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.