As Foreign Secretary under the spiritless premiership of the Duke of Portland, Canning was allowed free hand. The two years and a half during which he directed the foreign office were marked by a succession of moves which gave a new aspect to the contest with Napoleon.
Canning entered upon his duties just as the Fourth Coalition was being hammered to pieces, on the same anvil which had destroyed the others. By the Treaty of Tilsit (July, 1807), Napoleon prepared to unite the northern nations in his war on British commerce. Hearing or divining his purpose to further this project by seizing the fleet of Denmark, Canning dispatched an armed force to Copenhagen with a demand for the surrender of the Danish ships. The order was executed, and the Danish vessels were brought back to England, though at the cost of a bombardment of the Danish capital. The French Emperor's eye was fastened on the fleet of Portugal as another auxiliary, and when the Regent refused to accede to his request, Napoleon dispatched Marshal Junot to drive him from his kingdom and hold its ports and fortresses against England.
England now stood almost alone, and Napoleon hoped to complete her ruinous isolation by destroying her trade with Europe. His "Continental System," which was to make the continent commercially independent of Great Britain, was foreshadowed in his Berlin Decrees. Fresh decrees were now met by fresh Orders in Council, "shutting out from the continent all vessels which had not touched at a British port." It was Canning whose genius caught at the strategic possibilities of a war in the peninsula (Spain-Portugal) as a practical opening on the French flank for a final blow at the Napoleonic power. Napoleon's interference in the government of Spain by dethroning its monarchs and giving the crown to his brother Joseph had exasperated that proud nation and provoked the spirited people to arm against the intruder. The Portuguese were scarcely less bitter against the French conqueror. Canning perceived the possibility of gaining a foothold in these kingdoms, which were easily accessible by sea, and by utilizing the spirit and resources of the aroused nations to consolidate a power there which would threaten France itself, whose borders the great soldier had thus far kept inviolate. How ably Sir Arthur Wellesley fulfilled Mr. Canning's desire the life of Wellington has already shown.
The Peninsular Campaign was scarcely under way when Canning and Castlereagh, the War Secretary, quarreled and the former resigned from the cabinet. Yet from his place in the House the ex-minister continued manfully to uphold the general who was doing England's work in Spain. There was need of all the support his genius could contribute to this task, for parliament was slow to grasp the deep purpose of the campaign, was impatient for results, and prone to grumble at the bill of expense. Yet in the end Canning enjoyed the satisfaction of pointing to the complete verification of his hopes. He might have been Foreign Minister in the Liverpool ministry at its outset (1812) had he been willing to acquiesce in the leadership of Castlereagh in the House of Commons. This would have given him the direction of English policy in those critical years in which the Napoleonic empire was broken up and European affairs rearranged by the powers at Vienna. He lived to regret this as the greatest error of his career. He was sufficiently humbled after four years to join the government forces as president of the India board, resigning in 1820. In 1821, when on the point of going out to India, of which he had been appointed governor-general, his prospects suddenly changed. On the death of his rival, Castlereagh, Canning became Foreign Secretary and leader of the Commons. The prize which he had long schemed to secure, and had finally given up, suddenly fell into his hand. Canning's mind could not but revert to the lost opportunity of 1812. Not in a century would the Foreign Minister again have a world to set in order. He wrote to a friend, "Ten years have made a world of difference, and have made a very different sort of world to bustle in than that which I should have found in 1812. For fame it is a squeezed orange, but for public good there is something to do, and I shall try—but it must be cautiously— to do it. You know my politics well enough to know what I mean when I say that for 'Europe' I shall be desirous now and then to read 'England.'" The closing sentence was the keynote of his policy. For years it had been customary for representatives of the powers to treat all important matters as "European questions," and England had become habituated to a diplomacy which kept English interests in the background for the sake of the commonweal of Europe—Europe and the Holy Alliance being synonymous. "When Castlereagh," said Canning, "got among princes and sovereigns at Vienna, he thought he could not be too fine and complaisant."
When Canning began to represent England in her relations with foreign countries, he found the Holy Alliance in full vigor. In fact, the Czar, Kaiser, and King had just met at Laybach (1821) and issued a manifesto declaring that "useful and necessary changes in legislation and in the administration of states could only emanate from the free will and from the intelligent and well-weighed convictions of those whom God has made responsible for power. Penetrated with this eternal truth, the sovereigns have not hesitated to proclaim it with frankness and vigor. They have declared that, in respecting the rights and independence of legitimate power, they regarded as legally null and disavowed by the principles which constituted the public right of Europe, all pretended reforms operated by revolt and open hostilities." In plain terms the three monarchs, claiming to rule by divine right, reasserted their determination to interfere in the private affairs of any state to suppress movements which seemed to their majesties to be revolutionary. The powers had already acted according to this program in Piedmont and Naples, and were preparing to interfere in behalf of the Bourbons in Spain, the Spaniards in the revolted American republics, and the Turks in Greece when Canning came to power. To the Congress of Verona, where these and other questions were to be considered by the powers, Canning sent Wellington to speak for England. In accordance with his instructions the duke stood for non- intervention. Europe had no business to restore the Bourbon to the throne from which the nation had thrust him; on the same principle Greece must be allowed to fight out her own cause with the Turk; as for the Spanish-American colonies, why they were already lost to Spain, and England had recognized them as independent states. France undertook to do alone for the Spanish monarch what the Holy Alliance wished to do in the name of Europe. In this England acquiesced, but Russia's attempt to second the French in their Spanish project by military support was stopped by Canning's threat that such an act would only result in England's making the Spanish cause her own. "The admission of the jurisdiction of the Holy Alliance over Europe was a course which he deemed it vital at almost any cost to prevent," says Hill. "The time for Areopagus and the like of that," as Canning put it, "has gone by." And again, "What should we have thought of interference from foreign Europe when King John granted Magna Charta, or of an interposition in the quarrel between Charles I. and his Parliament?" To bring his colleagues around to his view, Canning showed them that the interference of the Holy Alliance in the affairs of Ireland might be justified upon the same grounds on which the argument for intervention in Spain was based. The King, never too fond of the brilliant commoner, whose presence in the ministry he considered scarcely less than a personal affront, had the temerity to criticise the policy which was so obnoxious to his fellow crowned heads. He thought that the English recognition of Spanish-American independence was as wicked as the French alliance in 1778 with the insurgent English colonists under Washington. Canning's recognition of Spanish-American independence was a sagacious stroke. It not only gave strength to his contention that peoples had a right to decide for themselves who should rule them, without consulting the despots of Europe, but its timeliness was masterly. Glorifying his own course in one of his most famous Parliamentary orations, in December, 1826, he explained why he had not joined the Spaniards in making armed resistance to the French invasion. He said: "Is the Spain of the present day, the Spain of which the statesmen of the time and William and Anne were so much afraid? Is it, indeed, the nation whose puissance was expected to shake England from her sphere? No, sir, it was quite another Spain—it was the Spain within the limits of whose empire the sun never set; it was Spain with the Indies which excited the jealousies and alarmed the imaginations of our ancestors. . . . If France conquered 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 material of compensation in another hemisphere. Contemplating Spain such as our 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!"
Greece began her struggle for independence in 1821. The heroism which her people displayed in their unequal battle with the Turks attracted the attention and sympathy of many persons all over the world, especially those who saw in the modern Greek the representative of the race which had once been the intellectual leader of Europe. The powers of the Holy Alliance, however, were inclined to regard the outbreak with coldness, seeing in it a fresh manifestation of the then growing disposition of European peoples to rise against the tyranny of their anointed kings. England held aloof from their conferences in regard to the matter, trusting to their discordant interests to break up their concert of action, since the Russian czar, as the head of the Greek faith, might be counted upon in the long run to befriend the Greeks, especially as such a step would carry the Russian influence into the Balkan Peninsula and mark a full stride toward Constantinople, then as now the goal of Russian ambition. Canning employed Wellington to negotiate an agreement at St. Petersburg for the rescue of Greece. Ultimately England, Russia, and France signed a protocol which was to establish Greece as a self-governing state, tributary to the Porte, but free in matters of commerce and religion. In 1827 the three powers demanded an armistice looking toward a treaty settlement, and threatened to use force to compel a cessation of hostilities. The Porte defied the powers, and his fleet having fired upon the allied vessels, the battle of Navarino was precipitated in October, 1827. The result was the expulsion of the Turks from the country, and the early establishment of the complete independence of the kingdom of Greece. Canning did not live to see the consummation of his hopes in Greece. His health, which had for several years been much enfeebled, gave way completely, and on August 8, 1827, he died, at the age of fifty-seven. He had then for six months held the highest office in the gift of the nation.
In February, 1827, the illness of Lord Liverpool had made it necessary to reorganize the cabinet and choose a new Prime Minister. After much hesitation the King sent for Canning. Most of his former colleagues declined to serve under him because he was a professed pro-Catholic, and they were still of the opinion that the Protestant constitution of England would be endangered if the Irish demand for Roman Catholic emancipation should be granted. Others were found to take the place of Wellington, Peel, Eldon, and the other Tory leaders, and the Canning ministry got under way, only to be abruptly halted at the grave. The remains of the Prime Minister were deposited in Westminster Abbey, where a statue by Chantry recalls his manly form and expressive countenance.
Even in so slight a sketch as the foregoing, some characteristics of the man stand forth. Canning's wit, while its mordancy cost him many friends, distinguishes him among English statesmen. The talent which had stood him in good stead as boy-editor of "The Microcosm" at Eton, and which is to be seen in the slings and arrows of "The Anti-Jacobin," he never quite lost. His pen was always ready to dash off a scrap of lampooning verse, and flashes of wit and extended passages of humor enlivened the brilliant orations by means of which he explained and defended his policies in Parliament. As an orator his speeches were of exquisite polish, and the voice, gesture, countenance and entire bodily presence of the speaker contributed to their tremendous effect. There were not wanting those who criticised his oratory as savoring more of the stage than the rostrum, but such persons were aristocratic political opponents who would not let the world forget that this man whose genius outshone them all was the son of a third-rate actress. Be it said to Canning's credit that he did not forget his mother, but made her comfort in her declining days the object of his solicitous care.
Mr. Hill, whose study of Canning has been of great assistance in the preparation of these pages, thus goes to the heart of his foreign policy: "The principle which made Canning the antagonist of the propaganda of French principles in Europe during the early part of his political life made him during his later years in an equal degree the antagonist of the principles of the Holy Alliance which it is his great glory as a statesman to have defeated. The Holy Alliance endeavored to impose upon other nations principles and a law of life not their own. As Canning objected to the Holy Alliance, so he would have objected to its present secular substitute, the Concert of Europe, which simply means the agreement of the great powers to inflict their will upon the small ones, not allowing them to develop according to their native forces and genius, but constraining them to such forms and confining them within such limits as suits the convenience of a despotic hexarchy of states, or of a majority of them. The country which is England at home should be England abroad, reserving all its freedom of action. Canning's foreign policy, which was for 'Europe' to read 'England,' and to 'get rid of Areopagus and all that,' was sound and statesmanlike and abundantly justified by its results."