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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT
 
 . 
 

 
 i 

 
 SPEECHES,
 
 DELIVERED BY THE 
 
 RT. HON. GEORGE CANNING, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 PUBLIC CELEBRATION OF HIS THIRD RETURN TO 
 PARLIAMENT FOR THE TOWN OF LIVERPOOL, 
 
 JUNE 29, 1818. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR G. AND W. NICOL, BOOKSELLERS TO 
 
 HIS MAJESTY, PALL-MALL J 
 BY W. BULMEK AND CO. CLEVELAND-ROW, ST. JAMES'S. 
 
 1818.
 
 THE Publishers, upon reading the following Speeches., 
 were anxious that they might be given to the Public in a more 
 permanent form than the columns of a Newspaper afford. 
 They have printed them in the present shape, as d mark of 
 respect for the eloquence, loyalty, and English feeling, which 
 they breathe ; but above all, at this day, for the boldness and 
 truth with which they unmask the designs of the Reformers.
 
 SPEECHES, 
 
 ' CXENTLEMEN, it was at my suggestion 
 that your worthy Chairman had the good- 
 ness to make a slight alteration in the 
 order of the toasts as they stand on the 
 printed card, and to propose, before my 
 health, which you have just done me the 
 honour to drink, the health of those per- 
 sons by whose suffrages I have been ele- 
 vated to the situation of your Representa- 
 tive, and of those who, had their suffrages 
 been wanted, would have contributed to 
 that elevation. It is in the natural order 
 of things, Gentlemen, that cause should 
 precede effect ; and before you expressed 
 your rejoicing on my return, I was anxious 
 
 73 &6
 
 that due acknowledgment should have 
 been paid to those whose votes, or whose 
 intentions to come forward, intentions as 
 notorious and as efficacious as their votes, 
 gave effect to the wishes of this great com- 
 munity in my favour. 
 
 " Gentlemen, six years have elapsed 
 since 1 was first placed in that envied 
 situation. Search the records of history, 
 where shall we find six years so fertile in 
 events ; and in events not only of such 
 immense importance, but of such various 
 character, at one time so awful and ap- 
 palling, at another so full of encourage- 
 ment and of glory ? We have, within this 
 period of time, had war peace war 
 again and again a peace, which, I flatter 
 myself, is now settling itself for a long 
 duration. 
 
 " In many of those changes, Gentlemen, 
 as they were taking place, and with re- 
 spect to all of them, while they were yet 
 in doubtful futurity, the opinions which I
 
 hold with you, and by holding which with 
 you I am alone worthy to represent you, 
 have been controverted by predictions, 
 which, in prospect, it would have been 
 presumptuous to dispute, but which, in 
 retrospect, it is now pleasant to contem- 
 plate. 
 
 " When I first, in obedience to your 
 call, presented myself before you, it was 
 at that period of a war, already of near 
 twenty years duration, in which the crisis 
 of the fate of nations seemed to be arrived. 
 It was at that period of the campaign, 
 destined to be decisive of that war, in 
 which the enemy appeared in his most 
 gigantic dimensions, and had begun to 
 run his most extravagant career. It would 
 be little disparagement to the stoutest 
 heart to say, that it shrunk from the con- 
 templation of a might so overwhelming; 
 and it required, perhaps, as much courage 
 as sagacity to derive, from the ill com- 
 pounded materials of the colossus, a hope
 
 8 
 
 or an expectation of its fall. We were, 
 indeed, loudly told, at that time, that re- 
 sistance was altogether hopeless ; and you, 
 Gentlemen, were encouraged to believe, 
 that if, by rejecting me, whose politics 
 were supposed to be identified with the 
 prosecution of the war, and by returning 
 to Parliament as your Representatives 
 those who then solicited your suffrages 
 in opposition to me, you marked your 
 disapprobation of the continuance of so 
 hopeless a contest, you would, by this 
 demonstration of the opinion of so con- 
 siderable a part of the British empire, 
 infallibly produce a peace, with all its 
 attendant blessings. 
 
 " Against these fallacious, but inviting 
 assurances, with all the responsibility that 
 belonged to the anticipation of brighter 
 prospects in the midst of overwhelming 
 gloom, and to the denial of associations 
 familiar in the mouths and in the minds 
 of men, I ventured to tell you, that peace
 
 was not in your power, except through 
 the road of victory ; and I ventured to 
 tell you further, that peace, if sought 
 through any other path, would not be 
 lasting ; and that, come when it might, it 
 would not come, in the first instance, with 
 all the blessings of ordinary peace in its 
 train. 
 
 " At the end of the period which has 
 elapsed, compare what I then said to you 
 with what has actually taken place. 
 
 " If, at the time of which I am speak- 
 ing, in 1812, this great town had contri- 
 buted its share towards forcing a change 
 in the national councils, by rejecting the 
 man whose political existence was identi- 
 fied with the success of the war, and by 
 choosing others in his room whose reputa- 
 tion depended upon its failure; and if, Gen- 
 tlemen, you had had the misfortune to 
 succeed in forcing such a change, I ask 
 you, whether you believe that England 
 would have stood erect, as she has done,
 
 10 
 
 with her enemy prostrate at her feet, and 
 with Europe saved by her assistance ? 
 
 " But, Gentlemen, as if to defeat and 
 discredit the professors of political pro- 
 phecy, you have had also a trial of peace, 
 not wholly corresponding with their anti- 
 cipations. I told you, in 1812, that no- 
 thing was easier than to draw flattering 
 views of distant prospects ; but that there 
 were circumstances to be taken into ac- 
 count in the estimate of war and peace 
 which baffled calculation. I told you, 
 that THE war (not WAR generally, as 
 has falsely been imputed), but the war in 
 which we were then engaged was, from its 
 peculiar character, one, in which though 
 the common characteristics of peace, such 
 as tranquillity, and absence of bloodshed, 
 and freedom from alarm, were necessarily 
 suspended yet the springs of enterprise 
 were not cut off, nor the activity of com- 
 merce altogether paralysed : nor would 
 the restoration of peace necessarily and at
 
 11 
 
 once restore the state of things which so 
 long and so extraordinary a war had in- 
 terrupted. 
 
 " And why, Gentlemen? Because I 
 was desirous, as was, I say, falsely im- 
 puted to me, of dissociating the natural 
 combinations of war and peace from their 
 respective attributes ? of holding out war 
 as, for its own sake, desirable, and peace, 
 as, in itself, unlovely ? No, Gentlemen ; 
 but because I wished to represent to you 
 things as they really were, or, at least, as 
 in my own honest judgment I saw them ; 
 because I wished to dissipate the prejudices 
 which were attempted to be raised against 
 a war, on the issue of which our national 
 existence depended, by pressing into the 
 service those common-place arguments 
 against war, which, however abstractedly 
 true, were not true as to the war in ques- 
 tion ; and by holding out all those com- 
 mon-place inducements to peace, which, 
 though also true in the abstract, could not
 
 12 
 
 have been true of any peace concluded 
 on ignominious terms, and have not been 
 found true of the first years of a peace 
 even as glorious as that by which the late 
 war was concluded. 
 
 " That the war had had the effect of 
 opening unusual channels of commercial 
 adventure ; that it had given a new and 
 universal stimulus to commercial ac- 
 tivity and enterprise ; that the war had 
 created I do not say a wholesome, I do 
 not say a substantial, I do not say a per- 
 manent prosperity ; but that it had 
 created a prosperity peculiar to itself, and 
 which atoned, in some measure, for the 
 evils, and enabled the country, in some 
 measure, to bear up against the difficul- 
 ties, incident to war ; all these were mat- 
 ters of fact, which, as such, I stated to 
 you : and I stated them as affording, not 
 motives but consolations not induce- 
 ments to prolong, beyond necessity, a war 
 which might be safely terminated at will,
 
 IS 
 
 but reasons for bearing patiently those 
 evils to which it was not in our power to put 
 an end. That this was a forced and unna- 
 tural state of things, neither I nor any man 
 pretended to deny : but whether England 
 alone could enjoy a sound and natural re- 
 pose, in the forced and unnatural state of 
 Europe; whether any peace which could 
 be made by us while all Europe remained 
 under the control of our enemy, would be 
 a peace worthy of the name, these were 
 questions which might fairly be mooted, 
 without depreciating the blessings of peace, 
 or denying the general preferableness of 
 peace to war. 
 
 Our adversaries represented the war as 
 uncompensated evil and voluntary self in- 
 fliction : peace, as unqualified prosperity, 
 and as immediately within our grasp. My 
 business the business of truth was to 
 shew, that THE war though all war is 
 full of evil had yet mitigations; and, 
 besides that it would not cease at our
 
 14 
 
 bidding; that peace would not come 
 at our call, and, besides, that when it 
 came, it would bring with it its priva- 
 tions. The stimulus of the war withdrawn, 
 manufacturing industry would necessarily 
 languish: the channels of commerce forced 
 open by the war having closed, commer- 
 cial enterprise must necessarily be check- 
 ed, till new channels were explored ; and 
 the mere cessation of the ' trade of war' 
 itself, in all its various branches, must both 
 discontinue the occupation of a population 
 which it had created, and throw additional 
 crowds on occupations already over- 
 stocked. Here were causes sufficient for 
 the inevitable privations and derangements 
 of a first year of peace, perhaps, after any 
 war, but much more after a war of such 
 unexampled effort and extension. 
 
 " It required no great sagacity to fore- 
 see these things : but, in those who did 
 foresee them, it would have been, at least 
 disingenuous to assert or to suffer the
 
 15 
 
 assertions to go uncontro verted that the 
 war was our single and voluntary suffering ; 
 and that peace was not only attainable, 
 but would be an instant and perfect cure. 
 " Such, Gentlemen, is the true account 
 of the temporary stagnation of commer- 
 cial industry and enterprise which has 
 been insidiously imputed to national ex- 
 haustion; of the difficulty in providing 
 employment for an exuberant population 
 (the* harvest of a long war) upon the sudden 
 return of peace, and before the world had 
 yet righted itself after all its convulsions. 
 
 " Either our antagonists foresaw these 
 immediate and necessary consequences of 
 the discontinuance of the war, or they did 
 not. If they did foresee them, would it not 
 have been fair to have shaded a little more 
 carefully the bright prospects which they 
 painted of the peace to come ? If not, 
 would it not be fair in them to acknow- 
 ledge, that they had been too sanguine in 
 their anticipations? But,what surely is not 
 
 ' * See note at the end.
 
 16 
 
 fair nor reasonable, is, that no sooner was 
 the peace, which they had so long cla- 
 moured for, obtained, than they proceeded 
 with as much pathos as they had bestowed 
 upon the evils of war, to deplore the suf- 
 ferings of that moment which they had 
 predicted as one of unalloyed prosperity 
 and happiness ! 
 
 " Then began thek lamentations over 
 languishing industry and stinted commerce, 
 and unemployed population ; as if these 
 evils were not the natural and necessary 
 consequences of unavoidably operating 
 causes ; as if they were the creation of 
 some malignant influence, which, whether 
 in war or in peace, blighted the destinies 
 of the country. 
 
 " Is it intended to maintain this propo- 
 sition, that, in order to produce the bles- 
 sings with which peace ought to be accom- 
 panied, the war ought to have been con- 
 cluded with defeat, and the peace to have 
 been a peace of humiliation? If so, I can 
 understand the arguments and acknow-
 
 17 
 
 ledge the consistency of those who pre- 
 tend to have been disappointed at the tardy 
 reappearance of the blessings which they 
 promised us; for undoubtedly the war 
 was concluded with triumphs such as must 
 have deranged all anticipations founded on 
 the hypothesis of unconditional surrender 
 and submission. 
 
 " But, Gentlemen, labouring as I do 
 under the imputation of being a great 
 lover of war, I am almost afraid to say, 
 that there are some things in the war which 
 I regret ; and some things in the peace 
 which I like as little as even those priva- 
 tions of which we have been speaking, but 
 which are happily in a course of daily di- 
 minution. The war divided the political 
 parties of the country on one great ques- 
 tion, which involved and absorbed all minor 
 considerations. With war, party has not 
 ceased ; but our differences are of a sort 
 more ignoble and more alarming. The 
 line of demarcation during the war was 
 
 B
 
 18 
 
 resistance or non-resistance to a foreign 
 enemy ; the line of demarcation now, is 
 maintenance or subversion of our internal 
 institutions. 
 
 " Gentlemen, it does seem somewhat 
 singular, and Iconceive that the historian 
 of future times will be at a loss to imagine, 
 how it should happen, that at this particu- 
 lar period, at the close of a war of such un- 
 exampled brilliancy, in which this country 
 had acted a part so much beyond its sup- 
 posed physical strength and its apparent 
 resources, there should arise a sect of phi- 
 losophers in this country, who begin to sus- 
 pect something rotten in the British con- 
 stitution. The history of Europe for the 
 last twenty-five years is something like 
 this. A power went forth, animated with 
 the spirit of evil, to overturn every com- 
 munity of the civilized world. Before 
 this dreadful assailant, empires, and 
 monarchies, and republics, bowed ; some 
 were crushed to the earth, and some bought
 
 19 
 
 their safety by compromise. In the midst 
 of this wide-spread ruin, among tottering 
 columns, and falling edifices, one fabric 
 alone stood erect and braved the storm ; 
 and not only provided for its own internal 
 security, but was enabled to send forth 
 at every portal, assistance to its weaker 
 neighbours. On this edifice floated that 
 ensign (pointing to the British flag,) a signal 
 of rallying to the combatant and of shelter 
 to the fallen. 
 
 " To an impartial observer I will not 
 say to an inhabitant of this little fortress 
 to an impartial observer, in whatever part 
 of the world, one should think something 
 of this sort would have occurred. Here is 
 a fabric constructed upon some principles 
 not common to others in its neighbour- 
 
 o 
 
 hood; principles which enable it to stand 
 erect while every thing is prostrate around 
 it. In the construction of this fabric there 
 must be some curious felicity which the 
 eye of the philosopher would be well em-
 
 20 
 
 ployed in investigating, and which its 
 neighbours may profit by adopting. This, 
 I say, Gentlemen, would have been an 
 obvious inference. But what shall we 
 think of their understandings who draw 
 an inference directlv the reverse? and 
 
 V 
 
 who say to us, ' You have stood when 
 4 others have fallen; when others have 
 * crouched, you have borne yourselves aloft ; 
 ' you alone have resisted the power which 
 ' has shaken, and swallowed up half the 
 ' civilized world. We like not this suspicious 
 ' peculiarity. There must be something 
 ' wrong in your internal conformation !' 
 With this unhappy curiosity, and in the spi- 
 rit of this per verse analysis, they proceed to 
 dissect the British Constitution. They find 
 that, like other States, we have a Monarch ; 
 that a Nobility, though not organized like 
 ours, is common to all the great kingdoms 
 of Europe ; but that our distinction lies in 
 a popular assembly, which gives life, and 
 vigour, and strength to the whole frame of
 
 21 
 
 the Government. Here, therefore, they 
 find the seat of our disease. Our peccant 
 part is, undoubtedly, the House of Com- 
 mons. Hence our presumptuous exemption 
 from what was the common lot of all our 
 neighbours : the anomaly ought forthwith 
 to be corrected ; and, therefore, the House 
 of Commons must be reformed. 
 
 " Gentlemen, it cannot but have struck 
 you as extraordinary, that whereas, in 
 speaking of foreign Sovereigns, our re- 
 formers are never very sparing of un- 
 courtly epithets ; that whereas, in discus- 
 sing the general principles of Government, 
 they seldom omit an opportunity of dis- 
 crediting and deriding the privileged or- 
 ders of society ; jet, when they come to 
 discuss the British Constitution, nothing 
 can be more respectful than their language 
 towards the Crown ; nothing more forbear- 
 ing than their treatment of the aristocracy. 
 With the House of Commons alone they 
 take the freedom of familiarity ; upon it
 
 22 
 
 they pour out all the vials of their wrath, 
 and exhaust their denunciations of amend- 
 ment. 
 
 Gentlemen, this, though extraordinary, 
 is not unintelligible. The reformers are 
 wise in their generation. They know well 
 enough, they have read plainly enough in 
 our own history, that the prerogatives of 
 the Crown and the privileges of the Peerage, 
 would be but as dust in the balance against 
 a preponderating democracy. They mean 
 democracy and nothing else. And, give 
 them but a House of Commons constructed 
 on their own principles, the Peerage and 
 the Throne may exist for a day, but may 
 be swept from the face of the earth by the 
 first angry vote of such a House of Com- 
 mons. 
 
 " It is, therefore, utterly unnecessary 
 for the reformers to declare hostility to the 
 Crown ; it is, therefore, utterly superfluous 
 for them to make war against the Peerage. 
 They know that, let but their principles
 
 23 
 
 have full play, the Crown and the Peerage 
 would be to the Constitution which they 
 assail, but as the baggage to the army ; 
 and the destruction of them but as the 
 gleanings of the battle. They know that 
 the battle is with the House of Commons, 
 as at present constituted ; and that that 
 once overthrown, and another popular as- 
 sembly constructed on their principles as 
 the creature and depository of the people's 
 power, and the unreasoning instrument of 
 the people's will, there -would not only be 
 no chance, but (I will go further for them 
 in avowal, though not in intention, than 
 they go for themselves,) there would not 
 be a pretence for the existence of any other 
 branch of the Constitution. 
 
 " Gentlemen, the whole fallacy lies in 
 this : the reformers reason from false pre- 
 mises, and therefore are driving on their 
 unhappy adherents to false and dangerous 
 conclusions. The Constitution of this 
 country is a MONARCHY: controlled by
 
 24 
 
 two assemblies ; the one hereditary, inde- 
 pendant alike of the Crown and the peo- 
 ple ; the other elected by and for the 
 people, but elected for the purpose of con- 
 trolling and not of administering the Go- 
 vernment. The error of the reformers, if 
 error it can be called, is, that they argue 
 as if the Constitution of this country were 
 a broad and level democracy, inlaid indeed 
 (for ornament's sake) with a Peerage, and 
 topped (by sufferance) with a Crown. 
 
 " If they say that for such a Constituti- 
 on, that is,in effect, for an unbalanced de- 
 mocracy, the present House of Commons 
 is not sufficiently popular; they are right: 
 but such a Constitution is not what we have 
 or what we desire. We are born under a 
 MONARCHY: which it is our duty, as much 
 as it is for our happiness, to preserve ; and 
 which there cannot be a shadow of doubt, 
 that the reforms which are recommended 
 to us would destroy. 
 
 " I love the Monarchy, Gentlemen, be-
 
 25 
 
 cause, limited and controlled as it is in our 
 happy Constitution, I believe it to be not 
 only the safest depository of power, but 
 the surest guardian of liberty. I love the 
 system of popular representation, Gentle- 
 men who can have more cause to value 
 it highly than I feel at this moment re- 
 flecting on the triumphs which it has 
 earned for me, and addressing those who 
 have been the means of achieving them ? 
 But of popular representation, I think we 
 have enough, for every purpose of jealous, 
 steady, corrective, efficient control over 
 the acts of that monarchial power, which, 
 for the safety and for the peace of the 
 community, is lodged in one sacred fa- 
 mily, and descendible from sire to son. 
 
 " If any man tell me that the popular 
 principle in the House of Commons is 
 not strong enough for such control, nor 
 diffused enough to insure sympathy with 
 the people, I appeal to the whole course of 
 the transactions of the last war ; I desire
 
 26 
 
 to have cited to me the instances in which 
 the House of Commons has failed either 
 to express the matured and settled opinion, 
 of the Nation, or to convey that opinion to 
 the Crown. But I wWn those who may un- 
 dertake to make the citation, that they do 
 not (as in fact they almost always do) substi- 
 tute their own for the national opinion, and 
 then complain of its having been imper- 
 fectly echoed in the House of Commons. 
 
 " If, on the other hand, it be only meant 
 to say, that the House of Commons is not 
 the whole Government of the country, 
 which, if all power be not only from but in 
 the people, the House of Commons ought 
 to be, were the people adequately repre- 
 sented, I answer, ' Thank God it is not 
 < so! God forbid that it should ever aim 
 ' at becoming so !' 
 
 "But they look far short of the ultimate 
 effect of the doctrines of the present day, 
 who do not see, that the tendency of those 
 doctrines is not to make a House of Com-
 
 27 
 
 mons such as, in theory, it has always been 
 defined a third branch of the Legislature; 
 but to absorb the legislative and executive 
 powers into one ; to create an immediate 
 delegation of the whole authority of the 
 people, to which, practically, nothing 
 could, and, in reasoning, nothing ought to 
 stand in opposition. 
 
 " Gentlemen, it would be well if such 
 doctrines were the ebullitions of the mo- 
 ment, and ended with the occasions 
 which naturally give them their freest 
 play ; I mean with the season of popular 
 elections. But, unfortunately, dissemi- 
 nated as they are .among all ranks of the 
 community, they are doing permanent 
 and incalculable mischief. How lamenta- 
 bly is experience lost on mankind! For 
 when, in what age, in what country of the 
 world, have doctrines of this sort been re- 
 duced to practice, without leading through 
 anarchy to military despotism? The re- 
 volution of the seasons is not more cer-
 
 28 
 
 tain than is this connection of events in 
 the course of moral nature. 
 
 " Gentlemen, to theories like these, you 
 will do me the justice to remember that I 
 have always opposed myself; not more 
 since I have had the honour to represent 
 this community, than when I was uncer- 
 tain how far my opinion on such subjects 
 might coincide with yours. 
 
 " For opposing these theories, Gentle- 
 men, I have become an object of peculiar 
 obloquy : but I have borne that obloquy 
 with the consciousness of having dis- 
 charged my duty ; and with the consola- 
 tion, that the time was not far distant 
 when I should come here among you (to 
 whom alone I owe an account of my pub- 
 lic conduct); when I should have an op- 
 portunity of hearing from you whether I 
 had (as I flattered myself) spoken the 
 sense of the second commercial commu- 
 nity in England ; and when, if unfortu- 
 nately and contrary to my belief I had
 
 become separated in opinion from you, I 
 should learn the grounds of that separa- 
 tion. 
 
 " Gentlemen, my object in political 
 life has always been, rather to reconcile 
 the Nation to the lot which has fallen to 
 them (surely a most blessed and glorious 
 lot among nations!) than to aggravate in- 
 curable imperfections, and to point out 
 imaginary and unattainable excellences 
 for their admiration. I have done so; 
 because, though I am aware that more 
 splendidly popular systems of Govern- 
 ment might be devised than that which it 
 is our happiness to enjoy, it is, I believe 
 in my conscience, impossible to devise one 
 in which all the good qualities of human 
 nature should be brought more beneficially 
 into action ; in which there should be as 
 much order, and as much liberty ; in 
 which property (the conservative principle 
 of society) should operate so fairly with a 
 just but not an overwhelming weight ; in
 
 so 
 
 which industry should be so sure of its re- 
 ward, talents of their due ascendancy, and 
 virtue of the general. esteem. , 
 
 " The theories of preternatural purity 
 are founded on a notion of doing away 
 with all these accustomed relations, of 
 breaking all the ties by which society is 
 held together. Property is to have no 
 influence talents no respect virtue no 
 honour, among their neighbourhood : 
 naked, abstract political rights are to be 
 set. up against the authorities of nature and 
 reason ; .and the result of suffrages thus 
 freed from all the ordinary influences 
 which have operated upon mankind from 
 the beginning of the world, is to be the 
 erection of some untried system of politics, 
 of which it may be sufficient to saj^, that it 
 could not last a day ; that, if it rose with 
 the mists of the morning, it would dissolve 
 in the noontide sun. 
 
 " Gentlemen, one ill consequence of 
 these brilliant schemes, even where they
 
 31 
 
 are the visions of unsound imagination 
 rather than the suggestions of crafty mis- 
 chief, is, that they tend to dissatisfy the 
 minds of the uninformed with the actual 
 Constitution of their country. 
 
 " To maintain that Constitution has been 
 the unvarying object of my political life ; 
 and the maintenance of it, in these latter 
 days, has, I have said, exposed me to 
 obloquy and to hatred ; to the hatred of 
 those who believe either their own reputa- 
 tion for sagacity, or their own means of 
 success, to be connected with a change in 
 our present institutions. 
 
 " We have heard something of numbers 
 in the course of the present election ; and 
 there is in numbers, I confess, a coinci- 
 dence which gratifies and pleases me. 
 The number three hundred was that of the 
 majority which assured my return. It is the 
 number, I am informed, of those who are 
 assembled here to greet me this day. The
 
 32 
 
 last time that I had heard of the number 
 three hundred, in a way at all interesting 
 to myself, was in an intimation publicly 
 conveyed to me, that precisely that num- 
 ber of heroes had bound themselves, by 
 oath to each other, to assassinate me. 
 Gentlemen, against my three hundred 
 assassins I put my three hundred friends ; 
 and I feel neither my life nor my popu- 
 larity in danger.'* 
 
 " His Majesty's present Ministers, the 
 firm and unshaken supporters of the 
 Principles of Mr. Pitt," having been 
 drunk, Mr. CANNING addressed the com- 
 pany in the following terms : 
 
 " Gentlemen, as one of that body to 
 whom you have just paid so cordial a 
 compliment, it becomes me, on their
 
 33 
 
 behalf, to express the acknowledgment 
 which I, as one of them, feel, and which, 
 I am sure, they will feel collectively, for 
 the honour which you have done to us. 
 
 " Gentlemen, for myself I am bound to 
 say something, because I must disclaim 
 any share in much of that credit to which 
 my colleagues are entitled for having 
 brought the late war to its glorious con- 
 clusion. But those who have witnessed 
 my political life well know, that never, at 
 any moment when I was separated from 
 the councils of the Crown, did I withhold 
 my firm and unqualified support from the 
 great measures which were necessary for 
 maintaining the war with all our strength, 
 until it could be concluded with safety 
 and with honour. At the period when I 
 had a share in those councils, began the 
 peninsular war; from which I then au- 
 gured, and from which all are now agreed 
 in dating, the deliverance of Europe. It 
 was during my absence from the cabinet, 
 
 c
 
 34 
 
 that the spirit of resistance, kindled in the 
 peninsula, communicated itself to the 
 other nations of Europe. By that spirit 
 was animated a combination of states, the 
 most powerful, perhaps, that history re- 
 cords ; and by that combination was 
 achieved a peace, such as the most san- 
 guine imagination would have hesitated to 
 anticipate ; but of which the councils of 
 Mr. Pitt had long ago laid the foundation. 
 
 " In equal consonance to the tenor of 
 those councils, his Majesty's present Mi- 
 nisters are determined to cultivate the 
 peace which has been so nobly achieved ; 
 and to maintain the country in the enjoy- 
 ment of internal quiet and of external 
 prosperity, not by encouraging vain pro- 
 jects of fanciful reform, but by rallying 
 the good sense and sound feeling of the 
 nation to the support of our free mo- 
 narchial constitution. 
 
 "In that path of internal peace, as in 
 the more brilliant course of national glory,
 
 35 
 
 undoubtedly the present Government en- 
 deavour to follow the footsteps of Mr. Pitt. 
 
 Where they fail, let it be understood, that 
 
 
 
 the failure is to be imputed to the inade- 
 quacy of the pupils, and not to any imper- 
 fection in the principles of their great 
 master, to any forgetfulness of his pre- 
 cepts, or any willing deviation from his 
 example/' 
 
 The health of " The Right Honourable 
 William Huskisson, and thanks to him for 
 his attention to the interests of Liverpool," 
 having been drank, Mr. CANNING re- 
 turned thanks for him as follows : 
 
 " Gentlemen, I rise to return my own 
 thanks and those which, I am sure, I 
 should have been commissioned by my 
 right honourable friend to return in his 
 name, for the manner in which you have 
 done him the honour to drink his health ; 
 a man whom I never can describe more 
 aptly than I once had occasion to describe
 
 36 
 
 him to some among you ; as being, what 
 he undoubtedly is, the best man of business 
 in England ; a man whose extraordinary 
 talents, matured by long reflection and 
 long experience, have qualified him as 
 one of the ablest practical statesman that 
 could be engaged in the concerns of a 
 commercial country. 
 
 " Gentlemen, the praises which you 
 have justly bestowed on him recal to my 
 recollection a debt of gratitude which I owe 
 to you, for the indulgence which I received 
 from you two years ago ; and which gave 
 him, during my absence, those opportu- 
 nities of serving you that have won so 
 deservedly upon your regard and esteem. 
 Gentlemen, you may be assured for him, 
 that, however totally disconnected from 
 you, as you may be assured for me, when- 
 ever my connection with you may cease, that 
 we shall be invariably anxious to promote, 
 by all means in our power, the interests of 
 Liverpool; riot only from sentiments of
 
 37 
 
 gratitude, but because we are quite con- 
 vinced, that, in promoting the interests of 
 this great commercial town, we secure to 
 the genera] prosperity of Great Britain one 
 of its most useful and efficient supports. I 
 will not say, that if the interests of the nation 
 were, in any instance, at variance with 
 those of Liverpool, even as your member, I 
 would take your part ; but I will say, that, 
 whether your member or no, I shall al- 
 ways retain the same desire not to benefit 
 you by any partial sacrifice of the general 
 good in your favour, but to advance your 
 greatness and prosperity, which are but 
 the samples and the epitome of the great- 
 ness and prosperity of England. 
 
 " Gentlemen, you have just recognised, 
 in the toast which preceded the health of 
 my right honourable friend, that identity 
 between the landed and commercial in- 
 terests of the kingdom, the principle of 
 which I am taking the liberty to inculcate. 
 
 " The one interest is, indeed, inherent in
 
 38 
 
 the soil, and inseparable from it. But that 
 soil is increased tenfold in its value, and 
 the tenure by which it is held is increased 
 tenfold in its security, by that commercial 
 enterprize which augments the wealth of 
 the kingdom, and strengthens the sinews 
 of its maritime power. 
 
 " The consent of different orders is the 
 strength and safet} r of the state. To set 
 one class of society against another is to 
 endanger the whole. How much more 
 when, as in the miserable politics of the 
 present day, an attempt is made to set the 
 poor against the rich, for the common de- 
 struction of both ! 
 
 " Gentlemen, your example and your 
 authority may do much, among the multi- 
 tude whom you employ, to protect them 
 against the poison of such doctrines to 
 satisfy them, that, as your prosperity de- 
 pends upon the general prosperity of the 
 empire, so do their happiness and comfort 
 depend upon the maintenance of that
 
 39 
 
 order, which not only consists with liberty 
 but is essential to it; and of that commerce 
 of which iberty and order are the guar- 
 dians. 
 
 " Gentlemen, I now take leave of you, 
 with a sentiment not the less valuable 
 because it is homely in its phrase which 
 will convey, though it does not fully ex- 
 press, all my good wishes for your pros- 
 perity and happiness : I beg leave to 
 give The good old Town of Liverpool 
 and the Trade thereof/ " 
 
 * " An exuberant population (the harvest of a long 
 war.)" 
 Population of England and Wales in the -j 
 
 year 1790 (the last official estimate > 8,675,000 
 
 before the war) 
 
 Ditto, in the year 1810 (the last year for 1 
 
 % x M 0,488,000 
 which the returns have been made up) J 
 
 Increase in twenty years 1,813,000 
 
 the whole of which period, with the exception of about 
 three years and a half (viz. 1791, 1792, 1802, and part 
 of 1803) was a period of war. 
 
 " It is in this manner that the demand for men, like 
 " that for any other commodity, necessarily regulates 
 " the production of men." 
 
 Smith's Wealth of Nations, Book I. Chap. vnr.
 
 Printed by W. Bulmer and Co. 
 Cleveland-Bow, St. James's.


 
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