IV.
A comparison which suggests itself naturally to those who study the history of their times, is one between the practical statesman, the sketch of whose career I am concluding, and his more brilliant contemporary, of whom I have previously spoken. Though for a long period rivals, they both entered political life under the Tory banner, and gained their reputation by adopting Whig principles. In canvassing their separate merits, it is just to say that Sir Robert Peel’s great acts were the development of Mr. Canning’s principles. The former hatched the latter’s ideas, and for one triumph especially, which Sir Robert tardily but nobly achieved, the Catholics of the British empire must feel even more grateful to their early champion than to their subsequent benefactor.
Sir Robert Peel had the talents for giving a prosperous issue to a popular cause, Mr. Canning the genius that makes a cause popular. The one had the courage to advocate an opinion before it was ripe for realization. The other, the fortitude when the advantage and the possibility of a measure became apparent, to make unhesitatingly every personal sacrifice for the public welfare. If we praise the one for his prescience as a statesman, we bend with admiration before the other as a patriot.
The brilliant talents, the genial and generous spirit of Mr. Canning procured him partisans who served him with their heart, and animating his country by a sympathy with his spirit, inspired a sort of affectionate interest in his fortunes. The calm and steady prudence, the sober and moderate language, the punctilious devotion to business, the constant attention to practical and useful improvements, the comprehensive acquirements, the gradual abandonment of early prejudices, won by degrees for Sir Robert Peel a sort of judicial pre-eminence which made men obey his decisions who were displeased with his manners, and who even differed from his opinions. Thus was he finally elevated to a height in the general esteem which was the more remarkable from its being gained by qualities which neither charmed individuals nor dazzled the public.
Each left a school. In the one we may learn how to sustain our renown and our power abroad; in the other how to advance our prosperity at home. Both were the citizens of a free state, but if I might venture to distinguish the peculiarities of these two illustrious Englishmen by a reference to classical examples, I would say that the one resembled a Greek in the most glorious times of Athens, the other reminded you of a Roman in the noblest epoch of the city of Romulus.
APPENDIX.
TWO MEMOIRS, READ BY M. DE TALLEYRAND AT THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE.
Essai sur les avantages à retirer de colonies nouvelles dans les circonstances présentes. Par le Citoyen Talleyrand. Lu à la séance publique, de l’Institut national, le 25 messidor, an V.
Les hommes qui ont médité sur la nature des rapports qui unissent les métropoles aux colonies, ceux qui sont accoutumés à lire de loin les événements politiques dans leurs causes, prévoyaient depuis longtemps que les colonies américaines se séparaient un jour de leurs métropoles, et, par une tendance naturelle que les vices des Européens n’ont que trop accélérée, ou se réuniront entre elles, ou s’attacheront au continent qui les avoisine: ainsi le veut cette force des choses qui fait la destinée des états, et à laquelle rien ne résiste.