD LONDONDERRY TO PORTUGUESE EXPEDITION.
Lord Castlereagh’s death.—Mr. Canning’s appointment as Foreign Secretary.—State of affairs.—Opposition he encountered.—Policy as to Spain and South America.—Commencing popularity in the country, and in the House of Commons.—Affairs of Portugal and Brazil.—Recognition of Brazilian empire.—Constitution taken by Sir Charles Stuart to Portugal,—Defence of Portugal against Spanish treachery and aggression.—Review of policy pursued thus far as a whole.
I.
At this critical moment Lord Castlereagh, who had now succeeded to the title of Lord Londonderry, worn out by a long-continued series of struggles with the popular passions—placed in a false position by the manner in which the great military powers had at Troppau and Laybach announced principles which no English statesman could ever sanction,—too high-spirited to endure defeat, and without the ability requisite for forming and carrying on any policy that might be triumphant,—irritated, overworked, and about to depart for Verona with the intention of remonstrating against acts which he had been unable to prevent,—having lost all that calm and firmness with which his proud but cheerful nature was generally armed,—and overpowered at last by an infamous conspiracy to extort money, with the threat that he should otherwise be charged with a disgraceful and dishonouring offence—put an end to his existence.
Fate looked darkly on the Tory party. Ever since 1817, it had excited one half of the community by fear, as a means of governing the other half by force. But the machinery of this system was now pretty well used up. Moreover the result of Queen Caroline’s trial was a staggering blow to those who had been its advisers; and though this unhappy and foolish lady did all she could to destroy the prestige which had once surrounded her—and it was only unexpected decease that rescued her from approaching contempt—even her death gave the authorities a new opportunity of injuring themselves by an idle and offensive conflict with her hearse.
Meanwhile the affairs in the Peninsula were becoming more and more obscured, whilst through the clouds which seemed everywhere gathering, some thought they could perceive the fatal hour in which a terrible despotism and an ignorant and equally terrible democracy were to dispute for the mastery of the world. In France the Bourbons trembled on their throne, and petty cabals and paltry conflicts amongst themselves rendered their rule at once violent, feeble, and uncertain. The volcanic soil of Italy was covered with ashes from a recent conflagration—some embers might yet be seen alive. Over the whole of Germany reigned a dreamy discontent which any accident might convert into a practical revolution.
II.
What part could the baffled and unpopular Ministers of England take amidst such a state of things as I have been describing? To the advocacy of democratic principles they were of course opposed. With the advocates of absolute power they dared not, and perhaps did not feel disposed to, side. Neutrality was their natural wish, since to be neutral required no effort and demanded no declaration of opinion. But it is only the strong who can be really neutral; and the Government of the day was too conscious of weakness to hold with confidence the position which, if powerful, it could have preserved with dignity. Such being the miserable condition of the British cabinet when Lord Londonderry was alive, it became yet more contemptible on losing that statesman’s energy and resolution. Mr. Canning was its evident resource. Yet the wish to obtain Mr. Canning’s services was by no means general amongst those in power, for the ministry was divided into two sections: one, hostile to Catholic Emancipation, to any change in, and almost any modification of, our long-standing system of high duties and commercial protection, and hostile also to all those efforts in favour of constitutional liberty which had lately agitated the Continent; the other, which, though opposed to any constitutional change that tended to increase the democratic element in our institutions, was still favourable to Catholic Emancipation as a means of conciliating the large majority of the Irish people—to the development of the principles of Free Trade, as a means of augmenting our national wealth—and to the spread of our political opinions, under the idea that we should thus be extending our commercial, moral, and political power.
These two parties, forced to combine under the common battle-cry of “no parliamentary reform,”—a reform which both opposed (in order to get a parliamentary majority for their united force)—were nevertheless jealous of each other, and in constant struggle for the predominant influence. Mr. Canning out of office, and away in India, there could be no doubt that the more Conservative section of the Administration would occupy the highest ground; Mr. Canning not going to India, and coming into office, the more liberal party, of which he was universally considered the chief, might overtop its rival. Lord Liverpool, however, was himself in a peculiar position. He agreed with Mr. Canning’s opponents as to the Catholic Emancipation question, but with Mr. Canning on all other questions. His policy, therefore, was to rule a pretty equally balanced cabinet, and not to have one half too strong for the other. With this object he had lately given office to two or three followers of Lord Grenville, who, though himself retired from affairs, had still a party favourable to Catholic Emancipation, and hostile to constitutional innovations. For the same reason he now insisted on the necessity of offering the Secretaryship of Foreign Affairs to Mr. Canning, and impressed his opinions on this subject so strongly on the Duke of Wellington, that his Grace, though he had some prejudices of his own to conquer, undertook to vanquish those of his Majesty, against Mr. Canning’s appointment. A lady who was an intimate friend of George IV., and at that moment of the Duke also, and who was then staying at Brighton, told me that the Duke went down to Brighton, and held an interview with the King, and she related to me parts of a conversation which, according to her, took place on this occasion.
“Good God! Arthur, you don’t mean to propose that fellow to me as Secretary for Foreign Affairs; it is impossible! I said, on my honour as a gentleman, he should never be one of my ministers again. You hear, Arthur, on my honour as a gentleman. I am sure you will agree with me, that I can’t do what I said on my honour as a gentleman I would not do.”
“Pardon me, Sire, I don’t agree with you at all; your Majesty is not a gentleman.”
The King started.
“Your Majesty, I say,” continued the imperturbable soldier, “is not a gentleman, but the Sovereign of England, with duties to your people far above any to yourself; and these duties render it imperative that you should at this time employ the abilities of Mr. Canning.”
“Well!” drawing a long breath, “if I must, I must,” was finally the King’s reply.[121]
III.
Mr. Canning thus entered the Cabinet; and under ordinary circumstances his doing so at such a crisis would have been hailed with general satisfaction. It so happened, however, that some time had elapsed between the death of Lord Castlereagh and any offer to his successor; and during this interval, Mr. Canning, then on the verge of departure for the East, made a speech at Liverpool, which, from its remarkable moderation, was considered by many as the manifestation of a wish to purchase place by a sacrifice of opinion. The words most objected to were these:
“Gentlemen, if I were remaining in this country, and continuing to take my part in Parliament, I should continue, in respect to the Catholic Question, to walk in the same direction that I have hitherto done. But I think (and as I may not elsewhere have an opportunity of expressing this opinion, I am desirous of expressing it here)—I think that after the experience of a fruitless struggle for more than ten years, I should, as an individual (speaking for none but myself, and not knowing whether I carry any other person’s opinion with me) be induced henceforth, or perhaps after one more general trial, to seek upon that question a liberal compromise.” Thus, when instead of going to India the Governor-General, already named, came into office at home, it was said at once that he had done so on a compromise.
The accusation was false, but there was some appearance of its being true, and those amongst the Opposition who believed it, were the more enraged, since they thought that if the Ministry had not been strengthened by the new Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, it could not have sustained itself, in which case they themselves would have been called to power.
The speeches made against Mr. Canning were consequently of the bitterest kind. One, by Lord Folkestone, on a motion for the repeal of the Foreign Enlistment Bill, delivered with extraordinary vehemence, accused him of truckling to France.
“Sir,” said Mr. Canning, in reply, “I will not follow the noble lord through a speech of which it would be impossible to convey the impression by a mere repetition of language. The Lacedæmonians, with the desire of deterring their children from the vice of intoxication, used occasionally to expose their slaves in a state of disgusting inebriety. But, sir, there is a moral as well as a physical intoxication; and never before did I behold so complete a personification of the character which I have somewhere seen described as exhibiting the contortions of the sibyl without her inspiration. I will not on this occasion reply to the noble lord’s speech, being of opinion that this is not a fit opportunity for entering into the discussion it would provoke; but let it not be supposed that I shrink from the noble lord; for he may believe me when I say that however I may have truckled to France, I will never truckle to him.”
IV.
This speech was delivered April 16, 1823. On the 17th another important discussion occurred in Parliament. Mr. Plunkett, who had joined the Administration with Mr. Canning, bringing forward on that day the claims of the Catholics, as a sort of token that he and those who thought with him had not, on taking office, abandoned the question of which they had so long been the most eminent supporters,—Sir Francis Burdett accused both the Attorney-General for Ireland and the Secretary for Foreign Affairs of seeking to make an idle parade of fine sentiments, which they knew would be practically useless. Mr. Canning defended himself, and, as he sat down, Mr. Brougham rose:
“If,” said he, “the other ministers had taken example by the single-hearted, plain, manly, and upright conduct of the right honourable Secretary for the Home Department (Mr. Peel), who has always been on the same side on this question, never swerving from his opinions, but standing uniformly up and stating them—who had never taken office on a secret understanding to abandon the question in substance while he contrived to sustain it in words—whose mouth, heart, and conduct have always been in unison; if such had been the conduct of all the friends of emancipation, I should not have found myself in a state of despair with regard to the Catholic claims. Let the conduct of the Attorney-General for Ireland (Mr. Plunkett) have been what it might—let him have deviated from his former professions or not—still, if the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had only come forward at this critical moment, when the point was whether he should go to India into honourable exile, or take office in England and not submit to his sentence of transportation, but be condemned to hard labour in his own country—doomed to the disquiet of a divided council, sitting with his enemies, and pitied by his friends, with his hands chained and tied down on all those lines of operation which his own sentiments and wishes would have led him to adopt—if, at that critical moment, when his fate depended on Lord Chancellor Eldon, and on his sentiments with respect to the Catholic cause—if, at that critical moment, he who said the other night that he would not truckle to a noble lord, but who then exhibited the most incredible specimen of monstrous truckling for the purpose of obtaining office that the whole history of political tergiversation could furnish.…”
At these words, Mr. Canning, labouring to conceal emotion which his countenance had long betrayed, started up, and, in a calm voice, with his eye fixed on Mr. Brougham, said, “Sir, I rise to say that that is false.” A dead silence of some minutes ensued; the Speaker interfered; neither party would retract, and both gentlemen were ordered into custody; but at last the matter was arranged through Sir R. Wilson’s mediation.
V.
Without going into many details, I have thus said enough to show that Mr. Canning had, in his new post, to contend—first, against the disfavour of the Crown; secondly, against the dislike, jealousy, and suspicion of a large portion of his colleagues; thirdly, against the bitterest hostility of the most able and eloquent amongst his parliamentary opponents.
It is necessary to take into consideration all these difficulties in order to appreciate the rare abilities, the adroit adaptation of means to ends, the clever profiting by times and occasions, the bold bearing-up against powerful antagonists, the conquest over personal antipathies, which in a few years placed England—humbled to the lowest degree when Lord Castlereagh expired—in the highest position she ever occupied since the days of Lord Chatham; and, at the same time, ended by making the most unpopular man with the nation, and the most distasteful minister to the Sovereign, the people’s idol and the monarch’s favourite.
I have asserted that England was never in a more humbled position than at the death of Lord Castlereagh. I had myself the opportunity of seeing this illustrated in a private and confidential correspondence between Prince Metternich and a distinguished person with whom he was on terms of great intimacy, and to whom he wrote without reserve;—a correspondence in which the Prince, when alluding to our great warrior, who represented England at the Congress of Verona, spoke of him as “the great Baby,” and alluded to the power and influence of England as things past and gone.
It was, in fact, too true that all memory of the long efforts of twenty years, eventually successful in liberating Europe, had wholly lapsed from the minds of those military potentates, who having during war experienced every variety of defeat, appeared at the conclusion of peace to have recovered unbounded confidence in their arms.
The institutions which had nourished the pride and valour to which we had owed our victories, were daily denounced by the sovereigns in whose cause we had fought; and every new expression of opinion that came to us from the Continent, manifested more and more that Waterloo was forgotten by every nation but the French. Nothing, in short, was wanting to complete our degradation after the false and impudent conduct of M. de Villèle, but its disrespectful avowal; and painful and humiliating must have been the sentiments of an English statesman, when he read the speech of the French minister in the Chamber of Deputies, and found him boast of having amused our Government by misrepresenting the force on the Spanish frontier as merely a cordon sanitaire, until it was made to act as army of invasion.
VI.
The ground, however, which the sovereigns forming the Holy Alliance had now chosen for fighting the battle of principles, was not well selected by them for the conflict.
During the despotism of Ferdinand, it was never forgotten in this country, that those with whom he filled his prisons, those whose blood he shed, those of whose hopeless exile he was the cause, had fought side by side with our own gallant soldiers; were the zealous and valiant patriots who had delivered the land from which they were driven, and re-established the dynasty which their tyrant disgraced. Many, then, who disapproved of the new Spanish constitution, were disposed to excuse the excesses of freedom as the almost natural reaction from the abuses of absolute power.
Nor was this all. There has always been a strong party in England justly in favour of a good understanding with the French nation. On such an understanding is based that policy of peace which Walpole and Fox judiciously advocated—the first more fortunately and more opportunely than the last. But as no policy should ever be carried to the extreme, we have on the other hand to consider that the only serious danger menacing to England is the undue aggrandisement of France. Her proximity, her warlike spirit, her constant thirst for glory and territory, the great military and naval armaments at her disposal, the supremacy amongst nations which she is in the habit of affecting, are all, at certain times, threatening to our interests and wounding to our pride; and when the French nation, with the tendency which she has always manifested to spread her opinions, professes exaggerated doctrines, whether in favour of democracy or despotism, the spirit of conquest and proselytism combined with power makes her equally menacing to our institutions and to our independence. Her predominance in Spain, moreover, which unites so many ports to those of France—ports in which, as we learnt from Napoleon I., armaments can be fitted out, and from which expeditions can be sent against our possessions in the Mediterranean, or our empire in the Channel, or against Egypt, on the high road to our Indian dominions, has always been regarded by English statesmen with a rational disquietude, and on various occasions resisted with boldness, perseverance, and success; nor did it matter to us whether it was the white flag or the tricolour which crossed the Bridassoa when either was to be considered the symbol of ambition and injustice.
VII.
Thus, Spain became, not inauspiciously, the spot on which a liberal English minister had to confront the despotic governments of the Continent. But for war on account of Spain, England was not prepared; and, indeed, the treachery which we knew existed in the Spanish counsels, rendered war on account of that divided country out of the question. The only remaining means of opposition was protestation, and Mr. Canning at once protested against the act of aggression which France was committing, and against the principles put forth in its justification. The mode of doing this was rendered easy by the speech from the French throne, which was inexplicable, except as a bold assertion of the divine rights of kings; and for that slavish doctrine Mr. Canning, who, whichever side he took, was not very guarded in his expressions, roundly stated that “he felt disgust and abhorrence.”
The gauntlet of Legitimacy having been thus thrown down, and being in this manner taken up, it only remained to conduct the contest.
Caution was necessary in the selection of an opportunity where a stand should be made. Boldness was also necessary in order to make that stand without fear or hesitation, when the fitting occasion arrived.
France, therefore, was permitted to overrun the Spanish territory without resistance. But Mr. Canning declared that, whilst England adopted, thus far, a passive attitude, she could not permit the permanent occupation of Spain, or any act of aggression against Portugal. At the same time he alluded to the recognition of the revolted provinces in South America, which provinces France was expecting to gain in compensation for her expenses, as an event merely dependent upon time, and protested against any seizure by France, or any cession by Spain of possessions which had in fact established their independence. In these expressions were shadowed out the whole of that course subsequently developed. They were little noticed, it is true, at the time, because they did not interfere with the plan of the moment, viz., the destruction of a constitutional government at Madrid; but they became a text to which our Minister could subsequently refer as a proof of the frankness and consistency of the policy that from the commencement of the French campaign he had been pursuing. No one, however, understood better than the statesman who had resolved on this policy, that to be powerful abroad you must be popular at home. Thus at the close of the session in which he had denounced the absolute doctrines of the French Legitimists, we see him passing through the great mercantile and manufacturing towns, and endeavouring to excite amidst the large and intelligent masses of those towns an enthusiasm for his talents, and that attachment to his person, which genius, when it comes into contact with the people, rarely fails to inspire.
VIII.
On one of these occasions it was that he delivered the memorable speech, meant to resound throughout Europe, and spoken with exquisite propriety in sight of the docks at Plymouth.
“Our ultimate object, no doubt, is the peace of the world, but let it not be said that we cultivate it either because we fear, or because we are unprepared for war. On the contrary, if eight months ago the Government did not proclaim that this country was prepared for war, this was from causes far other than those produced by fear; and if war should at last unfortunately be necessary, every intervening month of peace that has since passed has but made us so much the more capable of warlike exertion. The resources created by peace are indeed the means of war. In cherishing these resources, we but accumulate these means. Our present repose is no more a proof of incapability to act, than the state of inertness and inactivity in which I have seen those mighty masses that float on the waters above your town, is a proof that they are devoid of strength, and incapable of being fitted for action. You well know, gentlemen, how soon one of those stupendous masses, now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness—how soon upon any call of patriotism, or of necessity, it would assume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct with life and motion; how soon it would ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage; how quickly it would put forth all its beauty and its bravery; collect its scattered elements of strength, and awaken its dormant thunder! Such as is one of those magnificent machines when springing from inaction into a display of its might, such is England herself; while apparently passionless and motionless, she silently concentrates the power to be put forth on an adequate occasion.”
Luckily for Mr. Canning, the circumstances of the country in 1824 enabled him to maintain and increase that popularity which he was desirous to acquire. Trade had begun to thrive, the revenue to increase, taxation to diminish; nor were these facts merely valuable in themselves, they were also valuable in affording a facility for entering more freely upon that large and comprehensive system of commerce which was the best adapted to a country that combined great maritime power with great manufacturing capacity.
Besides, by entering frankly upon this system, Mr. Canning was giving strength to one of those links which now began to unite him to the Opposition, and thus to rally round him by degrees nearly the whole liberal force of the House of Commons. Already, indeed, many of his opponents had softened in their tone, and Sir James Mackintosh (June 25, 1824), referring to papers that had been laid before Parliament, passed the highest eulogy on the conduct which the Foreign Secretary was adopting in respect to the South American question.
IX.
The time is now arrived for speaking of that question. From the first moment that the intentions of the French government towards Spain were known, Mr. Canning, as it has been seen, hinted at the recognition of the Spanish colonies, and protested against any proceeding which either directly or indirectly should bring them under the authority of France. A variety of projects,—amongst which that of holding a congress of the Great Powers at Paris, for the purpose of considering how it might be most expedient to assist Spain in adjusting her differences with the revolted colonies, was the most significant,—all tended to show the necessity of some immediate step for placing beyond dispute the condition of those colonies.
By a series of measures, each in advance of the preceding one, none going so far as to excite any burst of resentment, Mr. Canning went on gradually towards the ultimate decision he had in view.
A warning to Spain that unless she forthwith effected an accommodation with her former subjects, their independence would be recognised, was given and repeated; a warning to France that the cession to any other power of the Spanish possessions in America would not be allowed, had also been once given, and was now formally renewed. The project of interfering for their conquest with foreign troops, whatever might be decided by any congress, was boldly forbidden. Consuls had already been appointed to attend to the interests of British commerce in those parts, and commissioners had been sent out to Columbia and Mexico (the emancipation of Buenos Ayres was undisputed) to report on their condition. The memorable declaration of the United States, frequently referred to since—as the Munroe Doctrine,—and to which our foreign minister, by his communications with the United States Envoy in London, had in no small degree contributed;—a declaration to the effect that the United States would not see with indifference the attempt of any European power to establish itself on the American continent, was a positive assurance of the only alliance that might be important, should England have to contend by force of arms against a French and Spanish expedition.
At last, strong in popularity at home, having by previous measures, difficult to be opposed, lessened the shock that might have been produced abroad, Mr. Canning put the seal to this portion of his plans, and announced his recognition of three of the most powerful of the new republics.
This recognition, however justifiable on its proper merits, is not merely to be considered on such isolated grounds. It formed a part, and an important part, of European policy; it altered the position in which this country stood towards those powers who had declared their principles to be in opposition to our own. Now it was the turn of Austria, Prussia, and Russia to remonstrate, and to have their remonstrances treated as those of England had been by them on former occasions. Thus, the part which Great Britain had hitherto played was for the first time reversed; and her character, which at each late congress had been sinking lower and lower in the scale of public opinion, rose at once in the balance. This is the first important epoch in Mr. Canning’s foreign administration.
X.
The affairs of Portugal next demand attention. That country, from the commencement of the new conflict in the Peninsula, had been the scene of French intrigues for the purpose of destroying English interests; and of court cabals, with the object of favouring Don Miguel’s pretensions. The Queen, a violent and profligate old woman, who had never kept any terms with her passions, countenanced the most desperate schemes; and King John VI., a weak but not unamiable monarch, was even obliged on one occasion to seek safety on board a British frigate. The defeat of the conspiracy which occasioned this alarm banished Don Miguel; but M. Subserra, the King’s minister and favourite, and a mere tool in the hands of France, still remained; so that although the Portuguese government never took any open part against the Spanish Cortes, the King would never concede a constitution to his people (this being very strenuously opposed by the French Government and its allies), nor unite himself cordially with England, by giving Lord Beresford the command of his army, and conferring on M. Palmella the chief influence in his cabinet. Our situation in respect to Portugal was moreover complicated by the state of Brazil. Don Pedro, King John’s eldest son, had been left Regent in that colony by his father, when the latter returned to his more ancient dominions. The King’s secret instructions were that the Prince should adopt any course that circumstances might render necessary, rather than allow so important a possession to pass from the family of Braganza. But the spirit of the Brazilians, who from the long residence of their monarch amongst them had for some time enjoyed the privileges of a Metropolitan State, would not submit to a renewal of their old dependence on the mother country; and the Regent was forced, in obedience to the injunctions just mentioned, to place himself at the head of a revolt, and to become, under the title of “Emperor,” sovereign of a new kingdom.
It may be doubtful whether Don Pedro’s father was quite pleased at an act of which (whatever might be his commands in the case of a supposed contingency) it might always have been difficult to prove the necessity by formal and unpalatable explanations; but the Portuguese in general were at all events far more violent than their monarch, and would at once have attempted the conquest of their rebellious but distant province if they had possessed any of the means requisite for such an undertaking. Mr. Canning, on the other hand, not only saw that Portugal, for her own sake, should endeavour to enter into some arrangement, admitting a fact which it was impossible to alter; he was also obliged, in consequence of the policy which he was elsewhere pursuing, to endeavour to obtain for Brazil an independent position.
It became desirable, then, on every account, to settle as soon as possible the differences between the colony and the mother country; and, having vainly attempted to do this in other ways, it was resolved at last, as the best and promptest course, to send some superior Diplomatist to Lisbon, who, if he succeeded in obtaining the consent of the Portuguese government to a moderate plan of accommodation, might proceed at once to Rio Janeiro, and urge Don Pedro and his government to accept it. Sir Charles Stuart (afterwards Lord Stuart de Rothsay), was selected for the double mission, and succeeded, after some difficulty, in accomplishing its object. He then, however, being in Brazil, undertook the arrangement of a commercial treaty between the newly emancipated colony and Great Britain, and some singular errors into which he fell delaying the completion of his business, he was still at Rio when King John died.
XI.
The Emperor of Brazil, Don Pedro, then became King of Portugal; and having to decide on the relinquishment of one of these kingdoms, it seeming impossible to keep them permanently united, he assumed that, in abdicating the throne of Portugal, he had the right of dictating the method and terms of his abdication. He proposed, then, first, to take upon himself the crown to which he had succeeded; secondly, in his capacity of sovereign of Portugal, to give a constitution to the Portuguese; thirdly, if that constitution were accepted, and that Don Miguel, his brother, were willing to espouse Donna Maria, his (Don Pedro’s) daughter, to place the ancient sceptre of Portugal in that daughter’s hands.
The apparent countenance of Great Britain, however obtained, was no doubt of consequence to the success of this project, and Sir Charles Stuart was prevailed upon to accept the title of Portuguese ambassador, and in such capacity to be the bearer of the new constitutional charter to Portugal. He thus, it is true, acted without Mr. Canning’s authority, for the case was one which could hardly have been foreseen, and it may be doubted whether his conduct was well advised; but still no experienced Diplomatist would have taken upon himself so important a part as Sir Charles Stuart assumed, unless he had pretty fair reasons to suppose that he was doing that which would be agreeable to his chief; and when Mr. Canning gave his subsequent sanction to Sir Charles’s conduct, by declaring in a despatch, dated July 12, 1826, that the King entirely approved of the ambassador’s having consented (under the peculiar circumstances of his situation in Brazil) to be the bearer of the Emperor’s decrees to Lisbon, the world in general considered the whole affair, as in fact it had become, the arrangement of Great Britain.
In this manner did we appear as having recognised the South American Republics, as having arranged the separation and independence of the great Portuguese colony; and, finally, as having carried a constitution into Portugal itself. All the Powers leagued in favour of despotism, protesting at this time against the recognition of any colony, and France being then as their deputed missionary in Spain, for the express purpose of putting down a constitution in that country.
This is the second memorable epoch in Mr. Canning’s foreign policy—the second period in that diplomatic war which at Troppau and Verona had been announced, and which when the Duc d’Angoulême crossed the Pyrenees, had been undertaken against Liberal opinions.
XII.
If our government at last stood in a position worthy of the strength and the intellect of the nation it represented, that position was, nevertheless, one that required for its maintenance the nicest tempering of dignity with forbearance; no offence was to be heedlessly given, none timidly submitted to. Spain and Portugal, long jealous and hostile, were marshalled under two hostile and jarring opinions. The most powerful, backed by friendly and kindred armies, was likely to invade the weaker; and that weaker we were bound to defend by an indissoluble alliance.
The first step manifesting the feelings of King Ferdinand’s government was a refusal to recognise the Portuguese Regency established at King John’s death; but matters were certain not to stop here. Portuguese deserters were soon received in Spain, and allowed to arm; nay, were furnished with arms by Spanish authority, for the purpose of being sent back as invaders into their native country. Even Spanish troops, in more than one instance, hostilely entered Portugal, while the Spanish ministry scrupled at no falsehoods that might stretch a flimsy covering over their deceitful assurances and unfriendly designs.
Things were in this state, peace rested upon these hollow and uncertain foundations, when Mr. Canning received at the same time the official news that the rebel troops which had been organised in Spain were marching upon Lisbon; and the most solemn declarations from Spain herself that these very troops should be dispersed, and their chief arrested. The crisis for action seemed now to have arrived; for England was bound, as I have said, by treaty, to defend Portugal against a foreign power, and a foreign power was in this instance clearly, though meanly, indirectly, and treacherously assailing her. To shrink from the dangerous obligation to which we stood pledged, or even to appear so to shrink, was to relinquish that hold upon public opinion, both at home and abroad, which hold we had at last obtained, and to abandon the moral power which, if a contest did arise, would be the main portion of our strength. On the other hand, to comply with the request of the Portuguese government for succour (that request was now formally made), and to send a British force to Portugal was, no doubt, an event that might be the commencement of a general war. Of all policies, a hesitating, shuffling policy would have been the worst. Had it been adopted, Spain, or those who then governed Spain, would have proceeded to more violent and irremediable acts—acts to which we must have submitted with the grossest dishonour, or resented with the smallest chances of success.
XIII.
At this moment, 12th December, 1826, Mr. Canning came down to the House of Commons, his fine eye kindling with a sense of the magnitude of the transactions in which he was called upon to play so important a part; and having described the circumstances in which England was placed, and the obligations to which she was pledged, stated the manner in which the duty of the English government had been fulfilled:
“I understand, indeed, that in some quarters it has been imputed to his Majesty’s ministers that an extraordinary delay intervened between the taking up the determination to give assistance to Portugal and the carrying of that determination into effect. But how stands the fact? On Sunday, the 3rd of this month, we received from the Portuguese ambassador a direct and formal demand of assistance against a hostile aggression from Spain. Our answer was, that although rumours had reached us through France of this event, his Majesty’s government had not that accurate information—that official and precise intelligence of facts on which it could properly found an application to Parliament. It was only on last Friday night that this precise information arrived—on Saturday his Majesty’s confidential servants came to a decision. On Sunday that decision received the sanction of his Majesty; on Monday it was communicated to both Houses of Parliament; and this day, sir, at this hour in which I have the honour of addressing you, the troops are on their march for embarkation.”
This passage possesses all the qualities of oratory, and could hardly have been delivered without exciting a burst of applause. So again, when the Minister, his voice swelling, his arm outstretched, and his face turned towards the benches where sat the representatives of the great monarchs who, but a short time before, derided our power and denounced our principles, said, “We go to plant the standard of England on the well-known heights of Lisbon. Where that standard is planted, foreign dominion shall not come,” a thrill ran through the assembly at these simple but ominous words. My conviction, indeed, was that this speech must throughout have produced as great an effect in delivery as it does, even now, in reading; but I was talking the other day with a friend who, then being a Westminster boy, was present at the debate; and he told me I was mistaken, and that with the exception of one or two passages such as those I have cited, there was a want of that elasticity and flow which distinguished Mr. Canning’s happier efforts.
It is probable that not having had time, amidst the business which the step he was taking had created, to prepare himself sufficiently, he had the air of being over-prepared, and, according to my friend, only rose to his full height as an orator, when he made that famous allusion to the position which England then held between conflicting principles, like Œolus between conflicting winds; and when again, in reply, defending the course he had adopted during the recent French expedition, he thus elevated his hearers to a conception of the grandeur of his views, and the mingled prudence and audacity of his conduct. “If France occupied Spain, was it necessary, in order to avoid the consequences of that occupation, that we should blockade Cadiz? No: I looked another way; I sought the materials of occupation in another hemisphere. Contemplating Spain such as her ancestors had known her, I resolved that, if France had Spain, it should not be Spain with the Indies; I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the old.”
XIV.
But the Minister of Foreign Affairs displayed talents far beyond those of the mere orator on this occasion. He took a step which was certain to incur the displeasure and excite the open hostility of a powerful party throughout Europe. Many who might have felt themselves obliged by honour to take this step would have done so with a timid and downcast air, endeavouring by an affectation of humanity to deprecate the anger of the high personages they were offending. Such men, exciting no sympathy, creating and maintaining no allies, encouraging the attacks and justifying the insults of all enemies, would have placed their country in a false and pitiful position, where, powerless and compromised, she would have stood before her opponents, exposed by her advance, tempting by her weakness. But the sagacious know that a bold game must be played boldly, and that the great art of moderating opponents consists in gaining friends.
Mr. Canning, then, neither flinched nor faltered. In venturing upon a measure which aroused the anger of so many powerful foes, he made those foes aware that if we were assailed because, in fulfilment of treaties, we marched to the defence of a country which was attacked on account of its liberal institutions, England would gather beneath her standard all those who loved liberty throughout Europe. Our country was on the verge of a contest with the most potent sovereigns. Our minister neither provoked nor quailed before those sovereigns, but plainly told them, that if such a contest did arise, it would be a contest in which many of the governments eager to provoke it might expect to find, side by side with our soldiers, not a few of their own people—a contest in which, were Englishmen forced to take a part, they would not shrink from taking the part that befitted the brave and free descendants of men who had suffered for their religion at the stake, and adjudged their monarch to the scaffold.
XV.
British troops, then, were at last sent in aid of Portugal; no other troops opposed them; the expedition was successful; and from that moment Mr. Canning was pointed to as the first statesman of his time; and Great Britain—without having excited war or produced revolutions, following a course conformable to her interests, her history, and her character, backed by the sympathy of the free, and guarded by the reverence and affection of the intelligent; having shed no blood, having exhausted no treasure, having never uttered a word that our nation did not echo, nor shrunk from supporting a word that had been uttered—stood before the world in a yet more exalted and noble situation than even at that moment when Napoleon fled from Waterloo, and the British drum was beating in the streets of Paris.
This is the third epoch in Mr. Canning’s conflict with the crusaders against constitutional principles. I have described the measures by which that conflict had been supported. It would be difficult to point out any stronger measures that a country, placed in similar circumstances, could have taken. But Mr. Canning, acting with force and spirit, had acted without exaggeration. He had not said, “I will wage war with certain opinions;” he had not told the sovereigns of Troppau, Laybach, and Verona, “Because you commit aggression and injustice, I will do the same; because you enter into a war against Liberal governments, I will forthwith arm the people of my country against all governments of a despotic nature.”
Representing a state which did not wish to give the law, but which would not receive it, he neither cringed nor threatened. “Publish what doctrines and take what course you may,” was the language of England’s great statesman, “I will shape my way according to the interests and treaties of my country with equal independence.”
With such language the Spanish colonies were recognised, because Spain could be no longer responsible for their conduct; because France maintained herself in Spain under the hope that those colonies would furnish an indemnity for the money she had spent in re-establishing despotism in Spain itself; because England, at the head of constitutional governments, found it necessary to check the moral influence of the Holy Alliance, at the head of absolute governments.
Thus the separation of Brazil from Portugal was negotiated, since the struggle between the mother country and her ancient but emancipated possession, was unfavourable to British commerce, embarrassing to British influence, and adverse to the general policy it was found expedient, as I have said, to pursue in Spanish America.
Thus British troops were sent even ostentatiously to Lisbon, since Mr. Canning would not for a moment countenance the belief that England would shrink from her engagements to the weakest ally, although the form of government adopted by that ally was contrary to the particular opinions of the most powerful confederacy in the world.
And here it is especially to be remarked that a policy which, regarded as a whole, bears so decided an appearance, and which was certain to produce so considerable an effect, offers hardly a single point where the success was doubtful, or the peril great. Developing itself, like that game where the skilful winner advances gradually but surely, each piece protected by another through a series of moves, our policy had only become conspicuous by the last move which obtained its victory.
Our treaties with Buenos Ayres, with Mexico, and Columbia, guarded as they were by our own previous declarations, and also by the important declaration of the American President, could only expose us to a useless and insignificant exhibition of displeasure.
The severance of Brazil from Portugal, as long as Portugal was a consenting party, could with little decency be objected to by an indifferent power; the concession of a charter to Portugal, coming from the sovereign of Portugal himself, was an act which those who contended for the divine right of kings to do what they thought proper, could not well oppose: and finally, the expedition of British troops to Lisbon—sent out at the time when the name of “Mr. Canning” had become the rallying word of England, and “England” herself the rallying word of the free and the intelligent throughout the world, demanded also under circumstances too well known to be disputed, and authorised by treaties which had always been acknowledged, and to which, from the very commencement of his administration, Mr. Canning had called attention—resolutely as it was announced, gallantly as it was made, and important as its impression on the public mind was sure to be—could hardly have been resented with propriety or advantage. On each occasion the minister had made his stand at the happiest opportunity and on the strongest grounds. Abandoning, it is true, all direct resistance to France and to the principles she maintained—where such resistance must have been made with great peril, and with but small chance of success—he had adopted towards both France and her principles a system of opposition which exhibited itself by a variety of successive acts each by itself little likely to be dangerous, and all in their combination certain to be effective. In the first place, instead of meeting the enemy on a ground undermined by factions, and where a large military force, inconsistent with the nature of our means, would have been necessary, he carried the quarrel into a new hemisphere, and placed it on a question which, mistress of the seas, England had the undoubted power of deciding. Lastly, when a British army was sent to the continent, it was sent not on grounds which might merely be justifiable, but for reasons which were obligatory; while the people to whose aid it marched—open to the ocean, animated by hereditary jealousy against their neighbours, accustomed to British command, and confident in British assistance—were the people whom we were most likely to be allowed to succour with impunity, and most certain, should war ensue, of triumphantly defending.
Something of chance and fortune, no doubt, was mingled in the happy conduct of these events, as is the case in all human affairs; but there is visible a steady and impressive will, tempering and ruling them throughout; the mind and spirit of a man, who was capable of forethought, governed by precaution, and prompt in decision.
Part IV.
FROM THE BEGINNING OF MR. CANNING’S POPULARITY AS FOREIGN MINISTER TO HIS DEATH.
Mr. Canning’s position.—Altered tone of opposition.—Favour of King.—Death of Duke of York and of Lord Liverpool.—Struggle for the Premiership.—Nomination of Mr. Canning.—Secession of Duke of Wellington and Anti-Catholic party.—Junction with Whigs.—Formation of Cabinet.—Effect of Canning on the men of his time, and their effect on a subsequent one.—Eastern affairs.—Treaty concerning Greece with Russia and France.—Sickness.—Death.
I.
It is needless to say that a policy which raised England so high in the world’s consideration was popular with Englishmen; they were proud of their country and of their minister. The Whig opposition, moreover, which at first depreciated that minister and praised his colleagues, soon began to depreciate his colleagues and to praise him. But Mr. Canning’s most extraordinary and unexpected triumph was at court. From being the man in the Cabinet the most odious to the King, he had become the King’s pet minister, and one of the most intimate of his chosen circle.
The leader of the House of Commons had one peculiar mode of obtaining his Majesty’s confidence, and cultivating his intimacy. It was his arduous duty to send to the Sovereign every night a written account of that night’s proceedings in the assembly to which he belonged. It is easy to see the advantage which this established custom may give to a writer who expresses himself with tact and clearness. A minister of foreign affairs has also more opportunities than any other minister of captivating the Royal attention. Foreign politics, which constitute the arena in which kings are pitted against kings, are the politics which most interest royal personages. A monarch there represents before other monarchs the fame, the power, the character of the nation he rules; he rises as it rises, he falls as it falls.
George IV., whatever his faults, was not without talent or ambition. In early life he wished to distinguish himself in military service abroad, and when, on this being denied him, he entered more deeply than discreetly into politics at home, it was the desire for popularity which connected him with the Opposition. He still remembered the high position which after the battle of Waterloo he held, as Regent of England, amongst the great potentates of the earth; and though personally attached to Lord Castlereagh, and unwilling to sever himself altogether from the sovereigns who had formerly been his allies, and who now in confounding Liberty with Anarchy came forward as the champions of Royalty and order, still he was not insensible to the fact that he had become, little by little, a nonentity in the councils of his peers, and that his advice and opinions, even when expressed by the great warrior who had vanquished Napoleon, were treated with a disregard which was galling to his pride as a monarch, and painful to his feelings as an Englishman. He experienced no small exultation, then, when he saw this state of things reversed, and that the King of England was once more a personage whose policy created hope and alarm. He had, moreover, a singular propensity, which was in fact a sort of madness, for conceiving that he had played a personal part in all the events which had passed in his reign. Amongst other fancies of this kind, he believed, or at least often spoke as if he believed, that he had been on the great battle-field which had terminated the war in 1815; and I have been told by two persons who were present, that one day at dinner, after relating his achievements on this occasion, he turned round to the Iron Duke and said:
“Was it not so, Duke?”
“I have heard your Majesty often say so,” replied the Duke, drily.[122] It was easy, then, for Mr. Canning to make George IV. consider Mr. Canning’s policy his policy, Mr. Canning’s successes his successes, and indeed Mr. Canning always spoke to his Majesty, when the popularity of his administration became apparent, as if he had only followed the inspiration of a prescient and intelligent master.
I should omit more trifling causes of favour, if I did not think them necessary to illustrate the character of the parties, and of the times of which I am speaking, and to show the attention which Mr. Canning, once engaged in the task of recasting our foreign policy, gave to the smallest circumstances which might facilitate it. In the ordinary acceptation of the word, he was not a courtier, or a man of the world. Living, as I have already stated, in the midst of a small clique of admirers, and little with society at large, he confined his remarkable powers of pleasing to his own set. He had determined, however, on gaining George IV.’s goodwill, or, at all events, on vanquishing his dislike, and he saw at once that this was to be done rather indirectly than directly, and that it could best be done by gaining the favour of those ladies of the court whom the King saw most frequently, and spoke to most unreservedly. These were Lady Conyngham and Madame de Lieven. For Lady Conyngham George IV. had a sort of chivalric devotion or attachment; Madame de Lieven he liked and appreciated as the lady who had the greatest knack of seizing and understanding his wishes, and making his court agreeable. She was a musician, and he was fond of music; she had correspondents at every capital in Europe, and knew all the small gossip as well as the most important affairs that agitated Paris, St. Petersburg, and Vienna, and he was amused by foreign gossip and interested in foreign affairs. Her opinion, moreover, as to the position of any one in the world of fashion was law, and George IV. piqued himself especially on being the man of fashion. Mr. Canning resolved, then, on pleasing this remarkable lady, and completely succeeded. She became, as she afterwards often stated, subjugated by the influence of his natural manner and brilliant talents; and the favour of Madame de Lieven went the further in this instance with the King, since he had previously a sort of prejudice against Canning, as being too much the man of letters, and not sufficiently the fine gentleman. This prejudice once removed, a man of wit, genius, and information, had no inconsiderable hold on a prince whose youth had been passed in the most brilliant society of his time, and who was still alive to the memory of the sparkling wit of Sheridan and the easy and copious eloquence of Fox. Lady Conyngham’s alliance was still more important than that of Madame de Lieven, and one of Mr. Canning’s first acts was to name Lord Francis Conyngham Under Secretary of State, it is said at the King’s desire. At all events, Lord Francis’s appointment, which was in every respect a good one, pleased the Marchioness, and satisfied his Majesty, who saw in it the willingness of his Minister to bring even the most private acts of his administration under the Royal cognisance.
II.
An anecdote of the time is worth recording, since it connected itself with the recognition of the Spanish colonies, and the subsequent elevation of the minister to whom this important act was due.
Lady Conyngham had been supposed in early life to have greatly admired (there was no scandal, I should say, attached to this admiration) Lord Ponsonby, then the finest gentleman of his day. Lord Ponsonby, who had long been absent from England, returned from the Ionian Islands, where he had held a small office, not a little desirous to get a better place than the one he had quitted. He met Lady Conyngham at Lady Jersey’s, and (so went the story of the day) Lady Conyngham fainted. So interesting a piece of gossip soon reached the ear of the monarch: the friendship of old men is very often as romantic as the love of young men. His Majesty took to his bed, declared himself ill, and would see no one. All business was stopped. After waiting some time, Mr. Canning at last obtained an interview. George IV. received him lying on a couch in a darkened room, the light being barely sufficient to read a paper.
“What’s the matter? I am very ill, Mr. Canning.”
“I shall not occupy your Majesty for more than five minutes. It is very desirable, as your Majesty knows, to send Envoys, without delay, to the States of South America, that are about to be recognised.”
The King groaned, and moved impatiently.
“I have been thinking, Sire, it would be most desirable to select a man of rank for one of these posts (another groan), and I thought of proposing Lord Ponsonby to your Majesty for Buenos Ayres.”
“Ponsonby!” said the King, rising a little from his reclining position—“a capital appointment! a clever fellow, though an idle one, Mr. Canning. May I ask you to undraw that curtain a little? A very good appointment: is there anything else, Canning, that you wish me to attend to?”
From that moment, said the person who told me this story, Mr. Canning’s favour rose more and more rapidly.[123]
But in mentioning Lady Conyngham and Madame de Lieven, as having been of much use to Mr. Canning, I should also mention Doctor Sir Wm. Knighton. Yet, I would not have it thought that I intend in any way to take from Mr. Canning’s character as a great minister by showing that he adopted the small means necessary to rule a court. George IV.’s habits were such that without some aid of this kind no statesman could have got current affairs carried on with due regularity, or initiated any policy that required the Royal support.
III.
The moment was now at hand, when the extent of this Royal support was to be tested; when, in short, it was to be decided whether the Canning party or the Wellington and Eldon party was to be predominant in the Cabinet. The difference in feeling and opinion between the two sections was, as I have said, more or less general; but as the only question on which the members of the same government were allowed to disagree (according to the principle on which the Cabinet had been founded) was Catholic Emancipation, so it was on the Catholic Emancipation question that each tried its strength against the other. In the preceding year the Emancipationists had obtained a majority in the House of Commons, and would have had only a small majority against them in the House of Lords, but for the speech of the Duke of York, heir-presumptive to the throne, who declared that he was, and ever would be, a determined supporter of the Protestant principles of exclusion, maintained by his late father. There is reason to suppose that this declaration was made on an understanding with the King, who thought that he would thus fortify his own opinions, which had become for the last twenty years hostile to the Catholics, and also deter Canning and his friends from pushing forward too eagerly a matter on which they must expect to encounter the opposition of two successive sovereigns.
On the 5th of January, 1827, however, the Duke of York died; and though during his illness he strongly advised his brother to form an anti-Catholic Administration—without which, he said, Catholic Emancipation must ere long be granted—the counsel, though it had distressed George IV. considerably, had not decided him; for his Majesty preferred his ease, as long as he could enjoy it, to facing difficulties which would disorder the ordinary routine of his social life, as well as that of public affairs. The Duke of York’s influence on George IV., moreover, was that of personal contact, of a living man of honest and sterling character, over a living man of weaker character; it expired, therefore, when he expired.
Another death soon afterwards occurred. Lord Liverpool was taken ill in February, 1827, and he died in March. This left the first situation in the Government vacant. The moderator between the two conflicting parties was no more, and a struggle as to the Premiership became inevitable.
Mr. Canning was at this crisis seriously ill at Brighton: and we may conceive the agitation of his restless mind, since Sir Francis Burdett’s annual motion on the Catholic claims was just then coming on. His absence would, he knew, be misinterpreted; and literally rising from his bed, and under sufferings which only ambition and duty could have rendered supportable, he appeared to confront his enemies and encourage his followers in his place in the House of Commons.
The debate was more than warm, and an encounter between the Master of the Rolls, Sir J. Copley, afterwards Lord Lyndhurst, and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was such as might rather be expected from rival chiefs of hostile factions, than from men belonging to the same government, and professing to entertain on most subjects the same opinions. Finally, a majority of four decided against Sir Francis Burdett.
After this trial of strength, it was difficult for the Minister of Foreign Affairs to insist upon the first place in a balanced cabinet, with a majority in both Houses of Parliament against the party which he represented. When, therefore, the King consulted him subsequently as to a new Administration, he said:
“I should recommend your Majesty to form an Administration wholly composed of persons who entertain, in respect to the Roman Catholics, your Majesty’s own opinions.”
This counsel could not be carried out; but it seemed disinterested, and forced George IV. to allow, after making the attempt, that it was impracticable. The formation of a Cabinet on the old terms of general comprehension thus became a necessity, and to that Government Mr. Canning was indispensable. But his Majesty naturally wished to retain him in a position that would not offend the rest of his colleagues, and to place some person opposed to the Catholics in Lord Liverpool’s vacant situation. This Mr. Canning would not consent to. In serving under Lord Liverpool, he had served under a man highly distinguished from his youth, offered, as early as the death of Mr. Pitt, the first situation in the State, and who, as the head of a government retaining possession of power for many years, had enjoyed the good fortune of holding it at one of the most glorious epochs in British history. That nobleman left no one behind him entertaining his own opinions, and on whom his own claims of precedency could be naturally supposed to descend. Besides, he was Mr. Canning’s private friend, and agreed with him on almost every question, except the solitary one of Catholic Emancipation.
It was clear, then, that if the successor to Lord Liverpool shared Lord Liverpool’s opinions on Catholic Emancipation, but did not share Lord Liverpool’s other opinions, and was more or less adverse to Mr. Canning instead of being particularly attached to him, this would make a great change as to Mr. Canning’s position in the Administration, and a great change as to the general character of the Administration itself. Mr. Canning, therefore, could not submit to such a change without damaging his policy and damaging himself. He was to be Cæsar or nobody; the man to lead a party, not the hack of any party that offered him the emoluments of place, without the reality of power.
IV.
But if Mr. Canning was determined to be Head of the Government, or not to belong to it at all, his rivals were equally determined not to belong to a government of which he was to be the head.
In this dilemma George IV. fixed his eyes on the Duke of Wellington. Few at that period considered the duke fit for the management of civil affairs; but George IV. had great confidence in his general abilities, and thought that with his assistance it might be possible to conciliate a minister whom he was disposed to disappoint, and did not wish to displease. But the Duke of Wellington was the very last man under whom it was Mr. Canning’s interest to place himself. That he refused to do so is therefore no matter of surprise; his refusal, however, was skilfully framed, and in such terms as were most likely to catch the ear of the nation, “he could never consent to a military Premier.” In the meantime, the struggle that had been going on in the Cabinet and the Court was pretty generally known in the country, and such steps were taken by the two conflicting parties as were most accordant with their several principles and desires. The Duke of Newcastle, on the one hand, claimed the privilege of a Royal audience, and spoke in no measured terms of the parliamentary influence he possessed, and the course he should pursue if Mr. Canning attained his wishes. Mr. Brougham, on the other hand, wrote to Mr. Canning, offering him his unqualified support, and saying that this offer was unconnected with any desire for office, which, indeed, nothing would then tempt him to accept.
V.
A serious contest thus commenced. The different epochs through which this contest was conducted may thus be given. On the 28th of March, the King first spoke to Mr. Canning in a direct and positive manner as to filling up Lord Liverpool’s vacancy. Between the 31st of March and the 6th of April affairs remained in suspense. On the 3rd and 4th Mr. Canning and the Duke of Wellington met; and on the 5th, by the desire of the latter, Mr. Canning saw Mr. Peel; the result of these three different interviews being a persuasion on the part of Mr. Canning that it was hoped he would himself suggest that the Premiership should be offered to the Duke of Wellington. On the 9th Mr. Peel again saw Mr. Canning, by the King’s desire, and openly stated that “the Duke of Wellington’s appointment would solve all difficulties.” On the 10th Mr. Canning, not having assented to this suggestion, was empowered to form the new Administration.
The events which followed are well known. On receiving the King’s commands, Mr. Canning immediately requested the services of all his former colleagues, to some of whom his application could only have been a mere matter of form. For this reason the surprise affected at many of the answers received appears to me ridiculous. Mr. Canning and his friends would have retired, if the Duke of Wellington had been made Premier; and the Duke of Wellington and his friends retired when Mr. Canning was made Premier.
Nothing was more simple than the tender of those resignations which were received with such artificial astonishment; and nothing more absurd than the cant accusations which were made against those who tendered them of abandoning the King, &c. &c. Nor was the refutation of such accusations less idle than their propagation. It might not be true that the seceding Ministers met in a room, and said, “We will conspire, and you shall send in your resignation, and I will send in mine.” But it is quite clear that they had common motives of action, that each understood what those motives were, that as a body they had long acted in unison, that as a body they intended to continue so to act. In every representative government men constantly band in this manner together, often denying uselessly that they do so; and we have only to refer to a memorable instance of Whig secession, in 1717, in order to find the same accusation as foolishly raised, and the same denial as falsely given.[124]
But although the resignation of the Duke of Wellington and his friends was almost certain, when the nature of the new arrangement became fully known, the mere fact of Mr. Canning having been commissioned to form a government was not at once taken as the proof that he would possess the power and dignity of Prime Minister.
The Duke of Wellington more particularly seemed determined to consider that nothing as to a Premier was yet decided, and replied to Mr. Canning’s announcement that he was charged to form an Administration, by saying:
“I should wish to know who the person is whom you intend to propose to his Majesty as the head of the Government.”
To this question Mr. Canning replied at once:
“Foreign Office, April 11, 1827.
“My dear Duke of Wellington,
“I believed it to be so generally understood that the King usually entrusts the formation of an Administration to the individual whom it is his Majesty’s gracious pleasure to place at the head of it, that it did not occur to me, when I communicated to your Grace yesterday the commands which I had just received from his Majesty, to add that in the present instance his Majesty does not intend to depart from the usual course of proceeding on such occasions. I am sorry to have delayed some hours the answer to your Grace’s letter; but from the nature of the subject, I did not like to forward it, without having previously submitted it (together with your Grace’s letter) to his Majesty.
“Ever, my dear Duke of Wellington, your Grace’s sincere and faithful servant,
(Signed)
“George Canning.”
The Duke of Wellington’s retirement from office and from the command of the army immediately followed, and now the whole anti-Catholic party definitely seceded.
VI.
At a cooler moment such an event might have seriously startled George IV., but the pride of the Sovereign overcame the fears and doubts of the politician. “He had not altered his policy; he had merely chosen from amongst his Ministers, a vacancy occurring in the Premiership, a particular individual to be Prime Minister. It was his clear right to select the Prime Minister. Who was to have this nomination? The Duke of Newcastle forsooth!” Thus spoke those of his circle whom Mr. Canning had had the address to gain.
Nor did he himself shrink from his new situation. His appointment was announced on the very night it took place, and another writ issued for the borough of Harwich, amidst cheers that rang through the House of Commons. Thus he became at once the Minister of the people of England. They anxiously asked themselves whether he could maintain himself in this position?
A circumstance occurred which went far towards settling opinions on this subject. Almost immediately after the official retreat of the anti-Catholic party, Lord Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty, though in favour of the Catholic claims, sent in his resignation, assigning what in the reign of James I. would have been called a good Scotch reason for doing so, namely, he did not think the Government could last.
The manner of filling up the situation thus vacated might also have satisfied Lord Melville’s scruples. On the 12th his lordship resigned; on the 18th Mr. Canning informed him that the Duke of Clarence, heir-presumptive to the crown, had accepted the office of Lord High Admiral, and would receive Sir George Cockburn and the other Lords of the Admiralty at twelve on the following day. This selection, suggested, it was said, by Mr. Croker, was a decisive blow, and announced the Royal feelings, as far as Mr. Canning was concerned, for two reigns at least. There was still, however, the highest office in the gift of a Minister to fill, that of Lord Chancellor. A supporter of the Catholic claims could hardly at that moment be selected to fill it. Amongst the opponents of those claims there was an eminent lawyer in Parliament, who, if placed on the Woolsack, would become a most valuable ally in the Lords, instead of being a most formidable antagonist in the Commons. Sir John Copley, whose recent altercation with the new Premier on the Catholic question was not forgotten, was the eminent lawyer alluded to; and hardly was it known that the Duke of Clarence was Lord High Admiral, when it was likewise officially promulgated that Sir John Copley, under the title of Lord Lyndhurst, had accepted the Great Seal. The other appointments immediately made known were those of Mr. Sturges Bourne (a friend of Mr. Canning) as Minister for Home Affairs; of Lord Dudley, a Tory who often voted with Whigs, as Minister of Foreign Affairs; of Mr. William Lamb (after Lord Melbourne), a Whig who often voted with the Tories, as Secretary for Ireland; and of Mr. Scarlett, a Whig, as Attorney-General. The Duke of Portland had accepted the Privy Seal, the Duke of Devonshire the highest court office, Mr. Robinson, resigning the Chancellorship of the Exchequer to Mr. Canning, became Lord Goderich, and Leader in the House of Lords. Lord Palmerston acquired a seat in the Cabinet. Lord Harrowby, Mr. Wynn, and Mr. Huskisson retained their former offices.
A private arrangement was also made for admitting into the Cabinet, at the end of the session, Lord Lansdowne (who was to take the place of Mr. Sturges Bourne), as well as Lord Carlisle and Mr. Tierney.
VII.
In this way commenced that new period in our history, which finally led to the forming of a large Liberal party, capable of conducting the affairs of the country, and to a series of divisions in that Tory party which had so long governed it. I have said that this party was already divided before the death of Lord Castlereagh; for it then contained some influential, well-educated men of Whig opinions, though of Tory alliances, who, whilst opposed to democratic innovations, were dissatisfied with the unpopular resistance to all changes, which was the peculiar characteristic of the Lord Chancellor.
Mr. Canning’s junction with this section of politicians brought to it a great additional force.
Nor was this all. His brilliant genius rallied round him all those in Parliament and the country who had enlightened ideas and generous feelings, and were desirous to see England at the head of civilization, and, whether in her conduct towards foreign nations or at home, exhibiting an interest in the well-being and improvement of mankind. Mr. Canning’s feelings on this subject were in no wise disguised by his language.
“Is it not,” said he on one occasion, when defending Mr. Huskisson’s Free Trade policy—“is it not the same doctrine and spirit now persecuting my right honourable friend which in former times stirred up persecution against the best benefactors of mankind? Is it not the same doctrine and spirit which embittered the life of Turgot? Is it not a doctrine and a spirit such as those which have at all times been at work to stay public advancement and roll back the tide of civilization? A doctrine and a spirit actuating the minds of little men who, incapable of reaching the heights from which alone extended views of human nature can be taken, console and revenge themselves by calumniating and misrepresenting those who have toiled to such heights for the advantage of mankind. Sir, I have not to learn that there is a faction in this country—I mean, not a political faction; I should rather perhaps have said a sect, small in numbers and powerless in might, who think that all advances towards improvement are retrogradations towards Jacobinism. These persons seem to imagine that under no possible circumstances can an honest man endeavour to keep his country upon a line with the progress of political knowledge, and to adapt its course to the varying circumstances of the world. Such an attempt is branded as an indication of mischievous intentions, as evidence of a design to sap the foundations of the greatness of the country.”
Again, whilst avowing himself the pupil and disciple of Mr. Pitt, he thus beautifully expresses himself:
“It is singular to observe how ready some people are to admire in a great man the exceptions to the general rule of his conduct rather than the rule itself. Such perverse worship is like the idolatry of barbarous nations, who can see the noonday splendour of the sun without emotion, but who, when he is in eclipse, come forward with hymns and cymbals to adore him. Thus there are those who venerate Mr. Pitt less in the brightness of his meridian glory, than under his partial obscurity, and who gaze on him with the fondest admiration when he has ceased to shine.”
In this manner, by his spirit, eloquence, and abilities, he brought public opinion round in such a manner that it even accommodated itself to his personal position, bringing forward into the light his personal views as the popular ones, and throwing those which had formerly been popular, but which he did not support, into the shade. The great constitutional questions hitherto debated were for a time lost sight of, and party spirit, as Mr. Baring stated, leaving its other and more accustomed topics, seemed for the first time to display itself on subjects simply relating to the commerce and mercantile policy of the country.
VIII.
At first the adherents of the Duke of Wellington were like the Royal emigrants from the old French army at the period of the great Revolution. They thought no officers could be found fitted to take their places. But when they saw another government formed, and formed of materials which, if they could be gradually moulded together, would constitute a composition of solid and perhaps permanent endurance, their feelings were marked by all that violence and injustice which are invariably displayed by men who unexpectedly lose power. Mr. Canning was a renegade for quitting his old political friends to join the Whigs; the Whigs were renegades for abandoning their old political principles to join Mr. Canning. Party rancour had not the candour to acknowledge that if the opinions of Mr. Canning on Catholic Emancipation were sufficient to alienate from him the great bulk of the Conservatives, it was natural that those opinions should attach to him the great bulk of the Liberals. To the attacks of his own party, which he called “the barking of his own turnspits,” Mr. Canning was sufficiently indifferent; but there was one voice lifted up against him, the irony of which pierced his proud heart deeply. Alone and stately, Lord Grey, who had long considered himself the great Whig leader, now stood stripped of his followers, and with little disposition to acknowledge the ascendency of another chieftain. Contempt was the terrible weapon with which he assailed his brilliant rival, whom from the height of a great aristocratic position and a long and consistent public career, he affected to look down upon as a sort of political adventurer; now carrying out measures the most oppressive to the civil liberties of the people; now spouting liberal phrases which he had no intention to realise; now advocating the claims of the Catholics in glowing words; and now abandoning them when called upon for practical deeds; and finally dressing himself up in borrowed plumes and strutting before the public as the author of a foreign policy the errors of which he cast off upon his colleagues, the merits of which, with equal meanness and unfairness, he took wholly to himself.
If all that Lord Grey said could have been completely justified (which it could not); if all that Lord Grey said, I repeat, had been entirely just (which it was not), the speech which contained it would still have been ill-timed, and impolitic. Mr. Canning represented at that moment those liberal ideas which the public were prepared to entertain. He was encircled by the general popular sympathy, and was therefore in his day, and at the hour I am speaking of, the natural head of the Liberal party. The great necessity of the moment was to save that party from defeat, and give it an advanced position, from which it might march further forward in the natural course of events. If Mr. Canning’s party had not obtained power, Lord Grey would never have had a party capable of inheriting it. If Mr. Canning had not become Prime Minister when he did, Lord Grey would not have become Prime Minister three years afterwards.
The public, with that plain common sense which distinguishes most of its judgments, made allowances for the haughty nobleman’s anger, but condemned its exhibition. Moreover, the formal charge of Lord Londonderry, who, as his brother’s representative, accused Mr. Canning of having forsaken that brother’s policy, was more than a counterpoise to Lord Grey’s accusation that one Foreign Secretary was no better than the other. Nor did people stop to examine with minute criticism every act of a statesman who had lived in changeful times, and who was then supporting a policy at home favourable to our trade, and carrying out a policy abroad which inspired affection for our name and reverence for our power.
I have as yet purposely confined my observations to those events which were connected with Spain and Portugal, and the struggle we had entered into against the Holy Alliance in regard to those countries; because it was there that Mr. Canning’s talents had been most displayed, and that their consequences had been most important. But we are not to limit our review of his conduct merely to these questions.
It was not merely in Spain or in Portugal that England justified her statesman’s proud pretension to hold over nations the umpire’s sceptre, and to maintain, as the mediatrix between extremes, the peace of the world. Such was the reputation which this statesman had obtained, even amongst those against whom his policy had been directed, that the Emperor Alexander, disgusted with the irresolution of all his other long, credited allies, turned at last to Mr. Canning, as the only one capable of taking a manly and decided part in the settlement of a question in which his power was to be guarded against on the one hand, and the feelings of his subjects, and the traditions of his empire, were to be considered on the other.
IX.
The affairs in the East during the last few years require a narrative which, though rapid, may suffice to account for the alliance into which at this time we entered.
In 1821 broke out the Greek insurrection. Suppressed in Moldavia and Wallachia, where it originated, it soon acquired strength in the Greek islands and the Morea. Excesses were natural on both sides, and committed by the conquering race, determined to maintain its power, and by the subjugated one, struggling to throw off its chains. The Greek Patriarch was murdered at Constantinople, and a series of savage butcheries succeeded and accompanied this act of slaughter.
By these events Russia was placed in a peculiar and embarrassing position. She could not countenance insurrection; her system of policy just displayed in Italy could not be reversed in Greece. But the sympathies of religion, and the policy she had long pursued (that of placing herself at the head of the Christian subjects of the Porte by always assuming the air of their protectress), demanded some manifestation of interest in the cause of the rebels. She came forward, then, denouncing the attempt at revolution on the one hand, but protesting on the other against the feelings which this attempt had excited, and the means which had been taken to suppress it. The re-establishment of the Greek Church, the safe exercise of the Christian religion, were insisted upon. The indiscriminate massacre of Christians, and the occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia by Turkish troops, were loudly condemned. A reply within the time fixed not having been given to the note in which these remonstrances were expressed the Russian Ambassador quitted Constantinople, and war seemed imminent.
But it was the desire of Austria and England especially to prevent war, and their joint representations finally succeeded in persuading the Sultan to satisfy the Russian demands; consequently, shortly after Mr. Canning’s accession to office, the Greek churches were rebuilt, and the Principalities evacuated, while wanton outrages against the Rayah population were punished with due justice and severity.
Russia, however, now made new requests; even these, through the negotiations of the British ambassador at Constantinople, were complied with; and, finally, after some hesitations and prevarications, the cabinet of St. Petersburg renewed its diplomatic relations with the Porte.
Still it was not difficult to perceive that all the differences hitherto arranged were slight in comparison with those which must arise if the Greek struggle long continued unsettled. In ordinary times, indeed, we shrink before the possibility of a power (whose empire, however wide, conquest would long keep cemented) establishing itself across the whole of Europe, and holding on either side, here at the Straits of the Baltic, there on those of the Mediterranean, the means of carrying on war, or securing safety and peace as it might seem easy to obtain victory, or advisable to avoid defeat; a power which, placed in this position, would demand the constant vigilance of our fleets, establish an enormous and perpetual drain upon our resources, and which appeared not unlikely to carry through Persia (the governor of which would be merely one of her satraps) disorder and destruction to our Indian empire. In ordinary times this gigantic vision, when seen but dimly and at a distance, has more than once alarmed our government and excited our nation. But the tardy struggle of that race for independence, to whose genius and spirit we owe our earliest dreams of freedom—a struggle in which we were called upon to side with Greeks fighting for Liberty, with Christians contending for Christianity, had awakened feelings which overwhelmed all customary considerations. A paramount enthusiasm, to which a variety of causes, and especially the verses of our great and fashionable poet, were contributing, had seized upon the public mind, and was destined for a while to be omnipotent. Guarded by that enthusiasm, Russia might have planted her eagles upon the walls of Constantinople, if she had appeared as the champion of that land
——“of gods, and godlike men,”
which had at last “exchanged the slavish sickle for the sword,” and it is doubtful whether an English Minister could have found a Parliament that would at that moment have sanctioned his defence of the Mahometan power.
X.
Mr. Canning, then, had either to allow the Russian cabinet to pursue its unavowed policy uncontrolled, or to limit its action by connecting himself with the policy which it professed. The contest, it was evident, after the first successes that had attended the Porte’s revolted subjects, would not be allowed to terminate in their subjugation. With the co-operation, or without the co-operation of Great Britain, the Morea was certain to be wrested from the Turks. To stand by neutral, calm spectators of what was certain to take place was to lose our consideration equally with the Ottoman empire and with Christian Europe, and to give to the Government which acted alone in this emergency, as the representative of an universal feeling, an almost universal prestige. But if our interference was expedient, the only question that could arise was as to the time and manner of our interfering.
As early as 1824 Count Nesselrode had had a plan for placing Greece in the situation of the Principalities of the Danube, and the great powers of Europe were invited to consider the subject. Mr. Canning was not averse to this project; but he hoped little from the discordant counsels of the five or six governments called upon to accept it; more especially as both Greece and Turkey, to whom it had become accidentally known, were equally dissatisfied; and he was therefore very properly unwilling to bind his government by a share in conferences which he foresaw were doomed to be fruitless. In short, the negotiators met and separated, and the negotiation failed.
But, in the meantime, affairs had been becoming every day more and more interesting and critical. On the one hand the sympathy for the Greeks had been increased by the unexpected resolution they had displayed; they had a loan, a government, and able and enterprising foreigners had entered into their service. So much was encouraging for their cause. But on the other hand the Egyptian army of Ibrahim Pasha had achieved cruel triumphs, and a great part of the Morea, devastated and depopulated, had submitted to his arms.
During these events the Czar Alexander died; and for some little time there was hesitation in the Imperial counsels. Alexander’s successor, however, soon pursued the policy which his accession to the empire had interrupted, and propositions (not unlike those formerly contemplated) were now submitted to our Minister, propositions in the carrying out of which Great Britain and Russia were alone to be combined. The circumstances of the moment showed that the period of action had arrived, and Mr. Canning no longer shrank from accepting a part which there appeared some hope of undertaking with success.
An alliance between two powers, indeed, afforded a fairer chance of fixing upon a definite course, and maintaining a common understanding, than the various counsels amongst which union had previously been sought. The Greeks also, who had formerly rejected all schemes of compromise (May, 1826), now requested the good offices of England for obtaining a peace upon conditions which would have recognised the supremacy of the Sultan, and entailed a tribute upon his former subjects. Finally (and this affords an interpretation to the whole of that policy which prevailed in the British counsels, from the first to the last moment of negotiation), the treaty of alliance into which Mr. Canning felt disposed to enter, contained this condition:
“That neither Russia nor Great Britain should obtain any advantage for themselves in the arrangement of those affairs which they undertook to settle.”
France became subsequently a party to this scheme of intervention, and it was hoped that a confederacy so powerful would induce the Turks to submit quietly to the measures which it had been determined, at all events (by a secret article), if necessary, to enforce.
But whilst these projects were being carried out, these hopes entertained, that dread King, more potent than all others, held his hand uplifted over the head of the triumphant and still ardent statesman.
XI.
On the 2nd of July Parliament had been prorogued; on the 6th the triple alliance was signed. This celebrated treaty was the last act of Mr. Canning’s official life. The fatigues of the session, short as it had been, had brought him near the goal to which the enterprising mind and assiduous labours of our most eminent men have too often prematurely conducted them. Of a susceptibility which the slightest word of good or evil keenly affected, and of that sanguine and untiring temperament which would never suffer him to repose during circumstances in which he thought his personal honour, his public opinions, and the welfare of his political friends required his exertions: tortured by every sneer, irritated by every affront, ready for every toil; in the last few months in which he had risen to the heights of power and ambition—such are human objects—was concentrated an age of anxiety, suffering, and endurance. His countenance became more haggard, his step more feeble, and his eye more languid. Yet at this moment, jaded, restless, and worn, he held in the opinion of the world as high and enviable a position as any public man ever enjoyed. All his plans had succeeded; all his enemies had been overthrown. By the people of England he was cherished as a favourite child; on the Continent he was beloved as the tutelary guardian of Liberal principles, and respected as the peaceful and fortunate arbiter between conflicting interests. Abroad, one of the most formidable alliances ever united against England had been silently defeated by his efforts. At home, the most powerful coalition that a haughty aristocracy could form against himself had been successfully defied by his eloquence and good fortune. The foes of Don Miguel, in Portugal; the enemies of the Inquisition in Spain; the fervent watchers after that dawn of civilization, which now opened on the vast empires of the New World, and which promised again to shine upon the region it most favoured in ancient times; the American patriot, the Greek freedman, and last of all, though not the least interested (whether we consider the wrongs he had endured, the rights to which he was justly born, the links which should have joined him to, and the injustice which had severed him from, the national prosperity of Great Britain), last of all, the Irish Catholic, dwelt fondly and anxiously on the breath of the aspiring statesman at the head of affairs. His health was too precious, indeed, for any one to believe it to be in danger.
The wound, notwithstanding, was given, which no medicine had the power to cure. On the 1st of August the Prime Minister gave a diplomatic dinner; on the 3rd he was seized with those symptoms which betokened a fatal crisis to be at hand. At this time he was at the Duke of Devonshire’s villa at Chiswick, where he had resided since the 20th of July, for the sake of greater quiet and purer air. The room in which he lay, and in which another as proud and generous a spirit, that of Mr. Fox, had passed away, and towards which the eyes of the whole Liberal world were now turned with agonizing suspense for five days, has since become a place of pilgrimage. It is a small low chamber, once a kind of nursery, dark, and opening into a wing of the building, which gives it the appearance of looking into a courtyard. Nothing can be more simple than its furniture or decorations, for it was chosen by Mr. Canning, who had always the greatest horror of cold, on account of its warmth. On one side of the fireplace are a few bookshelves; opposite the foot of the bed is the low chimneypiece, and on it a small bronze clock, to which we may fancy the weary and impatient sufferer often turning his eyes during those bitter moments in which he was passing from the world which he had filled with his name, and was governing with his projects. What a place for repeating those simple and touching lines of Dyer:
“A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam on a winter’s day,
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave.”
After passing some time in a state of insensibility, during which the words “Spain and Portugal” were frequently on his lips, on the 8th of August Mr. Canning succumbed. His remains sleep in Westminster Abbey; a peerage and a pension were granted to his family; and a statue is erected to his memory on the site of his parliamentary triumphs.
The generation amidst which Mr. Canning died, attended his hearse, and crowned his funeral with honours. What is the place he ought to hold in the minds of future generations of his countrymen?