A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV

by Justin McCarthy; Justin H. McCarthy

He stayed while in Liverpool at Seaforth House, the residence of Mr. John Gladstone, one of the merchant princes of Liverpool, whose son William Ewart Gladstone was afterwards to make the name of the family famous in history. During his stay at Seaforth House, Canning used to spend much of his time gazing out upon the sea, while the little boy William Ewart Gladstone played on the lawn near him. It was here that Canning heard the news {36} which led to an entire change in his purpose, and opened the way to his greatest success. His late colleague, his late rival, Castlereagh, was dead—had died by his own hand. Castlereagh had lately succeeded to his father's title, and had become Marquis of Londonderry; but as the marquisate was only an Irish peerage, he could still sit in the House of Commons as the chosen representative of an English constituency. His mind had seemed, for some time, to be darkened by troubles of which he gave no account to his friends, and he suddenly committed suicide. There are many conjectures and suggested explanations as to the immediate cause of the act, but all we know for certain is that the strong mind seemed suddenly to give way, and that Castlereagh could endure life no longer. Seldom, indeed, has the death of a public man in modern times been received with any such demonstrations as those which in many places followed the news that Castlereagh had done himself to death. In every community all over the country, and indeed all over Europe and the civilized world, there were those who proclaimed that the death of such a man was a positive blessing to the human race. Wherever men were struggling against despotism and suffering from tyranny, there were those who felt and who declared that the departure of Castlereagh from this world was a benefit to humanity at large.

[Sidenote: 1822—Canning as Foreign Secretary]

Yet the man himself had not a cruel or an ignoble nature. He had through all his life friends who loved him, and whose love his private character and conduct had well deserved. But he had made himself the English representative of the policy of the Holy Alliance at a time when every lover of liberty, and every believer in the development of free institutions and the beneficent results of their working, must have felt that even the excesses of the French Revolution gave no excuse for the deliberate setting-up of the doctrine of combined despotism. Men of liberal opinions were in an especially angry mood just then because England seemed to have gone in deliberately for the policy which authorized the "crowned conspirators," as Sydney Smith called them, to impose their edicts {37} on the whole continent of Europe. This condition of things may help to explain the cry of rejoicing with which the news of Castlereagh's suicide was received in so many places. The London crowd who followed the funeral procession to Westminster Abbey greeted the removal of the coffin with yells of execration. Byron wrote verses of savage bitterness about the dead man and his deed of self-murder—wrote some verses which no English publisher now would put into print.

The death of Castlereagh became a turning-point in the career of Canning. The whole voice of Liberal public opinion at once proclaimed that Canning was the only man left in the country who was capable of redeeming England's foreign policy from the discredit and disgrace brought upon it by Castlereagh's Administration. Even Lord Liverpool himself soon came to see that there was no other course left to him than to recommend the King to offer to Canning the place of Foreign Secretary. The King at first fought hard against the advice of his Prime Minister. The letters which passed between him and Lord Liverpool are a curiosity in their way. George had evidently persuaded himself that Canning was a monster of ingratitude, who had committed a positively unpardonable offence against his lord and master. Indeed, it was only by playing upon the King's personal vanity that Lord Liverpool at last brought him to accept the wholesome advice tendered to him. Lord Liverpool reminded George again and again that one of the noblest of a monarch's prerogatives was his power to grant forgiveness to any repentant sinner. George was probably beginning to be weary of the discussion, and perhaps had natural shrewdness enough to see that it could only end in one way. He therefore seemed to be taken by the appeal made to his generosity for pardon to a penitent offender, and he consented to make approaches to Canning with regard to the office of Foreign Secretary. At first, however, the King made so ostentatious a profession of his magnanimous desire to pardon the remorseful wrong-doer that Canning could not bring himself to accept the abject position which {38} his sovereign was arranging for him. He therefore declined at first to take any office under such conditions, and the King had to come down from his high horse and treat with his subject in less arrogant fashion. The King, at last, so far modified his language as to leave the prerogative of mercy out of the question, and Canning, by the advice of all his friends and supporters, consented to become once more a member of the Administration and to undertake the duties of Foreign Secretary.

[Sidenote: 1822-27—Canning's fitness for Foreign Minister]

This, we have said, was the turning-point in the career of Canning. It was also a turning-point in the modern history of England. The violence of the reaction against the principles of the French Revolution had spent itself, and the public mind of this country was beginning to see that the turbulence of democracy was not likely to be safely dealt with by the setting-up of despotism. Canning himself was a living illustration of the manner in which many great intellects had been affected by the course of events between the fall of Napoleon and the death of Castlereagh. Canning in his earlier days was in sympathy with the theories and doctrines of popular liberty, and we have seen that up to the time of his actually entering Parliament it was generally believed he would rank himself with the Whig Opposition. But, like many other men who loved liberty too, he had been alarmed by the aggressive policy of Napoleon, and he believed that the position of England was best guaranteed by the later policy of Pitt. Then came the Congress of Vienna, and the deliberate attempt to reconstruct the map of continental Europe, and to decree the destinies of nations according to the despotic principles of the Holy Alliance.

Canning soon recognized the fact, obvious enough, one might have thought, even to a man of intellect far lower than that of Canning, that the traditions, the instincts, and the feelings of a people must count for something in the form and manner of their government, and that there are forces at work in the hearts and minds of peoples which can no more be governed by imperial and royal decrees than can the forces of physical nature itself. He {39} had unconsciously anticipated in his own mind that doctrine of nationalities which afterwards came to play so momentous and so clearly recognized a part in the politics of the world. He saw how the policy of Castlereagh had made England the recognized ally of all the old-world theories of divine right and unconditional loyalty, and had made her a fellow-worker with the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance for the restoration of tyranny all over the European continent. He understood the nature and the meaning of the new forces which were coming up in political life; he saw that the French Revolution was not destined to end in the mere restoration of mediaeval despotism. He saw that the American Revolution had opened a new chapter in the history of the modern world, and that no man, whether he called himself Tory or Whig, was fit to be intrusted with the administration of England's foreign policy who had not learned the lessons taught by the closing years of the eighteenth and the opening years of the nineteenth century. Canning had much of that imaginative faculty without which there can hardly be any real statesmanship. Even his gift of humor helped him in this way. He was able to understand the feelings, the tempers, and the conditions of men with whom he had little opportunity of personal contact. He could bring himself into sympathy with the aspirations of peoples who were wholly foreign in race to him, and who would have been mere foreigners and nothing else in the eyes of many of his political colleagues.

If Lord Londonderry had lived and had continued, as no doubt he would have done, to hold the Foreign Office, he would have been England's representative at the Congress of Verona. The new chances opened by his death inspired that demand for the services of Canning which compelled the King at last to yield and invite Canning back to his old place. The Congress of Verona was in fact a reassembling of the Holy Alliance for the purpose of taking once more into consideration the disturbed state of Europe, and laying down once more the lines of the only policy which, according to the judgment of the despotic {40} sovereigns and their ministers, could restore peace to the Continent. The disturbances arose simply from the fact that some of the European populations were rising up against the policy of the Holy Alliance, and were agitating for the principles of constitutional government. The immediate and ostensible object for the summoning of the Congress was the fact that Greece had been trying to throw off the yoke of Turkey, and that the leading members of the Holy Alliance believed it was their business and their right to say what was to be done with Greece, and whether or not it was for their convenience that she should be held in perpetual bondage.

[Sidenote: 1822-27—England and the Congress of Verona]

But there were troubles also in Spain, because the Spanish sovereign had been giving way to the desire of his people for a system of constitutional government and for the recognition of the principle that a people has something to do with the making as well as with the obeying of laws. The restored Bourbon Government in France declared that it saw dangers to its own rights and its own security in these concessions to popular demand, made in a country which was only divided from French territory by the barrier of the Pyrenees. It was intimated in the clearest manner that the Bourbon Government of France would be prepared, if necessary, to undertake armed intervention in the affairs of Spain in order to prevent the Spaniards from thus setting a bad example to the subjects of the Bourbon dynasty. Then the condition of Poland was giving some alarm to the despotic monarchs of the Continent everywhere; for, if Poland were to rise and were allowed to assert its liberty, who could tell on what soil, sacred to despotism, other rebellious movements might not also break out. Therefore, the monarchs of the Holy Alliance were much perturbed, and came to the conclusion that, as the Congress of Vienna had not succeeded in enforcing all its edicts, the only wise thing would be to call together another Congress, to be held this time at Verona, and there go over all the work again with greater vigor and determination.