, . .o:
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GEORGE CANNING
GEORGE CANNING AS A BOY
(IN FANCY DRESS)
From tJu picture by Gainsborough in the possession of the Marquess of Cla
GEORGE CANNING
BY
W. ALISON PHILLIPS
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1903
PREFACE
JN preparing this little book I have used prin-
cipally Stapleton's Political Life of George
Canning (1831), Stapleton's George Canning and
hiit Times (1835), Bell's Life of Canning and the
memoir prefixed to Therry's edition of Canning's
speeches (1828). Much of Canning's official
correspondence is contained in the Supplementary
Despatches of the Duke of Wellington, to which
may be added Mr. E. J. Stapleton's Some Official
Correspondence of George Canning (1887).
To the kindness of the Countess of Cork and
Orrery I am indebted for the permission to
republish the Lines addressed to Miss Scott before
Marriage, while I have to thank the Marquis of
Clanricarde for allowing me to reproduce the
beautiful portrait by Gainsborough of George
Canning as a boy, and the Earl of Crewe for
permission to include the interesting picture by
Hickel of Canning as a young man.
W. A. P.
2081358
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
EARLY YEARS i
The Canning family — George Canning the elder — Can-
ning's mother — Canning at Eton — The Microcosm —
At Oxford.
CHAPTER II
PITT AND CANNING - - .'-•„'. . - 15
Canning and the Whigs — The French Revolution — He
enters Parliament — His maiden speech — Character of
his eloquence — Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs
— Bonaparte and the Revolutionary Wars — Policy of
Pitt — Canning and the new Humanitarianism — The
Anti-Jacobin — The Coup (U Etat of i8th Brumaire.
CHAPTER II J
CANNING AND THE IRISH QUESTION • • - - 37
Grattan's Parliament — The Rebellion of 1798— Pitt and
Ireland — The Union proposed— Canning and the
Union— The question of Catholic Emancipation-
Resignation of Pitt,
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV
PAGE
THE DEATH OF PITT 48
Marriage — Canning and Addington — Speech on the island
of Trinidad (Slave Trade) — Canning an Irish member
—The Peace of Amiens — Pitt's last Administration —
Napoleon Emperor of the French — The new Coalition
— Battles of Trafalgar, and Austerlitz— Death of Pitt
— "Ministry of all the Talents" — Death of Fox —
Portland Administration — Canning at the Foreign
Office.
CHAPTER V
AT THE FOKEIGN OFFICE 66
Napoleon and Alexander — Treaty of Tilsit — Bombardment
of Copenhagen — The Continental Blockade — England
and the United States — Napoleon and Spain — The
Peninsular War — The Walcheren Expedition — Can-
ning's duel with Castlereagh.
CHAPTER VI
CANNING AS A POLITICAL FREE-LANCE So
Canning and Journalism — His poems — Madness of George
III. — The Regency question — Murder of Perceval —
Lord Liverpool Premier — Canning refuses office —
Catholic Emancipation — Member for Liverpool —
Canning and Parliamentary Reform — Free Trade —
Speech on the prosecution of the war — Embassy to
Lisbon — President of the Board of Control.
CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER VII
PAGE
AFTER THE PEACE 98
Castlereagh and the European Alliance— Condition of
England— Canning and democracy— The Six Acts —
Personal incidents — Death of George III. — Queen
Caroline — Resignation of Canning — Offer of the
Governor-Generalship of India — Suicide of London-
derry— Canning returns to the Foreign Office.
CHAPTER VIII
THE AFFAJRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL - - - 116
Congress of Verona — Canning and the European Alliance
— The doctrine of Non-intervention — Ferdinand VII.
and the Spanish Liberals — Attitude of France — Eng-
land and the Spanish colonies— French invasion of
Spain — Troubles in Portugal — Intervention of Great
Britain— Canning and the Monroe doctrine — Recogni-
tion of the South American Republics — Speech on
the British intervention in Portugal.
CHAFFER IX
THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE .... 143
The ' ' Eastern question " and the Continental Alliance —
Insurrection in Greece — Metternich and Alexander I.
— Canning and the Greek question — The Flag of
Greece recognised — Intervention of Mehemet Ali —
Death of Alexander I. — Mission of Wellington to St.
Petersburg— The ' ' Protocol of St. Petersburg " —
Canning and Nicholas I.— Appeal of the Greeks to
Great Britain — Conference of London — The Treaty
of London.
b
x CONTENTS
CHAPTER X
PAGE
PREMIERSHIP AND DEATH 166
Split in the Tory Cabinet— The Free Trade party— The
"Reciprocity of Duties Act" — Canning's rhymed
despatch — Illness of Lord Liverpool — Canning's
motion on the Corn Laws — Canning at the head of a
Coalition Government — Illness and death.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
George Canning as a Boy (from the Picture by Gains-
borough in the possession of the Marquis of Clanricarde)
Frontispiece
George Canning (after Hoppner) . . .to face p. 18
George Canning (from an Engraving by B. Lane) to face p. 49
George Canning as a Young Man (from the Picture by
A. Hickel in the possession of the Earl of Crewe)
to face p. 66
Lord Castlereagh (from the Portrait by Lawrence in the
National Portrait Gallery) . . .to face p. 78
Interior of the House of Commons in 1812 . to face p. 91
George Canning (from an Engraving by Wm. Say after the
Portrait by Lawrence) . . . .to face p. Ill
George Canning (from an Engraving by Turner after the
Portrait by Lawrence) . . . .to face p. 166
The Great Battle for the Championship between Black
George and Dubious Jack . . . .to face p. 170
"The Struggle," or a Long Pull, a Strong Pull and a Pull
All Together to face p. 171
The Rats at the Corn . ". . ..- . . to face p. 172
A Head for the Cabinet to face p. 174
GEORGE CANNING
CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS
The Canning family — George Canning the elder — Canning's
mother — Canning at Eton — The Microcosm — At Oxford.
THE family of Canning is of a respectable
antiquity, and characteristically British.
To nobility of blood, in that narrower sense which
confines this virtue to the offshoots of the peerage,
it could lay no claim ; but for centuries it had en-
joyed that mysterious quality of distinction which
is inseparably associated with the possession of real
estate. The original seat of the race, indeed, at
Bishop's Cannynges, in Wiltshire, devolving upon
two coheiresses, passed from the name in the
reign of Henry VII. Long before this, however,
when Edward II. was King, a cadet of the family
setting out — as the custom was for younger sons
of country gentlemen in England — to seek his for-
tune in trade, had established at Bristol a branch
of the Cannynges, which was destined in time to
overshadow the parent stem. Under Edward III.
1
2 GEORGE CANNING
William Cannyinge was six times Mayor of Bristol,
and six times represented the city in Parliament.
His descendants continued to be notable citizens
of the second city in England until, in the fifth
generation, Thomas Cannynge regained territorial
rank for his branch of the family by marrying the
heiress of the Le Marshalls of Foxcote, in War-
wickshire. Here the family continued, in digni-
fied obscurity, down to our own days. Again it
was a junior branch which was destined to out-
grow the elder. In the year 1618 King James I.
granted to George, youngest son of Richard Can-
ning of Foxcote, the manor of Garvagh, in Ireland.
Here, for six generations, the Cannings continued,
through good and evil fortune, to represent that
stern principle of Protestant ascendency to which
they had owed their position in the country.
Then came a change, as unexpected as it was un-
welcome. Infected by I know not what quality
in the Irish atmosphere, which has proved fatal to
so much Macchiavellian statecraft, by tending to
make Teutonic Irishmen more Celtic than the
Celts, George, eldest son of Stratford Canning of
Garvagh, revolted from the traditions of his race.
Confused by a vivid imagination, he lost himself in
those attractive mists of political idealism which at
that time were beginning to spread over Europe
from their birthplace on the abstract heights of
the Paris salons. In short, he adopted democratic
EARLY YEARS 3
principles ; and to this crime, so unpardonable by
a parent of stern character and just views, he
added another, hardly less heinous, by falling in
love with an attractive, but wholly ineligible,
young woman. For a conscientious father there
was but one course open. George Canning was
dismissed from the paternal roof.
The unfortunate young man elected to carry
once more across the Channel the fortunes of the
Cannings; and these for the moment looked un-
promising enough. He was endowed by nature
with every amiable quality that makes for ill suc-
cess, and by his father with an allowance of £150
a year. In 1757 he settled in London, entered
the Middle Temple, and was, in due course, called
to the Bar. But, for a youth of his temperament,
the law had less than no attraction. He preferred
to spend his time writing political pamphlets,
under the fashionable form of " Epistles " to men
of eminence, or in the composition of verses
which were as rich in lofty sentiment as they were
poverty-stricken in nearly every quality of art.
These activities, though sometimes gratifying to
his vanity, added nothing to his purse. More-
over, being attractive and sociable, he had been
admitted to the intimacy of several of the leaders
of his own political persuasion ; and since, in the
days of Wilkes and Sheridan, Spartan simplicity
was not as yet associated with the profession of
4 GEORGE CANNING
Radical opinions, his expenditure soon exceeded
his income, and he fell hopelessly into debt. This
was the opportunity for which his father had been
waiting. Mr. Canning, intent on saving Garvagh
from passing to one who would make it a centre
of destructive propaganda, consented to pay his
eldest son's debts on condition of his joining with
him in cutting off the entail, and so becoming a
party to his own disinheritance. The luckless
youth, having eaten his mess of pottage, had no
choice but to sell his birthright. The entail was
cut off, the debts were paid, and George Canning,
thrown once more upon his allowance of £150 a
year, resumed his old inconsequent mode of life,
and so fell rapidly again upon evil days. Debts
once more accumulated, and by way of improving
matters he could think of nothing better than to
marry. Unfortunately, Miss Costello, though the
daughter of a sufficiently honourable Irish house,
brought as her only dowry charm and good looks.
To the Squire of Garvagh this was the last straw.
The estate had already been settled on his second
son, Paul. With his eldest son he would hence-
forth have no dealings, beyond the regular remit-
tance of the stipulated annuity.
George now, under the dire pressure of necessity,
was fain to exchange his unremunerative Muse for
that perennial hope of the destitute, the wine
trade. But for all the personal popularity of the
EARLY YEARS 5
young couple, George Canning's taste in wines in-
spired no more confidence than his taste in poetry,
and the new venture fared as ill as the old. The
many-coloured world of dreams had hardened into
the dull world of cruel reality ; and life, which
had begun with a reckless battle for impossible
ideals, had shrunk into a sordid struggle for the
means to live. Under these unpromising auspices,
on 1 1th April, 1770, George Canning, the subject of
this memoir, and only child of the outcast of Gar-
vagh, was born into the world. Exactly a year
after his birth, on llth April, 1771, his father, worn
out by anxiety and disappointment, died ; and
with him passed the pitiful allowance of £150,
which had stood between him and absolute ruin.
Mrs. Canning, left absolutely without means,
with great spirit determined to seek a livelihood on
the stage. The influence of friends, culminating
in royal patronage, procured for her at the outset
a leading part at Drury Lane with David Garrick ;
but her talents were unequal to the place she had
assumed, and when the momentary success won by
her beauty and simplicity had passed, she rapidly
sank to filling minor parts, and ultimately, dis-
appearing from the London stage altogether, earned
a precarious livelihood in provincial theatres. She
soon, however, remarried, her second husband being
the actor Reddish ; and after his death she took as
her husband a Mr. Hunn, a wealthy linen draper
6 GEORGE CANNING
and amateur of Plymouth. This latter step, which
had seemed to end her pecuniary troubles, in the
end only added to them ; for the linen draper
failed, and the amateur in his turn had to attempt
to earn a living on the boards. When he too died
he left his widow with three more children, two
daughters and a son. Since this lady, for reasons
shortly to be stated, had very little influence in
moulding her eldest son's career, it will, perhaps,
be well at once to dismiss her from the story
with the briefest account of her subsequent fate.
Happily, the rapid rise of George Canning soon
placed him in a position where he was able to give
her assistance, which he did with characteristic
generosity, devoting to her maintenance the whole
of the pension of £500 to which he became entitled
on retiring from his first office as Under-Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs. As long as she lived,
indeed, he never forgot the love and duty he owed
to her, visiting her, as often as public affairs per-
mitted, in her retirement at Bath, and never under
any circumstances of public anxiety or work for-
getting to write to her once a week. She had the
happiness of living to see her son Prime Minister,
and of dying a few months before the premature
close of his career.
From the above sketch of his parentage and
birth, it is clear that never infant came into this
world with less apparent chances of carving out of
EARLY YEARS 7
it a successful career. There was, however, another
side to the picture. That the boy very early dis-
played conspicuous talent would perhaps not alone
have served him ; for talent often starves. But he
possessed a sounder basis for worldly success in
an influential and wealthy uncle. Mr. Stratford
Canning, youngest brother of the unhappy George,
though he shared to a certain extent the latter's
liberal proclivities, had avoided his prodigality, and,
as a member of the respectable banking firm of
French, Burrows & Canning, had accumulated a
respectable fortune. This gentleman, learning
from the actor Moody of his nephew's precocious
talents, and that they were in danger of running
to waste in the unwholesome atmosphere of pro-
vincial green-rooms, determined to withdraw him
from the guardianship of Reddish, and himself to
become responsible for his education. The offer
was, as might be expected, gratefully accepted ;
and young Canning started life anew under con-
ditions which placed no obstacles in the path of his
ambition, save those of his own creation.
There is no need to linger over the incidents
of Canning's boyhood. In general it is a some-
what colourless record of unbroken and deliberate
success. When, in due course, he passed from
the preparatory school at Winchester, which he
had attended, to Eton, he took with him a reputa-
tion already established for writing elegant verse
8 GEORGE CANNING
both in Latin and English. At Eton, then even
more than now the nursery of statesmen, his
activities added to his fame. His native eloquence,
already brought under the discipline of conscious
art, made him a power in the debating club ; and
in the school paper, the Microcosm, of which he
was editor, he " marshalled the rising talents of
that celebrated seminary into emulative excel-
lence ". In this publication he certainly displayed,
if not genius, at any rate a precocious culture.
His wit, which in after days was to bite so trench-
antly, lacks, indeed, as yet the fine edge which a
wider experience alone could give ; but in these
youthful effusions the leading characteristics of his
later style are already perfectly represented. The
sonorous periods of these early efforts in English
prose are as carefully balanced, and furnished with
as fine a Ciceronian polish, as anything produced by
his later years. Of his verse contributions, too,
one at least has been found worthy of inclusion in
more than one anthology of Canning's poetical
works, and — though this may-be is no great praise
— it more than holds its own amongst its fellows.
This poem, "The Slavery of Greece," has, in view
of the part played subsequently by its author in
European politics, an interest quite apart from its
literary qualities, and I shall therefore quote from
it sufficiently for the purpose of illustrating its
spirit and style : —
EARLY YEARS
THE SLAVERY OF GREECE
Unrivall'd Greece ! thou ever honour'd name,
Thou nurse of heroes dear to deathless fame !
Though now to worth, to honour all unknown,
Thy lustre faded, and thy glories flown,
Yet still shall memory with reverted eye
Trace thy past worth, and view thee with a sigh.
Thee freedom cherish'd once with fostering hand,
And breathed undaunted valour through the land.
Here the stern spirit of the Spartan soil
The child of poverty inured to toil.
Here loved by Pallas and the sacred nine,
Once did fair Athens' towery glories shine.
To bend the bow, or the bright falchion wield,
To lift the bulwark of the brazen shield,
To toss the terror of the whizzing spear,
The conquering standard's glittering glories rear,
And join the maddening battle's loud career,
How skilled the Greeks ; confess what Persians slain
Were strew'd on Marathon's ensanguined plain ;
When heaps on heaps the routed squadrons fell,
And with their gaudy myriads peopled hell.
on Greece each science shone,
Here the bold statue started from the stone ;
Here warm with life the swelling canvas glow'd ;
Here big with thought the poet's raptures flow'd ;
Here Homer's lip was touch' d with sacred fire ;
And wanton Sappho tuned her amorous lyre.
This was thy state ! but oh ! how changed thy fame,
And all thy glories fading into shame.
What ! that thy bold, thy freedom-breathing laud
Should crouch beneath a tyrant's stern command !
That servitude should bind in galling chain
Whom Asia's millions once opposed in vain ;
10 GEORGE CANNING
Who could have thought ? who sees without a groan
Thy cities mouldering, and thy walls o'erthrown ?
Thy sons (sad change !) in abject bondage sigh ;
Unpitied toil, and unlamented die.
The glittering tyranny of Othman's sons,
The pomp of horror which surrounds their thrones,
Has awed their servile spirits into fear,
Spurn'd by the foot they tremble and revere.
Compare this with Byron's treatment of the same
theme : —
The isles of Greece ! The isles of Greece !
Where burning Sappho loved and sang,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprang.
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.
In general it would, of course, be idle to com-
pare the work of a clever lad with a talent for
versification with that of a poetic genius at the
maturity of his powers. In this case, however, the
comparison is not without its interest ; for the con-
trast lies deeper than the mere difference between
mature and immature art. Of none was the saying
that " the boy is father to the man " truer than of
George Canning ; and in this youthful poem are
already conspicuous all the essential characteristics
of his later attitude towards life. The inspiration
in Byron's poetry is the same as that which sent
EARLY YEARS 11
him to Missolonghi, and kept him there, through
disillusionment and disappointment, to die. On
Canning's nature no such tongues of fire had
fallen. No erratic impulses, however generous,
were ever allowed to disturb the equal balance of
his mind. " The Slavery of Greece " is but the
academic expression of an academic sympathy, not
with the Greece of actual fact — which, indeed, to
Canning's generation was but little known — but
with the ideal Greece of the schools ; and when
the time came to give this sympathy practical
expression Canning's attitude is not that of the
poet, but of the statesman. Sentiment had but
little place in his nature. It had none in his
policy.
For the rest, it must be confessed that Canning's
boyhood would seem to have been characterised by
a singular absence of boyishness. For games and
sports he cared nothing, and the whole admirable
energy of his mind seems to have been set on self-
improvement ; and this, not so much from the
model boy's sense of present duty, as a process
consciously directed by definite ambitions. The
determination to succeed was, in fact, already the
dominant motive of his life ; and already he had
by instinct or by art acquired that first essential
of success : the talent of the skilful chess-player
for looking many moves ahead, so as to avoid
the first false step that leads to ultimate failure.
12 GEORGE CANNING
Throughout his school career, if we may trust the
records, his portentous progress was unrelieved by
a single escapade.
At the age of eighteen he passed from Eton
to Oxford, matriculating as a commoner of Christ
Church. Mr. Stratford Canning was now dead,
but by this time George Canning had ceased to
be dependent upon the generosity of his uncle ;
for, at the instance of his grandmother, his grand-
father, old Mr. Canning of Garvagh, had so far re-
laxed as to bequeath to him a small estate in
Ireland, which brought him in an annual sum of
,£200, sufficient to cover the expenses of his educa-
tion. This income was not, of course, wealth even
for an undergraduate of those days ; but it was
sufficient to enable him to hold his own in the
aristocratic set to which the reputation he brought
with him from Eton served to introduce him. The
boy had never been indiscriminate in his friendships.
He selected his acquaintance, as he selected his
books : not — to be just — solely for their worldly
use, but for their style and their general agree-
ment with his own instincts and aspirations. And
so, at Oxford, his circle, if small, was decidedly
select. It included the names of many destined,
later on, to play a part in the world of affairs :
Lord Holland, Lord Carlisle, Lord Seaford, Lord
Granville, Lord Boringdon (afterwards Earl of
Morley) and the Hon. Charles Jenkinson, after-
EARLY YEARS 13
wards created Earl of Liverpool. Of these young
gentlemen and a few other chosen spirits, it would
seem, there was formed within the college a sort of
close corporation for mutual improvement, if not
for mutual admiration. Its atmosphere exactly
suited Canning's temper; and in the little world
of the University he tasted by anticipation some
of the joy which in after days he was to drain to
the dregs : the joy of the self-made man, whose
talents have raised him above the level of those
who were born to power. For power seemed to
him, even at this early age, the one thing in this
world supremely worth having. The boyish pleas-
ures of the average young Oxonian had for him no
attraction ; he despised the undisciplined state of
mind of which they were the outcome, and spoke
contemptuously of "the utter emptiness and un-
amiableness of the generality of good folks Christ
Church can boast ". He himself had already made
up his mind what he wanted of the world, and was
calculating the means for attaining it. The House
of Commons, indeed, " the only path to the only
desirable thing in this world — the gratification of
ambition," he recognised as, for the present, be-
yond his reach ; but there remained the Law, "a
profession which, in this country, holds out every
inducement that can nerve the exertions, and give
vigour to the power of a young man. The way, in-
deed, is long, toilsome and rugged ; but it leads
14 GEORGE CANNING
to honours, solid and lasting ; to independence,
without which no blessings of fortune, however
profuse, no distinctions of station, however splen-
did, can afford a liberal mind true satisfaction ;
to power, for which no task can be too hard, no
labours too trying." Surely a remarkable epistle
to be penned by a boy of eighteen to a college
friend !
The letter, from which the above is an extract,
was written in September, 1788. Three years
later George Canning left Oxford and entered as
a student of Lincoln's Inn.
CHAPTER II
PITT AND CANNING
Canning and the Whigs — The French Revolution — He enters
Parliament — His maiden speech — Character of his elo-
quence— Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs — Bonaparte
and the revolutionary wars — Policy of Pitt — Canning and
the new Humanitarianism — The Anti-Jacobin — The
coup d'£tat of 1 8th Brumaire.
TO the young student, chafing over his law
books, the prospect of ever realising his
ambitions seemed for the moment distant enough.
Yet, though his circumstances bound him to follow
a profession, his eyes were ever fixed on the great
world of affairs beyond the shadow of the courts.
For a youth of his temper, indeed, it would have
been impossible at that time to concentrate his
attention on the subtleties of the law. The French
Revolution had shaken the world of politics to its
foundations ; every day it assumed new shapes ;
every day it seemed to bring to birth fresh forces,
strange, portentous, terrifying. The sober judg-
ment of men was overset by a phenomenon incal-
culable and menacing ; and, amid the death of old
(15)
16 GEORGE CANNING
ideas, and the loosening of old allegiance, civilisa-
tion seemed to many to be reeling to its ruin.
The constitutional movement of 1789 in France
had been greeted by Englishmen with fairly general
approval ; but when the demand for the removal of
abuses developed into open defiance of all the prin-
ciples on which society was held to rest, and Reform
had become Revolution, approval gave place to anger
and alarm, which the Terror turned into fanatic hate.
For the moment, indeed, it seemed as though the
sickness of France were about to infect the English
body politic. The mass of the people, unrepre-
sented in Parliament, were suffering and ill content.
To the more intelligent the cruel anachronisms of
the Statute Book : the Test Act, the barbarous penal
code, above all the scandals of the parliamentary
franchise, were an ever present source of irritation.
To these the catch-words of the French Revolution
were welcome as giving voice to their own griev-
ances ; societies, of which the most respectable was
that of " The Friends of the People," were formed
in the great towns to agitate for change ; at Sheffield
and Dundee riots broke out, and the cry went up
for " Equality " and "The Republic ". Amid these
alarming symptoms the old party cries rang hollow
and unreal, and soon ceased to be heard. Burke,
hitherto the protagonist of freedom, revolted from
a liberty that tended to degenerate into licence,
and headed a Whig secession into the Tory camp.
PITT AND CANNING 17
The parliamentary balance was upset ; and when
Pitt took up the gage of defiance flung down by
revolutionary France, he had behind him a vast and
docile majority, while on the Opposition benches a
sorry remnant of the once all-powerful Whig party
championed the seemingly forlorn hope of a Liberal-
ism as yet unweaned.
The Opposition, however, though weak in num-
bers, was powerful in talent. To meet the burning
eloquence of Fox, the biting wit of Sheridan, the
cultivated common sense of Grey, Pitt could rely
upon himself only. It is true that no artillery of
argument, however well directed, could have shaken
the stolid battalions of country gentlemen who
supported the Government ; but the situation was
discreditable, and might prove perilous. Pitt, too,
was beginning to feel the strain of this single-
handed battle against intellectual odds ; and since
Parliament could not supply him with lieutenants,
he began to look abroad for young men of talent
to help him in his need. It was under these
circumstances that his attention was directed to
George Canning, of whom he had already heard
as a young man of parts and avowed ambitions ;
and realising that here was exactly what he wanted,
he offered him a seat in Parliament, in return for
his support.
The opportunity, so ardently longed for, had
come ; and but one apparent obstacle stood in the
18 GEORGE CANNING
way of Canning's accepting an offer as grateful as
it was unlocked for. This obstacle was, at first
sight, a serious one to a youth of high principle.
At his uncle's house he had been brought up a
Whig amongst Whigs. On first coming to town,
he had been greeted as a coming hope of the
Opposition, welcomed in the circle of Fox and
Sheridan, and introduced as a young man of talent
into the rarefied atmosphere of Devonshire House.
Under these circumstances, to accept the first offer
of the Tory Government, at a time when the Tory
allegiance was the sole apparent avenue to success,
would infallibly expose him to the obvious charge
which was actually flung in his face. Yet the
charge was as shallow as it was unjust. In any
case it would have been no great treason in a boy
of twenty - three to exchange a fortuitous and
doubtful allegiance to principles fallen obsolete for
the certainty of a brilliant and useful career ; but,
as a matter of fact, whatever Canning's views may
have been before the Revolution, this catastrophe
had wrought in him the same change which it
had produced in so many of the Whig leaders.
With the abstract political principles of the
new " French " school his nature, practical and
British to the core, was thoroughly out of sym-
pathy. Offers, tempting enough to the vanity
of youth, had been made to him by the party of
Reform ; but he recognised in " The Society of
GEORGE CANNING
After Hoppner
PITT AND CANNING 19
the Friends of the People" the organ of what
he called "not at random, but deliberately," the
French party; and in a letter of 13th December,
1792, addressed to his friend, Lord Boringdon, he
declared that he could attach himself to neither
section of the Opposition, and that, should he ever
succeed in entering Parliament, it would be as
a follower of Pitt. When, therefore, he received
the Prime Minister's offer of a seat, he accepted
it without hesitation, and in the session of 1793
made his entry into Parliament as member for the
borough of Newport.
The first few months of Canning's parliamentary
career were distinguished by a masterly inactivity
wholly characteristic. There was every temptation
for him to rush at once into the fray. He appeared
in the House with a reputation ready made ; and
friend and foe alike expected great things of him.
But he was not of those who believe they will be
heard for their much speaking ; and he was deter-
mined that, when the proper time for speech
should come, there should be no doubt about
his success. He remained, therefore, in silence,
studying the methods, and diagnosing the temper
of the House, until, on 31st January, 1794-, his
opportunity came during the debate on Pitt's
motion for granting a war subsidy to the King of
Sardinia.
Canning tells us that he rose to speak with
20 GEORGE CANNING
anxiety, that his vanity was hurt by the osten-
tatious inattention of the front Opposition bench,
and that his equanimity was only restored by the
vociferous applause of his party. Whatever his
own emotions during the delivery of his maiden
speech, of its effect on the House there could be
no doubt. When he rose, Canning was known as a
young man of brilliant promise ; when he sat down,
he was a recognised master of parliamentary ora-
tory.
To appreciate truly the great speakers of the
past is only less difficult than to estimate the
qualities of its great actors. Garrick and Talma
survive but as names. Of Canning and Mirabeau
the words may still be read ; but it is impossible to
conjure up the personal qualities, the subtleties of
look, and voice, and gesture, which gave to the
sounding periods a double portion of life. Then,
too, the art of oratory consists largely in the
appeal to the tastes, the temper, the idiosyncrasies
of a particular audience. We read with amazement
of the effect produced by Canning's eloquence ; of
a crowded audience rapt by a phrase into a frenzy
of almost uncontrollable emotion ; of the ready re-
sponse of laughter or of tears which at all times
he knew how to evoke. Yet, in the speeches
as they have come down to us it is difficult to
detect the secret of this art magic. Their style
is elaborated with an extravagance of care which
PITT AND CANNING 21
makes them almost unconvincing, and in their
ostentatious avoidance of the least suspicion of
vulgarity of phrasing they sometimes verge upon
pedantry. No orator would now substitute for
" cat's-paw " " the paw of a certain domestic
animal," nor, in order to avoid the word Quixotic,
speak of an " enterprise romantic in its origin, and
thankless in its end, to be characterised only by a
term borrowed from that part of the Spanish liter-
ature with which we are most familiar " ; — but then
we have lost, for better or for worse, the taste for
Ciceronian periods. In making these criticisms,
however, it must be remembered that Canning's
speeches have not come down to us as they were
delivered, but as they were emended by him for
purposes of publication. His orations, though pre-
pared with extreme and anxious care, were not
written down before delivery, and as a guide to
his memory he held in his hand only the barest
outline of his argument. Yet the impression made
by his published speeches is confirmed by the
opinion of contemporaries not incapable of form-
ing a sound and impartial judgment. Of these
Hobhouse was assuredly not one, yet his "appre-
ciation," every stinging line of which is venomous
with party spite, is worth giving, if only to illus-
trate the kind of criticism to which Canning was
exposed during his lifetime. "A smart, sixth-form
boy," he writes of Canning, " the little hero of a
22 GEORGE CANNING
little world, matures his precocious parts at college,
and sends before him his fame to the metropolis ;
a Minister, or some Borough-holder of the day,
thinks him worth saving from his democratic associ-
ates, and from the unprofitable principles which the
thoughtless enthusiasm of youth may have in-
clined him hitherto to adopt. The hopeless youth
yields at once, and, placed in the true line of pro-
motion, he takes his place with the more veteran
prostitutes of Parliament. There he minds his
periods ; there he balances his antitheses ; there
he adjusts his alliterations ; and, filling up the in-
terstices of this pie-bald, patchwork rhetoric with
froth and foam, this master of pompous nothings
becomes first favourite of the Great Council of
the nation." These, of course, are the ravings of
political lunacy, hardly more respectable than those
gutter broad-sheets of the time which, when they
had exhausted their abuse of Canning himself, pro-
ceeded to attack the character of his mother. Yet
though Canning was most certainly not merely a
" master of pompous nothings," there was enough
of the temper of truth in the accusation to give it
a cutting edge. Brougham, who, though a political
opponent, was not an unkindly critic, speaks of
Canning as an actor rather than an orator, and
in comparing his eloquence with that of Pitt said :
" Pitt gave you the impression of a man who stood
clearly on his purpose, and was too much in earnest
PITT AND CANNING 23
to be conscious of any ambition beyond it. Can-
ning always had the classical air about him of an
orator who felt he was addressing posterity."
Whatever the qualities of his oratory, Canning,
even after his first successful essay, was not pro-
digal of it. In December, 1794, he was chosen to
second the Address ; in March of the following
year he made a few remarks in the committee on
the state of the nation. In December of the same
year he was appointed to the Under-Secretaryship
for Foreign Affairs, and, devoting himself com-
pletely to the business of his office, for two years
he never, but once, opened his mouth in Parliament.
This self-repression in a character so naturally self-
assertive was as rare as it was admirable. George
Canning had his aim sun-clear before him. He
intended some day to govern ; and government was,
he realised, an art that must be learned. Mean-
while he had his reward. On 21st August, 1796,
he wrote to his friend, Lord Boringdon, ' ' The hap-
piness of constant occupation is infinite ". Which
is true — if the occupation be congenial.
There was certainly in the circumstances of the
times enough material to absorb the attention of a
Minister of Canning's keen and ambitious nature.
There were questions of vital importance at home,
social, economic, political ; above all, the peren-
nial problem of Ireland. All these were, however,
being rapidly overshadowed by the surprising de-
24 GEORGE CANNING
velopments of the war. The first effort of the
"legitimate" Powers to unite against the common
revolutionary peril had ended in discord and
disaster. Republican France, in answer to the
threats of the Coalition, had thrown down the
gage of defiance to monarchical Europe ; and, in-
spired by the double motive of love of country and
revolutionary fanaticism, the armies of Humanity
had poured over the frontiers to the conquest of
the world. Their strength was the outcome largely
of their very weakness. In face of a France appa-
rently disorganised and bankrupt, the Powers had
no sufficient motive for sinking their individual
jealousies and ambitions in a common cause.
Russia, which under the Emperors Alexander I.
and Nicholas I. was to become the banner-bearer
of confederated Europe, had, under the cynical
guidance of the Empress Catherine, taken advan-
tage of the preoccupation of the Powers to close
her grip upon Poland ; and Prussia, repenting her
unnatural league with Austria, had withdrawn
from the Alliance, and hastened eastward to take
her share of the spoil. France, the league of her
enemies dissolved, had time to organise her en-
thusiasm under the discipline of the Terror. Defeat
and fear gave place to victory and visions of mili-
tary glory, till, as conquest followed conquest, the
world began to realise that out of the chaos of the
Revolution a new force, sinister and menacing, was
PITT AND CANNING 25
gradually taking shape. When, in 1797, the career
of Napoleon Bonaparte in Italy was crowned by
the Treaty of Campo Formio, the birth of the
Napoleonic Idea, which "sprang from the Revolu-
tion, like Minerva from the brow of Jove, helmet
on head, and all sheathed in iron," was already
manifest to men of discernment.
It was among these momentous events that Can-
ning served his apprenticeship to Foreign Affairs
under the statesman who, from first to last, was
alone by him admitted to be his master. In the
•policy of Pitt we find, indeed, the key to those
principles of international action which, through-
out his career, and under very changed conditions,
Canning was consistently to apply. This policy, by
which for nigh on a quarter of a century British
blood and British wealth were poured out to
maintain the struggle against France, was not
the outcome of mere hatred of the abstract prin-
ciples of the Revolution. When, in 1793, Pitt
took up the reckless challenge of France, it was
with no intention of forcing upon her a system of
government which she had rejected. The doctrine
of Non-intervention, which in after years Canning
was to champion against the Holy Alliance, was
also his. It was the defiance of this principle by
France, and her claim — issuing in a policy of
frank conquest — to impose her own model upon
other nations, which moved him to begin and to
26 GEORGE CANNING
persevere in the war. Nor, in subsidising foreign
Governments, was his motive the altruistic one of
succouring "oppressed nationalities". Pitt's policy,
though it issued in "saving Europe," was in inten-
tion purely British. Europe must be saved, be-
cause upon the maintenance of the international
balance of power depended the safety and the
influence of England.
From the first Canning had identified himself
whole-heartedly with this policy, so congenial to
his own temperament. Even before entering
Parliament, in a letter dated 13th December,
1792, he had insisted to his friend, Lord Boring-
don, on " the right of a nation to choose for itself
its own Constitution " as " a right derived from
God and nature alone " ; and, in his first speech
to the House of Commons, he declared that had
the " madness " of France " been a harmless idiot
lunacy, contented with playing its tricks, and prac-
tising its fooleries at home ; with dressing up
strumpets in oak-leaves, and inventing nick-
names for the calendar," Great Britain might
have watched " their innocent amusements " with
pity and contempt. But their madness had not
been of this sort. " Theirs was a moody and
mischievous insanity by which, not contented
with wounding and tearing themselves, they pro-
ceeded to exert their unnatural strength for the
annoyance of their neighbours, and, not satisfied
PITT AND CANNING 27
with weaving straws and wearing fetters at home,
they attempted to carry their systems and their
slavery abroad. This was a disposition which, for
the safety and peace of the world, must be re-
pelled, and, if possible, eradicated."
In taking up this attitude, Canning professed
to study primarily the interests of Great Britain,
though he rejoiced that what made for his country's
good tended also to benefit the world at large.
" Every nation for itself, and God for us all ! " was
already his motto ; and in the great speech of llth
December, 1798, on Mr. Tierney's motion to end
the war, which finally established his reputation as
an orator, he poured scorn " on that large and
liberal system of ethics" which had superseded "all
the narrow prejudices of the ancient school — that
we are to consider not so much what is good for
our country, as what is good for the human race ;
that we are all children of one family ; " and other
like " fancies and philanthropies " to him incom-
prehensible. Yet, though he still conceived it to
be "the paramount duty of a British member of
Parliament to consider what was good for Great
Britain," his attitude was not the outcome of a
reckless Chauvinism, but because he saw in the
honest rivalry of nations the healthy state of the
world. " Ours has been a generous ambition," he
exclaimed on the same occasion, " and it has not
been disappointed so far as we ourselves are con-
28 GEORGE CANNING
cerned ; but it looks to larger and more elevated
objects — to the peace and prosperity of the world."
While, however, Canning found no difficulty in
pulverising the somewhat brittle arguments of the
Opposition in Parliament, the situation in the
country was, from the point of view of the Govern-
ment, less satisfactory. There the argument was
for the moment all on the other side ; the wits of
the "French" party had at command a whole
armoury of satire and invective with which they
mercilessly riddled the only too vulnerable un-
reformed body politic, while the friends of the
established order sought shelter behind their
intrenchments of privilege, without venturing to
reply. It was for the purpose of remedying this
state of things that Canning collaborated with
others like minded with himself in bringing
out the Anti- Jacobin — the title sufficiently ex-
plains its principles — a paper intended to combat
the enemies of the Government with their own
weapons. The first number appeared in November,
1797, the last in July, 1798. But though the life
of the paper was short, it was from the outset
a brilliant success. To this Canning, who was a
frequent contributor, added much. His mastery
of satire, which sometimes tended to cause scandal
in debate, was invaluable to him as a pamphleteer ;
and, though no poet, his facile verse possessed
just the qualities best suited for political ends. In
PITT AND CANNING 29
days of imperfect reporting the full-blooded periods
of Canning's parliamentary orations failed of their
effect outside the walls of the House of Commons.
But the "man in the street" could appreciate and
remember his description of the typical apostle of
the New Morality.
Taught in her school to imbibe thy mawkish strain,
Condorcet, filtered through the dregs of Paine,
Each pert adept disowns a Briton's part,
And plucks the name of England from his heart.
What ! shall a name, a word, a sound, control
Th' aspiring thought, and cramp th' expansive soul ?
Shall one half-peopled island's rocky round
A love, that glows for all creation, bound ?
And social charities contract the plan
Framed for thy freedom, Universal Man !
No — through th' extended globe his feelings run
As broad and general as th' unbounded sun !
No narrow bigot he ; — his reasoned view
Thy interests, England, ranks with thine, Peru !
France at our doors, he sees no danger nigh,
But heaves for Turkey's woes th' impartial sigh ;
A steady patriot of the world alone,
The friend of every country — but his own.
The poetry of the Anti-Jacobin was to a con-
siderable extent the result of collaboration ; and
it would require a more elaborate critical analysis
than I am able to present in order to determine
how much was contributed by Canning, and how
much by his colleagues, Frere, Ellis or Gifford.
Of Canning's undoubted compositions, " The New
Morality," from which the above lines are quoted,
30 GEORGE CANNING
is the most notable both in length and style. Two
others, " The Needy Knife-grinder " and the " In-
scription for the Door of the Cell in Newgate, where
Mrs. Brownrigg was Confined," are "often quoted ";
and since often-quoted things are by the generality
of people but seldom heard, I will quote them again.
"The Needy Knife-grinder" is a parody of Southey's
Sapphic poem " The Widow ".
SAPPHICS
THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GKINDEE
Friend of Humanity
" Needy Knife-grinder ! whither are you going ?
Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order —
Bleak blows the blast ; your hat has got a hole in't,
So have your breeches !
" Weary Knife-grinder ! little think the proud ones,
Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-
Road, what hard work 'tis crying all day ' Knives and
Scissors to grind 0 ! '
' ' Tell me, Knife-grinder, how came you to grind knives ?
Did some rich man tyranically use you ?
Was it the squire ? or parson of the parish ?
Or the attorney ?
" Was it the squire, for killing of his game ? or
Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining ?
Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little
All in a lawsuit ?
" (Have you not read the Rights of Man, by Tom Paine ?)
Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids,
Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your
Pitiful story."
PITT AND CANNING 31
Knife-grinder
" Story ! God bless you ! I have none to tell, sir,
Only last night a-drinking at the Chequers,
This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were
Torn in a scuffle.
" Constables came up for to take me into
Custody ; they took me before the justice ;
Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish-
Stocks for a vagrant.
" I should be glad to drink your Honour's health in
A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence ;
But for my part, I never love to meddle
With politics, sir."
Friend of Humanity
" I give thee sixpence ! I will see thee damned first —
Wretch ! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance —
Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,
Spiritless outcast ! "
(Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit in a trans-
port of Republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.)
The second poem is also a parody on one of
Southey's. The original I will also give in full,
for without a full knowledge of it the keen edge
of Canning's satire is not felt.
INSCRIPTION
FOR THE APARTMENT IN CHEPSTOW CASTLB, WHERE HENRY
MARTEN, THE REGICIDE, WAS IMPRISONED THIRTY YKARS
For thirty years secluded from mankind
Here Marten lingered. Often have these walls
Echoed his footsteps, as with even tread
He paced around his prison : not to him
32 GEORGE CANNING
Did Nature's fair varieties exist ;
He never saw the sun's delightful beams,
Save when through yon high bars he pour'd a sad
And broken splendour. Dost thou ask his crime ?
HE HAD REBELLED AGAINST THE KING ; AND SAT
IN JUDGMENT ON HIM ; for his ardent mind
Shaped goodliest plans of happiness on earth,
And peace and liberty. Wild dreams ! but such
As Plato loved ; such as with holy zeal
Our Milton worshipp'd. Blessed hopes ! awhile
From man withheld, even to the latter days
When Christ shall come, and all things be fulfill'd !
This effusion contains all the elements that invite
parody, for it is, in fact, itself a serious parody of
the truth. Henry Marten himself, who, if he had
no morals, possessed at any rate a cynical wit, would
have been the first to laugh at his own exaltation
into a martyr in the cause of humanity. Can-
ning had no compunction in pillorying such sham
sentiment. He did it effectually in the following
poem : —
INSCRIPTION
FOB THE DOOR OF THE CELL IN NEWGATE, WHERE MRS. BflOWN-
RIGG, THE TRENTICE-CIDE, WAS CONFINED PREVIOUS TO HER
EXECUTION
For one long term, or e'er her trial came,
Here Brownrigg linger' d. Often have these cells
Echoed her blasphemies, as with shrill voice
She screamed for fresh Geneva. Not to her
Did the blithe fields of Tothill, or thy street,
St Giles, its fair varieties expand ;
Till at the last, in slow-drawn cart she went
PITT AND CANNING S3
To execution. Dost thou ask her crime ?
SHE WHIPPED TWO FEMALE TBENTICES TO DEATH
AND HID THEM IN THE COAL-HOLE. For her mind
Shaped strictest plans of discipline. Sage schemes !
Such as Lycurgus taught, when at the shrine
Of the Orthyan goddess he bade flog
The little Spartans ; such as erst chastised
Our Milton when at college. For this act
Did Brownrigg swing. Harsh laws ! But time shall come
When France shall come, and laws be all repeal'd !
While allowing Canning and his collaborators,
however, all credit for their wit and literary style, it
is far from possible in every case to admit the justice,
or even the decency, of their satires. Many of the
parodies, especially those that — like " The Loves
of the Triangles" — are not political, exhibit an
abounding sense of humour and a sound spirit of
literary criticism. But what are we to say of the
taste or judgment which could represent the great
advocate Erskine, or the moderate and philosophic
Sir James Mackintosh, as taking a prominent part
in a republican orgy and drinking to "Bonaparte
and the Revolution " ? or of the knowledge of men
and affairs which could include the gentle Charles
Lamb amongst the enemies of social order ? The
explanation, and possibly the excuse, for the
tone of the Anti-Jacobin lie in the overheated
political atmosphere of the times. The aim of
the paper was frankly partisan ; and its authors
condescended deliberately into the gutter at a
3
34 GEORGE CANNING
time when the polemical weapons of the gutter
were even less savoury than they are now. It
is true that if Canning gave, he also received,
hard knocks. His antecedents, his character, his
person, his motives, were in turn ridiculed and
abused. Even the character of his mother was
not spared. It would perhaps have been more
dignified had he abstained from retaliating in kind.
Possibly it would also have been less effective.
In any case, however, revolutionary "senti-
mentality " was destined soon to receive a ruder
blow than could have been dealt it by the hardest
polemical bludgeoning or the keenest intellectual
sword-play.
In May, 1798, Bonaparte sailed on his Egyptian
expedition ; and on the following August 1
Nelson's victory on the Nile cut him off from
Europe. This catastrophe, apparently so fatal to
his ambitions, proved in effect helpful to his
success. During his enforced absence, Pitt had
succeeded in forming a fresh coalition against
France ; and the defeats suffered by the French
arms at the hands of the Archduke Charles in
Germany and of the Russian General Suvoroff in
Italy turned the eyes of the French people to the
young general who was reaping fresh laurels in
Africa and in Syria. Bonaparte, watching affairs
at home with a keen eye, at last saw that his time
had come. Leaving Kleber in command in Egypt,
PITT AND CANNING 35
he set sail with a few chosen companions, and,
managing to evade the British cruisers, landed at
Frejus on 9th October, 1799- Seven days later he
was in Paris. On 10th November his grenadiers
had driven the deputies from the hall of assembly
at the point of the bayonet, and Bonaparte was in
effect, though not in name, sole master of the
destinies of France.
To Canning the coup d'Etat of the 18th Brumaire
was wholly welcome, and he greeted it with loudly
expressed satisfaction. "I would give France
India," he wrote to a friend, "to ensure her a
despotism, and think the purchase a cheap one.
No ! no ! It is the thorough destruction of the
principles of exaggerated liberty — it is the lasting
ridicule thrown upon all systems of democratic
equality — it is the galling conviction carried home
to the minds of all the brawlers for freedom in this
and every other country, that there never was, nor
will be, nor can be, a leader of a mob faction who
does not mean to be the lord, and not the servant,
of the people."
The hatred and distrust of democracy revealed
in the above letter gives us the extreme measure
of Canning's Toryism. Yet, however exaggerated
his fears of popular government may have been,
they were founded upon no mere blind resistance
to all reform. But he thought he saw in demo-
cracy the same danger as in autocracy, and objected
36 GEORGE CANNING
to committing unlimited power to the great mass of
the people because " all unlimited and irresponsible
power is sure to be abused " ; and in the established
balance of forces in the British Constitution, how-
ever glaring its anomalies, he recognised the pal-
ladium of British liberty. So long as a system
seemed to him to work well, he cared not a rap
for the soundness or unsoundness of its logical
foundation ; and the French passion for recon-
structing institutions on general principles was
wholly foreign to him.
"The temper and practice of the British Con-
stitution," he said, "is to redress practical griev-
ances, but not to run after theoretical perfection."
But even the redress of admitted wrongs, whether
of classes or of individuals, seemed to him only
advisable in the public interest where the grievance
had attained proportions perilous to the body
politic. When, however, the general interests of
the State seemed to him bound up with such re-
dress, he was fearless and untiring in his champion-
ship of change.
This principle, Conservative rather than Tory,
was well illustrated in Canning's attitude towards
the Irish question, which, while Bonaparte was
consolidating his power in France, was passing into
a phase even more fateful for the future of the
British Empire.
CHAPTER III
CANNING AND THE IRISH QUESTION
Grattan's Parliament — The rebellion of 1798 — Pitt and Ire-
land— The Union proposed — Canning and the Union
— The question of Catholic emancipation — Resignation
of Pitt.
IN 1782, helped by the entanglement of Great
Britain in the war with the American colonies,
Grattan had succeeded in achieving the legislative
independence of Ireland, subject, however, to the
ultimate control of the Imperial Parliament. The
experiment, based as it was on the unsound prin-
ciple of Protestant ascendency, failed to bring peace
and contentment to the unhappy country ; Pitt's
enlightened policy of creating a solidarity of
material interests between the two nations by
abolishing the restrictions upon Irish trade inter-
course with England, and through England with
the British colonies, broke down on the selfish
opposition of the English commercial classes ; and
when, stimulated by the revolutionary propaganda
of France, the unrest in the sister island had cul-
minated in the great rebellion of 17.98, it was
(37)
38 GEORGE CANNING
recognised that nothing short of a complete read-
justment of the relations between the two countries
would give any chance of a permanent and a satis-
factory settlement. On 22nd January, 1799, a
royal message was brought down to the House of
Commons suggesting the legislative Union between
Great Britain and Ireland.
In view of the unhappy fact that the ' ' final ad-
justment " of the Irish question seems, after a
hundred years, as remote as ever, Canning's reasons
for supporting the Unionist policy of Pitt have still
an interest more than historical ; and, if we elimi-
nate the note of confidence and hope which at first
inspired them, they are as cogent at the outset of
the twentieth century as they were at the close
of the eighteenth. In general Canning's attitude
towards the question of the Union was singularly
illustrative of his political principles. No one, after
reading his speeches, can accuse him of taking a
low view of a great problem, or of a cynical desire
to exploit the woes of Ireland for the advantage or
security of Great Britain. Yet, the end being in
his view salutary for both countries, he is not
concerned to inquire too anxiously into the purity
of the means employed for its attainment. Hold-
ing the views he did on constitutional questions,
he was not likely to be impressed by the argument
that the members of the Irish Parliament did not
represent the will of the Irish people. By what-
CANNING AND THE IRISH QUESTION 39
ever constituency elected, theirs was the undoubted
right to dispose of the destinies of the nation, and
to dispute this right was to loosen the structure
of the Union between England and Scotland, long
accepted by both peoples, which rested on no
firmer foundation. He poured scorn also on the
charge that the Parliament in Dublin could only
be gained over to the policy of union by intimida-
tion and corruption. The former could be so easily
disproved ; the latter was at least incapable of
proof. It was no business of English ministers to
inquire into the process by which Irish members
had arrived at a conclusion which they believed to
be in the best interests of both countries.
It is easy, of course, to criticise this line of
argument, which, to a generation saturated with
democratic principles, appears disingenuous ; and it
is precisely from this point of view that in our own
day the Union has been most bitterly attacked.
Yet it is easier to condemn the means actually
employed than to suggest, under the circumstances
of those days, any practical alternative by which a
policy believed to be so essential to the welfare of
both countries could be carried through. The Act
of Union, in fact, must be judged upon its merits, and
its framers by their motives. If the goal was worth
striving for, we may be content to overlook the mud
splashed on the clothes of the racers : the accident of
the stormy times and of roads not yet made straight.
40 GEORGE CANNING
To Canning at least the goal seemed superlatively
worth attaining. To him it seemed that the legis-
lative Union was the sole method of escape from a
state of things which was at once a misery to Ireland
and a menace to Great Britain. Nor would he
admit for a moment that in voting away their
independence the representatives of Ireland had
sold the interests of their country. In reply to
Sheridan, who compared the project of the Union
to the annexations of Napoleon, and who warned
the House of Commons against " imitating French
practices, while reprobating French principles," he
denied the validity of the parallel. What com-
parison, he asked, could there be between the
unwilling tributaries of a foreign Power and a nation
admitted, as the result of a free contract, into full
partnership with the greatest Empire on earth ?
The moral of the parallel, indeed, might be exactly
reversed ; for as long as the Irish Parliament re-
mained independent, the Irish people were subject
to the British Empire, without having the smallest
voice in its affairs. By its union with that of Great
Britain the Irish Parliament would, in fact, receive
an immense accession of power and prestige. " Look
at other essential rights and powers of a Parliament,
and see how they can be made to belong to a separate
and unconnected Parliament in Ireland, or how they
can be effectually exercised by it. The right of
impeachment, can that be exercised by the Parlia-
CANNING AND THE IRISH QUESTION 41
raent of Ireland against the King's ministers in
Great Britain ? And yet does anybody doubt that
the King's British ministers are his proper and
constitutional advisers in respect to the affairs of
Ireland as well as to those of the Empire at large ?
The power of altering or limiting the succession of
the Crown — the Crown of Ireland as well as Great
Britain — who shall deny that power to the Parlia-
ment of Great Britain ? To ascribe the same power
to the Parliament of Ireland would be treason.
Where, therefore, do there exist, or where can
there exist, that perfect equality and independ-
ence, which it is imagined the Irish Parliament
must resign the moment that it ceases to be
distinct from that of Great Britain ?
" But if this be all that the Irish Parliament is
to keep and maintain by keeping its separate
state, let us next see what it will lose by in-
corporation with the Parliament of Great Britain.
Let us see which of its powers or privileges will
be abridged, what salutary and important function
it will be disabled from exercising, when it shall
be received into the bosom of this Parliament, and
made part of the general superintending legislature
of the Empire. To watch over the local and im-
mediate interests of a country, and to preserve its
interests, peace and tranquillity, is one great duty
of a Parliament : another is, to guard and improve
the civil and political rights of the people, and the
42 GEORGE CANNING
laws and institutions on which they rest. For
which of these functions will the Irish Parliament
be disqualified, when united with that of Great
Britain ? Will it be less qualified to adjust and
to control the local feuds and animosities arising
from religious differences in Ireland, when removed
out of the reach of the immediate influence of
every sudden and varying gust of popular frenzy ?
Instead of being committed as a party, it becomes
an impartial judge of the conflict, when it is placed
in a situation which enables it to weigh every
claim with dispassionate calmness and dignity, to
resist what may be extravagant without the ap-
pearance of enmity, and concede to the Catholics
what may remain to be conceded without the
appearance of intimidation, and without hazard
to its own authority and power. If we consider
the various other objects of legislation, in matters
of commerce, of civil liberty and of political con-
stitution, will the people of Ireland feel their
interests less safe, their rights and privileges less
guarded, when those whose duty it is to watch
over them shall sit among the guardians of the
British Constitution, and when no law shall be
passed affecting the condition of an Irishman,
which does not include in its operation millions
of his fellow-subjects in Great Britain ? "
It is of course an easy thing, in the light of subse-
quent history, to throw ridicule on these arguments.
CANNING AND THE IRISH QUESTION 43
Canning's vision of the Imperial Parliament, forti-
fied by the presence of the representatives of Ire-
land, discussing Irish affairs "with dispassionate
calmness and dignity," has hardly been realised.
Nor can it truthfully be said that the bulk of the
Irish people have felt their interests safe in the
hands of the guardians of the British Constitution,
or that Ireland since the Union has never been
made the subject of exceptional legislation. Into
the reasons for these unhappy truths it is no part
of my task to enter. Canning himself lived to see
his confidence belied, and declared later, as mem-
ber for the Irish constituency of Tralee, that had
he foreseen the attitude of the British Parliament
to Irish affairs he would have hesitated before giv-
ing his vote for the Union. Yet his arguments
for the Union remained, and remain, sound. He
realised that Ireland was suffering from a sickness
at once moral and material. The moral sickness
was due to the irreconcilable religious differences,
having their roots deep down in Irish history,
which made a settlement from within well-nigh
impossible. The "final settlement" of 1782 had,
as he pointed out in answer to Sheridan, in fact
settled nothing, for in it " the word catholic never
occurred " ; and what manner of " settlement " was
that which left out of account three-quarters of
the population ? " Catholic emancipation " Can-
ning regarded as absolutely essential to preserve
44 GEORGE CANNING
Ireland from a repetition of the troubles of '98,
a question not so much of abstract right as of
supreme expediency. But the Irish Parliament,
living, moving and having its being in the prin-
ciples of Protestant ascendency, would never con-
sent to commit political suicide by yielding the
vote to the Catholic majority. " Catholic eman-
cipation," in fact, could only be brought about by
merging the Irish Parliament in the larger entity
of that of Great Britain which, representing on the
whole a similar point of view, would prevent it
from being swept away in a revolution which
would have completely overset the traditional
balance of Irish life. It was this fact which, as
Canning pointed out, enabled the Government to
hold out to the Catholics, as an inducement to vote
for the Union, the prospect of emancipation, and
to the Protestants the certainty of being secured
from a Catholic domination. In this double pro-
mise there was nothing to justify the scornful
attacks of the Opposition.
If the moral sickness of Ireland was thus obvious,
the material sickness was not less so ; and the cure,
in Canning's opinion, was the same. The necessity
for this cure, he said, "argues no blame to the
people, or to the Government, of Ireland. The
fault is in the nature of things : in the present
disposition of property, and division of the classes
of society, in that country. They want commerce,
CANNING AND THE IRISH QUESTION 45
they want capital, they want a generally diffused
spirit of industry and order ; they want those
classes of men who connect the upper and lower
orders of society, and who thereby blend together
and harmonise the whole. But it is not an Act of
Parliament that would effect these great and bene-
ficial objects ; no, it is only by a connection with a
country, which has capital, which has commerce,
which has that middle class of men, of whom
skill and enterprise, and sober orderly habits are
the peculiar characteristics ; it is by such a con-
nection alone, diffusing these blessings, diffusing
the means of wealth, and the example and en-
couragement of industry throughout the sister
kingdom ; it is by such a connection that so great
and beneficial a change must be effected." Partial
remedies had been tried, with but partial success.
Moreover these remedies had taken the form of
concessions, as was inevitable ; for Ireland, as an
independent nation, could have no right to demand
equality of privilege with Great Britain. But, once
incorporated with England and Scotland, she would
be enabled to claim of right what had hitherto
been yielded only as a matter of grace, and
would enter into a full share of Britain's imperial
heritage.
Such, in brief, were Canning's views on the
Union ; or perhaps it would be truer to say Pitt's
views as reflected through Canning's mind, In
46 GEORGE CANNING
expressing them he could honestly declare that he
had, from first to last, the best interests of Ireland
at heart. In replying to Sheridan, during the
debate on the royal message, while doing full
justice to the patriotic motives of the eloquent
Irishman, he declared that he too, though not born
in Ireland, was connected with that country by the
closest ties of blood and sympathy. And, if his
confident arguments were to a sorry extent dis-
proved in the sequel, this was not that they were
in themselves unreasonable, but that he had in his
lofty view of the character and functions of the
governing powers exaggerated the part played by
reason in their august brains. Certainly if the
Union failed to produce the results he had expected
of it, the fault was not his, nor Pitt's.
The Act of Union was passed on 2nd August,
1800 ; but the promised emancipation of the Catho-
lics did not follow. In making this promise, in
fact, Pitt had neglected to reckon with the narrow
and stubborn mind of his royal master. George
III. absolutely refused to consider a proposal which
would, in his view, constitute a breach of his
coronation oath to defend the Protestant religion,
and in this attitude he was encouraged by a power-
ful and influential party in Parliament and at court.
When, in the first session of the united Parliament,
in 1801, Pitt introduced the promised Relief Bill,
the King requested him to withdraw it. The
CANNING AND THE IRISH QUESTION 47
honour as well as the policy of the Prime Minister
was bound up with the fulfilment of his undertaking
to the Irish Catholics ; and, realising the hopeless-
ness of carrying the measure through in face of
the King's attitude, he resigned his office. With
him Canning went into retirement.
CHAPTER IV
THE DEATH OF PITT
Marriage — Canning and Addington — Speech on the island
of Trinidad (Slave Trade) — Canning an Irish member —
The peace of Amiens — Pitt's last administration—
Napoleon Emperor of the French — The new Coali-
tion— Battles of Trafalgar and Austerlitz — Death of
Pitt — " Ministry of all the Talents " — Death of Fox —
Portland Administration — Canning at the Foreign
Office.
DURING the first five years of his parliament-
ary life Canning had been bound to his
leader, not only by the ties of willing allegiance,
but by the straitness of his means, and by the fact
that he sat as the representative of a close borough.
The defect of poverty he had already cured at the
time of Pitt's retirement. On 8th July, 1800,
he married Joan Scott, younger daughter and
coheiress of General Scott, who had divided be-
tween his daughters what was at that time the
great fortune of £200,000, accumulated by his
skill and good luck at the gaming table. The
elder sister was already married to the Duke of
(48)
CEOKGE CANNING
From an engraving by B. Lane
THE DEATH OF PITT 49
Portland. The match was, therefore, not only
advantageous from the pecuniary point of view,
but also gave to the young politician, who had
hitherto possessed no influence save that derived
from his own talents, the advantage of a power-
ful family connection.
Of this improved state of his fortunes Canning
was determined to take full advantage, in order to
secure that independence without which, even as
a boy, he had declared that neither "blessings of
fortune" nor "distinctions of station" could bring
any true satisfaction. His position in Parliament
after Pitt's retirement was to him increasingly
intolerable. The reins of government, which
Pitt had dropped, were in the feeble hands of
Addington ; the strenuous policy of pursuing the
war to a definite issue was exchanged for a tem-
porising policy of peace ; and Pitt, though deposed,
watched in silence the unravelling of his work.
Canning, bound to follow the example of the
leader on whose patronage he depended for his
seat, chafed at the enforced inaction. He vented
his impatience in letters to his friends. " I would
have cut off my right hand," he wrote on 29th
October, 1801, to Lord Boringdon, "rather than
have signed this treaty (with France) ! " and, in
the same letter, he added : " I mean to have an
independent seat in Parliament ; I mean never to
set my foot within the House of Commons again,
4
50 GEORGE CANNING
till I can speak and act in that House according
to my own judgment purely, without reference
to the will of any other man ". For the re-
mainder of the Parliament, in fact, he maintained
silence, except for one speech : that on the culti-
vation of the newly acquired colony of Trinidad.
This speech is interesting, not only as the first
mention in the House of Commons during the
nineteenth century of a subject which, as Adding-
ton pointed out, had been allowed to sleep for five
or six years, but as the first public declaration
of Canning's own views on the question of the
abolition of the Slave Trade. The occasion was
the moving by Canning himself of an address to
the Crown praying that any grants of public lands
in the new colony should be made only under such
conditions as should prevent any increase in the
traffic in slaves, and that regulations should be
made for promoting the cultivation of the island
"in the manner least likely to interfere with the
gradual diminution and ultimate termination of the
Slave Trade". In making this motion Canning
pointed out that the House of Commons had
twice endorsed the general principle on which
it was based ; once on 2nd April, 1792, when it
had agreed to the motion " that the Slave Trade
ought to be gradually abolished " ; and again on
6th April, 1797, when it had passed an address
to the Crown to the effect " that His Majesty
THE DEATH OF PITT 51
would direct such measures to be taken as should
gradually diminish the necessity for and ultimately
lead to the termination of the Slave Trade ". Into
the general question, then, he did not feel called
upon to enter ; but the present occasion seemed to
him eminently favourable for giving to accepted
principles practical expression, without imperil-
ling any of those vested interests which all of
them were called upon as far as possible to
respect. For, unless special precautions were
taken, the opening up to British enterprise of
the island of Trinidad, a country eminently suit-
able for the cultivation of the sugar cane, would
not only create new vested rights, but would tend
" to create a new slave trade " for the special sup-
ply of the island. To obviate " the shame and
danger " attending this, Canning suggested that
the importation of negroes from Africa to the
new colony should be forbidden, and furthermore
that the public lands should be distributed, not in
great estates to capitalists, but in small holdings
to European, creole, or free negro settlers, so as
to lay the basis in the new colony " of a natural
population, which is alone the great cure for all
evils that are suffered, and all that are appre-
hended in that quarter of the world ".
In advancing these arguments Canning declared
that his appeal was not to extremists on either side,
but to moderate men of all parties. With "that
52 GEORGE CANNING
select class " who admired the Slave Trade for
itself he said that he could have no argument. " It
requires," he said, "a degree of fellow-feeling to
be able even to differ in discussion to any purpose.
One must settle at what point the difference
begins ; but such persons must have their minds
altogether so differently constituted, their senti-
ments, affections and passions must be so unlike
anything that I can conceive, that I avow my
incapacity to understand them, and my despair of
making them understand me. To their opposition,
therefore, I must make up my mind : but I trust to
theirs only. The other class to which I have
alluded is one whose opposition I should be con-
cerned to have to encounter ; that of those with
whom from the beginning I have cordially agreed
in opinion respecting the necessity of abolishing
the Slave Trade. I trust it will not be felt by such
persons that the proposition which I offer, because
a modified, is an unsatisfactory one. I know that
in minds of a sanguine cast such a feeling is apt to
prevail ; that partially to redress a grievance is
often erroneously conceived and represented as
giving sanction and establishment to all that part
which you leave as you found it ; and that this
feeling is even sometimes carried so far as to rejoice
in any increase of the grievance, from the notion
that it must ensure and accelerate the total remedy.
But this doctrine is surely to be received with
THE DEATH OF PITT 53
some qualification. First, indeed, it may possibly
be true, where those who are to bear the ill, and
those who are to administer the remedy, are the
same persons. And, in any case, the augmentation
of the ill might be so great, that no man would be
justified in consenting to it on a precarious hope
of ultimately hastening the remedy. But in this
case it was obviously not desirable to increase the
oppression in order to force the oppressed to resist."
I have quoted these paragraphs from Canning's
speech because, though directed to a particular
occasion, they have an application for all time,
and because they are highly characteristic of the
peculiar sanity of his point of view. That he felt
deeply on the question of the slave traffic there
can be no doubt. In the speech we have been
considering there is more of natural feeling, and
less of studied art, than in many of his more famous
orations. Yet he is never carried by emotion
beyond the bounds of the possible. The bulk of
his argument is engaged with figures and statistics ;
his concern is, not to enlarge on the splendour of
principles already accepted, but to prove the ex-
pediency from the mundane point of view of their
immediate application. After all, God did not
give men wings ; on the great majority he even
laid the serpent's curse.
Canning's motion, though lost, was not in vain.
It drew from Addington a promise that the whole
54 GEORGE CANNING
question of the Slave Trade would be raised by the
Government during the next session, an assurance
with which even Wilberforce declared himself for
the time being satisfied.
After the dissolution of 1802 Canning, true to
the resolution above expressed, resigned his can-
didature for Newport, and was returned as an
independent member for the Irish borough of
Tralee. He now felt himself free to express at
large his views on the Addington Administration,
and to agitate, in season and out, for the return
of Pitt to power. In Parliament, he threw himself
into irregular opposition to the Government, and
overwhelmed the " doctor " — as with questionable
taste he nicknamed the Prime Minister (whose
father had been a country physician) — with criti-
cism and ridicule. Outside, he made his home
in Conduit Street the centre of an agitation
directed to the same end ; and even furbished
up, for use against the degenerate Tory Govern-
ment, the poetical weapons which, since the days
of the Anti-Jacobin, had been laid aside.
If the health and the strength and the pure vital breath
Of old England, at last must be doctor'd to death,
Oh ! why must we die of one doctor alone ?
And why must that doctor be just such a one
As Doctor Henry Addington ?
It was, above all, the weak and compromising
spirit of the new Prime Minister that roused his
THE DEATH OF PITT 55
wrath. " Since Pitt," said Count Nesselrode some
years later, " England has been better governed
by mediocrities than by geniuses." With this
opinion of the Russian statesman Canning would
hardly have agreed ; but, in any case, it had no
present application, for Pitt still lived ; and, with
Pitt alive, mediocrity at the helm of State would,
under any circumstances, have been an absurdity.
In the actual state of affairs, with Napoleon's
power yet unbroken, it seemed to Canning more
than an absurdity. The safety of England was, in
his opinion, bound up with the continuance of the
vigorous policy of Pitt ; and " moderate men and
moderate measures " constituted a serious peril to
the State. That is his justification for giving to
the world the following poem : —
MODERATE MEN AND MODERATE MEASURES
Praise to placeless proud ability,
Let the prudent Muse disclaim ;
And sing the statesman — all civility —
Whom moderate talents raise to fame.
He, no random projects urging,
Makes us wild alarms to feel ;
With moderate measures, gently purging
Ills that prey on Britain's weal.
CHORUS
Gently purging,
Gently purging,
Gently purging Britain's weal.
56 GEORGE CANNING
Addington, with measured motion,
Keep the tenor of thy way ;
To glory yield no rash devotion,
Led by luring lights astray ;
Splendid talents are deceiving ;
Tend to councils much too bold ;
Moderate men we prize, believing,
All that glitters is not gold.
GBAND CHORUS
All that glitters,
All that glitters,
All that glitters is not gold.
But Canning was not content with attacking the
Ministry in front and in flank with satirical verses
and outspoken criticism. He even bombarded
Pitt himself with letters, adjuring him to cease
from sulking in his tent, and once more to take
the lead of England in her time of danger. This
tendency to lecture at large, and to instruct his
betters in the way they should go, did not increase
Canning's popularity. Men commented disparag-
ingly on this youthful upstart, whose head had been
turned by premature success. " He had been
forced like a thriving plant in a well-managed hot-
house," said Lord Malmesbury, " had prospered too
luxuriantly ; had felt no check or frost ; and too
early in life had had many and too easy advantages."
His haughty manner, moreover, and his impatience
of the petty prejudices of rank or office, increased
this unfavourable impression ; and he reaped in
THE DEATH OF PITT 57
full measure the reward of those who do the right
thing in the wrong way.
That he was in essence right the sequel was to
prove. The short-lived peace of Amiens had
ended on 18th May, 1803, but it had lasted long
enough to proclaim to all the world the hollowness
of the arguments of those who had opposed the
war with France. The overtures begun by the
British Government had led Napoleon to misread
the temper of the British people ; and he had used
the respite allowed him by the temporary triumph
of the peace party to continue his high-handed
acts of aggression. The renewal of the war became
inevitable ; and with the renewal of the war the
return of Pitt to power. Canning set himself with
renewed ardour to hasten this latter consummation.
He supported the Government, indeed, in its
demand for the supplies necessary for the increased
armaments called for by the denunciation of the
Treaty of Amiens ; but at the same time he ex-
claimed that " men and not measures " were
wanted, and that, while he was far from objecting
to the large military establishments proposed, "for
the purpose of coping with Bonaparte, one great
commanding spirit was worth them all " ; and on
23rd June, 1803, in the debate on Colonel Patten's
motion of a vote of want of confidence in the
Government, when Pitt himself moved the previous
question, he spoke and voted against his leader.
58 GEORGE CANNING
The motion was lost ; but Canning's purpose was
none the less served ; for the debate disclosed a
state of opinion in the House from which the
Government, already somewhat discredited, never
recovered. Pitt, who had been merely biding his
time, began to throw himself into opposition ; and
the weight of his criticism, added to that of Canning,
proved fatal to the Ministry. In May, 1804, the
Addington Government fell, and the King sent
once more for Pitt.
The two years of Pitt's last Administration were
destined to be the most momentous in the history
of Great Britain ; and Pitt himself was very con-
scious of the tremendous issues at stake. In view
of the greatness of the crisis he endeavoured to
form a strong Government on a comprehensive
basis, and to this end approached Fox with a view
to a coalition. But Fox refused to take office, well
knowing that he would be hampered at every turn
by the hostility of the King ; and his friends
refused to join the Government without him.
Canning had made it clear to his leader that in
his opinion a stable Administration could only be
erected on the basis of a coalition ; but at the same
time he placed his services, in any event, at his
disposal ; and when Pitt was forced to patch up a
Ministry out of the debris of the Addington Cabinet,
he took office under it as Treasurer of the Navy.
The Government, weak from the outset, was still
THE DEATH OF PITT 59
further shaken by the impeachment of Lord
Melville for misappropriating the funds of the
Admiralty ; and upon Pitt alone, old before his
time and shaken by the disgrace and ruin of his
friend, was laid the whole burden of the nation's
safety in a time of unparalleled danger and anxiety.
On 18th May, 1804, only a few days after the
King had sent for Pitt, Napoleon proclaimed him-
self Emperor of the French, a title then of greater
significance than now ; and against the world-wide
ambition implied in it England alone was in arms.
To crush this implacable opposition to his plans
the Emperor was assembling a vast armament at
Boulogne, with a view to the invasion of England.
His power was already swelled by the tribute in
money and men of the subject states ; and during
the year it became apparent that it was about to
receive a still further increase by the accession of
Spain, under the corrupt and incompetent leader-
ship of the Queen's lover, Godoy. In December
the Spanish-French coalition was an acknowledged
fact, and England declared war against Spain.
In view of these accumulating perils, Pitt exerted
himself to the uttermost to renew the European
coalition against France ; and by September, 1805,
he had so far succeeded that Russia, Austria,
Sweden and Naples were once more leagued
together against the common emeny. In the
following month, moreover, all danger of an in-
60 GEORGE CANNING
vasion of England was dissipated by Nelson's
victory of Trafalgar. This, however, was the last
triumph of Pitt's strenuous career. On 2nd Decem-
ber was fought the battle of Austerlitz, which
shattered his plans and broke his spirit. Less
than two months later, on 2 1st .January, 1806, the
great statesman, worn out with work and anxiety,
and prematurely old at forty-seven, passed away.
The death of Pitt for the time set back the rapid
progress of Canning's advancement. The retire-
ment of Lord Harrowby from the Secretaryship of
Foreign Affairs in December, 1805, had revealed
to Pitt the weakness of his Cabinet ; and when,
next year, the negotiations which he once more
opened with the Whig leaders failed, he began to
make arrangements for including Charles Yorke
and Canning in the Cabinet. The prestige given
to the Government by the victory of Trafalgar had
postponed, however, the necessity for change ; and
with the death of Pitt the Ministry broke up.
But the death of Pitt not only deprived Canning
of a patron ; it left him in the position, more or less,
of a political free lance. ' ' To one man, while he
lived," he declared in a speech at Liverpool, six
years later, " I was devoted with all my heart and
all my soul. Since the death of Mr. Pitt I
acknowledge no leader ; my political allegiance lies
buried in his grave."
Pitt being no more, even the prejudiced mind of
THE DEATH OF PITT 6l
the old King could not but realise that his great
rival Fox was the only possible leader in the crisis
of the nation's affairs. The coalition Ministry, for
which Pitt had striven in vain, was thus rendered
possible ; and Fox assumed the reins of power.
In the " Ministry of all the Talents," formed in
February, 1806, Canning was offered a place. He
refused on the ground — curiously illuminative of
his essential Toryism — that in its composition the
King's wishes had not been sufficiently consulted,
and threw himself into opposition as the leader of
the party known as Pitt's friends. His attitude
was dictated mainly by his distrust of Fox's foreign
policy, which, while it recognised the present
necessity for a vigorous prosecution of the war, was
ever directed to the discovery of an opportunity of
coming to terms with Napoleon. On one great
question, indeed, he found himself in general agree-
ment with the Government. On 31st March, 1806,
Fox introduced a motion in favour of the abolition
of the Slave Trade. Canning, while declaring that
"he thought it impossible for the ingenuity of
man to devise a form of words contributing to the
repeal of the Slave Trade that he should not concur
in," criticised the Government for merely bringing
forward once more an abstract motion which had
twice already received the assent of the Commons,
and " lamented that the House had not the subject
more fully before them ". The motion, such as it
62 GEORGE CANNING
was, was the last one made by the great Whig
leader in Parliament. On 13th September of the
same year he followed Pitt to the grave.
The Government of which he had been the
leading spirit did not long survive him. During
his illness, Grey had once more opened negotia-
tions with Canning with a view to his inclusion ;
but the latter had refused his adhesion so long
as Fox's fate was yet uncertain, and the chance
of a compromise with France yet remained. Fox
was succeeded at the Foreign Office by Lord
Howick ; but before he had been many months
in office the Ministry to which he belonged came
to an honourable end. In March, 1807, a bill was
introduced for the purpose of allowing Catholics,
who were already permitted to serve in the army
in Ireland, to hold commissions in England. The
proposal, reasonable in itself, and still more so in
view of the obvious inconvenience of the actual
conditions, was wrecked once more on the rock
of the King's unyielding bigotry. On 24th March
the Ministry of all the Talents was dissolved.
Canning composed its epitaph in the following
verses : —
ALL THE TALENTS
When the broad-bottom'd Junto, with reason at strife,
Resign'd, with a sigh, its political life ;
When converted to Rome, and of honesty tired,
They gave back to the devil the soul he inspired.
THE DEATH OF PITT 63
The demon of Faction that over them hung,
In accents of horror their epitaph sung ;
While Pride and Venality join'd in the stave,
And canting Democracy wept at the grave.
" Here lies in the tomb that we hallow' d for Pitt,
Consistence of Grenville, of Temple the wit ;
Of Sidmouth the firmness, the temper of Grey,
And treasurer Sheridan's promise to pay.
" Here Petty 's finance, from the evils to come,
With Fitzpatrick's sobriety creeps to the tomb ;
And Chancellor Ego, now left in the lurch,
Neither dines with the Jordan, nor whines for the church,
" Then huzza for the party that here is at rest,
By fools of a faction regretted and bless'd ;
Though they sleep with the devil, yet theirs is the hope,
On the downfall of Britain to rise with the Pope."
Considering Canning's own views on the question
of Catholic emancipation, it is hard to acquit him of
having himself been somewhat inspired by "the
Demon of Faction " when he penned the above
lines.
The task of constructing a new Administration
was entrusted to Canning's kinsman, the Duke of
Portland, a nobleman of indolent character and
little given to speech, but honourable, and of a
conciliatory temper, invaluable in holding together
a Ministry in which were represented very diver-
gent views and tendencies. The late Government
had fallen on the question of Emancipation ; and
it was certain that no Ministry could live that
64 GEORGE CANNING
should attempt to pass measures favourable to the
Catholic claims. The new Government was, in
effect, founded upon a basis of uncompromising
Protestantism, which found its chief exponents in
Lord Eldon, the Chancellor, and Perceval, whose
influence in the Cabinet, backed as he was by the
support of the King, outweighed that of the more
tolerant Prime Minister. And in this Government
Canning, a consistent upholder of the Catholic
claims, was offered a place with Cabinet rank.
That he accepted it was proclaimed by his enemies
to be the final proof of his unscrupulous ambition ;
and he himself recognised the necessity for justify-
ing his action. His support of Emancipation had
from the first been the outcome rather of a belief
in its expediency, than of any deep-seated con-
viction of its abstract justice ; and, now that he
realised that its attainment was impossible during
the life of George III., he did not think that that
alone should prevent him from sharing in the work
of a Government with which, on all other points,
he was in sympathy. Therefore, on the offer of
the Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs being made
to him, he accepted it, convinced that he was well
qualified to carry on the great work of the states-
man who had been his master. Thus, at the age
of thirty-seven, Canning was a Cabinet Minister,
and entrusted with the oversight of the foreign
relations of the country at a time of singular
THE DEATH OF PITT 65
danger and difficulty. Among his colleagues were
some whose names were destined in the future to
be closely associated with his. Lord Castlereagh,
in some sort already his rival and competitor, was
Secretary at War ; Sir Arthur Wellesley (after-
wards Duke of Wellington), whose military genius
it is one of Canning's merits to have early recog-
nised and employed, was Secretary for Ireland.
CHAPTER V
AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE
Napoleon and Alexander — Treaty of Tilsit — bombardment
of Copenhagen — The continental blockade — England
and the United States — Napoleon and Spain — The
Peninsular War — The Walcheren Expedition — Can-
ning's duel with Castlereagh.
CANNING had not been long at the Foreign
Office before developments took place on the
continent which called out every quality of fore-
sight and resolution for which he was distinguished.
On 14th June, 1807, Napoleon defeated the Rus-
sians at Friedland ; on the 22nd an armistice
was arranged ; and, two days later, took place
the momentous meeting between the Emperor
and the Tsar Alexander I. at Tilsit. On the
field of battle the Russian arms had been over-
come by Napoleon's military skill ; in the con-
ference the impressionable mind of the Russian
autocrat was taken captive by Napoleon's genius
and vast political imagination. France and Russia
united could rule the world ; their division merely
served the selfish ends of commercial England ; and
(66)
GEORGE CANNING AS A YOUNG MAN
From the picture oy A. Hickel in the possession of the Earl of Crewe
AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE 67
Napoleon dazzled the eyes of Alexander with a
vision of the Empires of the East and West re-
stored, and holding the balance of the world. But
for the opposition of Great Britain the Western Em-
pire was already re-established in his own person ; it
would be easy for the Russian to overset the totter-
ing fabric of the Ottoman power, and re-erect on
the shores of the Bosphorus the orthodox Empire
of the East. Here, too, all that was needed was
the destruction of the British sea-power. The
plan was one which appealed irresistibly to Alex-
ander's grandiose imagination; and he threw him-
self into it, for the time, heart and soul. The
immediate result was the signature of the Treaty
of Tilsit.
Austria had been overthrown at Austerlitz,
Prussia at Jena. By the Treaty of Tilsit Russia
became a party to the " continental system " of
Napoleon devised against England and enunciated
in the Berlin decrees. But this was not all. It
came to the ears of the British Government that,
by additional secret articles of the treaty, arrange-
ments were to be made to unite the whole of the
naval forces of the continent in one vast effort to
wrest from England the supremacy of the seas. As
the nucleus of this combination the fleet of Den-
mark was to serve.
The situation was one of extreme peril to Eng-
land, and also one of extreme difficulty. When
68 GEORGE CANNING
the battle of Trafalgar was fought, nearly the
whole continent had been in arms against France.
Nelson's victory had wrecked the sea-power of
France ; but this was now to be reinforced by
that of Powers hitherto friendly to England ; and
against such a combination it was doubtful whether,
in the long run, Great Britain would be able to
hold her own. The position was complicated by
the fact that Denmark, on whom the new Alliance
chiefly reckoned, was still nominally neutral ;
though it was obvious that her neutrality would
not long withstand the combined pressure of the
French and Russian Empires, even if she had not
already become a party to their plans.
Under these circumstances Canning saw the
necessity for immediate and bold action. No
sooner had the terms of the secret articles of
Tilsit been communicated to him, than he de-
spatched a strong British armament, under Lord
Cathcart, to demand that the Danish fleet should
be handed over to Great Britain, to be held till the
conclusion of the war. The not unnatural refusal
of the Danish Government to comply with this
demand was followed by the bombardment of
Copenhagen and the complete destruction of the
fleet of Denmark.
That this prompt action saved England from
the most dangerous combination that had ever
threatened her independence was proved by evi-
AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE 69
dence subsequently published. At the time, how-
ever, it had all the appearance of a wanton act of
international piracy ; and as such it was denounced,
not only by the Powers whose plans it had over-
turned, but by many voices of weight in Parliament.
The Government laboured under the disadvantage
of not being able to give proof of the existence of
the secret articles, which were the justification
of its policy, without betraying the confidence
of those by whom they had been communicated.
Canning, in reply to those who in a tone of
righteous indignation denounced him for this
murderous attack on a friendly Power in time of
peace, the true character of which it was sought
to cover by a transparent subterfuge, could only
stand on his integrity, and declare that he was
in the possession of arguments which he was not
at liberty to publish to the world. Happily the
House believed him ; and a vote of censure moved
against him was rejected by a large majority.
Meanwhile, the situation created by the policy
of the Berlin and Milan decrees was leading to
complications in somewhat unexpected directions.
The closure of all the ports of the continent to
goods carried in British vessels came as a god-
send to the hitherto struggling oversea trade of
the United States of America, and the business
instincts of transatlantic " Anglo-Saxons " did not
permit any sentimental sympathy with the mother-
70 GEORGE CANNING
country in her life and death struggle with
Napoleon, or any Republican antipathy to the
wrecker of republics, to prevent them from taking
advantage of so obvious an opening for profit. To
meet this situation, the British Government replied
to the " Decrees " by the " Orders in Council," by
which a blockade of the whole continent was
established, and British ships of war were ordered
to intercept all trading vessels attempting to enter
continental ports. In answer to this the Congress
of the United States passed the " Non-intercourse
Act," prohibiting commercial relations with either
combatant. At a time when the trade of Great
Britain with Jamaica alone exceeded by £1,000,000
the whole of her trade with the United States,
this was no very serious blow to British prosperity ;
but it still further strained the relations between
the two nations, and roused a bitterness of feeling
which was intensified by a series of incidents,
not in themselves very serious, but important in
their cumulative effect. The cruel discipline of
British ships of war led to constant desertions to
American vessels, on which pay was higher and
treatment better. At American ports, too, British
seamen would slip on shore, sign papers of natural-
isation— a process then as now extremely easy — and
defy their officers to lay hands on free American
citizens. Under these circumstances the wrath of
zealous captains was apt to break through the
AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE 71
technical entanglements of misused international
law ; and the United States Government com-
plained of American territory violated ; of American
citizens forcibly carried on board British men-of-
war ; and of American vessels held up on the high
seas and searched for British deserters. The
trouble culminated at last in the affair of the
Chesapeake, an American ship which had offered
armed resistance to the right of search claimed by
a British war vessel. The American was worsted,
some of her crew slain, and not only a certain
number of British deserters, but also some genuine
Americans, were detained in custody.
This was an episode too serious to be over-
looked ; and Canning made it the occasion for
attempting to arrive at some general agreement
with the Government of the United States,
such as should obviate the increasing risk of an
appeal to arms. To this end Mr. Erskine was
sent out to Washington to arrange a settlement
on a basis of mutual concession. Great Britain
was willing to admit, and to repair as far as
possible, the wrong done by the violent seizure
of the Chesapeake ; but only on condition that the
American Government should repudiate the claim
of its Commodore to protect British deserters.
Furthermore, England demanded the abrogation
of the proclamation of 2nd July, 1807, by which
American ports had been closed to British ships,
72 GEORGE CANNING
while remaining open to those of France. Un-
fortunately, Erskine, in his anxiety to arrive at
a settlement, yielded all the demands of the
American Government without insisting on any
of the quid pro quos contained in his instructions.
On learning what he had done, Canning at once
recalled him in disgrace ; but the mischief was,
unhappily, beyond repair. The playful policy of
" twisting the lion's tail," so successfully inaugur-
ated, was continued, until it culminated in the
war of 1812.
For the time being, however, the annoyances
arising from the aggressive attitude of a young
nation as ignorant, as it was intolerant, of the
traditional code of international courtesy, were
as nothing compared with the vast issues at stake
upon the European continent. Alone of contin-
ental states Portugal, bound by old treaties with
England, still held out against Napoleon's con-
tinental system. The Portuguese Government,
indeed, in response to a peremptory order issued
from Tilsit, ordered the detention of all Englishmen
resident in the country, and laid an embargo upon
all British property. But these measures had been
carried out tardily, in order to allow Englishmen
time to sell their property and to leave the
country. The delay was, in the eyes of Napoleon,
sufficient excuse for carrying out the policy which
he had all along had in view : that of the absorp-
AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE 73
tion of Spain and Portugal into his own dominions.
On 18th October, 1807, a French army, under
Marshal Junot, entered Spain. Less than three
months later, King Charles IV., who, with his son
Ferdinand, the Prince of the Asturias, had obeyed
Napoleon's order to meet him at Bayonne, resigned
his crown into the hands of the French Emperor.
This was on 5th May. On 15th June Joseph
Bonaparte was proclaimed King of Spain.
The establishment of a Bonaparte on the throne
of Spain seemed to have set the key-stone in the
arch of Napoleon's Empire. The policy of Louis
XIV., against which the War of the Spanish
Succession had been waged a century before, and
which had been for ever barred by the Treaty of
Utrecht, appeared to have been carried through,
almost without a blow, by the French Emperor.
By a stroke of the pen the political barrier of
the Pyrenees had been razed, and Spain had
become, not so much a kingdom bound to that
of France by a family compact, as a vassal state
of the French Empire. But in his calculations
Napoleon had overlooked one fatal factor. Hitherto
his dealings had been exclusively with the
dynasties of Germany or Italy, artificial creations
of an unpopular principle, and easy to overturn,
because infirmly based ; in Spain he found him-
self face to face with a people passionate in its
nationalism, to which long centuries of contest
74 GEORGE CANNING
with alien and infidel forces had given the fervour
ef a religious creed. The Spaniards, deserted by
their feeble King, themselves took up arms to
defend the kingship — centre and symbol of their
national independence — which the degenerate
Bourbons had sold for a price. Napoleon, for
the first time, found himself confronted by a
people in arms.
Canning, ever on the look-out for fresh weapons
wherewith to wound the all-devouring ambitions of
Napoleon, at once recognised, and determined to
take advantage of, the new situation. It was
nothing to him that Spain had, in the hour of
England's greatest peril, added her fleet to that of
France, in the attempt to wrest from her the
mastery of the seas. That had been the act, not
of the voiceless people of Spain, but of the corrupt
minions of the court, whose treason to the national
cause was now stinking in the nostrils of all the
world. Whatever its past record, said Canning,
in a speech delivered on the very day that Joseph
Bonaparte was declared King, "any nation that
resists the common enemy becomes instantly our
ally ". Upon this principle the Government was
prompt to act. Portugal, the old-time ally of
England, was naturally the first object of solicitude.
By the Emperor's orders Junot had pressed on
through Spain with a view to occupying Portugal
before the end of November, 1807; and, on his
AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE 75
near approach, the Portuguese royal family had,
on the advice of Great Britain, fled the country
and transferred the centre of Government to
Brazil. Next day the French entered Lisbon.
They were not, however, to remain long in
possession. On 1st August Sir Arthur Wellesley
landed with an English force at Figueras ; on the
21st he won over Junot the battle of Vimiero, and,
had he not been superseded on the field of victory,
would have completed the ruin of the French
army. As it was, the prudence of Sir Harry
Burrard and Sir Hugh Dalrymple, his superior
officers, led to the conclusion of the Convention of
Cintra, by the terms of which the French force,
with arms and stores, were to be transferred in
British ships to the coast of France.
Into the momentous events which now followed
on the continent it is impossible for us to enter in
any detail. On the news of the reverse suffered
by the French arms in Portugal, Napoleon deter-
mined to take the field himself for the purpose of
completing the subjugation of the Peninsula. To
counteract this the expedition of Sir John Moore
into Spain was undertaken ; an effort which
resulted in the disastrous retreat of the British
and in the hardly won victory of Corunna, which
allowed the English army to embark in safety.
Corunna was fought on l6'th January, 1809. The
declaration of war by Austria against Napoleon
76 GEORGE CANNING
the expectation of which had already led the
Emperor to leave Spain, followed on 9th April.
This, together with popular risings in the Tyrol
under Andreas Hofer, arid in Prussia under Colonel
Schill, pointed to the possibility of a fresh coalition
against France, and the British Government, dis-
couraged for the time by the unsatisfactory Con-
vention of Cintra and the failure of Sir John
Moore's invasion of Spain, once more redoubled
its exertions. On 22nd April Sir Arthur Wellesley
landed in Portugal to assume the supreme com-
mand, and the Peninsular War, which was destined
to sap the power of Napoleon, was begun.
The importance of the campaign in the Peninsula
was recognised, though not to its full extent, from
the outset. That the lesson of Cintra was learned,
and Wellesley appointed to the supreme command
over the heads of officers whose seniority would
have given them the right to the post, was largely,
if not mainly, due to the insistence of Canning.
He was less successful in persuading his colleagues
to concentrate their attack on this most vulnerable
spot of Napoleon's defences. The declaration of
war by Austria had suggested a diversion in her
favour elsewhere ; and Lord Castlereagh planned
an attack in force on Napoleon's great arsenal at
Antwerp. The outcome of the ill-fated Walcheren
expedition was due to the incompetence of its
leader, Lord Chatham, rather than to any defects
AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE 77
in the scheme itself, which, had it succeeded,
would undoubtedly have dealt a serious blow to
Napoleon's power. None the less it greatly dis-
credited the Government ; and, incidentally, by
revealing an intolerable state of tension within the
Cabinet, led up to the crisis which caused its
downfall.
Canning had for some little time had cause to
complain of the tendency of the War Office to
encroach on the sphere of his own department of
Foreign Affairs. Contrary to his wish, the war in
the Peninsula had been " starved " for the sake of
the unfortunate Walcheren venture ; and the Con-
vention of Cintra, which lay even more indisputably
within his province, had actually been endorsed by
the Cabinet in his absence. He now approached
the Duke of Portland with a proposal for the re-
arrangement of business in such a way as more
clearly to define the boundary line between the
War Office and that of Foreign Affairs. Failing
such a readjustment, he declared that either he
or Lord Castlereagh must resign.
The duke, between good nature and indolence,
promised and procrastinated. Canning had first
broached the matter in April, 1810 ; by June
nothing had been done. He now offered his
resignation ; but withdrew it on being pressed,
notably by several of Castlereagh's friends, to wait
till the result of the Walcheren expedition should
78 GEORGE CANNING
be known. After the capture of Flushing he
insisted that the present was the most suitable
time for carrying through the suggested changes,
and now learned for the first time that Lord
Castlereagh had never been informed of his de-
mands. He promptly declared that he would
continue to hold office only until his successor
should be appointed. At the same time Lord
Castlereagh, now at last perforce informed, handed
in his resignation.
That in this matter Castlereagh had received
but scant consideration was only too clear ; and the
only doubt was as to whose was the door at which
the fault lay. To Castlereagh himself it was plain
that Canning was responsible ; and, immediately
after his resignation, he addressed a letter to him,
in which he stigmatised his conduct in appearing
openly to support him, while secretly intriguing
against him, as "a breach of every principle of
good faith, both public and private," and demand-
ing "satisfaction". In face of this direct challenge,
Canning, according to the social code of the time,
had no choice of reply. The challenge was
accepted ; and, on 21st September, the two states-
men met on Putney Heath. Two shots were
exchanged without result ; but at the second
discharge Canning fell, wounded in the thigh.
The wound was not a serious one ; and on 1 1 th
October he was able to attend the levee, when he
LORD CASTLEREAGH
(SECOND MARQUIS OF LONDONDERRY)
From the portrait by Lawrence in the National Portrait Gallery
AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE 79
tendered his resignation. The Portland Ministry
did not long survive the loss of two of its most
conspicuous members. Huskisson had resigned at
the same time as his friend Canning. Shortly
afterwards the Duke of Portland died ; and the
Administration was broken up. Twelve eventful
years were destined to pass before Canning was
again to direct the foreign policy of Great Britain.
CHAPTER VI
CANNING AS A POLITICAL FREE-LANCE
Canning and j ournalism — His poems — Madness of George III.
— The Regency question — Murder of Perceval — Lord
Liverpool Premier — Canning refuses office — Catholic
emancipation — Member for Liverpool — Canning and
parliamentary reform — Free Trade — Speech on the pro-
secution of the war — Embassy to Lisbon— President
of the Board of Control.
THE period succeeding the dissolution of the
Portland Administration Canning spent in
comparative retirement, mainly at Gloucester
Lodge, the house between Brompton and Ken-
sington which he had bought from the Princess
Sophia in 1807. While keeping a keen eye on
the developments of politics, he devoted much of
his leisure to literary interests. He had had a
considerable share in founding the Quarterly Review
in 1807 ; and he was at no time insensible to the
great position held by the press in the world of
politics, or to the importance of the good-will of
writers and artists to the career of a politician. To
his diplomatic kindness it was partly due that the
(80)
CANNING AS A POLITICAL FREE-LANCE 81
coarse and powerful quill of the caricaturist Gilray
was never turned against him, but used to rein-
force the onslaught of the Anil- Jacobin on the
" French " party. In the days when journalism
was still under the social ban, Canning had himself
condescended for a while to become a journalist ;
and in his last great speech at Liverpool he pro-
claimed, in a passage of splendid and characteristic
eloquence, the new and mighty part played by a
free press in the constitutional system of the
country ; proclaimed it, oddly enough, as an
additional argument against Reform. " What
should we think," he said, " of a philosopher, who,
in writing, at the present day, a treatise upon naval
architecture and the theory of navigation, should
omit wholly from his calculation that new and
mighty power — new, at least, in the application
of its might — which walks the water, like a giant
rejoicing in his course ; — stemming alike the tempest
and the tide ; — accelerating intercourse, shortening
distances ; — creating, as it were, unexpected neigh-
bourhoods and new combinations of social and
commercial relation ; — and giving to the fickleness
of winds and the faithlessness of waves the certainty
and steadiness of a highway upon the land ? Such
a writer, though he might describe a ship cor-
rectly ; though he might show from what quarters
the winds of heaven blow, would be surely an
incurious and an idle spectator of the progress of
6
82 GEORGE CANNING
nautical science, who did not see in the power of
STEAM a corrective of all former calculations. So,
in political science, he who, speculating on the
British Constitution, should content himself with
marking the distribution of acknowledged technical
powers between the House of Lords, the House of
Commons and the Crown, and assigning to each
their separate provinces — to the Lords their legis-
lative authority, to the Crown its veto (how often
used ?), to the House of Commons its power of
stopping supplies (how often, in fact, necessary to
be resorted to ?) — and should think that he had
thus described the British Constitution as it acts
and as it is influenced in its action ; but should
omit from his enumeration that mighty power of
Public Opinion, embodied in a Free Press, which
pervades, and checks, and, perhaps, in the last
resort, nearly governs the whole ; — such a man
would, surely, give but an imperfect view of the
government of England as it is now modified, and
would greatly underrate the counteracting influences
against which that of the executive power has to
contend." Not the most exacting journalist could
demand a more splendid tribute to the greatness
of the " fourth Estate ".
The appreciation of journalism is one thing, that
of literature is another. In the case of the former
Canning could read the signs of the times, but not
in that of the latter. With the new licence of the
CANNING AS A POLITICAL FREE-LANCE 83
romantic movement his severe classical taste could
have little in common. Romanticism, moreover,
whatever its later tendencies, was, or seemed to
be, for the moment poisoned with the virus of
Jacobinism. None, indeed — unless it were serious-
minded Germans — would quarrel with the ridicule
which, in the Anti- Jacobin, Canning poured in
full measure on the exaggerated sentimentalism
of the fashionable German drama of the day. As
a parody of Schiller's " Robbers " and Goethe's
" Stella," " The Rovers " was, and is, " excellent
fooling ". A more sympathetic critic would, per-
haps, have discovered beneath the "storm and
stress " of these youthful products of the new age
of German literature the signs of a power that
promised greater things. But Canning was out
of sympathy with the very first principles of
romanticism. With Sir Walter Scott, indeed,
whose acquaintance he first made at the table of
the unhappy Princess of Wales, he was soon on
terms of close I:. -Imacy. In their political prin-
ciples they were at one ; but Canning clearly had
but little appreciation of the peculiar genius of
the prophet of Romance ; and his advice to Scott,
after reading his poems, to " present himself in a
Drydenic habit," reveals the gulf fixed between
them.
In those few of Canning's own serious poems
which have been made public "the Drydenic
84 GEORGE CANNING
habit " is sufficiently displayed, nor, though their
sentiment is unexceptionable, can they be accused
of the least touch of sentimentality. This is true
even of his love poems. In them the human
passion, which runs riot in the " romantic "
writers, is rigorously subordinated ; and the lan-
guage moves on the same lofty, and perhaps
slightly artificial, plane as the sentiments. These
qualities are well illustrated in the "Lines addressed
to Miss Scott before Marriage " : —
And dost Thou fear where stern ambition reigns,
Schooled in the subtle Statesman's selfish art,
Love's jealous pow'r divided rule disdains,
And flies in scorn the abdicated heart ?
Think' st Thou to him no tender cares are dear,
No pleasures sooth the calm domestic hour,
Who, slave to Glory, runs his wild career,
Mad in the race for Fame, or strife for Pow'r !
Hush Thy vain fears, howe'er in other climes,
Where blood-stained factions plan the foul intrigue,
Ambition's Vot'ry thrives by craft or crimes,
By bartered Love, and Friendship's broken league !
Not such the gen'rous strife in Britain's cause,
That cause to holiest charities allied,
Where private morals prop the public laws,
And man's best feelings combat on their side.
If e'er this tongue hath practised arts of shame,
Framed specious frauds, or honest thoughts disguised,
With base detraction stained a rival's fame,
Or fawned upon the fool my soul despised ;
CANNING AS A POLITICAL FREE-LANCE 85
Then let Thy scorn pronounce the just decree,
Bid me each bold presumptuous wish resign,
111 would the mean, th' ungenerous arts agree
With candour, faith and purity like Thine !
But if fair fame or honest warmth inspire,
If no inglorious currents lave my Soul,
Think what new zeal my quickened course shall fire,
Thy smile my triumph, and thy praise my goal !
Let thy fond smile, whate'er my fate may be,
Cherish each hope and calm each anxious fear,
Each hope achieved but lifts me nearer Thee,
Or foiled but makes thy cherished Love more dear.
So to proud heights shall fav'ring Fortune lead,
Or drest in frowns her fleeting gifts recall,
Firm in Thy faith the dang'rous path I tread,
Or sheltered in thy arms forget my fall.
So while my oflfrings load Ambition's shrine,
Thy hand (nor thou the sacred charge disclaim 1)
Thy hallowing hand the increase shall refine,
And Love, which feeds, shall purify the flame.
No one can say that these verses are not whole-
some and manly in tone and full of a lofty senti-
ment. Some of the lines appeal to me also, I
confess, as beautiful in themselves. Yet, for all
that, it is not the poet, so much as the man of
affairs, that is revealed in them. Not even in this
intimate moment does the beloved object fill the
whole field of the writer's vision. He cannot
forget the revolutionary iniquities of France, or
"the gen'rous strife in Britain's cause," even in
86 GEORGE CANNING
hymning his mistress ; and his chief claim to be
worthy of her love is the delightfully insular plea
that he belongs to a country "where private
morals prop the public laws". But, indeed, we
ought not to quarrel with this attitude ; for it
was just this unwavering belief in the incon-
testable superiority of Great Britain which made
Canning a strong leader in a perilous crisis of the
nation.
More beautiful, I think, are the lines written
for the tomb of his eldest son, which need no
comment.
EPITAPH
GBOROB CHARLES CANNING
Born 25th April, 1801 ; Died 31st March, 1820
Though short thy span, God's unimpeach'd decrees,
Which made that shorten'd span one long disease,
Yet, merciful in chastening, gave thee scope
For mild, redeeming virtues, faith and hope ;
Meek resignation ; pious charity ;
And, since this world was not the world for thee,
Far from thy path removed, with partial care,
Strife, glory, gain and pleasure's flowery snare,
Bade earth's temptations pass thee harmless by,
And fix'd on heaven thine unreverted eye.
Oh ! mark'd from birth, and nurtured for the skies !
In youth, with more than learning's wisdom, wise !
As sainted martyrs, patient to endure !
Simple as unwean'd infancy and pure !
Pure from all stain (save that of human clay,
Which Christ's atoning blood hath wash'd away !)
CANNING AS A POLITICAL FREE-LANCE 87
By mortal sufferings now no more oppress'd,
Mount, sinless spirit, to thy destined rest !
While I — reversed our nature's kindlier doom,
Pour forth a father's sorrows on thy tomb.
The appearances of Canning, meanwhile, in
Parliament, were comparatively rare. The Port-
land Administration had been succeeded by that
of Perceval, in which Lord Wellesley occupied
Canning's office of Foreign Secretary, and Lord
Liverpool had replaced Castlereagh at the War
Office. To this Government Canning gave a
general, but independent, support. Wellesley
himself, as was natural in Wellington's brother,
was in favour of the vigorous prosecution of the
war in Spain ; and, in three succeeding sessions,
Canning strongly supported the policy of lavish
expenditure in the Peninsula. On the other
hand, he opposed the financial policy of the
Ministry in the question of the currency, and on
3rd February, 1812, he supported Lord Morpeth's
motion on Catholic emancipation, a reform to
which Perceval was fanatically opposed.
In 1810 the position of the Tory Government
was threatened by the madness of the old King,
which necessitated a Regency. The Prince of
Wales had identified himself with the Opposition,
and Carlton House had long been regarded almost
as the headquarters of the Whigs. Under these
circumstances the question of the appointment
88 GEORGE CANNING
and the powers of the Regent became one of
party ; and the Government brought in a bill
which, while offering the Regency to the Prince
of Wales, considerably restricted his prerogatives.
In this matter Canning held the authority of
Parliament to be supreme ; and he gave a general
support to the restrictions proposed by the Gov-
ernment, not as a matter of right, but, as Pitt
had done in 1788, on general grounds of ex-
pediency. As a matter of fact, the fears of the
Tories were somewhat idle. The Prince's Liberal-
ism had been no more than a pose ; and the less
than half-hearted support which he had received
from his Whig friends, in his opposition to what
he considered an invasion of his rights, served
as a decent excuse for a change of front which
would, in all probability, in any case have fol-
lowed his accession to sovereign power. His
attempt to oust the Perceval Administration, by
commissioning Huskisson to form a Ministry, broke
down on the latter's refusal to serve unless Can-
ning were given a portfolio ; for Canning was a
friend of the unfortunate Princess of Wales, and
to show sympathy with her was to forfeit the good-
will of her husband.
The Regent, in fact, soon found that he could
live on comfortable terms with his courtly Tory
advisers ; the Perceval Ministry continued in
office; and when, in February, 1812, the hope-
CANNING AS A POLITICAL FREE-LANCE 89
lessness of the King's illness was recognised, and
the Regency made permanent, the Government no
longer thought it necessary to restrict the Regent's
authority. The Perceval Administration fell, not
owing to any ill-will of the Regent, but to an
irresponsible crime. As early as February, indeed,
it had been weakened by the resignation of Wel-
lesley, the only real statesman in the Cabinet, on
the ground that he was thwarted by his colleagues
in his policy of pressing the war in the Peninsula;
and before his place could be filled, it came to an
end with the assassination of the Prime Minister in
the lobby of the House of Commons by the mad-
man Bellingham on llth May.
In response to a motion of the House of Com-
mons imploring him to appoint a strong Govern-
ment, the Regent instructed Wellesley to attempt
to form a coalition Ministry. The attempt failed,
partly owing to the doctrinaire objections of the
Whigs to the form in which they had been ap-
proached, partly to irreconcilable differences in the
matter of the Catholic claims. It became necessary
to fall back upon the old set ; and Lord Liverpool
was entrusted with the task of reconstructing the
Government. In his desire to strengthen it, he
approached both Wellesley and Canning. But
Wellesley refused to join a Government pledged
in advance against the consideration of the
Catholic claims. Canning also refused ; but,
90 GEORGE CANNING
though he shared Wellesley's views, not for the
same reason. Castlereagh, who had already been
installed in the Foreign Office, offered to resign
this in Canning's favour, while retaining the
leadership of the House of Commons. Canning,
however, was persuaded, not only that he had a
right to the leadership, but that, without it, he
would be unable to conduct the foreign policy of
the country effectively; and he refused to serve
unless the leadership were associated with the
Foreign Office. His terms were rejected ; and
Castlereagh was installed in office for the remain-
der of his life. Canning's attitude in this matter
proved, in fact, far more momentous than he him-
self expected ; and he lived bitterly to regret it.
For fifteen years he was excluded from any
decisive influence in moulding the international
destinies of England, and this during a period
when, as he himself said, " two years at the
Foreign Office would have been worth ten years
of life ".
Canning's exclusion from the Government in-
creased in some measure his influence in moulding
public opinion in the country. His tongue was no
longer tied by obligations to his party chiefs ; and,
while giving a general support to the Government,
he felt himself at liberty to "blame with freedom "
whatever he thought amiss in the Administration.
Above all, on the great and burning question of
Catholic emancipation he once more prepared to
speak his mind. Hitherto he had kept silence
out of respect for the feelings of the old King.
But the "living reign" of George III. was now
at an end ; and there was less reason to consult
the prejudices of the Prince Regent. The grow-
ing tension in Ireland, moreover, clamoured ever
louder for the practical solution of a question
which had already been solved in principle by the
repeal of the penal code. On 22nd June, 1812,
accordingly, Canning moved a resolution binding
the House of Commons " early in the next session
of Parliament to take into consideration the laws
affecting Roman Catholics, with a view to a final
and conciliatory adjustment ". Emancipation was
not destined to be carried by Canning, nor in his
day ; but the voting on this occasion was signifi-
cant of the trend of opinion. The motion, which
Canning supported on grounds both of justice and
expediency, was carried by a majority of 129.
At the close of the session of 1812 Canning was
invited to contest Liverpool, a constituency which
he was destined to represent four times in Parlia-
ment. The first election contest, in which his most
formidable opponent was Brougham, is mainly
memorable for the series of speeches in which he
more clearly defined his general political attitude.
This marked, in fact, a stage in the transition
* * O
between traditional Toryism and modern Conser-
92 GEORGE CANNING
vatism. He stated unequivocally his intention to
resist any tampering with the existing balance of
the Constitution. The Crown, the two Houses of
Parliament and the Protestant establishment were
the four corner-stones of the firm foundation of
British liberty ; and, amid the universal downfall,
the freedom so based had alone survived. Why
then press for a reform which would only spell
revolution ? Were the House of Commons made
representative of the people's will, the Crown would
not long survive, and still less the House of Lords ;
for " by what assumption could three or four hun-
dred proprietors set themselves against the national
will ? " " Of popular representation," he said, " I
think we have enough for every purpose of jealous,
steady, corrective, efficient control over the acts of
that monarchical power which, for the safety and
the peace of the community, is lodged in one sacred
family, and descendible from sire to son." As for
the anomalies of the unreformed Parliament, these
were of little importance so long as the system
worked well ; and that it had on the whole worked
well Canning was persuaded. "I would have," he
said, " in the House of Commons a great variety of
interests, and I would have them find their way
there by a great variety of rights of election. . . .
As to the close boroughs, I know that through them
have found their way into the House of Commons
men whose talents have been an honour to their
CANNING AS A POLITICAL FREE-LANCE 93
kind. I cannot think that system altogether
vicious which has produced such fruits." This
forecast reads strangely enough to those who have
had fifty years' experience of the conservative in-
stincts of the British democracy. It was less
extravagant at a time when the country was
seething with discontent, the King a madman,
and the Regent scandalous and unpopular.
But if, in the matter of parliamentary reform, Can-
ning was in opposition to the more progressive spirit
of his age, in other questions he was equally at odds
with the extreme Tory opinions represented by a
majority of the Cabinet. His attitude on Catholic
emancipation has already been described, as well
as the motives by which it was determined. Even
more distinctively Liberal were the views which,
as the representative of a great trading constitu-
ency, he was gradually impelled to adopt on the
abrogation of the existing restrictions on the free
development of commerce. Typical of this leaning
toward the principles of free trade had been his
attitude in the debates on the renewal of the East
India Company's charter ; and it was in part owing
to his advocacy that the Company's monopoly was
modified and India thrown open to all British
traders. But if, in these matters, he was in op-
position to a strong section of the Government,
in the most important issue before the country —
the prosecution of the war — he was heartily at one
94 GEORGE CANNING
with the party in power. Twice during the year
1813 he spoke in Parliament on this subject. The
first speech, that of 7th July, was on the vote of
thanks to Lord Wellington for the victories in
Spain ; the second was on a vote of £3,000,000
for the expenses of the war. Both speeches were
remarkable examples of his oratory at its best —
and at its worst. As word-pictures his description
of the career of Napoleon, and of the effects of
his final downfall, was superb. His comparison of
the receding fortunes of the French Emperor with
the subsidence of a mighty flood " electrified the
House ". " The mighty deluge by which the
continent had been overwhelmed," he cried, " be-
gan to subside. The limits of nations were again
visible, and the spires and turrets of ancient estab-
lishments began to reappear above the subsiding
wave." As a rhetorical flight, or even as poetry,
this was fine ; nor was it untrue from the point
of view of discerning statesmanship. Equally
splendid, but infinitely less just and less intelli-
gent, was the picture drawn, in the later speech,
of Napoleon and his work. He compared the
Emperor to that sinister Indian deity whose
triumphal car passes over the bodies of prostrate
victims. And in the author of the Code Napoleon
who, whatever his colossal faults, had at least
brought to myriads of the human race their first
experience of enlightened administration, and
CANNING AS A POLITICAL FREE-LANCE 95
whose Empire, illustrated by a thousand monu-
ments of art or of engineering enterprise, was
founded mainly upon the ruins of obsolete tyran-
nies— in Napoleon Canning could see only a
monster, whose guiding principle was " hostility
to literature, to light and life," and whose object
was "to extinguish patriotism, and to confound
allegiance — to darken as well as to enslave — to
roll back the tide of civilisation — to barbarise as
well as to desolate mankind".
It would be interesting, but idle, to speculate as
to what part Canning would have played in the re-
settlement of those portions of Europe left exposed
by the subsidence of the Napoleonic flood, had
he, and not Castlereagh, represented the voice
of England in the Congress of Vienna. Hold-
ing as he did strong opinions as to the rights of
nations, he would scarcely have acquiesced quietly
in an arrangement from the foundations of which
the factor of nationality was all but absolutely ex-
cluded ; and his masterful temper would probably
have introduced another, and possibly fatal, ele-
ment of discord into the none too cordial harmony
of the Powers. On the whole, it is probably
fortunate for England and for Europe that, at
that time, the control of foreign affairs was in
the hands of the more conciliatory Castlereagh.
Canning's opportunity of usefulness was to come
later, when the European Alliance had done its
96 GEORGE CANNING
work in tiding the world over a perilous crisis and
threatened to become a tyranny more mischievous
than that which it had overthrown. For the pres-
ent the world needed peace ; and this the Emperor
Alexander's dream of a confederated Europe, in
which for the moment Castlereagh shared, tended
to secure.
As it was, Canning had no voice in the great
discussions of the years 1814 and 1815. Early
in the former year he determined to go abroad
for the benefit of his son's health ; and very
opportunely the post of special ambassador to
Lisbon was offered to him and accepted. The
royal family of Portugal were about to return
from their exile in the Brazils ; and, in view of
the additional expenses likely to be incurred on so
auspicious an occasion, the salary attached to the
embassy was raised to £14,400. This, together
with the fact that Canning had agreed to serve
under Castlereagh, after refusing to serve in the
Cabinet with him, caused his enemies to blas-
pheme ; and, in 1817, after his return to the
Government, of which he had become a member,
he was attacked in the House of Commons for what
was stigmatised as a piece of gross jobbery ; since
events had proved, what the Government was
accused of knowing all the time, that the Portu-
guese royal family had no immediate intention of
returning. This attack Canning repelled in a
CANNING AS A POLITICAL FREE-LANCE 97
brilliant speech, in which he refused to dissoci-
ate himself from the Government, declaring that,
in spite of the efforts of the mover and seconder
of the motion to leave his name out of the count,
they had in reality attacked him for " corruptly re-
ceiving what had been corruptly given" : a charge
which he proceeded to refute.
At Lisbon he remained for seventeen months, a
period covering the Congress of Vienna, the return
of Napoleon from Elba, and the interlude of the
Hundred Days. On his return, in 1816, he was
offered the Presidency of the Board of Control,
an office equivalent to the present Secretaryship
of State for India. There was no longer any
reason for his remaining outside the Cabinet.
The war was over ; and in matters of domestic
policy — notably on the great question of Reform —
he was in hearty sympathy with the Government.
He therefore accepted office; and remained a mem-
ber of the Liverpool Government until, on 12th De-
cember, 1820, he resigned once more, for reasons
which will be discussed later.
CHAPTER VII
AFTER THE PEACE
Castlereagh and the European Alliance — Condition of Eng-
land — Canning and democracy — The Six Acts —
Personal incidents — Death of George III. — Queen
Caroline — Resignation of Canning — Offer of the
Governor-Generalship of India — Suicide of London-
derry— Canning returns to the Foreign Office.
DURING the next four years Canning had but
little direct influence on the foreign policy
of the Government, and this was confined to those
questions which, from time to time, were submitted
by Castlereagh to the Cabinet. It is necessary,
however, to the understanding of Canning's policy
when he again took up the reins of foreign
affairs, that we should grasp the principles which
actuated the Government in their relations with
the Powers of the continent during this period.
These were determined mainly by the desire to
preserve peace, which they conceived to be threat-
ened by two things : the revolutionary spirit and
Russian ambition ; and against both these it was
their policy to erect barriers. This being so, a
(98)
AFTER THE PEACE 99
cordial co-operation in the "concert" established
by the Treaty of the Quadruple Alliance of 18th
November, 1815, was the obvious course to pursue ;
for this treaty not only provided for common action
against any revolutionary peril to the peace of
Europe, but incidentally, by establishing a sort of
international board of control of the Great Powers,
in which each had an equal voice, it made the
realisation of that European dictatorship at which
the Emperor Alexander was supposed to be aiming
impossible. Had the conferences of the Powers
been based, as Alexander desired, on the principles
of the Holy Alliance, every prince, great or small,
who had signed that treaty would have been
entitled to a voice in them, and in such assemblies
the chance of Russia's obtaining a preponderating
influence would have been much greater. But
with the Holy Alliance the other Powers, realising
this, would, after the first platonic expressions of
admiration for the lofty principles embodied in it,
have nothing to do. They preferred the more
certain balance of the narrower league ; and their
energies were, at the outset, largely directed to
keeping the Russian Emperor within its bounds.
In spite, however, of the doubts inspired by
Alexander's enigmatic character, there was some-
thing in the exalted idealism of his ostensible
aims which was bound to appeal to the imagina-
tion of statesmen who, in the long struggle with
100 GEORGE CANNING
Napoleon, had grown accustomed to consider the
common interests of Europe as one at least of the
ends of statecraft. Castlereagh may be forgiven
if, for a while, he lost sight of the "rights of
nations " through being dazzled by the vision of
the " Confederation of Europe ". For a moment,
at Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1818, the vision seemed to
him to have been all but realised, the " cobwebs of
diplomacy " to have been swept away, and Europe
to have received something of the consistency of a
single State. Yet, for all his enthusiasm for this
organised amity of the Powers, he soon recognised
its limits ; and though to the last his sympathy
with the " continental system " continued, he
never lost sight of the essential interests of Eng-
land, and protested against those pretensions of
the reactionary majority of the Alliance by which
these seemed to be threatened. In 1817, to the
Tsar's suggestion for a general disarmament, he
had replied, with admirable wit, that in this
respect Russia might show "a salutary example ".
In 1819 he protested in a circular letter to the
courts against the claim, formulated in the famous
Protocol of Troppau, of the right of the Alliance
to regulate, not only the external relations, but
the internal constitutions of States, as threatening
the very liberties of Great Britain, based as these
were on the Revolution of 1688.
It has been usual to ascribe to Canning's presence
AFTER THE PEACE 101
in the Cabinet the attitude of opposition gradually
taken up by the Government to the dictatorial
powers which, under the influence of Metternich,
the Grand Alliance was assuming in Europe. That
he was fundamentally opposed to any plan for
subordinating what seemed to him the just liberties
of nations is true enough ; but this view was shared,
though in an unequal degree, by Castlereagh him-
self. The latter protested against the repressive
policy of the Carlsbad decrees, and pointed out to
Metternich that it was not desirable to stir up the
peoples against the Governments ; and in spite of
his general sympathy with the lofty ideals of the
Emperor Alexander, he made it perfectly plain
that he recognised the limitations of their practical
application. " The system " of the Tsar, he de-
clared, " tended to a perfection not applicable to
this age nor to mankind ; it was but ' a beautiful
phantom which England cannot pursue,' for all
speculative policy is outside the range of her
faculties."
The mere fact that Canning continued for four
years a member of the Government which, accord-
ing to the orators of the Opposition, was engaged
in bartering away the securities of British liberty
at home and abroad, showed that he was in
agreement with the main line of their policy.
This was most certainly the case with regard to
domestic affairs. These were years of economic
102 GEORGE CANNING
and political crisis in England. The conclusion of
peace, by putting an end to the abnormal condi-
tions which had lasted so long as to have become
a part of the habit of the people, had thrown the
markets out of gear. The economic revolution,
caused by the introduction of labour-saving ma-
chinery, added to the confusion and the distress,
which were again enhanced by the famine price
of bread, due to the Corn Laws. That under these
circumstances discontent was widespread and
loudly expressed is not surprising. The voiceless
misery of the people found vent in acts of violence.
In the country starving mobs of labourers, in the
towns starving mobs of artisans, plundered and
burned. And when, out of the chaos of passions,
a united opinion began to take shape, it assumed
the form of a passionate demand for political re-
form, as the necessary first step towards the
redress of intolerable grievances. Canning was
not blind to the reality of the crisis, nor to the
suffering of which it was the cause ; but he did
not believe in parliamentary reform as its cure.
It was at this period that the most strenuous of
his speeches against what he regarded as a revolu-
tionary propaganda were made. To those who
argued that Parliament should represent the will
of the people he replied, that government was not
a matter of will, but of reason ; and that an un-
bridled democracy was as likely to be unreasonable
AFTER THE PEACE 103
as an unbridled despotism. While, therefore, on
the one hand he held it to be the duty of the
existing governing class to rule in accordance with
the dictates of sound reason, and to meet the
crying needs of the times with " the mildest and
most liberal legislation," he gave his unqualified
support to the Government in their policy of
suppressing the unruly agitation in favour of Re-
form. On 3rd February, 1817, a message of the
Prince Regent drew the attention of Parliament to
the state of the country, and bills were introduced
for the suppressing of seditious meetings and for
the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The
prominent part taken by Canning in the debate
on these measures proclaimed to all the world his
share in the unpopular policy of the Government ;
and when, in May, 1818, a bill of indemnity to
cover the acts of the Administration during the
suspension of Habeas Corpus was introduced, the
caustic wit with which he parried the assaults of
the Opposition roused bitter resentment, and he
was accused in an anonymous pamphlet of "jesting
with the misery of the people ". This charge, as
injurious as it was unjust, Canning was not prepared
to suffer in silence. To the author of " A Letter
to the Right Hon. George Canning," he wrote
under cover of Mr. Ridgway, the publisher, " for
the purpose of expressing to you my opinion that
— you are a liar and a slanderer, and want courage
104 GEORGE CANNING
only to be an assassin ". The gage thus thrown
down was not taken up. The anonymous author
who, we are pleased to know, on the authority of
Mr. Therry, lived to alter his opinion and to pro-
nounce more than one "brilliant eulogy on the
calumniated minister/' preferred the inglorious
safety of obscurity to the conspicuous risks of
Putney Heath ; and Canning was spared the ex-
perience of a second duel.
Twice more, indeed, had Canning the choice
between risking his honour or his life. In the
first case an offensive attack upon him, attributed
by the Times to Hume, and which seemed to stand
in need of "explanations," was fathered upon the
indiscretion of a reporter, for which the unhappy
wight was duly reprimanded at the bar of the
House. The second occasion was somewhat more
serious, but ended in an equally satisfactory man-
ner. Sir Francis Burdett, from his retreat in the
Marshalsea, where he was undergoing imprison-
ment for a political libel, wrote on 4th April,
1821, to the chairman of a Reform dinner, "that
Mr. Canning, I mention him as the champion of
the party, a part for the whole, should defend to
the utmost a system, by the hocus-pocus tricks of
which he and his family get so much public money,
can cause neither in me, nor in any man, suspicion
or anger — >
AFTER THE PEACE 105
" For 'tis their duty all the learned think
To espouse the cause by which they eat and drink ".
This certainly needed an " explanation " ; and as
soon as Burdett was released from custody Can-
ning wrote to him to demand one. The reply
was prompt and satisfactory. The writer dis-
claimed any intention of passing any criticism
more than all public men who benefit from the
system which they advocate are fairly and
necessarily subject to ; he had avoided making
any allusion to Canning's personal character, and
certainly had never had any intention of doing
so. This explanation was adjudged satisfactory ;
and the incident closed.
These personal incidents, unimportant perhaps
in themselves, are valuable as illustrating the
temper of the times and the characters of those
who played a part in them. On the whole, in
spite of the bitterness with which he was
assailed, the disinterestedness of Canning's atti-
tude was sufficiently acknowledged by all parties.
He had proclaimed himself the protagonist of un-
popular causes : of Catholic emancipation on the
one hand, of opposition to Reform on the other ;
yet the electors of a great constituency still con-
tinued to give him their confidence. Even when,
in 1819, he lent the weight of his eloquence to
help the passing of the hated " Six Acts," the
obvious honesty of his motives still served to sus-
106 GEORGE CANNING
tain his popularity ; and when at last, in 1822, on
taking office as Foreign Secretary, he resigned his
seat at Liverpool, in favour of a less exacting con-
stituency, men of all shades of opinion combined
to overwhelm him with expressions of regret and
esteem.
The passing of the Six Acts marked the high
tide of the Government's policy of repression.
But, in spite of this suspension of the most
cherished constitutional guarantees of personal
liberty, the unrest and the discontent which pro-
duced it continued to grow. A new factor of peril
was added when, in January, 1820, George III.
died. Some sentiment of affection and of loyalty
had gathered round the pathetic figure of the old
King, whose name had so long been associated with
all the glories and the sufferings of the country.
The new King was hated and despised ; and
when it was learned that, in spite of all efforts
made to prevent it, his ill-used wife — who had
lately been living abroad — was about to return
home to claim her rights as Queen, all the forces
of disaffection in the country prepared to gather
in support of her cause.
The position was one of singular difficulty and
danger ; and between the obstinate resentment of
the King against his wife, and the clamour of the
public in her favour, Ministers were in a perilous
plight. As long as the Queen remained abroad
AFTER THE PEACE 107
the question was comparatively simple ; and the
Ministry succeeded in persuading the King to
agree to an arrangement by which an annuity of
£50,000 should be paid to her so long as she
should not return to England. Unfortunately for
everybody concerned, the Queen allowed herself
to be persuaded, against the counsel of her legal
advisers, to return and brave the charges laid
against her. On 20th June, 18^9> amid the ac-
clamations of an enormous crowd, she made her
entry into London, and took up her residence at
the house of Alderman Wood, who had been
mainly instrumental in bringing her over. This
at once altered the entire situation. The Cabinet
had persuaded the King of the impolicy, from
the point of view of the public morals and interest,
of introducing a divorce bill into the House of
Lords. But the Queen's public appeal had made
compromise impossible ; popular opinion in her
favour was violently excited ; and the somewhat
ungenerous and very short-sighted attitude of the
Government in refusing, before she had been
proved guilty, to recognise her status so far even
as to provide her with a lodging in one of the royal
palaces, made the public revelation of the whole
sordid scandal necessary for their own justification.
In this matter Canning's position was one of
exceeding delicacy. He did not doubt the es-
sential truth of the charges against the Queen ;
108 GEORGE CANNING
but he had, in earlier days, been on terms of
friendly intimacy with her; and he was unable to
pass a severe judgment upon her, in view of the
provocations and misery of her position. He had
agreed to the original proposals of the Govern-
ment as to the conditional annuity, and also to
the exclusion of her name from the Liturgy. But
had any penal process been in contemplation, he
declared that "the person to be tried would not,
without injustice, have been divested, before the
trial, of any of the privileges of her present
position ". A penal process had now become in-
evitable ; and, on 1 7th August, the trial of the
Queen before the House of Lords on a charge
of adultery, with a view to a divorce, began.
With the proceedings connected with the trial
Canning had nothing to do. He had declared
vehemently at the outset that he would " never
place himself in the situation of accuser " towards
the Queen ; and he took the earliest opportunity
of placing his position very frankly before the
King himself, offering to resign his position in
the Cabinet should his Majesty desire him to do
so. His interview with the King, which does
credit to both, took place on 25th June. George
IV., who was capable at times of acting up to
his self-assumed part of "first gentleman of
Europe," appreciated Canning's motives for de-
siring not to take part in criminal proceedings
AFTER THE PEACE 109
against a person to whom he had stood in a
confidential relation, praised him for his manly,
honourable and gentleman-like conduct, and
begged him not to resign ; since, as far as he
himself was concerned, Canning should take any
attitude in the case he might choose.
Under these circumstances Canning decided to
remain in the Government ; and, in order to avoid
even an appearance of opposing their policy in
Parliament, he went abroad, and stayed away until
after the conclusion of the trial. This, meanwhile,
had taken a course neither wholly satisfactory, nor
wholly unsatisfactory, from the Government's point
of view. The revelations made in the course of the
trial had in a large measure explained and justified
the attitude of Ministers, which had seemed to the
uninstructed public dictated by subservience to the
royal will. On the other hand, the bill passed the
Lords by a bare majority of seven — too narrow a
margin to justify the Government in carrying it
farther. The question was thus left more or
less unsettled ; and when, in December, Canning
returned to London, he announced that there being
no immediate prospect of the adjustment of the
Queen's affairs, his position as a Minister in the
House of Commons would be full of difficulty and
inconvenience both to himself and the Government.
He, therefore, once more tendered his resignation ;
which was accepted.
110 GEORGE CANNING
Some controversy has arisen as to whether the
ostensible reasons were also the real reasons of
Canning's retirement. Mr. Stapleton has pointed
out, in his Introduction to the Correspondence, that
Canning's position in the Cabinet was not such as
to have compelled him to open his lips in Parlia-
ment on the Queen's affairs ; that the generous
attitude of the King, admitted by Canning himself,
precluded any chance of serious misunderstanding
in the most exalted quarters ; and, lastly, that even
after the Queen's death, which occurred in August,
1821, he deprecated Liverpool's efforts to have him
readmitted into the Government. The accumu-
lated evidence, indeed, seems to prove that his
reasons for retiring from the Government lay deeper
than a mere personal attitude on what was, after
all, a minor point of policy. The outcome of the
trial had, of course, been a blow to the King's self-
love ; and he felt much resentment at the attitude
of Canning's friends among the peers which had
contributed to it. But this would hardly have
served to keep Canning out of the Cabinet had he
really desired to re-enter it. On the other hand,
it formed an excellent excuse for holding aloof, if
he wished to do so, without giving his true reasons.
That he was increasingly out of sympathy with the
general policy of Castlereagh in foreign affairs is
plain from his language when he himself, in 1822,
succeeded to the Foreign Office. To his friend,
Charles Bagot, he wrote, on 5th November, 1822 :
GEORGK CANNING
From an engraving by I I'm. Say after lltf portrait by Laieren
AFTER THE PEACE 111
" You know ray politics well enough to know what
I mean, when I say that for Europe I shall be
desirous now and then to read England," a sentence
which certainly implies that, in his opinion, Castle-
reagh had too often read Europe where he should
have read England. Evidently he was ill content
with the somewhat equivocal part played by this
country at the Congresses of Troppau and Laybach.
England, it is true, had protested against the
monstrous claims of the Troppau Protocol ; but her
protests had been practically ignored ; and to his
masterful temper the mere suspicion was intolerable
that Great Britain was being dragged impotently
at the chariot wheels of the " Holy Alliance ".
Yet to have assumed openly at this juncture the
attitude which he took up when he came into
power would have been to break, not only with his
colleagues in the Government, but with his party
at large ; and this would have meant resigning for
ever all chance of giving his policy practical effect.
The affair of the Queen gave him an opportunity
of severing his connection with the Government,
without offence either to his colleagues or to his
party. At the same time, whether this explanation
of his attitude be correct or no, there can be no
suspicion that he hoped to return to the Govern-
ment as master within any measurable time. Yet,
not many months were to pass before he reaped
the reward of his reticence, and was once more
112 GEORGE CANNING
in effective control of the foreign policy of the
country.
From the middle of 1821 until the beginning of
1822 Canning was in Paris ; a visit mainly memor-
able for the close friendship which he formed with
Chateaubriand, whom Canning admired both as a
man and as a master of style. After his return to
England he continued in intimate correspondence
with the French statesman, to whose opinion in
matters of taste he was so sensitive, that we are
told he would sit up all night polishing the style
of the despatches intended for his eye. During
his stay in Paris his political activity was neces-
sarily slight. Once, however, in 1821, he came
over to speak in the House in favour of Catholic
emancipation ; and in the following year he again
exhibited the double tendency of his mind in
politics, by supporting a bill for the removal of
the disabilities of Roman Catholic peers on the
one hand, and opposing Lord John Russell's motion
for Reform on the other.
Meanwhile, however, an offer had been made to
him which threatened to withdraw him from the
stage of English politics altogether. In January,
1822, the Court of Directors of the East India
Company offered him the Governor-Generalship
of India, which the Marquis of Hastings was about
to resign. In this matter Canning at first took up
an attitude of some reserve. The prospect of ruling
AFTER THE PEACE 113
the Indian Empire appealed to his imagination and
to his ambition ; while the knowledge of Indian
affairs, which he had gained during his four years'
Presidency of the Board of Control, gave him con-
fidence in his power adequately to fill the most
splendid position open to a British subject. On
the other hand, to go to India meant practically
closing for ever the avenues to the realisation of
his lifelong ambition : the attainment of supreme
power at home. This latter argument, indeed,
carried at the time little weight ; for the avenues
seemed already closed. Apart from the ill-will of
the King, on which he still laid special stress, it
would have been impossible for him to join the
Government, except in such a capacity as should
give him a decisive voice in directing its foreign
policy. But Castle reagh's ten years' occupation of
the Foreign Office had given him a prescriptive
right to represent the interests of the country
abroad ; in age Canning had only a few months the
advantage of him ; and it seemed, therefore, that
in the order of nature there would be no opening
for him in the only office which he really coveted.
The fact that the post had been pressed upon him
before a vacancy had actually occurred gave him
an excuse for carefully weighing all the arguments
for and against its acceptance. In the end the
former prevailed ; and he made all his preparations
for leaving England. These had been practically
8
114 GEORGE CANNING
completed when the news reached him that Lord
Londonderry (Castlereagh), who was on the eve
of leaving for the Conference about to assemble at
Vienna, had, in a moment of insane depression,
committed suicide (12th August, 1822).
Canning was in the North when the news
reached him of the tragedy which, with such
terrible opportuneness, had cleared his path to
power in England. Its significance he realised at
once. In spite of the King's dislike, in spite of
the hatred of powerful members of the Government
for his principles and his policy, he knew that he
would be invited to take office. But he was deter-
mined, if he were forced to give up India, only
to join the Ministry on his own terms. It should
be all, or nothing. He was, in fact, in a position
to have his will. With the possible exception
of Peel, whose parliamentary experience was not
as yet great enough to justify the succession of
the Foreign Office passing to him, there was no
supporter of the Goveniment comparable to Can-
ning in reputation or intellect. Lord Liverpool,
moreover, was determined that Canning should
have the Foreign Office and a free hand to carry
out his ideas. In face of this attitude of the Prime
Minister, the King, with a sufficiently good grace,
allowed his objections to be overruled ; and the
Foreign Office, the only subordinate office which
Canning had declared he must accept, were it
AFTER THE PEACE 115
offered to him, was placed at his disposal. Until
the affair was absolutely settled, Canning had given
no hint in public of any impending change in his
plans. On 30th August he was entertained at a
great banquet at Liverpool, and in a farewell
speech to his constituents he reviewed the part
which, with their support, he had played in politics.
At the same time an address, signed by members
of all parties and opinions, bore witness to the
impression which his character had made upon
the great community which he had so long repre-
sented. He was not destined to stand for Liverpool
again ; but neither was he about to leave England.
On llth September he was offered, and accepted,
the seals of the Foreign Office.
CHAPTER VIII
THE AFFAIRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
Congress of Verona — Canning and the European Alliance —
The doctrine of Non-intervention — Ferdinand VII. and
the Spanish Liberals — Attitude of France — England and
the Spanish colonies — French invasion of Spain —
Troubles in Portugal — Intervention of Great Britain —
Canning and the Monroe doctrine — Recognition of the
South American Republics — Speech on the British inter-
vention in Portugal.
" " I *EN years," wrote Canning to a friend who
JL had congratulated him on his accession
to office, " have made a world of difference, and
have prepared a very different sort of ' world to
bustle in,' from that we should have found in 1812.
For fame, it is 'a squeezed orange,' but for public
good, there is something to do, and I will try, but
it must be cautiously, to do it." There was, in
fact, no lack of important questions to claim his
attention. With Russia there was a controversy
as to rights in the Bering Sea, foreshadowing the
world-issues of later diplomacy. The insurrection
which, in the spring of 1821, had broken out in
Greece, was rapidly developing into a situation
(116)
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 117
which threatened to open up the whole perilous
Eastern question. Most instantly important of
all, the affairs of Spain, and the attitude of legiti-
mist France toward the infectious revolutionary
unrest south of the Pyrenees, promised a complica-
tion highly dangerous to the peace of Europe and
the interests of Great Britain.
It was for the purpose mainly of discussing this
latter question that the Congress of the Powers
had been summoned to Verona in September, 1 822,
the very month of Canning's entry into office.
In this matter the initiative had been taken by M.
de Montmorency, the French Minister of War, an
enthusiast for the " European system," and anxious
to obtain from the high council of the Powers a
mandate for France to interfere in Spain, similar
to that which had authorised Austria to " restore
order " in Naples and in Piedmont. A pretension
so perilous to the traditional policy of Great
Britain toward the Peninsula could not possibly
have been admitted even by Castlereagh ; and, as
a matter of fact, England would, even had he
lived, have been unrepresented at the Congress,
but for the strongly expressed opinion of the King
— ever in favour of upholding the cause of "morality "
in Europe — and for the belief that the Eastern
question would also be discussed.
At the time of his death Lord Londonderry had
been on the eve of setting out for the conferences
118 GEORGE CANNING
arranged at Vienna, which were to be prelimi-
nary to the great gathering at Verona. The news
of his death was a great blow to Metternich, who,
in spite of recent differences, felt that Castle-
reagh had sympathised with the main lines of his
policy in a way that could not be expected of his
successor. But though his views of Metternich
and his "system" were sufficiently notorious,
Canning was too cautious a statesman to break
hastily with a policy which, indeed, he saw needed
accentuating in a certain direction rather than any
fundamental alteration. The Duke of Wellington,
then, was sent to Verona in Lord Londonderry's
place, with instructions to limit his part in the
Congress to one of observation and, if necessary,
of protest. In entrusting this mission to Welling-
ton, the most "European" of British statesmen,
Canning sufficiently advertised the fact that, how-
ever " insular " his policy might seem, he had
no intention of repudiating the obligations which
Great Britain had incurred by her adhesion to the
Grand Alliance.
Before proceeding to examine his policy in
the Spanish question, it will be well to deter-
mine what was Canning's general principle in
guiding the foreign affairs of England. Happily,
he has himself so clearly defined this, that we
cannot do better than restate it in his own words.
In his speech of 30th August, 1 822, at Liverpool
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 119
— already alluded to — he referred to the great
struggle between monarchy and democracy raging
abroad. In this warfare, England, firm on her
basis of compromise, needed not " to be a partisan
on either side, but, for the sake of both, a model,
and ultimately perhaps an umpire " ; and in a letter
of l6th September, 1823, to Wellesley he wrote
that he thought " it unadvisable to force into con-
flict the abstract principles of monarchy and demo-
cracy". The function of England, in fact, so far
as her obligations to Europe were concerned, was
to hold the balance between extreme principles :
a function for which her Constitution pre-eminently
fitted her. But, for the fulfilment of this function,
England had been impotent because she had been
entangled in the meshes of a system which ham-
pered her free action. In the atmosphere of the
Alliance her initiative had been stifled, because
the whole spirit of continental statesmanship
was alien to her genius. Castlereagh, for all his
general sympathy with Metternich's views, had
more than once pointed out to him that British
policy must depend ultimately upon the temper of
the British Parliament ; but the result had been
little more than to lead the Austrian statesman to
draw a distinction between the "free" autocratic
Powers and those that were " limited by a Con-
stitution— to the disparagement of the latter. The
protests of England against the dictatorial claims
120 GEORGE CANNING
of the Alliance came to be regarded as no more
than sops thrown to public opinion, and, as far as
the Allies themselves were concerned, were — to use
Canning's phrase — "mingled with the air". But
if there had been any doubt as to the genuineness
of Castlereagh's attitude in this matter, there could
be none as to that of Canning. "Our influence,"
he said, " if it is to be maintained abroad, must be
secure in the sources of strength at home : and the
sources of that strength are the sympathy between
the people and the Government ; in the union of
the public sentiment with the public counsels ; in
the reciprocal confidence and co-operation of the
House of Commons and the Crown." This prin-
ciple, so impossible for a statesman of Metternich's
temper to understand, excluded any possibility of
Great Britain allowing the claim of the Alliance,
defined in the Troppau Protocol, to intervene, for
the supposed benefit of Europe, in the internal
affairs of independent States ; for this claim once
acknowledged would have justified the Powers in
intervening to suppress popular movements in
England itself.
The declamations of Opposition orators about
" Cossacks encamped in Hyde Park " were, in
fact, not altogether words and wind. Already
Metternich was complaining of the tone of
speeches in Parliament and the popular support
given to " revolutionary agitation " ; while, in
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 121
France, the Eloile, the organ of the " Ultras,"
was calling attention to Ireland, and declaring that
an insurrection there would embroil England, and
so prove a menace to France and to all Europe.
"Naples, Piedmont, Spain, Ireland!" wrote Can-
ning, " who shall draw the line, if the principle of
' European question ' be once admitted ? " In the
face of this " areopagite " attitude of foreign opinion,
indeed, his language was quite unambiguous. " The
pretensions of Prince Metternich," he wrote, "in
respect of this country, appear to me to be perfectly
unreasonable ; they must be founded upon some
strange misconception of our obligations, our
interests and our feelings . . . England is under
no obligation to interfere, or to assist in interfering,
in the internal concerns of independent nations.
The specific engagement to interfere in France is an
exception so studiously particularised as to prove the
rule. The rule I take to be, that our engagements
have reference wholly to the state of territorial
possession settled at the peace ; to the state of
affairs between nation and nation ; not (with the
single exception above stated) to the affairs of any
nation within itself. / thought the public declarations
of my predecessors had set this question completely at
rest." "The pervading principles " of the Alliance,
he wrote again, in 1825, to the Russian ambassador,
' ' are those established by the treaties of Vienna ;
viz., the preservation of the general peace and the
122 GEORGE CANNING
maintenance against all ambition and encroachment
of the existing territorial distribution of Europe."
In taking up this attitude, then, Canning, accord-
ing to his own statement, was but continuing the
policy of his predecessor in office. But while
Castlereagh, for all his careful stewardship of
British interests, had to the last been more or
less dazzled by the vision of the Confederation
of Europe, Canning reverted with conviction, and
even with enthusiasm, to the purely national prin-
ciple. " Our business is to preserve the peace "of
the world, and therefore the independence of the
several nations that compose it. In resisting the
Revolution in all its stages, we resisted the spirit
of change to be sure, but we resisted also the
spirit of foreign domination." He greeted with
enthusiasm the new-old spirit which Villele
brought into the policy of France. " Villele,"
he said, " is a Minister of thirty years ago —
no revolutionary scoundrel : but constitutionally
hating England, as Choiseul and Vergennes used
to hate us — and so things are getting back to a
wholesome state again. Every nation for itself,
and God for us all. Only bid your Emperor
(Alexander I.) be quiet ; for the time for Areo-
pagus, and the like of that, is gone by." In this
spirit, then, it was that Canning prepared to deal
with the crisis arising from the affairs of Spain.
The trouble had begun in 1820, in which year a
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 123
successful revolution had forced upon the unwilling
King, Ferdinand VII., the impossible Constitution
of 1812, which he had accepted, only immediately
to repudiate it, on his restoration in 1814. For
two years Spain had remained the scene of con-
tinued disorder, due partly to the opposition
of the peasantry and of the clerical party to a
Government which, in the true doctrinaire spirit,
rode rough-shod over their prejudices, partly to
the hatred of the provinces for a centralised system
which threatened to rob them of the last vestiges
of their traditional liberties ; while the King, de-
prived of all power, was made the mouthpiece
of a policy he loathed. At the outset the Em-
peror Alexander had offered to march 100,000
Russians through Southern Europe to the res-
cue of oppressed royalty in Spain ; but to Met-
ternich this drastic remedy seemed worse than
the disease, and he had managed to persuade the
Tsar that the " material sickness " of Spain could
not prove dangerous to Europe, whose illness was
" moral ," and that, isolated by the Pyrenees, it
might safely be left to itself. But though Met-
ternich might view with equanimity the raging of
a pestilence so remote from his own doors, it was
otherwise with the Government of France. In the
spring of 1821 the ultra-royalists had come into
office, under the able leadership of Villele ; and to
these the condition of Spain seemed increasingly
124 GEORGE CANNING
intolerable, a menace to the stability of the
monarchy in France, an insult to the whole House
of Bourbon in the person of King Ferdinand. An
outbreak of yellow fever in the Peninsula gave them
an excuse for taking some action ; and, under pre-
tence of establishing a sanitary cordon, a vast army
of observation was concentrated along the Spanish
frontier. Farther than this, however, even had
opinion within the Ministry as to further policy
been absolutely united, they dared not go with-
out consulting the Powers of the Alliance ; and it
was primarily for taking the sense of Europe on
this question that the Congress had been sum-
moned to meet at Verona.
When, in October, the Congress assembled,
Montmorency, the French plenipotentiary, laid
before it the question whether, in the event of
France being forced to declare war on Spain, she
would be able to reckon on the moral and material
support of the Allies. To this question Russia,
Austria and Prussia returned favourable replies ;
but Wellington, acting on his instructions, made
so vigorous a protest, that Montmorency dared
not sign a definitive treaty with them. By way
of gaining time it was now suggested that the
Allied Powers should try the effect of presenting
identical notes at Madrid, calling on the Spanish
Government to mend its ways. Again England
protested, declaring her intention, not only of not
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 125
holding a common language with the Allies, but of
making no communication to the Spanish Govern-
ment whatever on the subject of its relations with
its own country. The other Powers persisting,
Wellington was instructed to withdraw from the
conferences altogether.
The situation was now highly curious as well
as critical. While Canning was championing the
liberty of Spain in Europe, he was in angry con-
troversy with the Spanish Government as to its
high-handed interference with British trade in
South American waters ; for Spain was, in fact, as
he humorously summed up the situation, "holding
out her European hand for charity, and with her
American one picking our pockets ". Under the old
law of Spain intercourse with the Spanish colonies
had been confined to Spanish traders ; but during
the war the colonies had revolted from the mother-
country, and a lucrative trade had sprung up
between them and Great Britain. All efforts of
the restored monarchy in Spain to bring back
the colonies to their allegiance had failed ; but,
none the less, the Spanish Government still
claimed the right to prevent any foreign country
trading with them ; and, acting on instructions
from Madrid, Spanish warships had laid violent
hands on British vessels. Moreover, the unsettle-
inent caused by a long and inconclusive state of
Avar had led to the establishment of flourishing
126 GEORGE CANNING
communities of pirates in the Spanish West Indies ;
so that British trade with South America had to
run the gauntlet of ferocious sea-robbers on the one
side, and Spanish men-of-war on the other. This
was a condition of things which the British Govern-
ment could not lightly tolerate ; and, since all
remonstrances at Madrid proved useless, it was
at length decided to take action. On 18th Octo-
ber, 1822, the British ambassador at Madrid was
instructed to demand " instant atonement " for
the seizure of the Lord Collingtvood, which had
been condemned for trading with "the rebels of
Buenos Ayres " ; at the same time it was an-
nounced that reprisals would be made for every
attack on British shipping ; while, since Spain
seemed unable, or unwilling, to rid the high seas
of pirates, a British force was ordered to disembark
in Cuba for the purpose of exterminating the pirate
nests. At the same time the Spanish Government
was informed that this latter act was not to be con-
sidered " unfriendly ".
Meanwhile, the Allies at Verona had not advanced
beyond the somewhat tentative expedient of the
"identical notes". Corporate action had been
again suggested ; but this, in view of the Emperor
Alexander's generous offer, once more renewed, to
save the French troops from possible infection in
the revolutionary atmosphere of Spain, by marching
a reliable Russian army over the Pyrenees, had
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 127
seemed to Metternich, under the circumstances,
too perilous an expedient ; and the project dropped.
The ambassadors of the three autocratic Powers,
indeed, solemnly delivered their identical lectures
to the Spanish Government ; and, these having no
effect, as solemnly withdrew from Madrid. But
the fate of Spain, in fact, hung upon the determina-
tion of the French Government ; and within the
French Government opinion was divided. To
Montmorency intervention in Spain was a matter
of principle, to be determined by consideration of
the interests of Europe. To Villele it was an affair
of policy, to be settled in accordance with the
interests of France. His aim was to restore French
influence at Madrid, and ultimately, perhaps, by
helping Spain to recover her colonies, to win for
France solid commercial advantages ; and these
ends he hoped to attain by peaceful means. His
views had the support of the King and of the
majority of his colleagues ; and Montmorency,
foreseeing the wreck of his policy, resigned. The
act was too precipitate. To mark the moderation
of France, indeed, in contrast with the offensive
admonitions of the three autocratic Powers, the
French ambassador had been instructed to hold
back for a while the identical note with which he
had been entrusted ; and when it was presented,
the bitter medicament was disguised in a conserve
of friendly assurances designed to make it more
128 GEORGE CANNING
palatable. It none the less, however, failed of its
effect. The French Government had, in fact,
advanced too far on the path of war to draw back
with impunity. The insults of the Spanish press
had wrought to fury more than the royalist opinion
of France ; and, above all, the Government feared
the effect of withdrawing from the frontier the
great army which, for weeks past, had been fed on
hopes of glory. Villele was forced to yield to the
clamour ; and on 23rd January, 1823, Louis XVIII.
announced to the Chambers, in a speech from the
throne, that he had withdrawn his ambassador from
Madrid, and that 100,000 Frenchmen were about
to march, " invoking the God of St. Louis, for
the sake of preserving the throne of Spain for a
descendant of Henry IV., and of reconciling that
fine kingdom with Europe". "Let Ferdinand
VII.," he said, "be free to give to his peoples in-
stitutions which they cannot hold but from him ! "
Throughout this entanglement Canning had ex-
erted himself to the uttermost to persuade the
contending parties to accept the mediation of
England. War, he declared, must end either in
the fall of the Bourbon monarchy in France, or of
the Constitution in Spain. Wellington was com-
missioned to plead, as Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo,
with the Spanish Govemment, in order to per-
suade it to modify its Constitution sufficiently to
buy off the resentment of France. The French
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 129
'Government was warned against the danger to
the monarchy from entangling themselves in a new
Peninsular War. Neither Spain nor France would
listen. On the other hand, the French speech from
the throne seemed a direct challenge to Great
Britain ; and Canning vigorously protested against
it. England had in 1688, once for all, rejected
the doctrine that popular rights are £he gift of
the Crown ; and Canning repudiated the publicly
announced claim of France to make her own
example in this respect a rule for foreign nations,
and, still more emphatically, her pretension to
enforce this claim in virtue of the relationship
between the ruling dynasties of the two kingdoms.
France was reminded that the terms of the Treaty
of Utrecht had not yet fallen obsolete ; and, by
way of enforcing this argument, the clause in the
King's speech announcing the neutrality of Great
Britain in the coming war was at the last moment
omitted.
In spite of this bellicose hint, however, Canning
had no intention of pressing his opposition to the
designs of France to the supreme issue. In Par-
liament loud voices were raised in favour of flying
to the assistance of a free country in jeopardy,
others in favour of helping by arms to sustain the
threatened balance of power. Neither argument
seemed to Canning to carry much weight. In his
politics there was little room for sentiment ; and
9
130 GEORGE CANNING
he quoted against the Opposition a sentence from
a speech delivered by one of their own leaders,
Lord Grey, in 1810 : " That generous magnanimity
and high-minded disinterestedness which justly
immortalise the hero, cannot and ought not to be
considered justifiable motives of political action ;
because nations cannot afford to be chivalrous and
romantic ". As for the balance of power, he
pointed out that the France of 1823 was not that
of 1808 ; and that Spain, stripped of her colonies,
was no longer the world-power which she had been
in the days of Louis XIV. Any advantage that
France might obtain by occupying the Peninsula
could, as a last resort, be counterbalanced by Great
Britain recognising the independence of the Spanish
American colonies.
It was not long before Canning was called upon
to give effect to the policy he had thus fore-
shadowed. The Due d'Angouleme, at the head
of 95,000 men, crossed the Bidassoa on 7th April,
1823. Within six weeks the resistance of Liberal
Spain was crushed ; and on 20th March Ferdinand
was free to repudiate once more all his oaths, and
to enter again on the unfettered abuse of absolute
power. The triumph of the reaction in Spain,
moreover, affected also the neighbouring kingdom
of Portugal, in which the interests of Great Britain
were even more intimately concerned. The special
mission of Canning to Lisbon in ] 8 1 6 had been for
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 131
the purpose of welcoming the King on his return
from Brazil. The King, however, had not returned,
and had appointed Marshal Beresford Regent dur-
ing his absence. This arrangement had displeased
the Portuguese, who had some reason to think
that their interests were being subordinated to
those of England and of Brazil; and, in 1820,
fired by the example of Spain, they rose in in-
surrection, deposed the Regent in his absence, and
proclaimed the Spanish Constitution of 1812. In-
vited by the provisional Government, John VI.
now hurried back from Brazil, and, in spite of the
protests of his Queen Carlotta and of his second
son Dom Miguel, accepted the Constitution. His
eldest son, Dom Pedro, was left as Regent in Brazil,
with instructions to assume the crown of that
country, should circumstances render it advisable,
in order to preserve it to the House of Braganza.
This contingency occurred in 1822, when, on 12th
October, the Junta at Rio proclaimed the inde-
pendence of Brazil, and Pedro assumed the title
of Constitutional Emperor.
Meanwhile, at Lisbon, a war of intrigue had
been going on, the party in opposition to the
King and to the constitutional Government being
headed by Dom Miguel. The situation was, more-
over, complicated by the strife of parties assuming
a quasi-international character ; for the Liberals
leaned to the English Alliance, and received the
132 GEORGE CANNING
moral support of Great Britain ; while the French
ambassador, M. de Neuville, in the hope of ousting
the influence of England in favour of that of France,
had long been intriguing in the interests of Dom
Miguel and his faction. When, therefore, in 1822,
Dom Miguel, encouraged by the absolutist triumph
in Spain, by a successful coup d'etat suppressed the
Constitution, this was rightly regarded as a serious
blow to English influence in Portugal, and a menace
to her trade interests.
The downfall of the Constitution had, at the
outset, been joyfully welcomed by the Portuguese,
who, like the Athenians of old, ever desired to
hear or see some new thing. But they soon
wearied of Miguel's mediaeval methods of govern-
ment ; and, in response to their clamour, the
easy-going King appointed a Commission, under
the " Anglophile " M. de Palmella, to draw up a
new Constitution. Against this concession to re-
volutionary agitation the ambassadors of the three
autocratic Powers protested, and the " Apostolic-
als " raged ; till Palmella, fearing a fresh resort to
violence, appealed to Great Britain to despatch a
force to help the Government establish the Con-
stitution.
For Canning the situation was a singularly
awkward one. To refrain from sending help
would be to risk, not only the oversetting of
the Constitution, but the permanent eclipse of
British influence in Lisbon. To send help would
be to give the lie to all his protests against
" intervention " — would be, in fact, no more than
an imitation, in a reverse sense, of the action of
Austria in Naples and Piedmont. He refused,
then, to guarantee the Constitution of Portugal
against internal troubles, as he had refused to help
in saving that of Spain. Yet both British in-
terests and British honour forbade that England
should stand aside under the actual circumstances.
The relations between the two countries had long
been extremely intimate ; and, under the old
treaties of l66l and 1763, the validity of which
had been reaffirmed in 1815 at Vienna, Great
Britain had undertaken, in return for commercial
advantages, the special duty of protecting Portugal
against foreign aggression. Canning, then, so far
strained the doctrine of Non-intervention as to
send a British squadron to the Tagus, to act as a
" moral support " to the Government ; and when
it became increasingly apparent that France was
using the reactionary zeal of the autocratic Powers
for her own ends — to oust British influence from
Lisbon — and had joined with them in violent
threats against the Constitution, he declared that
Great Britain would resist by force of arms any
attempt of the Powers to intervene in Portugal.
" This policy, at once vigorous and restrained,
was in the long run successful. When, in April,
134 GEORGE CANNING
1824, the conflict within the Portuguese Govern-
ment culminated once more in a " pronuncia-
mento" of Dom Miguel, the King and the
Liberal Ministers found a refuge on board the
British warships, and the "moral support" of
the English admiral sufficed to frighten the
successful conspirator into submission and exile.
For a while, indeed, even after this temporary
collapse of Miguel's schemes, the struggle be-
tween France and England in Lisbon continued;
for even the Liberal leaders were offended at
Canning's attitude towards the independence of
Brazil. But in the end the continued hostility
of the autocratic Powers towards the Constitution
destroyed the influence at Lisbon of De Neuville,
who had identified himself with their views.
Meanwhile, on Canning's initiative, a conference
of the representatives of England, Austria, Por-
tugal and Brazil, in July, 1825, assembled in
London, to define the relations between Brazil
and the mother-country. During its session it
was discovered that M. de Subserra, the anti-
British Portuguese Prime Minister, was endeavour-
ing to effect a separate settlement with Brazil.
Canning at once demanded, and obtained, his
dismissal ; De Neuville was shortly afterwards re-
called, and the victory of British diplomacy was
complete.
The independence of Brazil, which was formally
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 1S5
acknowledged by the recognition by the King of
Portugal, on 29th August, 1825, of the Emperor
Pedro's title, had already been practically recog-
nised by the signature, in July, 1824, of a com-
mercial treaty between Brazil and Great Britain.
This recognition, in logic, involved that of the
Spanish South American colonies, which had long
ceased to have any de facto dependence upon Spain.
This Canning allowed ; but he none the less pro-
ceeded in the matter with characteristic caution.
He studied the question, as usual, primarily from
the point of view of British interests ; and these
might easily have been jeopardised by hasty
action. That any recognition of republics beyond
the Atlantic would still further offend the auto-
cratic Powers exercised him little ; the less so
since, in the event of trouble arising in that
quarter, he could reckon on the sympathy of the
United States. The claim of the Alliance to
interfere in the quarrel between Spain and her
colonies had been repudiated by Castlereagh at
Aix-la-Chapelle ; but it had been none the less
once and again revived, and it was this that
primarily led to the enunciation of the famous
" Monroe doctrine " of " America for the Ameri-
cans," first proclaimed in the message of President
Monroe to the Senate on 2nd December, 1824.
Against the extreme claims announced in this,
indeed, Canning, in the name of the British Gov-
136 GEORGE CANNING
ernment, had protested. For the United States
to pretend to a lien on all the unoccupied terri-
tories of the American continent, and to a right
to exclude all European Powers, including Great
Britain, from colonising them, could be justified,
in his opinion, neither by international law, nor
by the actual balance of power in America. In
the difficult " Oregon question," too, involving
the rights of Great Britain and the United States
to the north-western sea-board of America, Can-
ning was inclined to resist the demands of the
American Government ; and he pointed out to Lord
Liverpool, to whom the whole matter seemed of
little importance, how valuable to the future trade
with China the English possessions on the Pacific
coast were likely to become. But though, as be-
tween Great Britain and her revolted daughter,
the Monroe doctrine was calculated to breed
trouble, it was exceedingly useful in forwarding
Canning's policy in the matter of the Spanish
colonies; for the attitude of the United States
once made plain, all thought of European inter-
vention in America was at an end.
On this point, indeed, Canning had come to a
complete understanding with Mr. Rush, the Ameri-
can Minister in London, and to his influence the
policy of the United States in the matter may be
partly ascribed. But there were other considera-
tions involved. In the first place, the revolted
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 137
colonies were only gradually settling down ; and
until they had acquired some form of stable
government it would be worse than useless to
enter into relations with them. Moreover, under
pressure of the danger from France the constitu-
tional Government of Spain had conceded the
demands of England in the matter of the right
to trade with her American possessions ; and, so
long as the Spanish King should be content to
maintain the treaties signed by him while still
in the hated bonds of the Constitution, it would
have been needless, from the point of view of
British interests, to offend the susceptibilities of
Spain by any formal acknowledgment of what was
for all practical purposes already recognised.
The whole question was ultimately determined
by the position of the French in the Peninsula.
Canning had not thought it necessary to resist the
French invasion of Spain, because Spain was no
longer the " Empire on which the sun never set,"
no longer a menace to the world-power of Great
Britain. Had France been content, or able, to
withdraw, after setting up once more the ab-
solutism of the Bourbon monarchy, British interests
would not have been seriously threatened. But
France had not withdrawn, and showed no im-
mediate disposition to do so. And so long as she
remained in Spain, the danger was ever present
that she would, in her own interests, help the
138 GEORGE CANNING
Spanish monarchy to reconquer its colonial Empire.
It was to obviate this peril that Canning decided to
recognise the independence of the South American
States. Columbia and Mexico, the first to establish
a settled government, were recognised in December,
1824. The recognition of the others followed, from
time to time, as the Government was assured that
they were in a position to maintain their engage-
ments with Great Britain. Canning, in the famous
speech of 16'th December, 1826, defended and
explained this policy. " If France occupied Spain,"
he said, " was it necessary, in order to avoid the
consequences of that occupation, that we should
blockade Cadiz ? No. I looked another way — 1
sought materials 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."
The recognition of the South American States,
though in some sort the climax, was by no means
the end of the conflict between French and British
interests in the Peninsula. The death of King
John VI. reunited the crowns of Portugal and
Brazil once more, in the person of the Emperor
Pedro ; and the whole question, which had been
temporarily settled by the declaration of Brazilian
independence, threatened once more to be re-
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 1S9
opened. To meet this danger Canning instructed
Lord Ponsonby, who was about to start to take up
his duties as British Minister at Buenos Ayres, to
break his journey at Rio and to suggest to the
Emperor that he should abdicate the throne of
Portugal in favour of his daughter, Donna Maria
la Gloria, and reconcile the opposing factions in
the kingdom by marrying the latter to her uncle,
Dom Miguel. This course was actually followed ;
but, before resigning the crown, Pedro issued a
charter establishing a Liberal Constitution in the
kingdom. The document embodying this was
carried to Portugal, without instructions from the
British Government, by Sir Charles Stuart, who
had been on a diplomatic mission on behalf of the
Portuguese Government to Rio. Canning at once
saw the misunderstandings and troubles which, as
a matter of fact, actually accrued from this ap-
parently innocuous proceeding. Apart from the
fact that it would appear to foreign countries
like an act of that very intervention which Can-
ning had all along repudiated, it was peculiarly
obnoxious to France, which, having just suppressed
the " revolution " in Spain, could not view with
equanimity the establishment, under the aegis of
a foreign Power, of a Liberal Constitution in the
neighbouring kingdom. Austria, too, which had
throughout acted in harmony with Great Britain
in the Brazilian question, would be offended by
140 GEORGE CANNING
an act so offensive to Dom Miguel, whom, since
the failure of his last coup d'ttat, she had been
keeping out of mischief at Vienna. Lastly, Miguel
himself, the very incarnation of absolutism, would
never honestly accept an instrument by which his
powers would be so seriously limited. Canning,
moreover, who was the soul of honour, resented
the air of underhand intrigue which the whole
affair would wear in the eyes of the world. Yet,
the Constitution having been proclaimed, nothing
remained, in his opinion, but to make the best of
the situation. He endeavoured, by a frank ex-
planation, to soothe the suspicious temper of the
Powers, and, while disclaiming any intention on
the part of England to interfere in the internal
concerns of Portugal, begged them to accept the
fait accompli, rather than to plunge Portugal again
into the miseries of civil strife by encouraging the
irreconcilable temper of Miguel.
Canning's fears were justified by the event.
Miguel, indeed, took the oath of fealty at Vienna ;
but his partisans in Portugal rose against the con-
stitutional regime ; bands of " Apostolicals," openly
armed and organised with the connivance of the
Spanish Government, crossed the frontier from
Spain to their aid ; and the Portuguese Govern-
ment, hard pressed and unable to depend on the
loyalty or the discipline of the army, appealed
to Great Britain for help. On 17th December,
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 141
1826, the first British contingent sailed for
Lisbon.
The expedition to Portugal Canning defended,
in his speech of 12th December, 1826, on the
ground of ancient treaties by which Great Britain
was bound to defend that country in case of hos-
tile attack from outside. The attitude of the
Spanish Government, and its open encouragement
of the armed bands which crossed the frontiers
of Spain, constituted in his opinion such a foreign
attack. In a letter of 4th February, 1827, to Lord
Liverpool, he not only clearly defined the objects
of the expedition, but also suggested an improve-
ment in the general situation which might result
from it. The objects were "first, to repel foreign
aggression, and to put down (or enable the
Government of Portugal to put down) the in-
ternal disturbances which had grown out of it.
Secondly, to obtain from Spain atonement for
the past, by the establishment of direct political
relations with Portugal ; and security for the
future, by satisfactory assurances and engage-
ments. Thirdly, to watch over the full perform-
ance of such engagements and assurances."
The improvement in the general situation
would accrue from the opportunity the presence
of the British troops in Portugal would give for
coming to a friendly agreement with France as
to the evacuation of Spain. The presence of the
142 GEORGE CANNING
French troops in Spain was a constant menace
to the security of European peace ; Villele him-
self was anxious to withdraw in any way consistent
with the honour and the interests of France ; and
he might be helped out of a difficult position by
making the recall of the British troops from
Portugal unostentatiously reciprocal upon the re-
tirement of the French army from Spain.
The whole letter in which these views are ex-
pressed is interesting as showing the clear grasp
of Canning on a very difficult and complicated
situation. Unhappily his firmness and moderation
were not destined to unravel the tangled knot.
Dom Miguel took the oaths as Regent of Portu-
gal on 2pth February, 1827 ; and in the following
April the British troops were withdrawn. Can-
ning did not live to see the final evacuation of
Spain by the French, and only survived long
enough to witness the fulfilment of his own fore-
bodings in Miguel's usurpation of the throne and
the overthrow of the ill-fated Constitution.
CHAPTER IX
THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE
The " Eastern question " and the Continental Alliance —
Insurrection in Greece — Metternich and Alexander I.
— Canning and the Greek question — The Flag of
Greece recognised — Intervention of Mehemet Ali —
Death of Alexander I. — Mission of Wellington to St.
Petersburg — The " Protocol of St. Petersburg " — Can-
ning and Nicholas I. — Appeal of the Greeks to Great
Britain — Conference of London — The Treaty of
London.
" r I ^HE issue of Verona," wrote Canning on
J. 3rd January, 1823, "has split the one
and indivisible Alliance into three parts as dis-
tinct as the Constitutions of England, France and
Muscovy." This was, in his view, a consummation
devoutly to be wished ; and he declared, with a
note of exultation, that England would hence-
forward "revolve in her own orbit". Of this dis-
quieting fact continental statesmen were early,
and uneasily, conscious. " M. Canning," reported
Prince Lieven from London to his master the Tsar,
"is more insular than European;" and Metternich,
(143)
144 GEORGE CANNING
with an unconscious modification of Canning's
astronomical metaphor, spoke of him as a "malevo-
lent meteor " hurled by Providence upon England
and upon Europe.
Yet Canning's breach with the " European sys-
tem " only hastened a dissolution which was, sooner
or later, inevitable. Verona had revealed the rift in
the lute ; but the music would have been silenced
there and then, had Metternich not succeeded in
withdrawing from the debates of the Congress a
subject far more delicate than that of Spain —
that which became known from this time as the
Eastern question. It was, indeed, shrewdly sus-
pected even then that Metternich's zeal for crush-
ing the Revolution in Western Europe was largely
inspired by his anxiety to distract the mind of the
Russian autocrat from the affairs of the East. So
long as he could hold Alexander under the spell of
the Holy Alliance and fix his wandering imagina-
tion on his vision of himself as the peace-maker of
Europe, there was the less risk the Emperor turning
again to a purely Russian policy and — what Austria
above all things dreaded — attempting to realise
the dream of Peter the Great and of Catherine :
that of the Orthodox Empire of the East re-
established, under the Russian Tsars, on the banks
of the Bosphorus.
This fear of a renewed Russian attack on Turkey,
which had more or less exercised the minds of the
THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 145
other Powers ever since they had noted with mis-
giving the conscious exclusion of the Sultan from
Alexander's Holy League, received fresh point
when the news reached the Congress at Laybach
that a Greek insurrection had broken out in the
Danubian principalities, and that the leader of
this insurrection, Prince Hypsilanti, was a general
in the Russian service. Metternich, indeed, suc-
ceeded in persuading the Tsar to disavow all
sympathy with the movement ; which, in con-
sequence, speedily collapsed. A fresh, and far
more serious, rising, however, immediately after-
wards broke out in the Morea, and spread with
great rapidity throughout the mainland and islands
of Greece. The war from the first assumed a re-
ligious character and one of singular ferocity on
both sides. Wholesale atrocities on the part of
the insurgents were met by even more wholesale
cruelties on the other side ; and these culminated,
on the eve of Easter, 1821, in the official murder of
the Orthodox Patriarch at Constantinople. Again
it seemed as though a Russian movement against
Turkey was inevitable. The sentiment of the
Russian people had been from the first with
their co-religionists ; the martyrdom of the head
of the Orthodox Church raised their excitement
to fever heat. Had Alexander been in Russia he
would probably have been swept away in the fierce
tide of resentment, and war would at once have
10
146 GEORGE CANNING
resulted. But Metternich was at his elbow to
persuade him once more to subordinate the feel-
ings of Russia to the interests of Europe ; and,
though diplomatic relations between Russia and
the Ottoman Empire were broken off, the Greeks
were left to fight their battles alone. When, in
1822, the Hellenic provisional Government sent
envoys to Verona, to solicit aid of the Tsar, they
were turned back upon the road by a message that ~
they would not be received.
Such was the general situation when Canning
came into office. On the question at large he
was, at the outset, in agreement with Metternich.
Both Great Britain and Austria were committed
to the policy of preserving Turkey as a bulwark
against Russian ambition ; both were equally in-
terested in preventing Russia from taking up arms
as the champion of Greece. For all his ill opinion
of Metternich and his methods, Canning acknow-
ledged the value of the clever diplomacy by which
he had succeeded in postponing an issue fraught
with peril to the world's peace ; and though he
lacked Metternich's cynicism, he to all intents
and purposes shared his opinion that the con-
flagration in Turkey would be best left to burn
itself out " beyond the borders of civilisation ".
Metternich believed, wrongly as the issue proved,
in the rapid victory of the Turks ; and this was a
result which Canning, as a statesman, would have
THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 147
done nothing to prevent, had it appeared the
readiest road to a settlement ; but when the
stubborn spirit of the insurgents made this solu-
tion impossible, he was glad that an intervention,
dictated in the first instance by the interests of
England, made also for those of Hellas.
Nothing is more striking, or more characteristic,
than Canning's whole attitude in the Greek ques-
tion. By nature and by education his sympathies
were with Greece, then even more than now the
land of undefiled classic memories. Yet though
the air was full of voices urging him to go to the
assistance of the noble descendants of Plato and
of Pericles, he kept the even balance of his judg-
ment. "I have never understood," he said, "why
this particular war, of all others, is selected as
the one that must be put an end to, at whatever
cost. I am of quite another opinion ; I think that
the cost may be much greater than the mischief."
If, then, Canning's portrait has its place at Athens
among the liberators of Hellas, this is no more
than a memorial of the fact that his policy,
though dictated from first to last by considera-
tion for British interests, involved ultimately the
emancipation of Greece.
So long as the effects of the war were confined
within the limits of the Turkish dominions, Can-
ning had a double motive for leaving it to itself;
for any intervention would not only have opened
148 GEORGE CANNING
up the whole Eastern question, with all its incal-
culable and perilous issues, but would have been a
violation of those international principles of which
he had made himself the most conspicuous cham-
pion. In his view Great Britain was "bound in
political justice to respect, in the case of Turkey,
that national independence which, in case of civil
commotion, she would look to have respected in
her own". In this he was but following the pre-
cedent set, early in 1822, by Lord Londonderry,
who had refused to join with Russia in demanding
from the Porte a guarantee for better government
in the Christian provinces, as this would be to re-
cognise the right of Russia to intervene in the
internals concerns of Turkey. From this point
of view, indeed, British statesmen were in a much
better position than Metternich for resisting the
warlike impulses of the Russian Emperor. The
latter was hard pressed for arguments when Alex-
ander proposed to march into Turkey, as Austria
had marched into Naples, and to fight, not for
himself, but — true to his vow to the European
Federation — for all. Londonderry, and after him
Canning, were in no such dilemma. Whatever
their view as to the just grievances of Russia in
respect of the violation by the Porte of specific
treaty rights, the principle of " non-intervention "
gave them a firm standing ground in resisting
Alexander's claim for a free mandate to settle
THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 149
the affairs of the East in the vague interests of
the general good ; which would have meant, in
effect, the interests of Russia.
Canning fully realised, and exulted in, the
advantage which in this situation Great Britain
derived from her isolation. " Let Allied Europe
meet again," he wrote, " and by analogy and
implication not to be resisted, let the neighbour-
ing Power be deputed to set these convulsions
at rest." France and, for the matter of that,
Austria must resist a Congress, if they did not
wish to see Russia marching on Constantinople.
" We," he added, " could protest in any case."
More immediately perilous to peace, however,
than Alexander's demand for a European man-
date to go on crusade, was the stubborn refusal
of the Ottoman Government to redress the just
grievances of Russia. Greek ships sailing under
the Russian flag had been seized in the Bosphorus ;
and, apart from the cruelties exercised in Turkey
generally over that Christian population which the
Tsar claimed to protect, the Porte, in violation of
specific treaty engagements, still maintained an
armed force in the Danubian principalities, for
the alleged purpose of keeping order. Canning
realised that, until these questions were settled,
diplomatic relations between Russia and Turkey
could not be resumed, and that the risk of war
would continue. He therefore instructed Lord
150 GEORGE CANNING
Strangford, the British ambassador at Constanti-
nople, on the one hand to press the Porte to
concede the just demands of Russia, on the other
hand, by showing greater moderation towards the
rebels, to disarm the anger of the great Orthodox
Power. The efforts of Lord Strangford, seconded
by those of the Austrian internuncio, were in the
end successful in persuading the Divan to yield
the more important points in dispute with Russia —
the evacuation of the principalities and the rights
of the Russian flag in the Bosphorus. But owing
to the stubborn pride of the Porte, the negotiations
had been so long dragged on, that when they were
at last concluded the situation had so changed that
the concessions were no longer adequate to the end
aimed at.
The origin of this change was the recognition,
on 25th March, 1823, by the British Government
of the Greeks as belligerents. This measure, like
all Canning's policy, was dictated primarily by the
interests of England. The Greek warships, mostly
armed brigs privately fitted out, had degenerated
into pirates, and preyed upon the commerce of all
nations ; trade in the Archipelago was practically
at a stand-still ; and the Ottoman Government,
which was nominally responsible for this state of
things, had quite lost control of the seas. Apart
from the danger that it was open to any Power
to use its grievances in this respect as a pretext
THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 151
for armed intervention against the Porte, the situa-
tion itself was day by day growing increasingly
intolerable ; and Canning announced that some
action was necessary. " The recognition of the
belligerent rights of the Greeks," he said, "was
necessitated by the impossibility of treating as
pirates a population of a million souls, and of
bringing within the bounds of civilised war a
contest which had been marked at the outset, on
both sides, by disgusting barbarities ; " — for, the
flag of Greece once recognised, the Greek pro-
visional Government could be made responsible
for the outrages committed in its name.
Whatever the necessities which had justified
this move, to the other Powers it was a clear
proof of the "selfish" ambitions of Great Britain
in the East. To Alexander, it seemed that she
was about to take advantage of his obligations to
;he Holy Alliance, to steal a march upon Russia,
ind to pose as the sole protector of the Greeks.
To forestall any such isolated action, he once more
mooted the subject of a joint intervention of the
Allies. So far as concerned the Eastern question,
however, the Grand Alliance had ceased to have
any cohesion. Whatever the common ground of
the majority of the Powers may have been at an
earlier stage, the action of England in recognising
the Greek flag had made a new basis of negotia-
tion inevitable ; for the insurgents could no longer
152 GEORGE CANNING
be regarded merely as commonplace rebels against
legitimate authority. The reactionary Powers
were, in fact, on the horns of a dilemma. The
stubborn resistance of the Greeks had stultified
Metternich's policy of isolating the war, which
Canning had now brought " within the pale of
civilisation". That the Powers must ultimately
intervene in the interests of Europe was now
certain ; but as to the method and the object of
this intervention, opinion was hopelessly ir the
dark. To help the Turks crush the Greeks was
obviously impossible, even had the Emperor Alex-
ander been personally opposed to the sentiment
of his people. To take the part of the insurgents
would be to give the lie to every principle which
had hitherto inspired the actions and the utter-
ances of the concert. To Canning the situation
afforded exquisite entertainment ; and he watched
with insular complacency the statesmen of the
Alliance floundering in a diplomatic bog from
which there was no apparent escape.
To the Emperor Alexander the position was less
amusing ; and for a while it seemed as though he
were about to desert the dream of confederated
Europe in favour of the traditional policy of the
Tsars. The war party at St. Petersburg, which
had languished since the dismissal, in 1822, of
the Greek Minister Count Capodistrias, once more
gained the ascendency ; and had the intractable
THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 153
temper of the Porte continued, Alexander would
probably have placed himself at the head of an
Orthodox crusade. The concession of the main
points at issue by Turkey disarmed his wrath ;
but, in sending an agent to Constantinople to
watch over the carrying out of the terms of the
new treaties, he explained that full diplomatic
relations would only be resumed in response to
further concessions. What these concessions were
to be was soon revealed. In October, 1823, the
Tsar had discussed the whole situation with the
Emperor Francis at Czernovitz, and had suggested
to him, informally, that a conference of the Powers
should be summoned to St. Petersburg, to arrange
for a joint intervention on the basis of the erec-
tion of Greece and the islands of the Archipelago
into three principalities, under Ottoman suzerainty,
and guaranteed by the European Alliance. The
suggestion was formally repeated in a Russian cir-
cular of January, 1824, in which it was pointed out
that "the efforts of the Imperial Government to
bring about a collective intervention were the best
proof of its disinterestedness ". Neither Canning
nor Metternich shared this view. The latter was
alarmed at the prospect of the establishment in
the south of the Balkan Peninsula of a semi-
independent State on the model of the Danubian
principalities, which it was assumed would be sub-
ject to the preponderating influence of Russia.
154 GEORGE CANNING
Better than such a solution, from the Austrian
point of view, would be the erection of Greece
into a State absolutely independent and sovereign ;
and, by way of countermove to the Tsar's pro-
posals, he suggested this expedient to the startled
Powers. As for Canning, apart from his general
dislike for conferences and concerts, he suspected
that the present one was a mere device for ham-
pering the free initiative of Great Britain ; and he
had no intention of taking part in it only to act as
a buffer between the colliding interests of Russia
and Austria. "Austria," he said, "is for putting
down the insurrection. Russia is for not setting
it up. Ours Metternich supposes is for setting it
up. This, he supposes, would drive Russia into
a middle position between Austria and us ; and
then, with the aid of Spanish America and the
conflicting maritime interests of Russia and Greece,
he could gradually win over Alexander to his
views." There was, besides, another reason for
Canning's objection to taking part in the meeting.
European intervention, short of a demonstration of
force which he was not prepared to allow, could
only be effective if both belligerents were prepared
to accept the arbitrament of the Powers. But the
Ottoman Government had protested vigorously
against the pretension of the Allies to dictate to
it ; and the Greek insurgents had no less vigor-
ously rejected all idea of resting content with the
THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 155
terms outlined in the Tsar's note. Under these
circumstances he decided that Great Britain should
take no part in the discussion of the conference on
the Russian circular. Upon this, Alexander, in a
pique, declared all negotiations on the subject
between Russia and England closed.
The situation was once more modified by new
and alarming developments in Greece. Sultan
Mahmoud, at last convinced that his own forces
were unable to cope with the insurrection, had
bent his pride to ask help of his powerful vassal
Mehemet Ali of Egypt, who placed at his disposal
an army and a fleet disciplined on the European
model. In February, 1825, Ibrahim Pasha landed
with a considerable force in the Morea ; the Greek
guerilla warriors, unaccustomed to face regular
troops, were everywhere scattered ; and it seemed
as though the Egyptian conqueror would soon
be free to carry out the plan attributed to him
of rooting out the whole Christian population of
Greece, and resettling the country with Moham-
medan negroes and fellaheen. It was under these
circumstances that Canning decided to reopen
negotiations with the Russian Government ; and,
in the summer of 1825, his cousin, Stratford
Canning, the newly appointed ambassador to St.
Petersburg, was authorised to propose to the Tsar
a joint intervention of the Powers, still, however,
with the old stipulation that Turkey should not be
156 GEORGE CANNING
coerced. Russia, however, showed no disposition to
favour an intervention which, in the absence of
force, would be without effect. On 18th August,
in fact, Alexander announced that he intended
to take the matter into his own hands, and started
for the south of Russia, where an immense army
had been concentrated. Canning believed that,
"in a temper of gloomy abstraction," and de-
ceived by Metternich, the Tsar had resolved on
war ; and the fear that Russia was about to act
alone forced him on. He now opened negotiations
with Prince Lieven, the Russian ambassador in
England, on the basis of a separate understanding
between Great Britain and Russia. The " dis-
loyalty " of Austria, the unreliability of France, the
insignificance of Prussia, he urged, made them un-
desirable allies ; but for an understanding between
Russia and England " the doors were open ". " The
time has come to act," wrote Lieven; "M. Canning
and I are on the path of confidences."
The unexpected death of Alexander I. in
December, 1825, interrupted the negotiations,
and at the same time intensified the strain of
the situation. In place of the imperial dreamer,
worn out before his time, there was now seated
on the throne of Russia a young, vigorous and
ambitious autocrat, inspired with an overwhelming
sense of his divine mission as the ruler and repre-
sentative of Holy Russia, and endowed by nature
THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 157
with an iron will. A great army, which it needed
only his word to set in motion over the frontiers,
was concentrated in the South ; and, as an ad-
ditional inducement to him to declare war, the
military rising at Moscow, which it had been the
first act of his reign to suppress, pointed to the ex-
pediency of restoring the morale of the troops by
employing them abroad. To preserve the Ottoman
Empire from what seemed imminent downfall, Can-
ning determined to renew, at the earliest possible
moment, the negotiations, which had been inter-
rupted by the death of Alexander, with a view
to arriving at a "confidential concert" between the
two Governments, and thus to forestall any isolated
action of Russia. One of the obstacles to this
course no longer existed. He had refused to
share in the Conference of St. Petersburg partly
because the Greek insurgents had refused to be
bound by its decisions. But, meanwhile, Ibrahim's
discipline had reduced them to a more chastened
mood. In a conference between the Greek leaders
and Stratford Canning, held in January, 1826, in
the island of Perivolakia, the former had agreed
to accept a settlement based on the earlier pro-
posals of the Emperor Alexander. Canning had
by no means modified his objections to confer-
ences ; but the situation seemed now ripe for a
business-like discussion between the two parties
most directly interested, and he now proposed to
158 GEORGE CANNING
Prince Lieven that the two Powers most intimately
concerned, Russia and Great Britain, should open
negotiations with a view to their joint intervention
in the Greek question upon a new basis.
In February, 1826, the Duke of Wellington was
sent as special envoy to St. Petersburg, to con-
gratulate the Emperor on his accession and to
endeavour to arrange with him some basis of
joint action in the East. The mission, and still
more the agent to whom it was entrusted, marked
how greatly, in Canning's view, the situation in
Europe had altered. " The Duke of Wellington,"
he wrote to Lord Granville, " would not have done
for any purpose of mine a twelvemonth ago. No
more would confidence in Russia. But now — the
ultra system being dissolved, by the carrying of
every point which they opposed— the elements of
that system have become usable for good pur-
poses. I hope to save Greece through the agency
of the Russian name upon the fears of Turkey, with-
out a war."
The outcome of Wellington's mission was the
signature by Great Britain and Russia, on 4th
April, of the Protocol of St. Petersburg, by which
England was empowered to offer to the Porte a
settlement of the Greek question, based on the
terms agreed upon at Perivolakia, Russia promising
her co-operation " in any case ". By Article III.
of the protocol it was agreed that, in the event of
THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 159
the Ottoman Government rejecting the proffered
mediation, the signatory States should take the
earliest opportunity, either separately or in com-
mon, of establishing a reconciliation on the basis
of the protocol.
The "confidential concert" established by this in-
strument was from the first of a somewhat delicate
constitution. Both Wellington and Canning had
been puzzled, during the negotiations, by the
attitude of the Tsar, divided as he was between
hatred of Turkey and conscientious dislike of
"rebels". Their remonstrances had not suc-
ceeded in preventing the Russian Government
from despatching an ultimatum to the Porte on
its own account while Wellington was still at St.
Petersburg ; and, in view of this, the intrusion of
fresh demands under the protocol, while the Porte
was still considering those already laid before it,
increased, instead of diminishing, the risks of war.
War, indeed, did not result ; for Sultan Mahmoud,
though very much in the mood, was not in a posi-
tion, to fight. On 7th October, by the Convention
of Akkermann, the specific grievances of Russia
were redressed, and diplomatic relations were once
more resumed between Tsar and Sultan. But
meanwhile Russia and England had relapsed into
a mood of mutual suspicion. Russia commented
on the fact that Great Britain seemed in no hurry
to give effect to the protocol of 4th April ; Great
160 GEORGE CANNING
Britain complained that Russia had tried to force
her hand by a premature revelation of its contents
to the other Powers. Canning, in fact, wished to
keep the protocol in reserve, in case the Porte
were finally to reject the separate mediation of
England ; and Russia began to suspect that his
object throughout had been no more than to post-
pone the evil day of a Russian armed intervention.
In July Prince Lieven was instructed to press the
British Government as to its intentions, in view of
the notorious intention of Ibrahim to depopulate
the Morea, and the necessity for taking some
action. The response seemed in some sort to
justify the Russian suspicions. Wellington denied
that the intention to depopulate the Morea had
been proved ; he declared that the object of the
protocol was purely " pacific," aiming at most at
an eventual intervention of a concert of the Powers,
and that Great Britain had consistently resisted the
idea of forcing a mediation upon the Porte. If this
was to be the final word of the British Government,
the protocol seemed to Russia not worth the paper
on which it was written. She had learned, from
long experience of orientals, the exact value of
" pacific " protests against Ottoman policy.
Before long, however, the situation was once
more sensibly modified. Of the other European
Powers Austria and Prussia were, indeed, still
obdurately averse from any interference in aid of
THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE l6l
rebels against legitimate authority ; but Charles X.
of France at length allowed his religious feel-
ings to overcome his horror of revolution, and
declared himself ready to join in any measures
for succouring the oppressed Christians of the
East. More important still, the Greeks in their
despair had at last made a formal appeal to Great
Britain for her mediation. Canning now felt that
he could consistently and safely take a further step
towards the solution of the question. England, in
his opinion, could now intervene, because " inter-
vention had been asked for by one of the parties ;
and did not grow out of the self-constituted right
of any Power, or combination of Powers, to dictate
to both of the belligerent parties ". On 4th Sep-
tember, 1826, then, he addressed a note to the
Russian Government in which he declared that
" the sentiments of humanity and the interests of
commerce " should lead the two Powers to insist
on the Sultan's accepting their mediation ; that the
united force of Great Britain and Russia should be
used to persuade the Porte to accept the terms of
the Protocol of St. Petersburg ; and that, in the
event of its refusing to do so, the two Powers
should withdraw their representatives from Con-
stantinople, establish consulates in Greece, and
perhaps go so far as to recognise the independence
of the Morea and the Greek islands. These sug-
gestions the Tsar declared himself in general pre~
11
162 GEORGE CANNING
pared to accept as a basis of common action. He
proposed, however, that, instead of at once break-
ing off diplomatic relations, an armistice should be
insisted on, in order to save the Greeks from
destruction, and that, in the event of this being
refused, the ambassadors of the Powers should
be withdrawn from Constantinople. Prince Lieven
was at the same time directed to point out to Can-
ning that the best way of enforcing the armistice
was that suggested by himself, namely, to isolate
Ibrahim in the Morea by cutting him off from
his base of supplies in Egypt. This could be
done by a reunion of the fleets of all the Powers
sharing in the pacification of Greece.
Early in 1827 conferences were opened at Lon-
don with the object of securing some sort of work-
ing agreement between all the Powers interested
in the Eastern question. But their sole effect was
once more to emphasise the irreconcilable differ-
ences within the Alliance. Austria and Prussia
protested against the proposed intervention " to
serve revolutionary ends," and withdrew ; and
France thereupon proposed that the protocol
should be converted into a formal treaty. To
this Russia agreed, on condition that the ultimate
appeal should be to force. "We are invited,"
wrote Count Nesselrode, "to sanction a principle.
We invite to the recognition of its consequences."
Canning had already discussed this question with
THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 163
Baron de Damas during his visit to Paris in October,
1826. At that time he was prepared so far to
humour the desire of the French Government for
some initiative in the counsels of the concert, as to
consent of the protocol being made into a treaty ;
but when the French Minister proceeded to sug-
gest that its terms should be forced, if necessary,
upon the Porte, he had replied that such a pro-
posal, " if adopted, must not be laid down be-
forehand, but grow out of the measures now in
hand ". Since this conversation nothing had oc-
curred to change his opinion as to the coercion of
Turkey ; in reply to Count Nesselrode he objected
to making the rejection of the proffered media-
tion by the Porte a " casus belli " ; and it was only
after the irreconcilable attitude of the Ottoman
Government towards what it denounced as an
impertinent interference with its domestic con-
cerns had once more been made plain, that he
realised the necessity for using coercive measures,
if only to prevent isolated action on the part of
Russia. On 6th July, 1827, accordingly, the
Protocol of St. Petersburg was converted into the
Treaty of London. By this instrument, which
Austria and Prussia refused to sign, the three
signatory Powers bound themselves to secure the
autonomy of Greece under the suzerainty of the
Sultan, but without breaking off friendly relations
with the Porte, The most immediately important
164 GEORGE CANNING
part of the treaty was the secret article by which
it was agreed that an armistice should be proposed
to both parties, and that this should be enforced
by any means that might "suggest themselves to
the High Contracting Parties ". In this respect a
wide discretion was left to the admirals command-
ing the allied fleets in Levantine waters ; but, since
it was not for a moment supposed that the Greeks
would reject the armistice, it was suggested that
in general the best way to bring Ibrahim to terms
would be by a " pacific " blockade of the coasts of
Greece.
The signature of the Treaty of London was Can-
ning's last political act ; and he did not live to
witness even its immediate results. It may be
doubted whether these would have been essen-
tially more welcome to him than they were to his
successor, the Duke of Wellington, who had pro-
tested against the whole policy of which they
were the outcome. The "pacific" blockade cul-
minated rapidly in the destruction of the Ottoman
sea-power at Navarino ; the Turks, angered by so
huge an outrage in time of peace, proclaimed a
holy war ; and there followed the very invasion
of the Ottoman Empire by Russia which it had
been the main object of Canning's policy to
prevent. It is idle to speculate as to how far
Canning would have been able to modify the
actual course of events, had he lived. His aim
THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 165
had been, firstly, to compose the differences be-
tween Russia and Turkey, so as to avoid war ;
secondly, to secure a settlement of the Greek
question so as to protect Greece, without weaken-
ing the Ottoman Empire. Neither of these objects
were, in the long run, attained. The Russian
invasion of Turkey ended in the temporary efface-
ment of the Ottoman power as a barrier against
Muscovite aggression ; and the erection of Greece
into an independent kingdom, which followed,
was a fresh stage in the break-up of the Turkish
Empire, the integrity of which it had been a
cardinal article of Canning's creed to maintain.
CHAPTER X
PREMIERSHIP AND DEATH
Split in the Tory Cabinet— The Free Trade party— The
" Reciprocity of Duties Act " — Canning's rhymed de-
spatch— -Illness of Lord Liverpool — Canning's motion
on the Corn Laws — Canning at the head of a Coalition
Government — Illness and death.
IT was in the diplomatic battle of wits on the
field of European politics that Canning's
genius was most conspicuously illustrated ; and
it was here that he was always most ambitious of
gaining distinction. During the years of his tenure
of the Foreign Office, then, he had been mainly
absorbed in his task of restoring to Great Britain
that leading influence in the councils of Europe
which he believed to have been compromised by
the undue partiality of his predecessor for the
system of the "Holy Alliance". How he achieved
this task, in the working out of the great problems
connected with the Spanish peninsula and the
revolt of the Greeks against the Ottoman rule,
has been described in the two last chapters. Can-
ning himself had no misgivings as to the result
(166)
GEORGE CANNING
From ail engraving by Turner after the portrait by Lawrence
PREMIERSHIP AND DEATH 16?
of his labours. To the King, afraid lest "the
restless desire of self-interest " displayed in the
new British policy should lose him his status
among the Powers of the continent, he pointed
out convincingly that, so far from his policy having
produced any such result, it had in reality placed
him at the head of Europe instead of at the tail.
To a large section of the Tory party, however, of
which the Duke of Wellington was the most
distinguished representative, the Liberal tendency
of Canning's foreign policy was increasingly dis-
tasteful ; and this heightened the dislike which
they already felt for him in consequence of his
attitude towards some of the more burning ques-
tions at home.
The general attitude of Canning towards the
great problems of domestic politics in his day
has already been described. To the end it pre-
sented the same apparent contradictions and incon-
sistencies, setting him as it were half-way between
the opposing political camps, ready to throw his
weight on to the one side or the other, as the
needs of the moment dictated. On two important
questions only did he remain to the last consist-
ently Tory : in his opposition to parliamentary
reform, and to the repeal of the Test Acts, he
never wavered. But, while maintaining through-
out the sufficiency of the actual Constitution for
all the needs of the nation, he was persuaded
168 GEORGE CANNING
that it could be used, and ought to be used, for
the purpose of passing " the mildest and most
liberal legislation ". And to those who had eyes
to see and ears to hear the direction which such
legislation should take was sufficiently obvious.
Man is not, in spite of Aristotle, primarily a politi-
cal animal ; and so long as his belly is full he is not
generally greatly concerned with the form of the
institutions under which he thrives. Canning saw
that the revolutionary agitation in the country was
mainly the outcome of intolerable economic con-
ditions ; of the artificial dearness of food stuffs, and
generally of the antiquated restrictions, inherited
from a less expansive age, which everywhere ham-
pered the free development of British trade and
industry. The Reformers held that a radical
political change was the necessary preliminary to
any economic improvement. Canning believed that
the unreformed Parliament would do all that was
necessary, if it were convinced of the necessity of
doing it.
In 1823 Vansittart, whose reckless finance had
been largely responsible for the misery of the
country, was raised to the peerage as Lord Bexley.
His place at the Exchequer was taken by Robin-
son ; and the vacancy in the Presidency of the
Board of Trade thus created was filled, at Can-
ning's instance, by his friend Huskisson. This
was a fresh infusion of Liberal leaven into the
PREMIERSHIP AND DEATH 169
Government ; for, though Huskisson was politi-
cally a Tory, he was a man of singularly enlight-
ened economic views, a supporter of free trade —
not yet become a party question — and courageous
in carrying through his measures in the face of
opposition. For a complete policy of free trade,
indeed, the country was not yet ripe ; but a good
deal could be done in the way of removing restric
tions here and there, and Canning supported all
Huskisson's proposals directed to this end. Of
these the most important was the " Reciprocity of
Duties Act," introduced by Huskisson on 6th
June, 1823. By the terms of the old Navigation
Act, passed in Cromwell's time and completed in
the days of Charles II., goods from Asia, America
and Africa were only allowed to be imported into
Great Britain in British vessels, while European
produce had to be brought, either in English ships,
or in those of the country of origin. This had, of
course, led to reprisals and, consequently, to an enor-
mous waste of money and energy by all concerned.
The restrictions had been removed in the case
of American vessels by the Treaty of Ghent in
1814. Huskisson now proposed to put the ships of
British and foreign Powers upon an equal footing,
while maintaining the right to place restrictive
dues upon the ships of nations which should reject
the reciprocal rights thus offered.
A minor outcome of the " Reciprocity of Duties
170 GEORGE CANNING
Act " was perhaps the most famous, as it certainly
is the most amusing, of Canning's despatches. In
1826 the Dutch Minister, Mr. Falck, in the
course of negotiations growing out of the Act,
proposed to Sir Charles Bagot an exceedingly
one-sided arrangement for the admission of British
ships to Dutch ports, which the British Minister
duly forwarded home, with a request for instruc-
tions. By return, enclosed in an official envelope,
and signed by the Secretary for Foreign Affairs,
he received the following verses : —
In matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch
Is giving too little and asking too much.
With equal advantage the French are content,
So we'll clap on Dutch bottoms a twenty per cent.
Twenty per cent. ,
Twenty per cent.,
Nous frapperons Falck with twenty per cent. ,
which was done, with excellent results.
Huskisson's free trade policy, the modification
of the Corn Laws, Catholic emancipation, the
gradual abolition of slavery — all of which Can-
ning supported — had violent enemies, not only in
the Tory party at large, but in the ranks of the
Cabinet itself. On all these questions the Govern-
ment could reckon on the support of the Whigs,
but not on that of its own followers ; until Pal-
merston, himself a member of the Ministry, could
declare that the genuine Opposition in Parliament
was not facing, but behind, the Treasury bench.
PREMIERSHIP AND DEATH 171
By the beginning of 1827, indeed, it was clear
that the Government was only held together by
the influence and tact of Lord Liverpool ; and
when, on *l7th February, he was seized with an
apoplectic fit which compelled him to withdraw
from public affairs, it was obvious that a crisis
was inevitable.
The illness of Liverpool was, both personally
and politically, a severe blow to Canning. They
had been friends ever since their college days ;
and, in spite of differences of opinion — notably on
the Catholic question — there had always been
preserved between them the confidence born of
mutual regard and affection. It was Liverpool's
consistent support of him that had alone made
Canning's position in the Cabinet tolerable ; and
with his retirement a crisis in the Government
was inevitable. Canning, who was himself suffer-
ing from the painful illness which was to prove
fatal, took the earliest opportunity of persuading
the King to leave the rearrangement of the
Government open until all chance of Liverpool's
recovery should be past. George IV. was only too
willing to postpone the settlement of a troublesome
question ; and during the interregnum that followed
the divisions of opinion within the Cabinet became
still more violently accentuated. The climax was
reached with the introduction by Canning, on 15th
March, of a motion for the relaxation of the Corn
172 GEORGE CANNING
Laws. The measure was, in his opinion, absolutely
called for by the breakdown of the existing system,
by the accidental working of which " the ports had
been shut when the home supply was deficient, and
opened when the home market was glutted"; the
general result being at once the ruin of the agri-
cultural interest and the starvation of the people.
He now proposed a sliding scale of duties on im-
ported corn, so arranged as to maintain the average
price at sixty shillings the quarter. The eloquent
and closely reasoned speech in which he presented
his case to the House of Commons sufficed to over-
come the prejudices of the Tory majority, and
the motion was triumphantly carried. But when
the bill embodying it was sent up to the House of
Lords it met with a very different reception. The
opposition to it was led by the Duke of Wellington,
Canning's colleague in the Cabinet, and under his
auspices it was so " knocked about " that Canning
preferred to withdraw it.
In momentary anger at conduct so insensate in
view of the actual condition of the country, Can-
ning forgot his lifelong belief in the "reason"
which he had stoutly maintained to be the ruling
characteristic of Parliament ; and warned the peers
of the danger of hurrying on that struggle between
"the people and property" which he saw to be
impending. In any case the episode made all
question of the preservation of the existing Cabinet
PREMIERSHIP AND DEATH 173
under a new head, which was the solution desired
by the King, impossible, quite apart from the Catho-
lic question, on which opinions were equally sharply
divided, and which, in view of the formation of the
Catholic Association and the alarming developments
in Ireland, equally clamoured for solution.
When it became obvious that Lord Liverpool
would never be able to resume the reins of power,
Canning suggested to the King that, considering
his Majesty's own Protestant prejudices and the
general feeling of the constituencies, the interests
of the country would be best served by excluding
him from the Government and forming a purely
anti-Catholic Ministry. The King's religious zeal,
however, was not so potent a quantity as his sense
of personal importance ; and this latter was of-
fended by the attitude of the Tory peers. Wel-
lington, while recommending the re-establishment
of a Government committed neither way on the
Catholic question, refused point-blank to serve
under Canning ; and the Duke of Northumberland,
claiming his privilege as a peer, had pressed into
the royal presence in order to protest against the
appointment of Canning, and to threaten to with-
draw the support of his following in the event
of his being placed at the head of the Government.
This was more than the pride of the King could
endure ; he was personally no longer indisposed
towards Canning, who had persuaded him that
174 GEORGE CANNING
his foreign policy, so far from diminishing, had
increased his prestige in Europe ; and on 10th
April he handed him the seals of office. The
members of the Tory " cabal " in the Cabinet —
Lord Chancellor Eldon, Wellington, Westmorland,
Melville, Bathurst, Bexley and Peel — at once re-
signed. Their places were filled up by accessions
from the Whig ranks, on the understanding that
the questions of parliamentary reform and of the
Test Acts were not to be raised. Canning himself
combined the Chancellorship of the Exchequer
with the Premiership, handing over the Foreign
Office to Lord Dudley. Of the other Ministers
the most notable were Huskisson, who resumed
his place at the Board of Trade, and Lord Palmer-
ston, who became Secretary at War.
Canning had thus, at last, attained the summit
of his ambition ; but he was not destined to enjoy
it long. What a Ministry combined of such healthy
elements would have done for the benefit of the
country, had it survived, it is impossible to say.
The few weeks of its existence were not sufficient
to test its quality. Its most important work was
the advancement of the settlement of the Eastern
question, which had already been discussed. In
home affairs the Corn Amendment Bill was re-
introduced, and this time passed through both
Houses. Canning, on this occasion, only spoke
very shortly to explain that the bill had been
A HEAD FOR THE CABINET
From a caricature published April, /&/
PREMIERSHIP AND DEATH 175
originated and worked out, not by himself, but by
Lord Liverpool. On 1st June, as Chancellor of
the Exchequer, Canning introduced the budget
in the last great speech he was destined to address
to the House of Commons. On the 29th he spoke
for the last time in Parliament : a few remarks in
answer to a question. When, on 2nd July,
Parliament was prorogued, Canning was already
dying.
His fatal illness was traced to a cold caught
while attending the funeral of the Duke of York,
the heir to the throne. The duke's death had
taken place on 29th January, and he was buried
at night in St. George's Chapel at Windsor. By
some mismanagement the funeral cortege was two
hours late ; and the official mourners, Canning
among them, were kept standing all this time in
a bitterly cold passage, over the damp stones of
which not even a mat had been laid. Stapleton
tells, as an illustration of Canning's personal
kindliness, how he persuaded Lord Eldon, who he
saw was suffering from the cold, to stand upon
his cocked hat, so as to prevent the damp from
the stones striking up through his thin shoes.
He himself took no such precaution, with the
result that he contracted a severe chill, from the
effects of which he never recovered. Until the
rising of Parliament, the necessity of attending to
business had sustained him, though he was already
176 GEORGE CANNING
suffering much pain ; but the immediate compul-
sion of affairs removed, the indomitable spirit was
at last conquered, and he accepted the offer of
the Duke of Devonshire to retire for rest and
recuperation to his house near Chiswick. Here,
on 8th August, in the same room where, a few
years before, Fox had died, he breathed his last.
His eldest son had predeceased him on 31st
March, 1 820 ; his second son, William Pitt, was
not destined long to survive him, being drowned
at sea on 25th September, 1828. It was reserved
for the third son, Charles John, to carry on, as
Governor-General of India during the Mutiny and
first Viceroy, the tradition of a name which his
father had made illustrious.
In the presence of death the voice of criticism,
which had raged so bitterly round Canning in life,
was hushed, and men of all parties and shades of
opinion united in praise of the large qualities of
the great Englishman so prematurely lost to his
country. In January, 1828, the King gave expres-
sion to the sentiment which he now shared with
the whole country, by conferring a peerage on
Mrs. Canning. The feelings of the people had
been more eloquently expressed by the huge
crowds that assembled at Westminster on the day
of his burial. Looking back, after the lapse of
three-quarters of a century, we cannot altogether
join in the unmeasured chorus of praise that went
177
up from his admirers over his grave. That he did
a great and necessary work for England is true
enough. His career was coincident with the
period during which the immemorial Constitu-
tion of England was on its trial; when it was yet
doubtful whether it would prove elastic enough
to expand with the expanding age. His position,
half-way between the old and the new, served to
break the violence of the impact of the colliding
political forces ; and the very strenuousness and
obvious honesty of his opposition to any change in
the constitutional balance made it easier for him
to obtain a hearing when, in the unreformed Par-
liament, he raised his voice in favour of changes
which foreshadowed the coming times. Yet what
has been said of Metternich seems to be true also
of him : that he was less skilful in discerning the
direction and force of the great undercurrent of
human affairs, than in dealing with those phe-
nomena which from time to time appeared on the
surface. His great speeches on Reform, so impres-
sive when delivered, form curious reading now.
The "will of the people" has long been expressed
in Parliament ; yet who will say that Edward VII.
is less firmly seated on the throne than George IV.?
Or who will affirm that the House of Lords is im-
potent to stem the violent onrush of democratic
legislation ? So, too, perhaps in his conduct of
those foreign affairs which were his especial
12
178 GEORGE CANNING
interest and delight. He claimed to have found
Great Britain occupying the fifth place in a Con-
federation of Powers, and to have left her the
arbitress of the destinies of Europe. He certainly
made the influence of England very effectively felt
in the great questions of the hour ; but did he
see beyond these to the great issues of the future ?
The Grand Alliance had been established in the
interests of peace ; Canning proclaimed that the
interests of peace would be best served by studying
the rights of nationalities. Yet the clamour
of nationalities for their rights has been since,
and will yet be, the most fruitful cause of blood-
shed ; and in our own day, as the direct out-
come of the principle which Canning championed,
we have the nations of Europe weighed down
under the crushing burden of an "armed peace"
almost as intolerable as war.
Yet in whatever degree we may feel disposed
to modify the eulogies poured upon him by his
admirers who, living closer to him, were dazzled
by his genius, it is impossible to deny that Canning
was, in his day and generation, great. His noble
presence, his masterful will, his abounding elo-
quence and wit, marked him out as a ruler of
men ; and if he was ambitious, his ambition was
certainly not that desire "to be the only figure
among cyphers" which, according to Bacon, is
"the decay of an age ". His ambition was, as
PREMIERSHIP AND DEATH 179
he once put it, "to advance through character to
power"; he loved a fight and a rival worthy of his
steel ; and, as Bacon says again, "He that seeketh
to be eminent amongst able men, hath a great
task, but that is ever good for the public".
INDEX
Addington, Henry (first Viscount Burdett, Sir Francis, and| Can-
Sidmouth), succeeds Pitt, 49 ; ning, 104, 105.
and the Slave Trade, 54 ; re- Burke, Edmund, 16.
signs, 58 ; Canning and, 49, 54. Burrard, Sir Harry, 75.
Akkermann, Convention of, 159.
Alexander I., Emperor of Russia,
24; Treaty of Tilsit, 66; and
the European " Confederation," Campo Formio, Treaty of, 25.
96, 99, lop; Castlereagh and, Canning, the family of, i.
101 ; Canning and, 122 ; and the — George, father of the Right
Spanish Revolution, 123, 126 ; Hon. George Canning, 2, 3,
and the Eastern question, 144, 4, 5.
145, 148, 150 (proposes joint in- Canning, George, the Right
tervention), 152 ; and Francis Hon., birth, 5 ; and his
11. at Czernovitz, 153, 155 ; mother, 6; boyhood, 7, 8 (the
death, 156, 157. Microcosm); "The Slavery of
Angouleme, Due d', invades Greece," 9, 10, n ; at Oxford,
Spain, 130. 12, 13, 14 ; enters Lincoln's Inn,
Anti-Jacobin, the, 28. 14; offered a seat in Parlia-
Austerlitz, battle of, 60. ment, 17; and the French Re-
Austria declares war against volution, 18 ; member for New-
Napoleon, 75 ; and the Spanish port, 19 ; first speech, 19 ;
Revolution (see Metternich), character of his eloquence, 20,
124; and Portugal, 134, 139; 21, 22; Under-Secretary for
and Russia in the East, 144, 146, Foreign Affairs, 23 ; and the
150; and Greek independence, policy of Pitt, 25; and the "mad-
154.156,160,162,163. ness" of France, 26; speech
on the motion to end the war,
27 ; the A nti-J acobin, 28 ; on
Bagot, Sir Charles, Canning's the coup d'itat of the i8th
rhymed despatch to, 170. Brumaire, 35 ; on the " temper
Bathurst, Earl, 174. and practice of the British Con-
Beresford, Marshal, 131. stitution," 36, 91 ; and the
Bering Sea, 1 16. Union with Ireland, 38, etc.;
Berlin decrees, the, 69. and the Catholic question, 42,
Boringdon, Lord (Earl of Morley), 43, 87, 90, 112, 170 ; resigns with
12, 19, 23, 26, 49. Pitt, 47 ; marriage, 48 ; and
Brazil, Portuguese royal family Addington, 49, 54 ; speech
leave for, 74; Pedro proclaimed on the Island of Trinidad
Emperor of, 131 ; Conference of (Slave Trade), 50 ; member for
London on, 134; British recog- Tralee, 54; urges Pitt to re-
nition of, 135. sume office, 56 ; Lord Malmes-
Brougham, Lord, on Canning's bury on, 56; attacks the Govern-
style, 22, 91, ment, 57 ; Treasurer of the
(181)
182
INDEX
Navy, 58; and the death of
Pitt, 60 ; refuses to join Fox's
Ministry, 61 ; epitaph on the
" Ministry of all the Talents,"
62 ; Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, 64 ; and the bombard-
ment of Copenhagen, 68 ; and
the United States, 71 ; and
Spain, 74, 76, 87 ; quarrel with
Castlereagh, 77; resigns, 79;
and the Quarterly Review, 80;
on the Press, 81 ; and Sir
Walter Scott, 83 ; " Lines ad-
dressed to Miss Scott," 84 ; and
the Perceval Administration,
87 ; and the Regency, 88 ; refuses
to join the Liverpool Adminis-
tration, 90 ; and Free Trade, 93,
167, 169; and the war, 94 ; on
Napoleon, 94; ambassador in
Portugal, 96 ; joins the Liver-
pool Government, 97 ; and the
Grand Alliance, 101, 118, 119,
121, 143, 144, 152 ; and parlia-
mentary reform, 102, 112, 167;
and the " Six Acts," 103, 105 ;
and Sir Francis Burdett, 104 ;
and the royal divorce, 107, 108,
109; resigns, 109; attitude to-
wards the Liverpool Govern-
ment, no, in ; and Chateau-
briand, 112; accepts Governor-
Generalship of India, 112 ;
offered the Foreign Office, 114 ;
last speech at Liverpool, 115;
and Metternich, 118, 121, 146;
and British foreign policy, 119;
and " national " politics, 122 ;
and the Spanish Revolution,
124,128,129; and the Spanish
colonies, 125, 130, 135; and
Portugal, 133, 138-141 ; and the
" Monroe doctrine," 135 ; and
the Eastern question, 146, 164 ;
and Russian intervention, 148;
recognises the Greek flag,
150 ; and Russian proposal
for autonomy, 153 ; and
European intervention, 154 ;
reopens negotiations with
Russia, 155, 156, 158, 161 (sug-
gests joint mediation) ; and the
Treaty of London, 163 ; and
the Tories, 166, 170 ; rhymed
despatch to Bagot, 170 ; motion
to relax the Corn Laws, 171 ;
Prime Minister, 174 ; last speech
in Parliament, 175 ; illness and
death, 176.
Canning, George Charles, epitaph
by Canning on, 86.
Canning, Mrs. George, afterwards
Mrs. Hunn, 4, 5, 6.
Canning, Paul, afterwards Lord
Garvagh, 4.
Canning, Stratford, of Garvagh,
3, 3, 4.
Canning, Stratford, father of Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe, 7.
Canning, Stratford (Lord Strat-
ford de Redcliffe), at St. Peters-
burg, 155, 157.
Cannynge, Thomas, 2.
— William, 2.
Capodistrias (Capo d'Istria),
Count, 152.
Carlsbad decrees, Castlereagh and
the, 101.
Caroline, Queen, and George IV.,
106; Canning and, 107; trial
of, 108, 109, no. (See also
Wales, Princess of.)
Castlereagh, Viscount (Marquis
of Londonderry), 65 ; and the
Walcheren expedition, 76 ;
quarrel with Canning, 77 ; Sec-
retary for Foreign Affairs, 90,
95, 96 ; and the " continental
system," loo, 117, 119, 122, 135;
and international disarmament,
100 ; and Alexander I.'s ideal-
ism, 101, 113; death of, 114 ;
and the Spanish colonies, 135 ;
and intervention in Turkey, 148.
Cathcart, Lord, 68.
Catholic Emancipation, Canning
and, 42, 43 ; George III. and,
46, 62 ; Canning's motion on, 91.
Charles, Archduke, 34.
Charles IV. of Spain, 73.
Charles X. of France, 161.
Chatham, Earl of, 76.
Chesapeake, affair of the, 71.
Cintra, Convention of, 75.
Constantinople, murder of Gre-
gorios, Patriarch of, 145.
Corn Laws, 102, 171, 174.
Corunna, battle of, 75.
Cuba, British force landed in, 126.
Dalrymple, Sir Hugh, 75.
Damas, Baron de, 163.
Dudley, Earl of, 174,
INDEX
183
Eastern question, 117, 143 (War
of Greek Independence) ; Can-
ning and, 146; and the Grand
Alliance, 151 ; Conference of
St. Petersburg on, 153; Con-
ference of London, 162 ; Treaty
of London, 163.
Eldon, Lord Chancellor, 64, 174,
175-
Erskine, Lord, 33.
Erskine, Mr., mission to America,
71.
Falck. 170.
Ferdinand VII. of Spain, 73, 123,
128, 130.
Fox, Charles James, 17, 18 ; re-
fuses Pitt's overtures, 58; suc-
ceeds Pitt, 61 ; and abolition of
the Slave Trade, 61 ; death,
62.
France, Revolution in, 15; coali-
tion against, 24 ; the Terror in,
24; Treaty of Campo Formic,
25 ; character of the struggle
against, 25 ; Canning and, 26 ;
and the Spanish Revolution,
117, 124, 127, 128 ; the Etoile and
the Irish question, 121 ; and the
Greek question, 156, 162.
Francis, the Emperor of Austria,
153-
Free Trade, 93, 167, 169.
157 ; asks for British mediation,
161 ; Treaty of London, 163.
Grey, Lord, 17, 62.
Harrowby, Lord, 60.
Hobhouse on Canning, 21.
Hofer, Andreas, 76.
Holy Alliance, the, 25 ; and the
Grand Alliance, 99; Canning
and, in, 166; Metternich and,
144; Sultan and, 145.
Huskisson, William, 88, 168, 169,
170, 174.
Hypsilanti, Prince Alexander, 145.
Ibrahim Pasha, 155, 157; and the
depopulation of the Morea,
160; the Powers and, 162.
India, Canning and, 112.
Ireland, 23 ; Grattan's Parlia-
ment, 37 ; Pitt's policy towards,
37 ; question of the Union, 38 ;
Act of Union, 46.
John VI. of Portugal, 131 ; death
of, 138.
Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain,
73-
Junot, Marshal, invades Spain,
73 ; and Portugal, 74 ; defeated
at Vimiero, 75.
George III., madness of, 87;
death of, 106.
George IV., 87 ; unpopularity of,
106 ; and Canning, 108, 114 ;
and the " continental system,"
117, 171 ; and the Tories, 173 ;
commands Canning to form a
Cabinet, 174.
Ghent, Treaty of, 169.
Gillray, James, 81.
Godoy, Prince of the Peace, 59.
Grand Alliance, 101; Canning and,
118, 119, 121, 143, 144, 152.
Grattan, Henry, 37.
" Greece, The Slavery of," 9.
— insurrection in, 117, 145; Can-
ning and the insurrection, 146;
England recognises the Greek
flag, 151; proposed autonomy
of, 153 ; Ibrahim Pasha invades,
155; Conference of Perivolakia,
1 Knife-grinder, The Needy," 30.
Laibach, Canning and the Con-
gress of, in, 145.
Lamb, Charles, 33.
Lieven, Prince, on Canning's in-
sularity, 143 ; 156; 158; 160; 162.
Lisbon, French enter, 75 ; Can-
ning at, 96.
Liverpool, Canning's election at,
91.
Liverpool, Earl of, 12 ; Secretary
at War, 87 ; Administration of,
90; foreign policy of, 98; and
the Grand Alliance, 99; offers
Canning the Foreign Office,
114 ; and the " Oregon ques-
tion," 136; illness of, 171, 174.
London, conference opened at,
162 ; Treaty of, 163.
184 INDEX
Londonderry, Marquis of. (See Non-intervention, the doctrineiof,
Castlereagh.) 25.
Louis XVIII. and Spain, 128. Northumberland, Duke of, 173.
Mackintosh Sir James, 33. .. Orders in Council," the, 70.
Mahmoud II., Sultan, appeals to Oregon question, the, Canning
Mehemet Ah, 155. anj I3g
Malmesbury, Earl of, on Canning,
56.
Maria da Gloria, Donna, 130. .. , „ ,_ ,
Marten, Henry, parody of £* hnella, M. de, 132.
Southey's poem on, 31. Palmerston, Vlscount) I7f°'R174-.,
Mehemet Ali, intervenes in Pedro, Dom, Emperor of Brazil,
Greece, 155. ?3i I King of Portugal, 138 ;
Melville, Lord, impeachment of, >ssues a Llberal Constitution,
alittMi&ch, Prince, Castlereagh Peel> Sir R°bert' "4, W
and, 101, 118; and Canning, Perceval, Spencer, 64; Admims-
118, 143; and Castlereagh, 119 ; "atlon °f' 87: aand the Regent,
and English opinion, 120; and D.!? ; gSSr* ** 3 ... T,
the Spanish Revolution, 123, Pl"' William, and the French
127; and the Eastern question, Revolution, 17; offers Canning
144, 145, 146, 148, 152, 153, 156, a s!iaV7' 22: his policy to-
jZZ ' wards France, 25, 26 ; and the
Miguel, Dom, 131, 132, 134, 140; ?ec<?nd coalition, 34 ; and Ire-
Regent of Portugal, 142 land- 37, 45; resigns, 47, 55,
" Monroe doctrine/' the, 135. 57 I returns to office, 58 ; last
Montmorency, M. de, 117, 124, Administration, 58 ; and the
I27 third coalition, 59; death, 60;
Morek, insurrection in the, 145 ; _ and th.e question of regency, 88.
Ibrahim lands in the, 155 ; Ibra- Ponsonby, Lord, 139-
him's reputed policy towards, Portland, Duke of, 4& , ; forms a
160; Canning suggests the in- Government, 63 ; and Canning
dependence of, 161, 162. and Ca.st'ere?gh' 77 : reM8n«-
tion and death, 79.
Portugal, invaded by Junot, 74 ;
Napoleon I., 25; in Egypt, 34; Wellesley lands in, 75! Con-
coup d-ttat of i8th Brumaire, yention of Cmtra, 75 ; Welles-
35 ; and the peace of Amiens, !eV assumes command m, 76 ;
57 proclaimed Emperor, 59; insurrection in, 131, 132; British
plans against England, 59, 61 ; "".? rv«/} tlona ln.' J33 ! death of
Treaty of Tilsit, 66; United J°hn ^'l1^- Mariada Gloria,
States and, 69; and Portugal, 13.8 ; Pedro proclaims a Con-
72; and Spain, 73, 75, 76; stitution, I39 ; " Apostohcal
Canning's "appreciation" of, rising, 140; British expedition
94 07 t0' ?4l-
Navanno, battle of, 164. Pri?ssla and tr]e Spanis h Revolu-
Nelson, Viscount, battle of the tlon> I24- r» l6°' l62- l63-
Nile, 34; Trafalgar, 60.
Nesselrode, Count, 55, 162, 163.
Neuville, M. de, 132, 134. " Reciprocity of Duties Act," 169.
Nicholas I., Emperor of Russia, Reform, parliamentary, Canning
24; accession, 156; and the and, 102, 112, 167.
Greek question, 159, 161. Revolution, the French, 15; public
Nile, battle of the, 34. opinion and, 16; Pitt and, 17;
" Non-intercourse Act," the, 70. Canning and, 18.
INDEX
185
Ridgway, publisher, letter of
Canning to, 103.
Robinson, 168.
Romanticism, Canning and, 83.
Rush, Mr., 136.
Russell, Lord John, motion for
reform, 112.
Russia and the Bering Sea, 116;
effect of the execution of the
Orthodox Patriarch in, 145,
146 ; war party in the ascendant
in, 152; proposes Greek auto-
nomy, 153 ; death of Alexander
I. and accession of Nicholas I.,
156 ; Protocol of St. Peters-
burg, 158 ; ultimatum to Tur-
key, 159; Convention of Akker-
mann, 159 ; adheres to the
Treaty of London, 162.
Troppau, Canning and the Con-
gress of, in.
Turkey, Greek insurrection, 117,
145 ; murder of the Patriarch
Gregprios, 145 ; Canning on
Turkish independence, 148 ;
breach with Russia, 149, 150 ;
England recognises Greek
belligerency, 150 ; Russian ulti-
matum to, 159; Convention of
Akkermann, 159 ; Treaty of
London, 163 ; battle of Nava-
rino, 164.
Union, Act of, 46.
United States and the Berlin
decrees, 69 ; the " Monroe
doctrine," 135, 136.
St. Petersburg, Conference of,i53,
157 > Protocol of, 158, 161 (be-
comes Treaty of London), 163.
Schill, Colonel, 76.
Scott, Miss Joan (Mrs. Canning),
48; " Lines addressed to," 84.
Scott, Sir Walter, 83.
Sheridan, 3, 17, 18 ; and the
Union with Ireland, 40.
South America, Spanish colonies
in, 125, 126, 130, 135, 136, 137;
England recognises the inde-
pendence of, 138.
Southey, Canning's parodies of,
30-
Spain, Napoleon and, 73 ; Can
ning and the national rising in,
74; expedition of Sir John
Moore, 75 ; revolution in, 116,
123; question of the colonies,
125 ; French invasion of, 130 ;
reaction in, 130.
Strangford, Lord, 150.
Stuart, Sir Charles, 139.
Subserra, M. de, 134.
Suvoroff, General, 34.
Tilsit, Treaty of, 66.
Trafalgar, battle of, 60.
Trinidad, speech on the island of,
50.
Vansittart (Lord Bexley), 168,
174.
Verona, Congress of, 116, 118,
124, 126, 143, 146.
Villele, Jean Baptiste, Comte de,
122, 123 ; and Spain, 127, 128.
Wales, Caroline, Princess of
(wife of George IV.), 83 ; Can-
ning and, 88. (See also Caro-
line, Queen.)
Wellesley, the Marquis, 87, 89.
Wellington, Duke of, 65 ; lands
in Portugal, 75 ; assumes com-
mand in Portugal, 76 ; vote of
thanks to, 94; at Verona, 118,
124, 125 ; and Spain, 128 ;
mission to St. Petersburg, 158,
1 60 ; and the Treaty of London,
163 ; and Canning's policy, 166 ;
opposes Canning's Corn Bill,
172 ; refuses to serve under
Canning, 173, 174.
Westmorland, Earl of, 174.
Wood, Alderman, and Queen
Caroline, 107.
Yorke, Charles, 60.
12*
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