J.G.B.
NOTES OF A READER.
QUARTERLY REVIEW. No. 87.
Character of Mr. Canning.
There have been some who equalled him in acquirements—many who have possessed sounder judgment and sounder principles; but never was there in any legislative assembly, a person whose talents were more peculiarly and perfectly adapted to the effect which he intended to produce. With all the advantages of voice and person—with all the graces of delivery—with all the charms which affability and good-nature impart to genius, he had wit at will, as well as eloquence at command. Being frank and sincere in all his political opinions, he had all that strength in his oratory which arises from sincerity, although in his political conduct the love of intrigue was one of his besetting sins. By an unhappy perversion of mind it seemed as if he would always rather have obtained his end by a crooked path than by a straight one; but his speeches had nothing of this tortuosity; there was nothing covert in them, nothing insidious—no double-dealing, no disguise. His argument went always directly to the point, and with so well-judged an aim that he was never (like Burke) above his mark—rarely, if ever, below it, or beside it. When, in the exultant consciousness of personal superiority, as well as the strength of his cause, he trampled upon his opponents, there was nothing coarse, nothing virulent, nothing contumelious, nothing ungenerous in his triumph. Whether he addressed the Liverpool electors, or the House of Commons, it was with the same ease, the same adaptation to his auditory, the same unrivalled dexterity, the same command of his subject and his hearers, and the same success. His only faults as a speaker were committed when, under the inebriating influence of popular applause, he was led away by the heat and passion of the moment. A warm friend, a placable adversary, a scholar, a man of letters, kind in his nature, affable in his manners, easy of access, playful in conversation, delightful in society—rarely have the brilliant promises of boyhood been so richly fulfilled as in Mr. Canning.
Political Economists
Are the most daring of all legislators, just (it has been well said) as "cockney equestrians are the most fearless of all riders." But the confidence with which they propose their theories is less surprising than the facility with which their propositions have been entertained, and their extravagant pretensions admitted. We need not marvel at the success of quackery in medicine and theology, when we look at the career of the St. John Longs in political life. From the time in which the bullion question came out of Pandora's Scotch mull, parliament has been wearied with the interminable discussions which they have raised there. Youths who were fresh from college, and men with or without education, who were "in the wane of their wits and infancy of their discretion," imbibe the radiant darkness of Jeremy Bentham, and forthwith set themselves up as the lights of their generation. No professors, even in the subtlest ages of scholastic philosophy, were ever more successful in muddying what they found clear, and perplexing what is in itself intelligible. What are wages?—this, we are told, is the most difficult and the most important of all the branches of political economy, and this, we are also told, has been obscured by ambiguities and fallacies. What is rent? What is value? Upon these questions, and such as these, which no man of sincere understanding ever proposed to himself or others, they discuss and dilate with as much ardour and to as little effect, as the old philosophers disputed upon the elements of the material creation; bringing to the discussion intellects of the same kind, though as far below them in degree as in the dignity of the subjects upon which their useless subtlety is expended. But it cannot be said of them, that they, when all is said,
With much discretion and great want of wit,