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.