ENGLISH WORTHIES EORGE Tanning V«/ BY F. H, Hill i MW^I ■ li i .M M I ^ W m u n a 0"' v-^V^ ./• / 1 /> f u ■ y / Edited bt ANDREW LANG GEOEGE CANNING BY FEANK H. HILL LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1888 All rights reserved ^aGaKtrstc press EALLANTYXIi, HANSON AND CO, LONDON AND EDINEl'lJGH LIBRARY N a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA! Sl 2- ^^^^^ BARBARA PEEFACE. The materials of a Life of Cauuiug are scattered over the newspapers of the period which it covers, Hansard and the ' Annual Register,' the Parliamentary papers, and the memoirs and diaries of his contemporaries. Of formal biographies, the late Mr. Robert Bell's in- teresting ' Life of George Canning ' contains a good deal of information, drawn from various sources, espe- cially as regards his family history ; but it is not always accurate, and tlio author writes rather as a man of letters than as a politician. The works of Mr. Augustus Staplcton, wlio was Canning's private secretary towards the close of his career — ' }"*olitical Life of George Canning' and 'George Canning and his Times' — are rather political apologies than biographies, though they contain much valuable material, especially in the letters of Canning to Lord Boringdon, afterwards Earl of Morley. An anonymous work, ' Memoirs of the Right Hon. George Canning,' in two volumes, 'published in 1828, appai-ently as a bookseller's speculation to meet iv Preface an interest aroused by Canning's recent deatli, is a fairly- executed compilation from his speeches and from the ' Annual Eegister,' The more important of Canning's speeches, many of them revised by himself, were collected in six volumes by Mr, Robert Therry, who prefixed to them a short biographical sketch. It would be difficult to mention any political me- moirs, diaries, or correspondence published during the past half century in which the name of Canning does not occur, and which do not incidentally throw light upon his character or on the impression made by him during his lifetime. Omitting ephemeral publications, and Mr. J. Frank Newton's pamphlet, ' The Early Days of George Canning,' the list would possibly begin with the 'Life of Sir James Mackintosh,' published in 1835, and would for the moment end with Mr. Hodder's ' Life of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury.' It includes, with others, the ' Diaries and the Letters to his Family of the first Earl of Malmcibnry,' the 'Life and Letters of William Wilberforce,' Lord Stanhope's" 'Life "of Pitt,' and Lord John Russell's ' jMemorials ' and ' Life of C. J. Fox ; ' Mr. Edmund Phipps's 'Memoir of Robert Plume Ward ; ' the ' Diaries and Correspondence of George Rose ; ' Mr. Horace Twiss's ' Life of Lord Eldon ; ' the ' Diaries and Correspondence of I^ord Col- chester ; ' the Duke of Buckingham's ' Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George III., the Prince Regent, and George IV. ; ' the ' Wellington Despatches ; ' Mr. Preface v Pearce's ' Memoirs of the Marquis Wellesley ; ' Dean Pellew's ' Life of Viscount Sidmouth ; ' Mr. Spencer A\'alpole"s ' Life of Spencer Perceval;' Mr. C. D. Youge's ' Life of the Second Earl of Liverpool ; ' the ' Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly ; ' Sir Denis Le Marchant's ' Life of Viscount Althorp ; ' Lord Brougham's ' Life and ^ Times '"by himself; the ' Journals and Correspondence of Lord Auckland ; ' Lockliart's ' Life of Sir Walter Scott ; ' the political writings of Cobhett ; the ' Memoirs of^Sir W. Knighton ; ' the ' Works and Memoir of Hookham Frere ; ' the ' Memoirs of Lady Hester Stan- hope ; ' General Greys ' The Early Life and Opinions of Cliarles, Earl Grey ; ' Sydney Smith's ' Plymley Letters;' Sir A. Alison's ' Memoirs of Lord Castlereagh and Sir Charles Stewart, Marquises of Londonderry ; ' M. Mar- cellus's ' Politique de la Restauration ; ' the Journals of Charles Greville, and the Croker Papers. " rt is curious to note in nearly all these writers and statesmen, of either party, a deep-seated dislike and dis- trust of Canning, or at best an adverse judgment of his conduct in the most notable controversies of his public lit^. Even tlie friendlv feeling: of Pitt, Malmesburv, and Wilberf'orce is qualified by misgiving. The only tliorough exceptions — unless Mackintosh is to be in- cluded — are to be found, so far asT recollect, in the three im-u who after all kuewhim best — in Newton, Hookham Prere, and Stapleton. The chapter on -The Canning Incident ' in Lord Beaconsfield"s biography of Lord o vi Preface George Bentinck deals with Peel's conduct, and not with Canning's. Estimates of Canning as a politician and orator will be found in Lord Brougham's ' Statesmen of the Reign of George III.,' where a much more favourable view of him is taken than that given in Brougham's letters published in his ' Life and Times ; ' in Lord Dalling's * Historic Characters ; ' in Sir George Lewis's ' History of British Administrations,' and Mr. Kebbel's ' History of Toryism.' Among the writers of connected histories, Miss Martincau (' History of the Thirty Years' Peace ') is the passionate eulogist of Canning; Sir Archibald Alison (' History of Europe ') a fair, though unfavourable critic. Canning is the Wentworth of Mr. Plumer Ward's novel, ' De Vd1!^,''^-nTris drawn there in far more pleasing colours than those in which he appears in the same writer's ' Diaries.' In stating Canning's opinions, as expressed by him- self, I have endeavoured, even when the necessity of abridgment did not admit of quotation, to use, as far as possible, his own phrases. I have quoted freely from the squibs and lampoons represented in ' The Spirit of the PublTc "Journals,' not because of the intrinsic value of these productions, but because, with Wolcot's poems and Canning's own, they illustrate the temper of the time, and the moral and political atmosphere which he breathed. CONTENTS. CIlAl'TER TAGE 1 I. The Cannik'j Family . , , . . II. Boyhood and Schooldays . . , , III. The ' Microcosm ' IV. Christ Church V. Mental Training and Eecreation VI. In London — Introduction to Pitt . VII. In the House op Commons .... Vlir. At the Foreign Office .... IX. The ' Anti-Jacobin ' • . . , . X. Domestic Relations ..... XI. Attacks on Adding ton XII. The Second Titt Admini3t.!Ation . XIII. Canning and the Grenville-Fox Ministry 8 17 23 30 39 iS Si GO G9 71 85 92 XIV. The Portland Administration — Mr. Canning Foreign Secretary lOG viii Contents Cll.M'Tiii: PAGE XV. Canning, Castlereagh, and Perceval . . 121 XVI. The Perceval Ministry — Canning Out of Office 127 XVIL Assassination op Mb. Perceval— Formation of THE Liverpool Administration . . . 135 XVIII. Four Years Out of Offick 141 XIX. In and Out of Office 118 XX. Ministerial Leader and Foreign Secretary . 102 XXr. Canning Prime Minister 183 XXII. Death of Canning 194 XXIII. Orator and Statesman — In Private Life . . 199 INDEX 225 GEOEGE CANNING. CHAPTER I. THE CANNING FAMILY. George Canning, who died in 1827, Prime Minister of England," Was born in London on April 11, 1770. In a letter to Sir Walter Scott, consciously or uncon- sciously parodying a remark of Steele's, L.e described himself as an Irishman accidentally born in London. His immediate ancestors would doubtless have de- scribed themselves as Englishmen eccidentallv born in Ireland. The Canning family liad originally been settled at Bishop's Canynge, in Wiltshire, a village the name of which seems to indicate the lay appropri- ation of an ecclesiastical estate. There they remained until the reign of Henry VII. From the earliest periods of English history the well-known couplet of Pope has expressed a division of family pursuits, if not of faniilv characteristics : Boist'rous and rough, your first son is a squii'e, Your second a tradesman, meek ;ind much a liar. In the reign of Edward II. a scion of the Canning B 2 George Canning stock transplanted himself from Wiltsliire to Bristol, then perhaps the chief seat of English industry, and the natural outlet for the ' west countree ' to the sea and the world beyond. The Cannings presently took and long maintained their place among the notables of Bristol. In the reign of Edward III. and Eichard II. William Canning was six times mayor of Bristol, and represented it in successive Parliaments. Another Wil- liam Canning, his grandson, was also mayor of Bristol, and figures in the Rowley forgeries of Chatterton. It was in a chest in St. Mary's Church, known as ' Mr. Canynge's cofre,' that ' the sleepless soul who perished in his pride ' professed to have discovered the manu- scripts to which he gave an air of antiquity by stamp- ing them under his feet, putting them up the chimney, and smearing them with ochre. Another Canning migrated to London, becoming Lord Mayor, and re- ceiving knighthood in I486. A grandson of the elder brother of ' Rowley ' Canning married the daughter of John Salmon and Eustatia his wife, the latter being the heiress of an old AVarwickshire family, the Le Mar- shals of Foxcote. From him the Irish Cannings, and the statesman, are descended. In 1618, some time after the regular plantation of Ulster, James I. granted the manor of Garvagh, in the county Londonderry, to George Canning, youngest son of Richard Canning of Foxcote. It was Strafford's maxim in the subsequent reign that where ' jjlantations did not reach, defective title should extend.' The practice was no doubt older than the maxim. It was deemed prudent to ' line the disaffected Roman Catholic population with Protestant guards,' and for this purpose ' discoverers Avith eagle The Canning Family 3 eyes,' as tlie report of an Irish Parliament calls tliem, went about detecting or inventing flaws in title. George Canning of Garvagh appears to have acted as one of the agents of the Corporation of London, to whom the lands forfeited after the rebellion of Tyrone and O'Don- nell were granted — a cession to which the county of Londonderry owes its formation and its name. His descendants had to fight for their estates. William, his son, was killed in the Great Irish Rebellion of Sir Phelim O'Neill. William's son George was attainted by the Irish Parliament in 1689, but the attainder was reversed and his estates were restored to him in 1691. George Canning, the father of the statesman, was the eldest son of Stratford Canning of Garvagh, the first bearer of those names afterwards celebrated. His grandmother was the daughter of Robert Strat- ford of Baltinglass. George Canning having formed an attachment which his parents disapproved, be- took himself, on an allowance of 150Z. a year, to London. The lady seems to have been his Rosaline, and not his Juliet, for he did not marrv her. Geors^e Canning read for the bar and was called to it, became a small poet and a political pamphleteer, fre- quented Dodslej^'s shop, married, had children, set up as a Avine merchant, found it impossible to live, and died. He was the author of a poetic ' Epistle from William Lord Russell to William Lord Cavendish,' in which the doctrines of the Whim's of the Revolution are o set forth, for the benefit of George III. and Bate; and of an English ' Version of the First Three Books of the Anti-Lucretius of Cardinal Polignac,' a Latin poem u 2 4 George Canning wliich, refuting the doctrines of Epicurus by those of Descartes, was extravagantly praised by Voltaire. The ethics of translation were not then understood as they are now, and Canning takes credit to himself for having corrected the political opinions of his author, making the Italian cardinal speak the language of a patriotic Englishman, An attack upon this book in the ' Cri- tical Review ' led Canning into a fierce controversy with Smollett, whom he suspected of being his assailant, anticipating the feud of English bards and Scotch reviewers, and possibly with as little reason for his suspicion as Lord Byron had for his. The elder George Canning was the author also of 'A Letter to Lord Hillsborough on the Connection between Great Britain and the American Colonies,' defending the policy of the Government on the principles laid down by Dr. John- son in his pamphlet, ' Taxation no Tyranny.' Lord Hills- borough was President of the Board of Trade and Plan- tations, and the letter was naturally enough addressed to him ; an additional reason may perhaps be found in the fact that, like Canning himself, Lord Hillsborough was an Irishman and an Ulster man. If any hope of ad- vancement was entertained by the author, it seems to have been disappointed. The elder Canning published a collected edition of his poetic works, including a further translation of the fourth and fifth books of the ' Anti- Lucretius,' and a prefatory address to his fi'iend and teacher, Seth Thompson, D.D., in wliich he reviews his position : How liavc I fall'n beneath fell Fortune's frown ! How seen niy vessel founder in the deep, Her ablest pilot, Prudence, laid to sleep ! The Cannixg Family 5 But hence Despondence ! liell-born liag, away ! Oft lowers the morn when radiance gilds the day. Hard if all liope were dead, all spirit gone, And every prospect closed at thirty-one ! Then welcome Law ! poor Poesy, farewell ! Though in thy cave the loves and graces dwell, One chancery cavise in solid worth outweiglis Dryden's strong sense and Pope's harmonious lays. Unfortunately the one Chancery cause seems to have been as little within Canning's reach as Dryden's sense or Pope's harmony. By way of committing the guidance of his vessel to her ablest pilot, Prudence, Canning married in May 1768, a year after he had published this farewell to poesy, a portionless young lady. Miss Mary Annie Costello, then resident with her grandfather. Sir Guy Dickens, in Wigmore Street, This Sir Guy Dickens appears to be the Colonel Guy Dickens who makes his appearance, now and again, in Carlyle's ' Life of Frederick the Great.' He was Secretary to the Britisli Legation at Berlin at the time of the double-marriage negotiations, and he had a good deal to do with the domestic and ]3olitical troubles of the time, with the escapades of the Crown Prince, and the intrigues which led to his attempt to get to England, his imprisonment, and the execution of the unhappy Katte. Carlyle seems to have taken a liking for Guy Dickens, describing him as a ' brisk, handy military man,' ^ clear, ingenuous, ingenious,' ' with eyes brisk enough, and lips well shut.' Except in the last cha- racteristic, some trace of the statesman may be found in these qualities. Canning, after his marriage, had got deeply into debt, The family consented to pay hia 6 George Cann/ng debts on condition of his consenting to cut off the entail of the estates, which vrere then settled upon his younger brother Paul, whose descendants owe the baronage of Garvagh, in the Irish peerage, to the son of the disinherited head of their family. The third brother, Stratford, Avas the father of Sir Stratford Canning, afterwards Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. The abilities of the elder George Canning seem to have been just enough to tempt him into lite- rature and politics, and not enough to win success in either. The time of his residence in London, from 1757-71, Avas not unfavourable to a literary adventurer. The age of newspapers and reviews and magazines was beginning. Political pamphleteering had received a new development. The booksellers were on the look- out for recruits. It was the period of Johnson's pamphlets, and Churchill's satires, and Junius's letters, of Smollett and of "Wilkes, of the ' Briton ' and of the ' North Briton,' of the ' Monthly Review ' and of the ' Critical Eeview.' A political partisan who could strike hard, quick and home, whose pen was sharply pointed, and dipped in ink that was made of gall, might have made his mark, and earned a daily dinner and an ulti- mate pension. But the elder George Canning had not the intellectual qualifications, nor perhaps the moral dis- qualifications, for this rough conflict. He hung about among the people who met at Dodsley, the footman- poet and bookseller's, and at his successor's, but he was rather in than of their set. In trade the elder Canning did not prove more successful than he had been in poetry, pamphleteering, and law. The despondence which he had defied at thirty-one overpowered him at The Canning Family 7 tliirfcy-five. On April 11, 1771, he gave up the struggle for existence. He was buried in the graveyard of the cliurch in Marylebone in which he had been married. On his tomb the folloAving inscription, said to have been written by his wife, was placed : — Tliy virtues and my woe no words can tell ; Therefore, a little while, my George, farewell. For faith and love like ours Heaven has in store Its last best gift — to meet and part no more. George Canning CHAPTER II. BOYHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS. George Canning the elder died just a year to the day after his son's birth. A daughter born a year before had lived only a few months. The family of Garvagh had put a private interpretation on the Scrip- ture about visiting the widow and orphan in their affliction, and withdrew from them the allowance of 150L a year which they had granted to the disinherited eldest son. How the two years following the death of the elder George Canning were spent by his widow does not ajDpear to be on record. In 1773 the usual resource of the im]:)overished Englishwoman possessing youth, good looks, abilit}", and energy presented itself to the mind of Mrs. Canning. She bethought herself of the stage. According to Mr. Bell, Mrs. Canning owed her chance of making her first appearance to the kind intervention of Queen Charlotte. Garrick, who was manager of Drury Lane, was officially His Majesty's servant ; he was eager to be socially Her Majesty's servant also, and at her suggestion an ensragement was offered to Mrs. Canning. Mr. Bell conjectures that tlie good offices of Mrs. Canning's uncle, Mr. Gustavus Guy Dickens, one of the grooms of the Queen's chamber, Boyhood and Schooldays 9 and of Lord Hfircourt were employed. But Mrs. Can- ning appeared on the stage in 1773, and neither Mr. Guy Dickens nor Lord Harcourt held court appoint- ments at that date. Mrs. Canning essayed, on November 6, 1773, the part of Jane Shoi'e in the play of that name, Garrick himself resuming that of Hastings, while the good-for- nothing Reddish, who was afterwards Mrs. Canning's second husband, took the part of Dumont. She seems to have had that sort of success which is known as ' success of esteem,' and which consists of a cold appi'oval or absence of disapproval. Bernard, the provincial manager, of whose company at Plymouth and elsewhere she was afterwards a member, and who was present at the performance, says, ' She put forth claims to the approbation of the critical.' But the approbation of the critical, though it may intrinsically outweigh the plaudits of a whole pitful of others, does not fill the treasury. ]Mrs. Canning repeated the part of Jane Shore the following evening, and altogether appeared in it six times. But when the difficulty of coming out had been ovei'come, the still greater difficulty of keep- inof out had to be encountered. Mrs. Canning retired into the background of the stage until she faded from Drury Lane altogether. Her subsequent theatrical career was almost entirely, if not entirely, confined to what, in a theatrical sense, there can be, we imagine, no objection to calling ' the provinces.' Its course is a little confused by her marriage with the actor Reddish, a polygamic person, whose name was borne, not merely in rapid succession but simultaneously, by a perfect troupe of theatrical ladies. In a letter to lo George Canning Garrick, Miss Hannah More says of this very much and at the same time too little married person, who was then manager of the Bristol theatre, ' This is the second or third wife he has produced at Bristol. In a short time we have had a whole bunch of Reddishes, all of them remarkably unpungent.' The audience, wisely discriminating between the provinces of art and morality, used to pelt Reddish in his personal character when he first appeared, in one instance, as Hannah Moi*e records, protracting this operation for a quarter of an hour. Then, having given expression to their injured moral susceptibilities, they allowed him to proceed with the counterfeit presentment with which he was charged for the evening. This man, who seems to have had more than the vices of the elder Kean without a spark of his genius, ultimately drank and debauched himself into a state of imbecility, and died in the York Asylum when Canning was fifteen years of age. Canning had, however, some years before been happily rescued from this dangerous guardianship. Mood}-, the actor, appealed on his behalf to his uncle, Mr. Stratford Canning, who had become a man of note in the world of business and in the political society ot London, but who seems, for whatever reason, to have left his struggling and unhappy elder brother to die unaided and unnoticed. Mr. Stratford Canning was at this time a member of the firm of French, Burroughs, and Canning, merchants and bankers. Moody called on him or wrote to him and told him that his nephew, though full of promise, was at present on the high road to the gallows. Of this portion of his life Canning seems never to Boyhood and Schooldays ii have spoken, tliougli he cannot have forgotten it. Peril aps it was among the things which are harder to recollect than to endure, for the reverse of Dante's saying is often true, and in happy days the recollection of bygone misery is the heaviest of griefs. It may be doubted whether Canning would, in any circumstances, have taken to the road indicated by Moody. His industry, self-restraint and prudent circumspection were as conspicuous throughout his career as his bold and brilliant genius. His course might have indeed been different. But for j\Ioody, his name might have been joined with those of Garrick, Kemble, and Kean, and not with those of Chatham, Pitt, and Peel. Wil- berforce, on the authority of a schoolfellow of Canning's mentions the passion for theatricals which he displayed at Eton. As Addison was ransomed from the Church — the phrase is correct, for he was almost literall}^ bought out of it — for service to the State by Lord Halifax, so Canning, through Moody's generous inter- vention, may have been redeemed from Drury Lane for St. Stephen's and Downing Street. An arrangement was made with the Garvagh family by which an estate of 200Z. a year was settled upon the young Canning for his education and maintenance. He was sent in the first instance to Hyde Abbey, near Winchester, of Avhich a certain Mr. Richards was the master. Mr. Richards seems to have been a hard flogger ; Canning, however, was probably at Hyde Abbey School, as after- wards at Eton, the model good boy for whom birches and canes had no terrors. Here he gave promise of the qualities which he displayed later in life. He gained a prize for a poem on West's picture of the 12 George Canning resurrection of Lazarus, which forms the altar-piece of the cathedral of Winchester. Possibly but for Moody's intervention he might have emulated the achievements of Master Betty, for he is said, in acting the part of Orestes in an adaptation of Euripides, to have powerfully delineated — that is, as powerfully as was possible to an innocent child — the remorse of the matricide. He was more usefully employed in storing his memory with the language and images of Gray, the whole of whose English poems he learned by heart. Canning, at any rate, did not carry away from Hyde Abbey any ani- mosity to Mr. liichards, or, if he did, it wore out in the course of time, for one of his first acts of ecclesiastical patronage was to bestow on \\\% old master, who survived his pupil six years, a prebendal stall in Winchester Cathedral. When Canning, then eleven years old, left Hyde Abbey for Eton in 1781, he was at once put into the lower fourth form. The Eton of George III.'s time bore a much closer resemblance to the Eton of Holy Henry's institution than to that of Queen Victoria. Prizes for modern languages, science masters, pre- parations for army examinations were unknown. It was as much a playground as a school. The games played were, as manuscripts published by Mr. Lyte in his ' History of Eton College ' show, more nume- rous than the books read, and the nomenclature of the sports requires a scholarship of its own for its understanding. The majority of the boys played a good deal, were punished a good deal, and learned a little. Red-letter days, founders' days, and court days Boyhood and Schooldays 13 threw the machinery of instruction periodically out of gear. A whole holiday on one day, a half-holiday on another, and a play at four on the third, made liavoc of time. Greek and Latin extracts, Latin verse, a smattering of geography and mathematics, the Church Catechism, and ' The Whole Duty of Man ' formed the school course. For voluntary and private study in the leisure hours the boys of the fifth and sixth forms were commended to Dr. Middleton's ' Cicero,' Tully"s ' Offices,' Ovid's ' Long and Short V^erses,' ' Spectator,' &c., Milton, Pope, ' Roman History,' Porter's 'Antiquities,' and Ken- net's ' Antiquities,' and all other books necessary to make a complete scholar. The ' &c. ' and ' all other books ' enlarge at pleasure the range of the somewhat narrow selection, but being of private interpretation they do not form a very rigid injunction to individual study. The provost and the head-master of Eton in Can- ning's time suited the place as it then was. The pro- vost was the Rev. William Hay ward Roberts, known as ' Double Gloucester ' from the county that had given him birth and the good living which had given him cor- pulence. Miss Burney describes him as ' very fat, with a large paunch and gouty legs, good-natured, loquacious, gay, civil and parading.' Elsewhere she notes him as ' a goodly priest, fat, jovial, breathing plenty, ease and good living.' He had paid at one period of his life the usual debt of scholarship to the booksellers in a poem entitled ' Judah Restored,' and a treatise on the ' Errors of the English Aversion of the Old Testament.' The head-master of Eton was Dr. Jonathan Davies, who afterwards succeeded Roberts as provost. Davies had 14 George Canning been tutor to tlie Marquis Wellesley, to wLom he alwaj's showed, as Wellesley gratefully acknowledged, tlie solicitude and affection of a kind parent. Accord- ing to Hookham Frere, ' Davies was the very incar- nation of authority. We boys never dreamed of his condescending to any other plwsical exercise than that of flogging us.' He was a king of boys, and his sub- jects jealously scrutinised his demeanour in his relations Avith other royal personages. ' He used,' Frere says, ' to be watched by the boys when George III. came over to Eton, to see that he did not play the courtier too much, and very well he managed it.' Davies was given to the pleasures of the table, including table-talk, and in his later days, at least when he was provost, found London more attractive than Eton. ' Sooner,' says the author of ' Pursuits of Literature,' seeking to find an image for the impossible — Sooner stentorian Davies cease to talk, And for his Eton quit his Bond Street v>'alk. He was on terras of intimate conviviality with the Prince of Wales, towards whom he seems to have exhibited the equality of a boon companion, as he exhibited the equality of a potentate with George III. The Prince, when they were dining together, had ven- tured to mention Homer. This was more than a pro- vost and an ex-head-master could endure. ' What do you know about Homer ? ' retorted Davies, whose feasting had been Homeric. ' I bet you don't know a line of the poet.' The Prince took the bet and retorted with the line (H. i. 225) : OlvofSapi'i, Kuids ofx/xaT' e^^^' KpaSifjv S' kXdcfiOio. Boyhood and Schooldays 15 If not true, well invcuted. It is wliat the princo mio-lit have said. The tribute paid by Wellesley to Davies makes it possible that his scholarship and deportment may have gone for something in the training of Canning, but the truth seems to be that Canning was always rather a master among the boys than a boy under the masters. An entry in Wilberforce's Diary says : ' C knew Canning well at Eton. He never played at any game with the other boys ; fond of acting, decent and moral.' The fact that, though without distinction in the plfiying fields, and taking no part in the sports of the school, he was not considered a ' miss ' or a ' muff,' shows how strong was the ascendencv of his genius and character. He was never in any scrapes. Though he had learned Gray by heart, he was not, while at Eton at least, one of ' those bold adventurers who disdain the limits of their little reign,' nor ' snatched a fearful joy ' in the sense of being out of bounds. There is no evidence that he ever ' delighted to cleave with pliant arm the glassy wave,' or ' enthralled ' proleptically ' the captive linnet,' nor ever ' chased the rolling circle's speed or urged the flying ball.' He ' sapped like Gladstone,' but did not ' fight like Spring.' He pursued the course of private reading necessary to make him ' the complete scholar,' especially familiarising himself with the ' Spectator,' &c. Verses of his are in the ' Muste Etouenses.' He took part in the Debating Society, in which a regular speaker, a treasury bench, ministers, opposition, right honourable and honourable gentlemen, and noble lords figured. He helped to set on foot the 'Microcosm,' and wrote the best articles in it. Eton 1 6 George Canning was to hiin tlie ' Microcosm ' of the world which he was about to enter, and he rehearsed in it the part he aspired to and was destined to play in the greater world beyond. Among his schoolfellows were those who would afterwards be his allies or antagonists in literature and public life. First among them was Hookham Frere. who, though by a year his elder, vowed to him a passionate devotion which grew stronger through nearly half a century, until Canning's death . Frere was his associate in the ' Microcosm ' and the ' Anti-Jacobin ; ' his successor in the Under Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs in Pitt's first Adminis- tration ; his jninister, during Canning's first Foreign Secretaryship, at Madrid. Speaking in old age to his nephew and biographer, Frere said : ' I think, twenty years ago. Canning's death would have caused mine _; as it is, the time seems so short, I do not feel it as I otherwise should.' Canning was already regarded by masters and boys as having the future and the world at his disposal to do Avhat he liked with. Next to him, Frere said, ' Bobus ' Smith, the brother of Sydney, was deemed sure to distinguish himself. In spite of his deplorable Whig connections, great things were looked for from Lambton ; but the greatest thing which came of him was his son, the first Earl of Durham. Of Morn- ington, afterwards Marquis Wellesley — who belonged, however, to an earlier Eton generation — though the boys thought well of him, little was expected by the masters, in spite of his Latin verses, in comparison with ' Bobus ' Smith and Lambton. 1/ CHAPTER III. T II E ' M I C R O C S M. ' The 'Microcosm/ which still holds its place among the curiosities of schoolboy literature, and has several times been reprinted, was started on November 6, 1786, when Canning was sixteen years of age. It was published in Windsor once a week, price twopence. It appeared under the pseudonymous editorship of Mr. Gregory Griffin, who was its Isaac Bickerstaff, its Sylvanus Urban, its Christopher North, its Oliver Yorke. Its real editor appeared to have been James Smith, the brother of Bobus — it need scarcely be said not of Horace — and among its contributors were, be- sides Canning and the editor, Bobus Smith, Hookham Frere, and Lord Henry Spencer. It lasted through forty numbers, extending over nearly two years, ex- piring when James Smith left Eton. The copyright was sold for fifty guineas to Mr. Charles Knight, of Windsor, the father of the better-known publisher of that name, and the document which records the transfer bears the sig-nature of CanniuQ-. The ' Microcosm ' is the work of boys in tail-coats and stuck-up collars — boys in the garb of men — and produces the sort of effect on the reader which the acting of a play by one of those aieries of children, of C 1 8 George Canning which Shakespeare, all the manager swelling in his soul, bitterly complains must have produced on the theatre-goers of that day. The reflections are for the most part the insincere anticipation at fifteen or sixteen of the commonplaces which become truths of con- viction and experience at fifty or sixty. There is no trace in the ' ]\Iicrocosm ' of those passions which inspired the Eton boy as he is described in the opening pages of ' Coningsby ' : ' In that young bosom what burning love, what intense ambition, what avarice, what lust of power, envy that fiends might emulate, hate that men might fear ! ' The difference is obvious between the youth of a period nourished on the ' Spectator, &c.,' and the youth of a period nourished on ' Childe Harold,' ' Manfred,' and the ' Corsair.' Among Canning's con- tributions, which are distinguished by the letter ' B,' is a sarcastic epistle from Mr. Gregory Griffin, acknow- ledging with gratitude his obligations to the gentlemen who are kind enough to assume responsibility for his writings, but requesting them to settle among them- selves, and inform him who is the author of what, so that there may be no confusion, and his bookseller may have proper directions if called upon to enforce their respective claims. 'Jlie reverence of the Microcosmists for the ' Spectator, &c.,' did not prevent Canning from writing a parody — perhaps the cleverest thing in the magazine — on Addison's celebrated criticism of ' Chevy Chase,' in the form of a review of an epic poem, entitled the ' Queen of Hearts,' representing the theft, detection, and punishment by the king of the knave of hearts, who had jmrloined and carried off certain tarts manu- factured by the royal hands of his consort, A ' Poem The * Microcosm^ 19 on the Slavery of Greece,' full of generous sentiment, does not rise much above the level of his unfortunate father's compositions. Canning's poetical genius lay in the mocking and not in the heroic vein, and he was seldom kindled with anything more ardent than the artificial fires of rhetoric. To the second number of the ' Microcosm ' Canning contributed a paper on the 'Art of Swearing,' ridiculing the profane habits of speech common at that time, and incidentally satirising the mania for foreigners. Whether or not virtue can be taught, swearing surely can. Some person, having first un-Englished his name, calling himself Pedro if he be Peters, Nicolini if he be Nicholls, Girardot if he be Gerard, might, he suggests, issue a ' Complete Oath- Register, or Every Man his own Swearer,' containing oaths and imprecations for all purposes and occasions. There were also to be sentimental oaths for ladies, who might object to the good mouth-filling oath that Hotspur recommended to his wife. The idea of this paper was probablv derived from Bob Acres' new method of sentimental or referential swearing- intro- duced to the world twelve years before by Sheridan. The writer also proposes to draw up a list of execrations suitable to the year 1786. In the seventh number. Canning, in the character of an Eton boy, describes his sufferings as a visitor to a supposititious uncle who cruelly proposes examination into his attainments by the parson of the parish, and who makes unkind jokes about orchard robbing, the mutton of the Eton dinner- tables, and the necessity for providing cushions for Avhat Sheridan, in reference to Pitt, once called the sitting part of a lad supposed to bear in his person the c -1 20 George Canning marks and sting of the rod. Commenting upon this letter in the person of Mr. Gregory Griffin, Canning proposes to make application to Parliament for permission to open a licensed warehouse for wit, and for a patent entitling the grantee to the sole vending and uttering of wares of this sort for a given term of years. ' For this purpose,' he says, 'I have already laid in jokes, jests, witticisms, morceaus, and bons mots of every kind. ... I have epigrams that want nothing but the sting. Impromptus will be got ready at a week's notice.' In the shape of a letter from a certain Mr. Homespun, written in indignant protest against the ill-natured prejudices of which weavers and tailors are the sub- jects, Canning banteringly insists on the analogy be- tween the arts of weaving and of poetrj^ as shown in the language common to both. Making a curious apj)lication of the Protectionist principle, he proposes that literary metaphors shall in future be drawn ex- clusively from branches of native industry. In another paper Canning weighs the better morality and inferior art of Sir Charles Grandison against the better art and more doubtful morality of Tom Jones. A niaturer judgment would perhaps have seen less to blame in the naked and honest grossness of Fielding than in the Puritanic prurience of Richardson. Another essay gives a mock preference to Newbery's books over the novels of the day. The adventures of Mr. Thomas Thumb and Mr. John Hucklethrift are commented on, and, by the aid of parallel passages from Homer, a correspondence is established between the characters of Hucklethrift and Achilles, of Thumb and Ulysses. A letter from ' Nobod}' ' is based on a play of words as The ' Microcosm ' 2 1 old as the Oyrts of the Odyssey, 'Nobody' develops the relations in which he stands to his kinsmen ' Every- body,' ' Somebody,' ' Anybody,' ' What's his name,' ' Thing'um Bob,' &c. Everybody is endeavouring to be Somebody ; no one is satisfied to be Nobody, who is made the subject of injurious and defamatory statements, such as ' Nobody is more wicked .' In the thirty-ninth number of the ' Microcosm,' Mr. Griffin gives an account of his life, now drawing to a close, and grows weaker in the process of telling it. A proposal is made for the publication of a selection ot Griffiniana. As an illustration of the quick wit of this illustrious man, and of a readiness of repartee which the recorder and subject of Mr. Burnand's ' Happy Thoughts' might have envied, the following anecdote is narrated. One day, being accosted by a friend who saluted him with the remark, ' How do you do, Mr. Griffin ? ' he replied, without the smallest hesitation, ' Pretty well, I thank you, sir. I hope you are well.' The preceding outline will convey some idea of the character of the 'Microcosm,' and especially of Canning's contributions to it. They show his facility in using the materials which his time of life, his powers of mind, and his reading had given him. The magazine gave an early notoriety to its authors. Fanny Burney, nominally one of the dressers, really to a great extent one of the readers, of Queen Charlotte, and always a strong Canningite, brought several of the numbers of the magazine under the notice of her royal mistress. Mentioning in her diary a visit of the King and Queen to Eton in 1787, she says : ' The speeches were chiefly Latin and Greek, three or four in English. Some were -2 George Canning pronounced extremely well, especially those spoken by the chief composers of the "Microcosm," Canning and Smith.' Canning- occupied the post of honour in delivering what appears to have been the final speech at Eton in 1787. 23 CHAPTER IV. CHRIST CHURCH. On leaving Eton, Canning entered himself as a student at Lincoln's Inn. 'George Canning, gentleman, only son of George Canning, Esq., of Middle Temple, de- ceased,' was 'admitted June 27, 1787.' Later in the same year, Canning went to Christ Church, Oxford, then presided over by a very notable person, Dean Cyril Jackson. Dr. Jackson was one of those men who make history by helping to make the men who form it. Without playing a part in the drama him- self, he was behind the scenes prompting the actors and directing the stage management, Christ Church at the end of the eighteenth century was in some degree what Balliol became since, and the Deau discharged something of the honorary functions in relation to society which the Master once exercised. Jackson was the director of the youthful nobility and gentry who were destined to a political career. He had kept a diary of his own life and times, which, how- ever, he destroyed. Probably, if it had been preserved and printed, mucli light would have been thrown on some of tlie darker and more secret passages of the political liistory of his day. As it is, the Dean is only to be traced by the allusions to him which crop up in 24 George Canning the memoirs and correspondence, and in the society novels of the period. Dean Cyril Jackson is the President Herbert of Robert Plumer Ward's once cele- brated story of ' De Vere.' The President is described as at once a man of thought and of the world, in whom a look of command and the penetrating glance of a pair of keen though small black eyes were softened by the most polished courtesy. A certain air of superiority and protection, and a little pomp of manner, were set off by a stately figure clad in the silk cassock and hat of the ecclesiastical dignitary. In 1771 Mr. Cyril Jackson, who had not yet taken orders, became sub-preceptor to the Prince of Wales and to his brother Frederick, Bishop of Osnaburg and Duke of York, then lads of nine and eight years of age re- spectively. He resigned this post in 1 776 in resentment, gossip said, at the interference oi the King with the education of his sons. He always maintained friendly relations with his royal pupils. He was in succession preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and Canon, and finally, Dean of Christ Church. He was content to be the clearer but lesser light at which the more glowing or smoky torches destined to illume the world, or to set it on fire, were kindled. Literary ambition he had none, or, if he had, literary fastidiousness killed it. The only record of him which is to be found in that monument of the vanity and glory of literature, the catalogue of the British Museum, is a solitary entry under his name. It calls attention to a volume without a title-page con- taining the text, with Latin notes, of the first book of Herodotus. The book has on the fly-leaf the following manuscrijDt statement, signed ' H. Cotton ' : — ' This Christ Church 25' volume contains a sj)eciinen of an edition of Herodotus, designed by Dr. Cyril Jackson, Dean of Christ Charcli, Oxford, commenced under his superintendence by the Rev. John Stokes, of Christ Church. It was executed in the Clarendon Press in Oxford. No more than this first book was printed, and this even was suppressed before publication, title-page,' &c. His Greek scholar- , ship is said to have shown itself in the nicety of his appreciation of each word in an author, and in his un- derstanding of the transitions of meaning which phrases and terms have undergone. His regard for the precise and idiomatic rendering of the force of the particles in Homer survives in the tradition of his translation of Tpcofs- pa — ' The Trojans, God help them.' Dean Cyril Jackson was in the habit of entertaining at dinner every day six or eight of the members of his college whose faculties and peculiar bent it was his aim to correct or confirm in conversation. He occupied eveiy Long Vacation in a home tour, taking some young friend with him as a companion, whose expenses he bore, visiting interesting objects and places of industry, avoiding only the great houses^from which, if he entered them as a guest, it would be difiicult for him to escape. He conversed with everybody he could meet, of what- ever rank or pursuit, and is said to have had a greater knowledge of the social and economic condition of England than almost any man of his time. His home tours formed the subject of his conversations with his young guests when he returned to Christ Church, and he was able by his own experience to direct their vacation rambles properly, advising them what to see or bringing out the value of what they had seen. He 26 George Canning made himself acquainted with the individual character of the young men for whom he had a regard, and, as will he seen, took a very special interest in Canning's future. Dean Jackson restricted himself to his college work, and did not take part in the more general business of the University. He was never Vice-Chan- cellor, or anything but Dean of Christ Church. During the twenty-six years of his Headship, from 1783-1809, he counted among his pupils an unusual proportion of those who afterwards filled the highest posts in the service of the State. But it was not merely in the equipment of the statesmen of the future that he in- fluenced public affairs. He was busy in the intrigue for the removal of Addington from the Premiership in the years 1803-4, and was much consulted in political combinations and projects. The reaction which is not unusual from worldliness in its legitimate character — a dignified and useful Avorldliness — to kindly other worldliness came upon Dean Jackson. In 1809 he resigned the Deanery of Christ Church, declining a Bishopric, and sought an almost absolute retirement in the village of Feltham, in Sussex, where he gave him- self up to the service of the poor. Such was the man who ruled Christ Church when Canning entered it in 1787. Canning's associates in a state of pupilage were not less remarkable, and many of them were destined to be his associates in public life and in political literature. Among them were Robert Jenkinson, on his father's elevation to an earl- dom, Lord Hawkosbuiy, and finally. Earl of Liverpool ; Lord Holhmd ; Viscount Morpetli, afterwards the Earl of Carlisle : Jjord Granville Leveson-Gower, after- CiiRJsr Church 27 wurcls Earl Granville, the fathep- of the living statesman of tliat name ; Charles Ellis, through life Canning s more intimate friend and confidant, afterwards Lord Seaforth ; Lord Boringdon, afterwards the Earl of Morley ; Lord Henry Spencer, an Eton friend of Canning's, a Microcosmist, and a younger son of the Duke of Marlborough ; Sir William Drummond. after- wards ambassador at Constantinople ; Erancis Goddard, who ultimately became Archdeacon of Lincoln ; "William Spencer, the fashionable drawing-room versifier ; and Vansittart, during many years the inevitable Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterwards Lord Bex- ley. Among his graver acquaintances was Dr. Jacob Bryant, the mythologist, then resident near Oxford. In 1828, the year following Canning's death, Mr. John Frank Newton, who seems to have enjoyed much of his intimacy, published, in a pamphlet entitled ' Early Days of the Right Hon, George Canning,' an account of Canning's university life. He describes him as being at Christ Church much what Wilberforce's informant describes him at Eton. In his rooms at Peckwater, says Newton, he was always to be found with a pen or a book in his hand. He was indifferent to amusements, and took little exercise, not keeping a horse or even, hiring one. Newton describes the Speak- ing Societ}', of which he as well as Canning was one of the six original members, the others being Jenkinson, Lord Henry Spencer, Drummond, and Goddard. In its constitution there was a whimsical blending of display and secrecy, a sort of ostentatious mystery. The mem- bers devised a uniform for themselves, the description of which recalls tlie uniform of the Pickwick Club. 28 George Canning ' Sometimes,' Mr. Newton writes, ' we appeared at dinner in the liall dressed in our nniform, which was a brown coat of rather an uncommon shade, with velvet cuffs and collars. The buttons bore the initials of De- mosthenes, Cicero, Pitt, and Fox. Thus habited, and much the object of notice to every passing observer, we pleased ourselves with the excessive curiosity which our dress excited. As secret were we as the grave on all that concerned our oratorical institution, and it would be difficult to give an idea of the anxiety evinced by our fellow-students to discover the meaning of the brown coat and velvet cuffs.' The members met in the rooms of one or other of them every Thursday. They debated on some prearranged subject. After the dis- cussion was over, and before separating at night, a vote was taken, and the topic for the following Thursday was chosen. While Canning was the brilliant and vivacious orator of the society, Jenkinson, not less pre- figuring the statesman at the university, was its sen- sible and well-informed member. Newton says of him that he was not only a first-rate scholar, but had more general knowledge than any of his contemporaries at Christ Church. His acquaintance with history and European politics was especially remarkable. The supe- riority of his attainments was not, however, offensively displayed, the conciliatory and benignant manner of the mature man already marking the youth. The club was broken up by the secession of Canning himself, as he explained in a letter to Newton dated Brighton, September 15, 1788, a year after its foundation. Newton had already left the University. ' That club, Newton,' he exclaims, in mock lieroic vein, ' is no more ! " And what Christ Church 29 dread event, what sacrileo-ious hand ? " vovi will exclaim. Newton, mine ! ' So long as the society was a secret one he was pleased to belong to it, and especially to try his strength with Jenkinson in anticipation of conflicts in the House of Commons, when Canning as a Whig mierht be brought into collision with Jenkinson as a Tory. But the Dean had spoken to Canning on the subject seriously, representing that the suspicion of parliamentary intentions would be injurious to him at the bar, and advising him to quit the society. The Dean only advised ; if he had affected to interfere with authority nothing would have induced Canning to leave the society. But he saw the reasonableness of the Dean's view, and on his return after the Easter Vaca- tion sent in his resignation through Lord Henry Spencer. ' The message which Lord Henry brought occasioned, as it were, a combustion, which ended in the moving of some very violent resolutions. Among others, I was summoned to the bar ; of course refused to obev the summons. A deputation was then sent to interrogate me respecting the causes of my resignation, which, of course, I refused to reveal ; and they were at last satis- fied by my declaring that the reason of my resignation did not affect them collectively or individually.' The society suspended its meetings and abolished the uni- form. ' This, it seems, was intended,' Canning adds, ' to punish me by carrying the face of a common and not a particular secession. It was not long, however, before the truth came out, and their nightly debates are again renewed ; not undiscovered, but with less pomp, regularity, numbers and vociferation.' 30 George Canning CHAPTER V. MENTAL TRAINING AND RECREATION. There was no Oxford equivalent for the ' Microcosm ' in Canning's time, but lie did not allow his faculty of verse- making to be confined to competitions for prize poems. He was already a lion in society. The flattery of women was added to the favour of head-masters and of heads of houses, of the Microcosmic bovs of Eton and the speaking young men of Christ Church. His college friendships introduced him to the town and country houses of great people, and his passage through them may be traced by verses in the ladies' albums and by poetic epistles after the fashion of the eighteenth cen- tury. As an Eton boy, part of his vacations had been spent at the house of his uncle, Mr. Stratford Canning, whither the Whig leaders of the day resorted. He was a frequent visitor at Crewe Hall, the residence of the celebrated heroine of the Whig toast, ' Buff and Blue and Mrs. Crewe,' and repaid her hospitalities b}" jocu- larities in prose and verse. ^Irs. Crewe had a theory that all nervous affections produce a craving appetite. Canning, through some sixty or seventy lines, pursues the idea, and points the moral thus to himself and to her : — Mental Training and Recreation 31 Dear Mrs. Crewe, this wondrous knowledge I own I never gained at College ; You are my tut'ress, would you quite Contirm your wavering proselyte % I ask you tliis :— to show your sorrow At my departure hence to-moj-row, Add to your dinner, for my sake, A supernumerary steak. To Mrs. Leigh, of Leigh Hall, who had presented him with a pair of shooting breeches, he says that in a wife he will Ask not rank nor riches, For worth like thine alone I pray, Temper like thine, serene and gay, And formed like thee to give away, Not wear herself, the breeches ! A poetic epistle, written as from his friend Lord Borino-don to Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, tells how the heart of the supposititious writer, captured by Lady Elizabeth Spencer, has been Scorched and burnt to tinder, When talking to her at the winder. He aspired Proudly to bear the beauteous maid To Saltram's venerable shade ; Or, if she likes not woods of Saltram, Why nothing's easier than to alter 'era. But the lady became engaged to her cousin, William Spencer : — How changed the scene, for now, my Graiaville, Another matcji is on the anvil, 32 George Canning And I, fi widowed dove, complain, And find no refuge from my pain, Save that of pitying Spencer's sister, Who has lost a Lord and gained a Mister. These thing's, and things like these, were but the effervescence of a mind in which there were deeper workings, the bubbles and eddies on the surface of a stream in which the current was strong and steady, but which seemed shallower than it was, because its clear- ness minimised its apparent depth according to the well-known law of visual measurement. Beneath his seeming frivolity and levity Canning was possessed through life by a serious and persistent purpose. He doubled the parts of the ant and the butterfly in the fable. Mr. Newton, who was a West Indian, says that during his Oxford years Canning was profoupdly interested in the Slavery question, in which in after life, within the limits imposed on him by his prudence of temper and his party connection, he always took the side of humanitv. Mr. Newton, when he was about to return to the West Indies, suggested that Canning sliould accompany him thither; but Canning had other plans. ' You must know,' he replied to his friend, ' that I am. most shamefully ignorant of French ! . . . By this time twelve months I intend to procure a smattering sufficient to call a coach or swear at a waiter, and then to put into execution a plan formed long- ago in happier days, of going abroad with my three fellow-scribes, the Microcosmopolitans. . . . Our idea is not that of scampering through France and ranting in Paris, but a sober sort of thing — to go and settle for some months in some provincial town remarkable for Mental Training and Recreation 33 the salubrity of its climate, tlie respectabilitj' of its inliabitants, and the purity of its language ; there to improve our constitutions by the first, to extend our accjuaintance with men and manners by the second, and to qualify ourselves for a further extension of it by perfecting ourselves in the third.' In what manner and with what companions Canning put this plan into execution, or whether it was put into execution at all, is not apparent. When Canning, in 1807, became Foreign Minister, his imputed ig- norance of French was the subject of incessant news- paper gibes. He makes confession of his shortcomings at a period somewhat earlier. In a letter to Lord Boring- don, written in the beginning of the year 1800, he elabo- rately vindicates the use of English in diplomacy, which he had employed in the first note he ever drew up ; ' but for that,' he adds, ' I claim no great thanks, as I could not have written it in French.' The statute which introduced examinations for honours at Oxford belongs to 1800. In Canning's day the degree of Bachelor of Arts was probabl}' obtained as easily as it had been in that of Lord Eldon, some twenty years before. When Mr. John Scott went up for his degree he was examined in Hebrew and History. One question was put to him in each subject. ' What is the Hebrew for the place of a skull ? ' ' Golgotha.' ' Who founded University College ? ' ' Alfred,' ' Very well, sir, you are competent for your degree.' Through whatever form or phantasm of examination tte opera- tion was conducted, Canning^ took his B.A. deofree on June 22, 1791, proceeding to his Master's degree ou July G, 1704. While at Oxford he competed for and D 34 George Canning failed in obtaining the prize for an English poem on the attractive theme of ' The AborifTinal Britons ' sue- Climbing to a candidate afterwards known and afterwards forgotten as the Rev. Dr. Richards, probably from his name himself an aboriginal Briton. Canninf>-'s Latin poem, 'Iter ad Meccara, religionis causa susceptum,' won the prize, and was a remarkable tour do force. It was recited by its author on June 26, 1789, the day of commemoration, and through the confident graces, probably already a little theatrical, but not the less effective, of Canning's person and delivery, was ap- plauded by a theatre full of auditors little competent to appreciate the elegant Latinity and the vivid imagery of the composition. According to Wolcot, who almost certainly lies, the poem owed a good deal to Dean Jackson's revision. He makes Pitt say : — For any borough I will bring my man in, From Greek-mouthed Belgrave to Lame-Latin Cannino-. Greek-mouthed Belgrave, otherwise called Lord Poluphloisboio, was so named from having quoted the Greek of Homer in the House of Commons. ' Lame- Latin Canning ' is thus annotated : — ' His " Iter ad Meccam " for the University prize exhibited such proof of ideas and scholarship as put the poor Dean of Christ Church to the blush. The first effort was condemned to the flames though it obtained the prize, the second was a cobbled piece of work between Mr. Canning and somebody of Christ Church, which with diHiculty passed muster.' ' Lame-Latin Canning ' was the rhe- torical antithesis to ' Greek-mouthed Belgrave ' ; and the note was probably devised to justify the epithet. Mental Training and Recreation 35 In the Homeric poems tlie arming of the heroes is described as fully as their battles, and the education of statesmen is their arming for battle. Whatever may bo thought of its intrinsic and comparative merits, the older system of University training was suited to Canning's genius and to the career on which he was destined to enter. He left Oxford almost ignorant of French, absolutely ignorant of most of those things which the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and Popular Instructors of various kinds endeavoured a generation afterwards to place within the reach of the intelligent artisans of the day. Frere gives an account of a walk in the woods near Enfield which he took with Canning when they were both engaged in public life. Canning stopped by the bank of a pool to look at some curious creatures which he saw swimming about, and asked what they were. Frere told him they were called tadpoles, and in course of time they would be- come frogs. Canning was amazed. Mr. Frere moralises this theme, and points out to a world grown sceptical as to the sufficiency of the older learning, as presenting the exclusive method and topics of education, that here was a man who could govern nations and balance worlds, and who yet was not aware that tadpoles turned into frogs. He probably could have recited pages from the ' Battle of the Frogs and the Mice ' and from ' The Frogs' of Aristophanes, but of the natural history of the creatui'es he knew less than the slouching rustic of the fields through which he passed. The ' inoderii side ' had not come into existence in Canning's school and University days. Ignorance of this kind would, of course, b^ injurions a:id disgracefq] now. It is not that D a 36 George Canning natural history or physical science in any of its forms has any especial relation to statesmanship. The Jesuit Father Pineda, as he is quoted by Horace Walpole, asserted that Adam, in his paradisiacal condition, was master of all the sciences except politics, and Adam, though he was necessarily the first, was not the last man of science in whom this remarkable blending of general knowledge and particular ignorance is per- ceptible. The habit of precise reasoning from d priori truths, or from clearly ascertained facts, through irre- sistible deductions or crucial experiments, to positive conclusions, does not necessarily involve that delicate sense of the probable, and that tact in dealing with doubtful indications, which are the condition of civil prudence, or, in other words, statesmanship. But it is essential that a man taking part in affairs should possess the general culture and information of his age, that he should be familiar with the laws and theories which shape its conceptions, colour its language, and furnish its illustrations. If Canning lived now he would pro- bably have known as much of Darwin as Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury does. But whatever may be the true method of education in its relation to statesman- ship, the special training which Eton and Oxford, Dr. Davies and Dean Cyril Jackson, afforded to Canning was admirably suited to his genius and to the career that lay before him. His great gift — a gift in which, perhaps, he has no rival in parliamentary history — was his mastery of the art of expression in written and spoken language. He possessed in an eminent degree the faculty of clear and epigrammatic statement, sentence by sentence, and of lucid order in the arrangement of the Mental Training and Recreation 37 greater passages of his speeches, wliich makes each part seem, not merely the best in itself, as it stands alone, but perfect in its contribution to a whole yet more perfect. Nature had armed him with a weapon keen and effective in no ordinary degree. His education and accomplishments pointed the barb and winged the shaft. A fertile fancy was nourished by the illustrations with which a large reading of the great writers of Greece, Rome, and England supplied it. A keen wit found the material for burlesque and parody in the precedents of history and the creations of poetry. It is curious that, though Canning lived so much at Oxford, it never had that hold on his affections which Eton retained to the last. He was tired of it before he left it. A premature mannishness was common to him with Lord Beacon sfield. The young Disraeli was too impatient to mingle with the world, and take part in its affairs, to be able to endure the idea of years of University pupilage and tutelage. Vivian Grey, Avlien it was proposed to him to go to Oxford, ' paced his chamber in an agitated spirit and panted for the Senate,' for ' to such an individual the idea of Oxford was an in- sult.' Canning, it would seem, also paced his chamber in an agitated spirit and panted for the Senate, in disgust with Oxford, but he wisely did so at Peckwater, and not in London, and after having put himself in the way of getting from Oxford all that it could give hiin. In a letter to Mr. Newton he says that Oxford is so completely uncongenial to him in mind and body that he dreads returning to it : ' Wallace is gone. Western is gone, Newton is gone, and why am I not gone ? I expect, however, on my return a small cargo 33 George Canning of Etonians, wliicli will in some measure comfort me for the emptiness and unamiableness of the generality of the good fellows of whom Christ Church can boast.' The names of the three friends whose departure from Oxford Canning bewails illustrate the diverging paths of men whose starting-point is the same. Wallace, afterwards Lord Wallace, has an official and parlia- mentary association v/ith the fiscal and commercial reforms of the first quarter of this century inferior only to that of Huskisson. Death extinguished the bright promise of Western. Poor Mr. Frank Newton, to whom we owe interesting glimpses of Canning in his University days, was speedily absorbed in a craze. He discovered — taking seriously the doctrine of a passage in Frere's ' Anti-Jacobin ' poem on ' The Progress of Man ' — that man, in becoming carnivorous, lost health and innocence. In 1811 he wrote the first part of a treatise, which never had a second, entitled, ' The lleturn to Nature ; or. The Defence of the Vegetarian Regimen.' Ten years later he gave to the world a little volume entitled, ' Three Enigmas attempted to be Explained.' The three enigmas were (1) the Import of the Twelve Signs ; (2) the Cause of Ovid's Banish- ment ; (3) the Eleusinian Secret. These three enigmas are only one enigma, and the key to the enigma is vegetarianism. Ovid Avas banished because, in a passage of the 'Metamorphoses,' he had blundered, without knowing it, not having been initiated, on the Eleusinian secret, which is that the zodiacal signs are an allegorical presentation of the truth that man's proper food is bread and fruit. 39 CHAPTER VI. IN LONDON — INTRODUCTION TO PITT. The young Disraeli declined Oxford for an attorney's office. The young Canning left Oxford with a view of finding at the bar fortune, independence, and so much of a career as would open parliamentary life to him. He came to London at the beginning of the year 1792. He had entered himself five years before as a student at Lincoln's Inn, but was never called to the bar ; and there is no trace, as the Steward of the Inn has courteously ascertained for me, of his ever having Icept any of his terms. In the last years of his life, when he was l*rime Minister, he was, as a matter of compliment, called to the Bench of his Inn. He be- longed to one or more debating societies— such as that in Old Bond Street, the ' Crown and Anchor,' or the ' Hardwicke ' Canning had left Eton, and he may have left Oxford, a Whig of the school of Fox and Sheridan. He had taken an active part as a schoolboy, in favour of Admiral Keppel against the Court candidate, in an election for Windsor ; and it was as a Whig, or something more, that he had met Jenkinsou in the debates of the Christ Church Speaking Club. Lord Holland said that at Oxford Canning was a furious Jacobin and a hater of the 40 George Canning aristocracy. The change in his political views, which was avowed within a few months after his coming to London, was perhaps in process of silent and gradual accomplishment under the courtly influence of Dean Cyril Jackson and the associations of Christ Church. A strange story is told by Sir Walter Scott as to the manner of Canning's conversion — a story which belongs as completely to the region of historical romance as any incident of the Waverley novels. In his diary, under the date of April 17, 1828, Scott writes: 'Canning's conversion from popular opinions was strangely brought about. When he was studying in the Temple, and rather entertaining revolutionary opinions, Godwin sent to say that he was coming to breakfast with him, to speak on a subject of the highest importance. Canning knew little of him, but received his visit and learned to his astonishment that, in expectation of a new order of things, the English Jacobins designed to place him. Canning, at the head of their revolution. He was much struck, and asked time to think what course he should take — and having thought the matter over, he went to Mr. Pitt and made the anti- Jacobin confession of faith.' Scott adds that Canning himself mentioned this to Sir W. Knighton on the occasion of his giving a place in the Charterhouse of some ten pounds a year to Godwin's brother. Godwin's application was made to the King through Knighton, and Canning's name does not appear in the correspondence in Knighton's ' Memoirs.' During his life the story was not brought up against him. Scott first records it in the year follow- ing Canning's death. The fable illustrates the growtli of myth. A conspicuous phenomenon had to be accounted In London— Introduction to Pitt 41 for, namely. Canning's transfer of himself from the Whig or even revolutionary side to that of Toryism and reaction in English politics. The conflict within his own mind was dramatically represented in the shape of external agencies. In Godwin the revolution was personified, in Pitt the resistance ; and they were figured as contending in person for the soul of Canning, as Satan and the archangel Michael in the Scriptural legend contended for the body of Moses. Canning represents, it might be said, the youth and the future of England — the young England of the close of the eighteenth century — and Godwin and Pitt the opposite forces, social and political, which struggled for the mastery over it, the victory remaining with resistance, as typified in Pitt. Canning's mind was at this time working itself free from its old associations and prepossessions. In a letter to Lord Boringdon, dated Paper Buildings, Temple, December 13, 1792, while reserving to himself freedom of judgment and action, he declares that if he were now in Parliament he should take the side of Mr. Pitt. He cannot agree with Fox about the French Revolution. He admits the full rig-ht of every nation to choose the institutions which it thinks best for itself, and avows a sort of speculative fondness for the idea of a representative republic, but the aggressive arrogance of the French and the tyranny which they seek to establish over Europe have opened his eyes. As usual, a change of view in regard to foreign politics affected his mental attitude in home questions. Seeing in the various popular associations of the day instruments for the propagation of French ideas, and in apparently innocent proposals of reform 42 George Canning tlie germ of revolution, lie declares himself against tliem. The facts leave no place, chronological or moral, for the sharp alternative presented in the supposed interview with Godwin and Pitt and the sudden choice between them. Canning's letter was written towards the close of the year 1792. Godwin's 'Enquiry concerning Political Justice,' which made him first widely known, was not published till the year following, and, except as the author of that work, he did not represent revolutionary principles in England. The idea that Godwin, essentially a man of speculation and not of action, meditated a revolutionary outbreak, and that he invited a youthful law student to place himself at the head of the movement, is absurd. But it is not more credible than the supposition that Canning, made acquainted with these designs and asked to further them, should have kept them to himself, and that he should have gone on discoursing to his friend Lord Boringdon on the danger of the French principles without breatliing a word as to the proposals made to him, thus becoming an accessory after the fact to seditious and treasonable designs. The period which immediately preceded Canning's entry into public life may be considered, after that of Elizabeth, as the lieroic age of English politics. It was the era of Chatham, in whom the national spirit was reborn. The old struggle with Franco had been fought out on three continents. The help given by Chatham to Frederick the Great raised Prussia to the rank of a great power, and began that movement of events which, more than a century later, called the German Empire into existence. The victory of Plassy In LoiVDON — Intruduction to Put 43 ensured that England, and not France, should hold the glorious East in fee, and that the European influences destined to recreate India should come from our race and country. Two years later Wolfe, on the heights of Abraham, decided that North America should be held by England, or by a republic of the English race. The work has stood in Europe, in Asia, and in America, in spite of the efforts of the two Napoleons to undo it ; ar.d the work was Chatham's. Frederick was the ally, Clive and Wolfe the instruments of his policy. His was the contriving head, theirs were the armed hands. At home Chatham no less embodied the national and popular spirit. England ceased to be the creature of the Whig families which had ruled it under the first two Georges, and a force was called into existence which alone was capable of defeating the monarchical system which George III. strove to erect on the ruins of the power of the great houses and to strengthen by the rupture of political connections. The English people became England. It is one of the contrasts which run through English and French history, that the greatness of England abroad, unlike the great- ness of France, instead of overshadowing liberties at home, stimulated and expanded them. During the periods of her European preponderance, under Louis XIV. and the Napoleons, France has been abject and servile within her own borders. The victories by which Chatham made England the ruling power in Europe, Asia, and America were contemporary witli the revival of the national life at home. The foun- dations of the industrial and commercial England of the present day were laid by the system of internal 1 44 George Canning water communication devised bj Briudley, and by the inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Watt. The source of the wealth of nations was expounded by Adam Smith almost simultaneously with the invention of these mechanical aids to its development. In political life the concession of the right of parliamentary re- porting gave public opinion indirect but real control over public affairs. Parliamentary representation was indeed imperfect, but public meetings now first gave the nation the means of expressing its mind and pur- pose. The great English newspapers had their origin at the same time. The right of the constituencies to the free choice of their representatives was decided in the controversy of the House of Commons with Wilkes. The liberties of the subject received new gua- rantees in the judicial condemnation of general war- rants and in the reversal of Wilkes's outlawry. The religious and philanthropic revival (as the names of the Wesleys and of Howard testify) was as remark- able as that of industry and politics. The younger Pitt's accession to office, with its peculiar circum- stances, gave a mortal wound, though the thing did not at once die, to the principle of government by oligarchical combinations, and his enlightened fiscal and commercial policy raised the material prosperity of the country to the highest point. He meditated, as is well known, the complete abolition of all custom duties and the establishment of a system of absolute free trade, which we have not yet reached, and but for the French revolutionary war he might have accomplished his design. The national life was raised to its highest power when Canning entered Parliament. No one, it /.v London — Introduction to Pitt 45 might scorn, could have a nobler stage or a nobler part to play than that which was opened to him. A change for the worse was, however, impending. It is common to speak of the two Pitts, the elder and the younger — Chatham and the second son of Chatham ; but practically there are three Pitts of whom history has to take account : (1) Chatham, (2) the William Pitt who was Prime Minister from 1783 to 1793, and (3) the William Pitt who was Prime Minister from 1793 to 1801, and again from 1804 to 180G. The two last, with osten- sible personal identity, differed as much from each other as anv rival statesmen have ever done. The Pitt of 1783 to 1793 was a sort of Cobden of the eighteenth century » in office, the disciple of Adam Smith, the projector of a scheme of Free Trade more thorough than Peel or Gladstone has been able to bring about, the anticipator - of Grey and Russell in the design at least of parlia- mentary reform — a cosmopolitan and international statesman in the good sense of the phrase, if ever there was one. The Pitt of 1793 to 1806 was simply the i parody of his more illustrious father — a Chatham | mcmque ; the man of peace dressed up in weapons of war; hiding in swollen Bom bastes and Pistol phrases the consuming anxiety for peace which never left him till the eternal conflict ruined his health and broke his heart ; giving by the dignity and ascendency of his personal character the semblance of success to measures which were but a series of energetic failures. This lliter and less glorious Pitt was the Pitt whom Canning elected to follow — the Pitt of decadence and apostacy, not the pilot who weathered the storm, but the mariner driven helplessly 1)('ibre it, and at best keeping afloat and 46 George Canning from the rocks the vessel which he could not bring into port. At the time when Canning looked out from his chambers on the political world the war spirit and anti-French spirit were at their height. Canning fully shared them, and to him Pitt symbolised them. How Canning's acquaintance with Pitt began is not very clearly stated ; but it did not require any great political research on the part of a Minister anxious to discern useful ability to discover Canning. Sheridan had already bragged about him in the House of Commons as the coming Whig hero. Towards the end of the session of 1792, when Jenkinson made his first speech on behalf of the Government, Sheridan could not refrain from saying that his own party was about to receive a great accession in the companion and friend of the young orator w^ho had just distinguished himself. Canning had been an ' imp of fame ' when he was a lad at Eton. Fox is said to have had his eye upon him as a parliamentary recruit even then. Canning, however, had refused a safe Whig seat which had been offered him by the Duke of Portland. He foresaw the im- pending Whig rupture ; and, feeling himself drawn to Mr. Pitt, resolved, if he joined him, to do so by his own act, and not ' gregariously in a troop ' of political deserters. His youthful friendships at Eton and Oxford had opened to him the world of society, which w^as then more exclusively than now the world of politics. His name and talents were probably as well known to Mr. Pitt as to Fox or Sheridan. At any rate, when Lord Hawkesbury, the father of Jenkinson, gave q, dinner-party in order to bring Pitt and Canning In London — Introduction to Pitt 47 together, it was found tliat tliey had ah-eady made acquaintance. Hookliam Frere, in his okl age, fancied that he, through all anonymous lord, had been the means of making them known to each other. Lady Hester Stanhope describes the first meeting of Pitt ailiJ^ahnlng. ' The first time,' she said, ' he (Mr. Canning) was introduced to Mr. Pitt, a great deal of prosing had been made beforehand of his talents, and when he had gone ]\Ir. Pitt asked me what I thought of him. I said I did not like him ; for his forehead was bad, his eyebrows were bad, he was ill made about the hips, but his teeth were evenly set, though he rarely showed them. I did not like his conversation. Mr. Canning heard of this, and some- time after, when upon a more familiar footing with me, said : " So, Lady Hester, you don't like me ? " " No," said I, "they told me you were handsome, and I don't think you so." ' Probably there was something of feminine jealousy in this aversion. She found in Canning a rival in the affections of her uncle, whom Lord Malmesbury speaks of as ' nursing him in the hothouse of his partiality and engoxmnent, for it amounted to that.' Canning's conversation with Pitt, however it was brought about, had its natural result. A place in Par- liament was soon found for the young convert. Sir Richard Worsley resigned his seat for Newtown, in the Isle of Wight, and Mr. Canning presented himself to the electors with the conr/6 cVclire which then scarcely implied more freedom of choice in political than it now does in ecclesiastical matters, 1 1 4^ George Canning CHAPTER VII. IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. When Canning entered the House of Commons in 1793 the chair was occupied by Mr. Addington, who in 1789 had succeeded Mr. (afterwards Lord) Grenville on the appointment of that statesman to a Secretaryship of State. He remained Speaker until he became Prime Minister in 1801. Canning ridiculed his airs and gracesl^iCtlie cliair — When with gait consequential and dignified pace You were strutting behind little C 's mace ; When you moved to the chair With so stately an air ; When your looks were so solemn, important and dull, When your gown was so ample, your wig was so full ; With what rapture we owned, as the farce we surveyed, That the Chair and the Speaker of one block were made. Canning's contempt was inspired by a retrospective animosity. Supported by the immense authority of I'itt, Addington filled the chair respectably if not with distinction, and as the usage of those times permitted, he repaid Pitt's patronage by occasional aid in debate. On the Treasury Bench, at the right liand of the Speaker, the Cabinet was represented by I'itt himself, /.v THE House of Commons 49 by Dundas, who combiuecl the offices of Secretary of State" and Treasurer of the Navy, and by Windham, who, as a Portland Whig, had taken the post of Secre- tary at War. The House of Lords at that time, and long afterwards, had a preponderance amounting almost to a monopoly of Cabinet offices. George Rose and Charles Long were Secretaries of the Treasury, Jenkin- son was one of the Commissioners of the India Board, aiici Huskisson was Under Secretary for the Colonies and War. Lord Mornington was a -Junior Lord of the Treasury. The magisterial eloquence of Pitt commanded the House with an authority which probably no one before or since has ever exercised over it. He did not brow- beat it like his father, nor show his power, as subse- quent Ministers have done, by controlling the storms which they have raised. His authority was equal and constant. He was powerfully seconded by Dundas, probably as great a master of official and parlianientary business of all kinds and of businesslike speaking as the House has ever seen. His broad Scotch accent, ridiculed in ' The Rolliad ' and in ' The Pursuits of Literature,' made his shrewdness seem yet more shrewd, and in spite of George IIL he was as innocent of Scotch meta- physics as Joseph Hume himself. Windham, uniting the prejudices of a Squire Western with the chivalry of a Bayard and the paradoxical ingenuity of a Greek sophist, was probably as inuch of an embarrassment as an assistance. His brilliant wit and perverse origin- ality were ' ornaments of debate, but discomfited his allies and coUeao-ues as often as his antagonists. The subordinate ]\Iinisters were not capable of giving much aid. Huskisson, a clear thinker, was at that time and E I ( 50 George Canning for long after an embarrassed talker, and his ungainly manner and provincial accent displeased the eye and ear of the House. In Jenhinson, afterwards ' the pink- nosed Liverpool ' of Cobbett, ' the arch mediocrity ' of Disraeli, disorder and want of method seem to have been hereditary. Lady Hester Stanhope describes his father, the first Lord Liverpool, as always looking for documents which he could not find. ' He used to ram his hands into his pockets, first on one side and then on the other, searching for some paper just as if he were groping for an eel at the bottom of a pond.' George III. noticed in the son an absence of method and of a head for business. A disorderly fulness of in- formation, an amplitude of ill-assorted knowledge, and a too modest and yielding temper, made Jenkinson in- effective. The animated rhetoric of Lord Mornington seemed to seek mental vivacity in vivacious gesture. George Eose had an easy murmuring talk and a mastery of usage and precedents. Charles Long, who afterwards bore the title of Lord Faruborough, worn for too short a time by the late Sir Thomas Erskine May, is described by Lord Brougham as ' the most experienced and correct observer of all the parlia- mentary men of his time.' Against this respectable array were ranged the stormy force of Fox, carrying away at once the convictions and feelings of his hearers in a tempest of reasoned passion ; the manly dignity of Grey ; the elaborate wit and the somewhat harlequin glitter of Sheridan ; the easy colloquial sarcasm, the ])r)intcd argument and the business knowledge of 'i'ierney ; the courtly dignity and facile utterance of Burdett, most aristocratic of demagogues and most Zv THE House of Commo.xs 51 simple-minded of charlatans ; the generous eloquence of Erskine, which lost much, though not everything, in being transported from the Bar to Parliament ; the somewhat pompous and egotistic but impressive good sense and integrity of Whitbread, It is not strange that Pitt should have sought a recruit in Canning, whoso powers of continuous argument, illumined by wit and fancy, from the first gave promise of what he afterwards became, when the flippancy, occasionally verging on impertinence, and the scholarship, a little too pedantically displayed, of the Christ Church Speaking Club were in some degree softened down to the temper of an assembly of men of business. Canning was not in a hurry to speak. He held his tongue during his first session, devoting himself to the study of the House, its ways and temper. He allowed expectation to gather. Fanny Burney indicates the im- patience and disappointment with which this tardiness was regarded by Canning's eager friends, and the grati- fication with which his maiden speech, on January 31, 1794, was hailed. But while the hearers were delighted, the performer was undergoing alternations of bliss and torture. In a letter written some weeks later to Lord Boringdon (March 20) he says : — I intended to have told you, at full length, what my feelings were at getting up, and being pointed at by the Speaker, and hearing my name called from all sides of the House ; how I trembled lest I should hesitate or misplace a word in the two or tliree hrst sentences, while all was dead silence around me, and my own ^oice sounded to my ears quite like some other gentleman's ; how in about ten minutes or less I got warmed in collision with Fox's argu- K 2 52 George Canning ments, and did not even care twopence for anybody or anything ; how I Avas roused in about half an hour from this pleasing state of self-sufficiency by accidentally casting my eyes towards the Opposition Bench, for the purpose of paying compliments to Fox, and assuring him of my respect and admiration, and there seeing certain members of Oppo- sition laughing (as I thought) and quizzing me ; how this accident abashed me, and together with my being out of breath, rendered me incapable of uttering ; how those who sat below me on the Treasury Bench, seeing what it was that distressed me, cheered loudly, and the House joined them ; and how in less than a minute, sti^aining every nerve in my body, and plucking up every bit of resolution in my heart, I went on more boldly than ever, and getting into a part of my subject that I liked, and having the House with me, got happily and triumphantly to the end. Canning had not completed his twenty-fourth year when he made his first speech. The occasion of it was Mr. Pitt's motion for a subsidy to the King of Sardinia. Events had been moving fast. The session of 1793 had been a busy and exciting one. It witnessed Pitt's formal renunciation of the doctrine of Parliamentary Reform, of which twice before he had submitted large projects to the House. The Traitorous Correspondence Bill, and similar measures, suspended the guarantees of freedom in England, In France the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Committee of Public Safety were established. The two nations sacrificed their domestic liberties to reciprocal hate and fear. In the course of the session 1794 Canning made two other speeches, which are not recorded with any minuteness in the 'Parliament Debates,' and which he did not print. One of them was on Major Maitland's In the House of Commons 53 motion for an inquiry into the causes of the failure of tlie expedition to Dunkirk and on the evacuation of Toulon, and another in defence of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. He vindicated Pitt's abandonment of parliamentary reform against the attack of Mr. Grey on the ground of inopportuneness. Canning carried his new anti-Whig feeling so far as to view with distrust the admission into the Government of the Whig leaders who were under the influence of Burke — the Duke of Portland, Mr. Windham, Lord Spencer, and Lord Fitzwilliam, wlio, giving up the Lord Presidency, went to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, and to whose recall next year the subsequent Irish troubles are in some degree traceable. Parliament, after prorogation, met again on Decem- ber 13, 1794. Mr. Canning was chosen to second the address in reply to the speech from the Throne. In ]\Iarch, 1795, j\Ir. Fox, in a speech of historic fame, moved for a Committee on the State of the Nation, and especially the condition of Ireland. Canning spoke in the debate, following Sheridan. An exaggerated air of mature sagacity marks Canning's earlier speeches. In a debating society manner he protests against intro- ducing a debating society into the House of Commons. It is enough to note these youthful exercises. 54 George Canxixg CHAPTER VIII AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE. Canning had entered Parliament with a view to office, and office was near at hand. After some delays and doubts, the nature and cause of which do not very explicitly appear, he was appointed, in the spring of 1796, Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in succession to Mr. Thomas Aust, now known to man- kind only as Canning's predecessor. Fox, who at this time had a very angry feeling towards Canning, which he expressed in his letters to Lord Holland, ungene- rously attacked the appointment as a job substituting an incompetent for a competent person. Soon after- wards Canning accepted the post of Receiver-General of the Alienation Office, with a salary of 700?. a year — a sinecure the nominal duties of which were the reception of fines levied upon writs of covenants and entries. In May, 1796, the approaching expiration of the septennial term brought about a dissolution of Parlia- ment. Canning, leaving Newtown, offered himself as a candidate for Wendover ; both boroughs were after- wards victims of the Reform Act of 1832. For Wendover he sat in conjunction with I\Ir. John Ililey Addington, destined to a place in human memory At the Foreign Oeeice 55 as the cheering '■ Brother Hiley ' of one of Canning's anti-Addingtonian squibs. During the next two years Canning took little part in debate. He was absorbed in the work of his office, patiently bearing the deten- tion in town and the seclusion from society which it involved, for which, he said, the happiness of constant occupation and the satisfaction of seeing a great deal of himself were more than a compensation. Next to this improving intercourse he valued his opportunities of being with Mr. Pitt, who, though not so close a prisoner as Canning, never left town without giving him a map of his movements. Canning saw much of him at Holwood, and never left him without a warmer love and admiration. ' I wonder,' Canning writes from the Foreign Office, ' what sort of times those must have been when there were no armies to watch, no conflicts to apprehend, and ]<]urope had no fate depending.' The life of Canning is essentially that of a politician, and to narrate fully his first thirteen years in Parlia- ment and office would be to trace the course of history through the first Administration of Mr. Pitt, that of Addington, Pitt's second Administration, and that of Grenville and Fox. It is the history of unsuccessful war and equally unsuccessful negotiations with France; of coalitions and the rupture of coalitions ; of the Direc- tory, the First Consulate, and the Empire ; of the ' ex- perimental peace ' of Amiens and of the renewal of the war. Canning's connection with these events is almost that of any other subordinate member of the Government — of Jenkinson or Huskisson. It was not until he became Foreign Minister in the Portland Administration of 1807 that he began to play an independent and original part T 56 George CaI^ning / in public affairs. His intimate personal relations with Pitt and Avith Lord Malniesbnry, the diplomatist of the Pitt Government, and his official" connection with Lord GrenVille, hrought him Tnto~nearer "view" of tlie great events of the time than was possible to any other per- son not a member of the Cabinet; but the part he played was that of an instrument, and not of an agent, still less of a principal. He was very busy in the second negotiations for peace which were conducted by Lord Malmesbury at Lisle. There was a peace party and 'ar war party in the Cabinet. Pitt was at the head of the former ; Grenville, his Foreign Secretary, of the other. Malmesbury, nominally instructed by Grenville, was i-eally directed by Pitt ; and Canning in the Foreign Office, and George Ellis — Pitt's former assailant in ' The Rolliad,' but now his devoted follower — at Lisle were the subterranean channels of these secret communica- tions. Pitt used the newspapers against Grenville, and Grenville forced a resolution of secrecy on the Cabinet, expressly intended. Canning says, to tie up Pitt's tongue. Probably Canning was the intermediary between Pitt and the press, for he was suspected of using his official position for stock-jobbing purposes, and he had to enforce a retractation from Mr. Perry, of the ' Morning Chronicle,' by the threat of an action for libel. While Pitt and Grenville were at variance with each other, they conspired to keep the rest ' of their colleagues in the dark. ' Lord Malmesbury had to write a double set of despatches, one to mystify the Cabinet at large, the other to inform the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. Important despatches which could At the Foreign Office 57 not be kept back were so copied out as to be nearly illeo-ible. ~~Pitt ancOTaTmesburv, throusch Cahnino- and Ellis, ado^jted the device "of"'^ most private letters,' of winch Canning speaks as a most axTmlrable invention, which he hopes will be kept up to the end of the nego- tiations for the purposes for which it was designed. In this private correspondence, Malmesbury, from his long white mane and fine eyes, was caTTed The"t)lcl Lion ; ' Le ToiTrneur, one of the French negotiators, was ' Sir Gregory,' in honour, no doubt, of Sir Gregory Turner ; Maret was ' William ; ' Talleyrand ' Edward.' Mysterious messengers from Lisle came to Spring Gardens, where Canning lived, found their way to the back of the house, stealthily passed the bow windows, roused Canning, and had conspiratorlike interviews with him in the garden. At Lisle Lord Malmesbury established a system of signals with M. Maret, one of the plenipoten- tiaries. Assent or compliance was expressed by Maret's taking his handkerchief out of one pocket, passing it before his face, and returning it into the other pocket. It was really a question of purchase and sale. Talley- rand aiid Barras insisted on payment in advance, r which Pitt refused, for concessions which they were \ prepared to secure. Ultimately, however, the French, ' while demanding the cession of English conquests, . refused any corresponding surrender on their own part. | Lord Malmesbury received his passports and the war ] went on. Canning had for some time been discontented with his position in the Foreign Office. He was serving two masters, hating the one and cleaving to the other. Grenville was the most haughty and frigid of Whigs, k» 58 George Canning painfully conscious, as he himself avowed, of his inability to manage men and adapt himself to them, and it was strange that they were able to go on together, as they did, nearly two years longer. In 1799 Canning became one of the twelve com- missioners of India, a post of loss importance, whatever its titular rank, than that which he had quitted. He felt, naturally enough, that his abilities and services justified his aspiring to a higher place in the Adminis- tration. Towards the close of 1799 there was some talk of Dundas, who united the office of Secretary of State with that of Treasurer of the Navy, giving up the former post. Canning did not desire this office until he should ' grow bigger.' He feared to shock the public. Still he avows himself discontented with his position of work without distinction, and with liability to have the results of long labours overthrown by a speech or canvass of Lord Westmoreland's, the ' Sot ' (Sceau) ' Prive' (Privy Seal) as he was accustomed to call him. As to his age — he was twenty- nine- -he points to the examples of Castlereagh', now for two years Minister of Ireland; Addington, who was made Speaker at thirty ; Lord Grenville, before that age Speaker and Secretary of State. Pitt he will not quote ; he is a 'monster of talent.' But he protests against exclusion being practised against himself which is not put in force against others. If peace is concluded, the present functions of the Third Secretary of State (War) will, he points out, in a groat measure cease. But the public service requires that the number of respectable and eflicient House of Commons offices should not be diminished, and the need At the Foreign Office 59 of revicwinof the establishments will be ursfent. ' Do yon imagine that the Home Secretaiy (such as ho is at present) '- such as he was then he was the Duke of Portland — ' would be sufficient assistance to Pitt in a revision of this sort?' Canning thinks the Home Secretary ought to have Irish business in his hands, which, after the Union shall have been made, must be done in England. Peace, however, was not made during Pitt's Ad- ministration. The Duke of Portland remained Home Secretary, and Dundas War Secretary, while the Treasurership of the Navy, which Canning desired, was given in May, 1800, to Dudley Hyder, afterwards Lord Harrowby. Canning became one of the Joint Pay- masters of the Forces, an office which he held until Mr. Pitt's retirement and Mr, Addington's accession to the Premiership in 1801. During this period Mr. Can- ning spoke against peace with France, against the Slave Trade, and in favour of the union with Ireland. He urged that a separate Parliament, whatever limita- tions might be imposed on it at first, must ultimately be an independent Parliament, and that an independent Parliament meant national separation and the conver- sion of Ireland into a hostile republic under the pro- tection of France. He varied these graver performances by a speech in favour of bull-baiting — a sort of playing at being Mr. Windham, which would scarcely have been more incongruous in Mr. Wilberforce himself. "ft* George Canning CHAPTER IX. THE 'anti-jacobin.' The return of Lord Malmesbary from Lisle, and the substitution of war for diplomacy, left, it may be assumed, a good deal of time on the hands of the youth of the Foreign Office and other departments of State. Hostilities were renewed with the pen as well as with the sword. Lord Malmesbury received his passports on September 18, 1797. The first number of ' The Anti- Jacobin, or AVeekly Examiner, to be continued every Monday during the sitting of Parliament,' was published on November 20, 1797. It continued in existence without interruption until Monday. July 9, 1798, when the session of Parliament ended and the final number was issued. The conductors of the ' Anti-Jacobin ' were better than their word, for they published a supplementary number on Monday, November, 1797, and two numbers on Monday, July 2, 1798. The paper consisted of eight pages quarto, double columns, and was sold for sixpence. The writers appear to have held conferences, for the purpose of talking over their future numbers, at the house of Lord Malmcsburv. 'The Old Lion' had a court of his oxn at" which the young lions met. In other words, Lord ]\ralmcsbury The 'Anti-Jacobin^ 6i had tlie valuable faculty of attracting the younger men of his party about him, quickening himself by their impulses and guiding them by his experience. On Sunday, the day before publication, the Anti-Jacobins foregathered at the house of Wright the publisher, 'No. 169, opposite Old Bond Street, Piccadilly,' Avhere they had secured an editorial room, which they entered mysteriously by a door in another house, as ostenta- tiously avoiding notice as when some of them had donned the brown livery of the Christ Church Speaking Club. According to Croker, Canning could not take a cup of tea without a^" stratagem ; and there was a good deal of the play-actor about his proceedings at this time. The conspirators in the ' Rovers ' seem to have been the model of some of his doings. Whether through their elaborate precautions to avoid detection, or through courting notoriety, the writers in the ' Anti- Jacobin ' failed to keep their secret. ' The youths whom Malmesbury chose ' are signalised with a Homeric simplicity of epithet in the ' Epistle to the Editors of the " Anti- Jacobin," ' written by William Lamb, afterwards Lord Melbourne, at this tiine* a lad of nineteen, and published in the ' Morning Chronicle' of January 17, 1798. 'Ellis's sapient pro- minence of nose ; ' ' Morpeth's gait, important, proud, and big ; ' and ' Leveson-Gower's crop-imitating wig,' are commemorated. Their mutual puffery is gently ridiculed. ' Consequential Morpeth nods applause ; ' ' In every fair one's ears at balls and plays, the gentle Leveson-Gower whispers praise.' The editorship of the ' Anti-Jacobin ' was generally attributed to Canning : — • 62 George Canning The skill Of youthful Canning guides the ranc'rous quill ; With powers mechanic, far above his age, Adapts the paragraph and fills the page, Measures the column, mends whate'er's amiss, Rejects that letter, and accepts of this. Canning's was undoubtedly the directing and in- spiring mind of the ' Anti- Jacobin ; ' but the editor was William Gilford, the poet of the ' Baviad ' and the ' M^eviad,' and afterwards tlic editor of the ' Quarterly Review.' Tlie chief associates of Canning in the ' Anti-Jacobin ' were George Ellis, the converted Anti- Pittite of the ' Rolliad,' one of the members of Lord Malmesbury's suite at Lisle, now remembered for his works on early English literature ; and Hookham Frere. Other contributors were, or were supposed to be, Pitt, Jenkinson, ' Brother Bragge ' and ' Brother Hiley,' j\rorpeth, Hammond, Baron Macdonald, and Mornington (afterwards j\Larquis Wellesley). The assignment of pieces to the several authors is made with great confidence by Mr. Charles Edmonds in his ' Poetry of the " Anti- Jacobin," ' but it seems to rest on second-hand and, in itself, not very conclusive testimony. It appears, however, tolerably certain that Canning wrote the prospectus ; that he contributed two lines to the ' Loves of the Triangles,' of which Frere was otherwise the sole author ; that he was the exclusive writer of the second and third parts of that poem, of the ' Friend of Humanity and the Knife Grinder,' of the 'Inscription for the Door of the Cell of ]\Irs. Brownrigg, the 'Prenticide,' of the second and third parts of ' The Progress of Man,' of ' The New Morality,' and of the lines in reply to the The ' Axti- Jacobin' 63 ' Epistle to the Editors of the " Anti-Jacobin." ' The play of The Rovers ; or, The Double Arrangement,' was a composite work in which Ellis and Frere had a part. The first five stanzas of the ' Sono- of Roo-ero ' are assigned by Mr. Edmonds to Canning, the last to Pitt. The ' Edinburgh Review ' attributes to Canning the speech of Erskinc in the burlesque report of the meeting of the Friends of Freedom to commemorate the IStli of Fructidor. A ' Quarterly Reviewer,' on the other hand, states as from certain knowledge that this per- fect sample of keen yet good-humoured badinage was from beginning to- end the work of Hookham Frere. The poetry of the ' Anti- Jacobin ' is tcKrwell known to makeitnecessary,evra if space allowed, to quote it here. 'The New Morality,' to which, with the exception of a few Tines attributed to Pitt, Canning has an ex- clusive title, is his most serious if not his happiest contribution, and exhibits the temper by which, even in their lightest moods, he and his associates were animated. It is true moral satire — the satire not merely of personality and badinage, of defamation and lampoon, nor even the satire which attacks tendencies and opinions through persons, but that which is in- spired by the sense of contrast between the professions and the practice of men, between the semblance and the reality of virtue, between the age in which we live and the better ages which are assumed to have preceded it. The lines in which the false virtues that ape the realities of benevolence, sensibility, justice, and candour, are denounced, and traced to ' that parent of ten thou- sand crimes, the new philosophy of modern times,' have become the commonplaces of the second-hand i 64 George Canning satire of orators who steal their art ready made. The parody of the Benedicite was cited by Hone on his'frTal in justification of his parody'. of the Lord's Prayer : — ' Couriers ' and ' Stars,' sedition's evening host, Thou ' Morning Chronicle ' and ' Morning Post ! ' Whether ye make the rights of man your theme, Your country libel, and your God blaspheme ; Or dirt on private worth and virtue throw, Still, blasphemous or blackguard, praise Lepaux. And ye, five other wandering bards that move In sweet accord of harmony and love ; Coleridge and Southey, Lloyd, and Lamb & Co. Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux ; Priestley and Wakefield, humble holy men, Give praises to his name with tongue and pen ; Thelwall, and ye that lecture as ye go, And for your pains get pelted, praise Lepaux. Praise him each Jacobin, or fool or knave, And your cropped heads in sign of worship wave. All creeping creatures, venomous and low. <* Paine, Williams, Godwin, Holcroft — praise Lepaux ! La Reveillere Lepaux had the double claim to Canning's hatred of being one of ' the three scoundrelly directors ' who had made peace impossible at Lisle, and the High Priest of the Theophilanthropic sect — a sort of Deistic anticipation of M. Comte's ritualistic religion of humanity — which had opened four temples in Paris and worshipped the Supreme Being with a liturgical service of chants and flowers. It is impossible to approve the taste and feeling oF some of these lines, which mix up in indiscriminate censure men of character with men whose leading I The ' Anti-Jacodi\-' 65 qualities can scarcely be described in these terms, and which coarsely appeal to prejudice and hatred. But to discriminate was, in Canning's view, to be guilty of the treachercrns^land' unmanly vice of candour. Coleridge, even when he came to be on Canning's side, did" not t forgive this attack, although he reserved his indignation ' \ mainly for the inclusion of poor Lamb in a company ;., with which politically he had nothing in common, being 1 1 connected with the Jacobin bards, as they then were, only by the ties of poetiy and friendship. But war is war, in politics as in arms ; and Canning was the last man to Wunt the weapons of personal satire and in- vective, which none could use so effectively as he. The taste 6r~the times and the Whig precedent of the 'Eolliad,' the 'Probationary Odes,' and the 'Political Eclogues,' some few years earlier, and of Tom Moore some years later, justified him, so far as an example set and an example followed can do sb'.""'*^"'" """' ' The New Morality ' has something of the vigour of Dryden, something of the polish of Pope, and, in spite of its passionate prejudices and personal animo- sities, something of the sound moral feeling of Cowper. The place of the poetry of the ' Anti- Jacobin ' amongst English political satires has been unduly lowered. It has been described as inferior to the ' llolliad ' and to the political verses of Tom Moore, which it is the fashion to call his best performance. There is, indeed, about the ' Rolliad,' with which for this purpose the other works of~tFe sanie^riters,'the' Probationary Odes ' and the ' Political Eclogues,' ma}^ be associated, a rollicking vigour, a masculine force, a broad humour, and, with all their coai'seness, a sort of good humour which the ' Anti-* 1 66 George Canning Jacobin ' lacks. The writers are not professional jokers, they are country gentlemen who happen also to he scholars and wits. Even when they misconduct them- selves; they are gentlemen misconducting themselves. Their very grossness has an air of good manners and distinction about it. Moore, on the other hand, is the man of letters lending himself to the purposes of his patrons. The bookseller and the cheque from the news- paper' office are always in view. He has unexampled grace, ease and vivacity, and copiousness of fancy and wit. But neither in the writers of the ' Eolliad ' nor in Moore is there any belief. They have no cause ; they are pure partisans ; their satire is almost entirely personal. The ' Rolliad ' and the other poems of its authors were written in vindication of the discreditable coalition between Fox and North. They attacked the jMinis- try of Pitt, which, apart from thS" circumstances of its origin — and these have since found constitutional vin- dicators upon the highest democratic theories — was. since Lord Chatham's and before the war with France, the most sagacious and patriotic that England saw until Lord Grey's, or at any rate until Mr. Canning's accession to power half a century later. The ' Bolliad ' had, necessarily, no political principle to vin^StPate. '' Moore assailed the Prince Eegent and his Tory Ministers as the ' Eolliad ' people assailed George III., Mr. Pitt and his colleagues. He did not, save in the use of a few party cries, go much beyond personal badinage. The writers of the ' Anti-eTacobin,' though they were personal enough, and sometimes were as wantonly personal as Fitzpatrick or Moore, had a doctrine which they up- held and a doctrine which they attacked. They had a The * AxVti-Jacobin' 67 scheme of politics aud of morals, views of art. literature, and philosophy, of which they wof tli<' unflinching champions. Against the abstract principles of the French thiri'kers, the humanitarian and (■i~-iiiipolitan en- thusiasm of the earlier poetry of Coleridge and Southe}", they set' up a morality which is based on habits and usage ; against the rights of man, the rights which depend on laws and institutions ; against theophilan- thropy, the Christian religion ; against the Goddess of Reason, the Established Church. They believed that man is the creature of organised society fThaFTie be- longs to his own nation and to its institutions ; and that to strip him of these things is to unclothe him and leave him naked, to expose him, wounded and bleeding. Canning and his friends hated the jargon ofcause and principle and system ; they thought it Frencli ; but nevertheless they had a cause, a principle, and a system ; and this fact gives to the satire of the ' -i^iti- Jacobin ' a place in English satire of a higher character than can be claimed for the writers with whom its authors are sometimes put in disadvantageous'contrast. They were bent on amendino; the doctrines and manners of* their time ; bent on restoring sagacity to politics,"^ood sense to literature, morality to the stage, sobrietyl;o specula- tion. They had principles and a doctrine,' and they applied those principles and that doctrine all round, in correction of French principles in politics, of false tasto in letters, of wild speculation of the Payne and Erasmus Darwin school icTsocial philosophy and science, of senti- mental theophilanthropy or blank atheism in religion, of German licence on the stage. The ' Anti- Jacobin ' represented a counter-reaction against an exaggerated 00 ' F 2 68 George Canning reaction. The gross abuses of custom and inheritance which the French revolution had swept away had led to a movement against all that was established and hereditary. In protesting against the extravagances of cosmo- politan and humanitarian sentiment, and of individual licence, Canning fell into something like a worship of national prejudices and antipathies, of political abuses and ecclesiastical and social tyrannies. He did not make enough account, because his antagonists had made too much, of personal freedom, and of that sense of a common humanity which is the basis of national differences. His literary judgments rested no less on national sentiment, in this case inspired by good sense. He objected to the Latinised style of Junius and Johnson for the reason which made him ridicule the spondaics and dactylics of Southey and Coleridge. In English prose and verse the structure of the sentences and the metrical forms should be English. As Dr. Johnson said, criticising Hume's Gallicisms of style, the French structure may be as good as the English structure, but it is not English : ' Mv name mio-ht originally have been Nicholson as well as Johnson, but if you were to call me Nicholson now you would call me very absurdly.' 69 CHAPTER X. DOMESTIC RELATIONS. / While Canning was taking part in the schoolboy parliament of Eton and the speaking club at Christ Church, lionising at Blenheim and Saltram, and earn- ing renown in St. Stephen's and Dowlaing Street, his mother was wandering over the country as a strolling actressT" After the death of Eeddish she had married a stage-struck silk mercer at Plymouth, named Hunn, who, failing in business, essayed the boards at Exeter and 'was damned. A situation was obtained for him in a merchant's office in London ; but he too died, leaving Canning's mother for the third time a widow, with three children — two girls and a boy — dependent on her. Canning's affectionate devotion to her through life was unfailing. He wrote to her fully and reg-ularlv, he missed no opportunity of seeing her. The story of his having settled his pension upon her appears to be imfounded. I can find neither his name nor hers on jiny pension list. He enabled her, however, to with- draw from the stage. She took up her residence first at Winchester and afterwards at Bath, where she re- mained until 1827, the year of her own and of her son's death. The fact that Canning's mother had been on the stage, and was supposed to have a pension, was not ^ yo George Caxxixg likely to escape the notice of the lampooners and libellers of the time. It saved them the necessity of simply lying ; they had, in pai't at least, only to exag- gerate. Wolcot (' Peter Pindar ') was especially per- tinacious and malignant. ' Gifford,' lie makes Pitt say:— GifFord, that crooked babe of grace, And Canning, too, shall be in place, And get a pension for liis niotlier. Again : — 'I must have something,' Canning cries, And fastens on some rich miucepies, As dextrous as the rest to rifle ; Ecocl, and he must something do For mother and for sisters too, So steals some syllabubs and trifle. On July 8, 1800, Canning married Miss Joan Scott, the daughter and co-heiress of General Scott, who had made a fortune in India and at the gaming-table. He left 100,000L to each of his' clanghters, with the strange provision, for an Englishman, that if either of them married a nobleman her fortune should go to the other. The elder sister married the Marquis of Tichfield, the son of the Duke of Portland ; but the younger, who became Mrs. Canning, generously refused to take advantao-e of her father's will, and insisted on the fortune remaining divided. We have to consider the political morality of the times, which, however, except in the limitation of opportunities, does not per- haps differ much from our own, in estimating the fact that when the marriage bv which he was enriched took place — certainly Avhen it was arranged— Canning, Mj Domestic Relatioxs yi tliough the pension story seems to be a pure fabri- cation, had and kept a sinecure as Receiver in the Alienation Office. Wolcot did not fail to magnify the received fiction, and to burthen the pension list with a perfect army of imaginary half-brothers and half-sisters of Canning. In the letter of Mr. Joseph Budge on the Middlesex election, written congenially in the Devonshire dialect to Lord Rolle, whose accent — S£/3apr^rr==is^'commemorated ni the ' Rolliad/ this grdwth'ciT calumnious fable is exhibited"-^ And then one CanniDg, a poor Ijoy, Took from a school to his (Pitt's) employ, Once thoft a huge deep thinker. He, like a very duteous son, Got nice tid-bits for mother Hun, And brother Tim, the tiiilcer. And zister Peg, and zister Joan, With scarce a flannel dicky on, As ever I can larn ; Broken-down actresses, tliey zay, Tlaat in the country used to play Yor herx'ings in a barn. Now though this curious young man got, A hundred thousand with Miss Scott, (Egad ! a fortune thumpmg !) Behold, a hadn't got the heai't To give his family a peart, Zo zend mun out a mumping. In another piece of rhymed and metrical scm'rility the libeller savs : — / 72 GeorgIi Canning I met mother Hun in the park, The dam of our great Master Canning, Forth flying as brisk as a lark, With her daughters perspiring and fanning. J * You've heard of the marriage, I guess ; Nice match, oh, a very nice match ; Half a million of money, not less, J Oh, Lord ! 'twas a beautiful catch. ' Yet how mortally proud they will be; Three days, sir, before the grand wedding, Bundled off were my daughters and me, Pack'd off" in the mail, bed and bedding. ' For we weren't of importance enough Our court to great people to pay ; And so we were all ordered off. For fear of disgracing the day.' X In a footnote appended to this precious effusion, Pitt is charged with having ' saddled the nation with pensions for Madam Hun, the Misses Hun, alias Cannings, alias Reddishes, a pension on her husband Mr. Richard Hun, a place in the West Indies for one Master Reddish, and military promotion in the East for the other, and, to crown the whole, a pension for poor Uncle Tommy, the tinker of Somers-town.' By a later effort of imagination, to ' brother Tom the tinker from Pentonville,' who, no doubt, is simply a variety of ' poor Uncle Tommy, the tinker of Somers-town,' is added ' brother Bob, a common soldier from Botany Bay.' Mrs. Hunn is described as having been a woman of considerable force of mind and character, but of some- Domestic Relat/oAs 73 what original and eccentric manners, sucli as tlie neces- sary emphasis of the stage and the self-assertion of a competitive profession occasionally produce. There is a dim suggestion of Mrs. Crummies in the accounts we have of her ; but there is no trace of any disposition on Canning's part to keep her out of view ; and his wife, wlio was devoted to him, and, with Charles Ellis, was to the last his confidante, even beyond what is prudent in matters of State — he had no secrets from her, his friends said — -is not likely to have been at variance with him on this point. Her own generosity to her sister is a strong presumption that she would not fail in gene- rosity and tenderness to one who had found a harbour after a stormy passage and some shipwrecks, AYolcot's libels, however, show amid what accompanimenls of calumny and insult the business of public life was car- ried on at the close of the eighteenth and the beg-inning of the nineteenth centuries. On his marriage Canning left Spring Gardens and took up his abode in the house in Conduit Street now numbered 37, his occupation of which a tablet commemorates. He had previously lived at Putney, probably to be near Pitt, and while resident there had formed a friendshijD with the unhappy Prin- cess of Wales. He took part in the romps of j\Iontagu House, Blackheath, in which graver persons — the bro- thers Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, and Perceval — had been sharers. Of all these men Canning alone remained true to the Princess" throughout her troubles. When she became queen he confronted the hostility of the King, which at that time might mean permanent exile from political life, rather than join in the proceedings against her. 74 George Canning CHAPTER XI. ATTACKS ON ADDINGTON. The parliamentary union with Ireland had been passed in the two Parliaments of Westminster and Dublin in the summer of 1800. The aim of the political union was to defeat the French design of converting Ireland into a Hibernian republic after the Batavian, Cisalpine, and Ligurian model. The union of the Parliaments was, however, in Pitt's eyes, the condition under which alone the moral union between the two countries which he thought Catholic Emancipation would secure became safe. The King refused his consent to any relief, and emj^hasised his refusal by going mad. Mr. Pitt resigned office, and after some months' delay, occasioned by the King's inability to attend to business, Mr. Addington became Prime Minister. Canning, who sat for the Irish borough of Tralee in the now United Par- liament, was bitter in his hostility to Addington and incessant in his efforts to restore Pitt to office. A sort of round-robin of protest and remonstrance was pro- jected, which was to be presented to Addington, asking him, as an act of Decian virtue, to sacrifice himself for his country and to make way for Mr. Pitt. The Dean of Christ Church, Lord Malmesbury, and Canning were active in the matter. But the plot got wind. Pitt, Attacks ox Add/.\\;7(k\- 75 who had covertly favoured the project, was forced to discountenance it, and the thing- dropped. There were long intrigues, in which Canning was the most active agent. His hostility was not confined to attacks in .I.*arliainent and to machinations out of it. In the years 1803-1 ho was busy in the ' Oracle.' as he had been half a dozen years before in the 'Anti-Jacobin,' but his attacks wore now purely personal. The journal, so far as he is concerned, might have been properly called the ' Anti- Addington.' The indecencies to wdiich he now and then descended would have amply justified the somewhat prudish remonstrance which Wilberforce addressed to him with respect to the ' Anti-Jacobin.' The squibs of the period were reprinted in the annual volumes called ' The Spirit of the Public Journals ; ' and Sir George Lewis, in his ' Essays on the Administration of Great Britain from 1788 to 1830,' enumerates those which 'appear to be by Mr. Canning.' The first of these, entitled ' Proofs of Political Sagacity,' resembles those copious memo- randa for his speeches which Canning was iu the habit of preparing, and contains indeed a good deal of the sarcasm which is involved in the rhetoric and aro-ument of his parliamentary speeches, disengaged from them and given in its undiluted essence. The points wero given in a series of antitheses, supported by references to ministerial statements. The first two may serve as a specimen : — How very wise we were to make peace with Bonaparte, because his tone and temper were so friendly ! But How very wise we were to go to war with him again, because his tone and temper have always been so hostile ! Addington was to Canning — as he was, indeed, to 76 George Canning everybody in tlie colloquial slaug of tlie lobbies, of societ}'', and of the press — always the doctor. His father had been the family physician of Lord Chatham ; but the nickname, though this reference to the paternal profession is implied in it, is said to have been derived from his recommendation to the King of a hop-pillow as a soporific. ' The Doctor : an Ode — Scene, Treasury Chambers,' has the motto from Romeo and Juliet : ' I do remember an apothecary, and here about he dwells.' Doctor, Doctor ! what dose, narcotic, emetic. Diuretic, cathartic, or diaphoretic, Can retrieve your poor country s deplorable case, Her destruction avert or repeal her disgrace ? ' Apothecaries' Hall, First of April, Mr. H. A.'s Birthdav and Anniversarv of the Arrival of the Treaty of Amiens,' describes a banquet in honour of Mr. Addington. It gives one stanza, not very remarkable, from a song in parody of Canning's own verses, ' The Pilot that Weathered the Storm,' addressed to 'The Pilot that jMoored us in Peace.' The following Anacreontic, as it is called, refers to the fact that Addington had made his brother Hiley Addington, and his brother-in-law Bragge, afterwards Bragge- Bathurst (both of them, by the way, contributors to the ' Anti- Jacobin '), respectively Secretary of War and Treasure!' of the Navy : — How blest, how firm the statesman stands (Him no low intrigue can move), ** Circled by faithful kindred bands, And propped by fond fraternal love. When liis speeches hobble vilely, What 'Hear Iiim's' burst from Brother Hiley ; Attacks on Addington yy When his faltering periods lag, Hark to the cheers of Brother Bragge ; When the faltering periods lag, Or the yawning audience flag ; Wlien his speeches hobble vilely, Or the House receives them drily, Cheer, oh, cheer him, Brother Bragge, Cheer, oh, cheer him. Brother Hiley. Each a gentleman at large. Lodged and fed at public charge, Paying (with a grace to charm ye). This the Fleet, and that the Army. Brother Bragge and Brother Hiley, ^z Cheer him when he speaks so vilely ; -^ Cheer him when his audience flag. Brother Hiley, Brother Bragge. ^-^^ In a subsequent letter Timothy Gosling sends a song, which he represents as having been accidentally omitted from the report of the meeting, and in which Pitt and Addington are contrasted : — 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 alarm to feel ; With moderate measures gently purging Ills that prey on Britain's weal. Chorus. Gently purging, Gently purging. Gently purging Britain's weal. / ^8 George Canning Addiiigton with measured motion Keeps the tenour of his way ; To glory yields no rash devotion, Led by burning lights astray. Splendid talents are deceiving, Tend to counsels much too bold ; Moderate men we prize, believing All that glistens is not gold. ClIOKUS. All that glistens, All that glistens. All that glistens is not gold. ' The Blocks ' is a paper containing a great variety of epigrams, comparing certain defences of the Thames so named with analogous political defences : — If blocks can from danger deliver. Two places are safe from the Prench ; The first is the mouth of a river, The second the Treasury Bench. ' Ambubajaruni Collegia, PliarmacopolaD,' is a com- parison in verse between Addington and his colleagues and certain notorious quacks of the day. ' The Doctor's Practice justified by Precedent ' depicts Addington as a political Sangrado, bleeding and purging his patient to death. Young Bolus, in the following stanza, is Addington's son, to whom the Clerkship of the Pells • had been given — a sinecure in the Court of Exchequer not more abusive than that which Canning himself held as Receiver-General of the Alienation Office : — Our Doctor's practice is the same, | To park and lodge he makes his claim, In Richmond Palace dwells; Attacks on Addington 79 Gives Navy-purse to Brother Bragge, Hiley secures the Army bag, Young Bolus bolts the Pells. The patient next so high in blood, Cupped, bled, and purged, as he thinks good, He lowers to such condition. That while he swears he has sweetly dozed, And safe in peace serene composed. He dies of his Physician. ' 31ore of the Doctor,' and the ' Doctor versus Cocker,' do not contain anything very remarkable. The latter possibly refers to the financial blunders of Addington, which had enabled Pitt to ' set up ' what Canning called ' a separate indignation ' of his own. ' Good Intentions ' affects to be an extract from the first canto of a poem on that subject, of which the argument is thus given : — Happy that nation's lot I ween (As Briton's sons can tell), Whose rulers very little mean, But mean that little well. The theme is thus developed : — But more than all, we love to dwell On thy best talent, meaning well ; Whether thou flatter or alarm us, The intention never fails to charm us Others, Avith necromantic skill, May bend men's passions to their will. Raise with dark spells the tardy loan, To shake the vaunting Consul's throne. In thee no magic arts surprise. No tricks to cheat our wondering eyes ; 8o George Canning On thee shall no suspicion fall Of sleight of hand, or cup, or ball ; Even foes must own thy spotless fame, XJnbranded with the conjurors name. Ne'er shall thy virtuous thoughts conspire To wrap majestic Thames on fire ; And if that black and monstrous grain. Which strews the field with thousands slain, Slept undiscovered yet on earth. Thou ne'er hadst caused the monstrous birth Nor aided (such thy pure intention) That diabolical invention. Hail, then, on whom our KState is leaning, O minister of mildest meaning ! Blest with such virtues to talk big on, With such a head (to hang a wig on) : Head of wisdom, soul of candour, Happy Britain's guardian gander, To rescue from the invading Gaul, Her Commerce, Credit, Capital ! While Kome's great goose could save alone One capitol of senseless stone. A prose ' Parallel between Buonaparte and Mr. Addingtou ' is long, and not in Canning's best vein. ' St, James's Park Ghost,' an adventure of which Mr. J Addington is the hero, has more of Swift's indecency f than of his wit. ' A Symposium, or Attic Entertain- ment, given in Downing Street on the 6th day of Feb- ruary, 1804,' describes farcically an entertainment in honour of the birthday of the Prime Minister's father, to which the guests were summoned in the following billet, in the shape of a physician's prescription : — AtTACKS ON AdDJMGTON 8 1 Ij!,. De cibis earn, et pise, suniatur : De vino quant, suff. recipiatur, Cum Ilecit. atque Mus. sumend. Ad gaud, et jocos promovendum. H. A., M.D. The festival is noisy. lu its course Mr. Manasseli (whose name a later generation has contracted to Massey) Lopes is insultingly knocked down with a ham ; Sheridan misbehaves himself; Addington makes a speech in terms of medicine, and the meeting is broken up by the report of Bonaparte's landing in Essex. From ' A Quartetto, written for and sung at Mr. Addington's last public Dinner,' we take the parts of Addington, Tierney (who had quitted his party to take office under Addington) and Sheridan. .^^ Mr. Addington. y^ If a body jjut a body in the Speaker's chair, Must a body be nobody but a cypher thei-e 1 My gown and wig, so long and big, they pleased the Royal eye, Both King and Queen admired my mien, so ^Minister am I. Mr. TiEUXEY. If a body join a body called a party Whig, Need a body for that body care a single fig ? Like an ass retired Dundas from Bench of Treasury, So in his bai'ge I sail at large, triumphant George Tierney. Mr. Sheridan. If a body everybody seeks to please and coui't, Must a body from nobody find the least support ? Not a man trusts Sheridan with half a halfpenny, Yet all the day I'm blithe and gay, and d at night am I. G 82 George Canning Addington speaks in the following address, parodied from the ' Tragedy of Douglas/ Act II., Scene 1 : — The Stranger. jMy name's the Doctor ; on the Berkshire Hills JNIy father purged his patients — a wise man AVliose constant care was to increase his store, And keep his eldest son, myself, at home. But I had heard of politics, and long'd To sit within the Commons House, and get A place ; and luck gave wdiat my sire denied. Some thirteen years ago, or ere my fingers Had learned to mix a potion, or to bleed, I flattered Pitt, I cringed, and sneak'd and fawn'd. And thus became the Speaker. I alone, ' With pompous gait and peruke full of wisdom. The unruly members could control, or call The House to order. Tir'd of the chair, I sought a bolder flight, And grasping at his power, I struck my friend Who held that place which now I've made my own. Proud of my triumph, I disdained to court The patron hand which fed me, or to seem Grateful to him who raised me into notice ; And when the King had called his Parliament To meet him here, convened in Westminster, With all my family crowding at my heels. My brotliers, cousins, followers, and my son, I showed myself Prime Doctor to the country. ]My end's attained : my only aim has been To keep my place and gild my humble name. Canning made merry, in more than one paper, over a project to protect the coasts of the couutr}'- by sinking large masses of stone in assailable places. He describes Attacks on Addington 8 with muck fulness iu a poem, called ' The Stone Expe- dition ; or, The Doctor's Head Good for Something," a scherSe" according to which Addington's head should be used a^a maritime obstruction : — /■ Thou who hast dragg'd the country clown so low, y To save her yet might Roman virtue shew. That pond'rous head which ne'er presumed to think But England tottered on perdition's brink ; Tliat head where army, navy, and finance Are jerk'd about like puppets in a dance ; Where all is chaos, where no reason's light Breaks forth to brighten the Boeotian night ; That head, that leaden cranium, wouldst thou lend, To the world's centre, should the mass descend. Neptune would tremble at the impulsive force Of such a plummet, and permit its course. The various accretions are described by which the head of Addington, sunk at the bottom of the sea, is converted into a shoal, to the despair and terror of Bonaparte, whose flotilla is wrecked on it, 'some shij)s having their bottoms beaten out by striking on the doctor's os frontis, others foundering on the occiput,' &c. Mr. Vansittart proposes that the members of the Cabinet should visit iu a diving-bell 'the remains of the late Dr. A n, now for his country's sake con- verted into a mud bank.' But they all on various J3retexts refuse. A political song, ' Axing pardon,' refers to the speech of an Irish member who had spoken of Ireland as a woman in labour ' cured by the care and precaution of her doctor ' — a medical metaphor which Canning could notj of course, neglect the chauco of turning to tlie 62 / 84 George Canning ridicule of Addington. 'A Petition Extraordinary' affects to proceed from Addington, Castlereagh, and Mr, Yorke, and prays that ' Napoleon Buonaparte and others, his vile associates, may be delivered over to the custody of the Serjeant-at-arms, and retained in durance,' so that they may not invade the country until the Volunteer system of England is in full operation. Addington is said to have tried to enlist Tierney, to whom he had given oflace, and Sheridan, towards whom he made advances on his side in the conflict of pamphlets and paragraphs. The allusions to them in Canning's pasquinades show that he recognised or suspected the alliance. Dean Pellew attributes the origin of the feud between Canning and Addington to Canning's resent- ment of certain supposed slights on Addington's part. But the character and situation of the two men suffi- ciently explain it. ' I can't bear fools, anything but fools,' said Fox of Addington ; and this was, no doubt, Canning's feeling. They remaiiaed at variance until the year 1812, not speaking when they met in society. Canning, calling at the Home Office on private busi- ness in that year, was accidentally shown into Addington's (then Viscount Sidmouth's) waiting-room. Addington hearing his name sent for him, and Avitli a generosity and gentleness of manner before which Canning, greatly moved, broke down, solicited a recon- ciliation. At Canning's request. Dean Jackson, some time after, wrote to Lord Sidmouth, to say how deeply Canning had felt the kindness, which at the moment he was physically unable to acknowledge. 85 CHAPTER XII. THE SECO^■D PITT ADMINISTRATION. Pitt affected to disajiprove of Canning's attacks upon Addington — ' Look you, mock him not ! ' — and of his over-zeal for Pitt's return to office. The ' experimental peace ' of Amiens was only a truce. The nation contem- plated with alarm the prospect of Addington's remaining at the head of affairs during the wai* that it Avas now seen must presently break out. Pitt wrote to the King, saying that he could no longer suppOTt the policy of the Ministry. This was on April 22, 1804. Pitt made an unsuccessful attempt to include Fox, Grenville, and their friends in the Administration. In the list of the proposed Ministry in Mr. Pitt's handwriting — of which Lord Stanhope has printed a facsimile — Canning is assigned the Irish Office. The King, who had just recovered from a fresh mental illness, declared that he preferred civil war to Fox, and Grenville declined to enter the Government without him. Canning was a reluctant member of Pitt's second Administration. He was deeply disappointed at the exclusion of Fox and Grenville. He told Pitt that he would rather not take office at all, and in any case he objected to Cabinet office, for which the country did not think him yet ripe. It would attribute his 86 George Canning advancement to favouritism on Pitt's part. He was anxious not to be in tlie secrets of administration, but if Pitt desired to have a parliamentary friend close to him, and thought that he could be of assistance to him in the House of Commons, he would place himself at his disposal. The only offices, he added, outside the Cabinet which were in the line of promotion and seniority were the Secretaryship at War and the Treasurership of the Navy. A few days after this con- versation, on May 12, Pitt wrote to Canning, offering him his choice between the two offices he had desig- nated. Pitt, who did not like grudging and conditional support, added that he hoped Canning would not feel himself bound to take either if to do so was disasfree- able to him. Canning chose the Treasurership of the Navy. The Treasurership of the Navy was one of those lucrative offices the perquisites of which had been shorn more than twenty years before by Burke's economic reform. Before that time the incumbent of it was allowed, as was the Paymaster of the Forces, to emj^loy for his own purposes the balances lying in his hands. When this . abuse was abolished, the salary, which had been 2,000?. a year, was raised to 4,000/., with an allowance of 1,500Z. a yenr for a deputy. The payment of seamen's wages and of the navy and victualling bills were among the duties of the Treasurer of the Nav}?", whose office in Broad Street was the centre on which depended branch establishments in different parts of the kingdom. A squib in the ' Oracle,' which Sir G. Lewis assigns to Canning, called ' Counter Theatricals,' in reply to a paper called ' Theatricals ' in the ' Morning Chronicle,' The Second Pitt Admixi^tration 87 ricliculos more coarsely and le>s cloyerly than was Cannino-'s wont the leadino- antasfonists of IMr. Pitt's Government. It describes a comedy called ' Discon- tent ; or, The Murmurs of Opposition,' which is pre- sently to be produced, and the company which are to act it. ' The ostensible Manager of the Company is an old Fox, who generally plays a principal part in the pieces acted by his troop. He was once in a manner hissed off the Stage for disrespectful behaviour to the audience : that is, for saving there was no audience worth acting to' — this refers to Fox"s secession from 1797 to 1802 — ' and did not venture to reappear until a considerable time had elapsed. . . . He has always been considered an actor of great talents, tho' exceed- ingly unhappy in the choice of 2:)arts which he ought to play, as well as in the pieces which he has produced, most of which have been irretrievably damned, &c. . . . Among those who are principally to support the Manati'er in this Drama is an Irishman, who is known amonsr his friends bv the name of Dan-Sherrv or Sherry-Dan, supposed to have been given him by his Bottle Companions in allusion to the great quantities of sherry — Ave are told, however, claret — which he has been continually pouring down his throat, and which has lighted up a flame in his countenance that all tlie water in the House cannot extinguish. The next actor is known by the appellation of Wind-him, from his notorious liability to be wound or turned about, or in allusion to the variableness and inconsistency of the wind, which he a good deal resembles,' &c. Keluctant as Canning had been to join Pitt's second Administration, he was presently still more reluctant to 88 Gforge Canxing remain in it. Pitfs majority proved small and un- certain. Addington carried with him a certain number of dissentient Conservatives, and his help was essential. The Duke of Portland resigned the Presidency of the Council, which was conferred upon Addington, who was raised to the peerage with the title of Viscount Sidmouth. To Canning Addington's appointment was a bitter mortification. He wrote to Lady Hester Stanhope on hearing of it : ' Everybody must know that the arrange- ment which places Mr. Addington in the Cabinet dis- places me.' When the project was first mooted for overtures to Addington, he had thought that a peerage and a pension, not a Cabinet office, were intended. ' A.,' Canning went on to say, ' if I understand your letter right, is a Minister and I am nothing. I cannot help it. I cannot face the House of Commons or walk the streets in this state of things as I am.' He then asks Lady Hester to represent to Pitt that he should make Canning's inevitable retirement his act, not by dis- missing him but by taking for granted that it is in- evitable, and by further explaining the matter to the King, with whom he wishes to stand well, and to Lord Melville, by whom he did not wish to be misunderstood. Canning was, however, induced to retain office, pro- bably on Pitt's appeal to his loyalty and patriotism. Addington, though he said naturally enough that he could never meet him nor alter his feelings towards him, disclaimed any idea of wishing to interfere with his private friendships or his prospects. The gain of Addington was as nothing to the loss of Melville, charged with having, as Treasurer of the The Second Pitt Administration 89 Navy in a former Admin isl rali.in. niisappropriated public money, and ' concTemned by the House of Commons, tbouo'h on impeachment acquitted by tlie House of Lords. • Pitt, feeling the necessity of strengthening his ]\linistry, asT^ed the King, during the recess of 1805, to allow him to propose ofBce to Fox and the Gren- villes ; but the King was obstinate as regards Fox, and Thomas "Grenville refused to come in without him. Canning, who told Malmesbury this in December, said that Pitt now felt that he must depend upon his own side, and that he and Charles Yorke were to be brought into the Cabinet— a statement which George Rose dis- credits. If Pitt had this design he did "not live to carry it out. The disgrace of Melville, and the ruin at Ulm and Austerlit^ of his plans of a European con- federation against France, against whicli the victory of Trafalgar alone could be set, broke down his physical strength. He took Melville's disgrace tlie niore* gravely. Austerlitz, he said to Huskisson, might be got over, but not the Tenth Report. Canning, who visited him on the day before his death at Putney, whither he had returned from Bath, saw that it was an affair of a few hours. Canning had long been anxious. His admi- ration of his poTiticaTcLief and master was' expressed in the epitaph on the statue in the Guildhall of London. "^ Mr. Canning's parliamentary activity was not great during Mr. Pitt's second Administration. He spoke at length on the defences of the country in February 1805, of course supporting Mr. Pitt's schemes ; but the main call made upon his powers was for the defence of Lord 90 George Canning Melville, already punished by dismissal from office and the ei'asure of liis name from the list of Privy Councillors, against the impeachment proposed by Mr, Whitbread. Canning held the office of Treasurer of the Navy, in which the offences, reduced by the decision of the House of Lords and by subsequent opinion to some- thing less than peculation, were committed, and he there- fore spoke with knowledge of the way of doing business in that department. He could not help seeing the funny side, not of the trial, but of some of the actors in it, and he was especially tickled with the virtuous egotism and self-importance of the speech in which Mr. "Whitbread, the chief accuser, brought the articles of impeachment before the House of Lords. His sense of them was expressed in — ' I'ragment of an Oration.' Part of Mr. Whitbread's speech at the trial of Lord Melville put into verse by Mr. Canning at the time it was delivered : — I'ni like Archimedes for science and skill, I'm like a young Prince going straight up a lull ; I'm like (with respect to the fair he it said) — I'm like a young lady just bringing to bed. If you ask why the lltli of June I remember ^ Much better than April, or IMay, or November, On that day, my Lords, with truth I assure ye, My sainted progenitor set up his brewery ; On that day in the morn he began brewing beer. On tliat day, too, connnenced his connubial career ; f ' The day on which Lord Melville was heard in his own defence at the bar of the House of Commons. The Second Pitt Admix/strat/on 91 On that day he received and he issued his bills ; On that day he cleared out all the cash from his tills ; On that day he died, having finished his sunnning, And the angols all cried, ' Here's old Whitbrcad a-coming.' So that day still I hail with a smile and a sigh, For his Beer with an e and his Bier with an i ; And still on that day in the hottest of weather The whole Whitbread family dine all together. 80 long as the beams of this house shall support Tlie roof which oershades this respectable Court Where Hastings was tried for oppressing the Hindoos ; So long as that sun shall shine in at those windows, My name shall shine bright as my ancestor's shines, Mine recorded in journals, his blazon'd on signs. Canning had been a very discontented member of Pitt's secoiid Administration. He was an uncomfortable colleague, hard to live with. At its formation he quarrelled with Hawkesbury. who refused to join him in trying to oust their old Oxford comrade, "Wallace, from the India Board. He sneered at Hawkesbury himself in debate, and, emulating the vouthful freedom of Fox, expressed his disapproval of the composition of the Ministry of which he was a suTSordinate member. He incurred Pitt's reproof and tlie threat of dismissal. But his attacliTnent to Pitt was unabated, and Pitt's death consecrated it. 9- George Canainq CHAPTER XIII. . CANNING AND THE GRENVILLE-FOX MINISTRY. Mr, Pitts death, of-caui'se, dissolved his Administra- tion. To the close of his life Canning did not cease pas- sionately to vindicate the measures and character of the man in office and close political and personal connection with whom the first ten years of his parliamentary life had been passed. An early opportunity was given him of doing so. The House of Commons was asked to vote a sum of 40,000?. for the payment of Pitt's debts, and it did so unanimously. But the motion for an address to the King in favour of a public funeral and a monu- ment in Westminster Abbey was opposed, among others, by Fox and Windham — by Fox on the ground that Pitt, though a pure and disinterested was a mischievous statesman ; by Windham, who alleged that, whatever his merits, he had not won success. Canning protested against the vote for the payment of Pitt's debts being treated ' as an eleemosynary grant to posthumous necessities.' It was a ' public debt to a higlily meri- torious public servant,' and only as such could his friends sanction it. On the death of Mr. Pitt the King endeavoured to find another Addinsfton in Lord Hawkesbury in lieu of the Addington he had lost in Sidmouth, who was now the ally in faction, though not Cax.v/.w; and the Gkrnvii.i.e-Fox Ministry 93 in principles, of Fox and Grenville. But the time of Lord Hawkesbuiy, who as Lord Liverpool was destined to be Pi'ime Minister for fifteen successive years, had not yet come. The King saw that there was nothing for it but to have recourse to Lord Grenville, as formerly, and with no less reluctance, he had been obliged to accept Lord Rockingham, and to allow Grenville, as formerly he had been forced to allow Rockingham, to bring Fox with him. In other respects the new Ministry resembles rather the coalition of 1783 than the purely Whig Administration of 1782. Grenville was an abler and firmer Portland; Sidmouth was a dull North; Fox, as Gobbo says, was himself. The Whig element predominated. Sidmouth, indeed, whose forty or fifty followers in the House of Commons could not be spared, would have been the only Tory and King's friend in it if he had not been allowed to bring in with him Lord Ellenborough, as he brought the Earl of Buckinghamshire into the second Ministry of Pitt. The faithful old steward and his mastiff, to use the expression of a contemporary observer, w^ere em- ployed to watch the new servants. The appointment of Ellenborough was constitutionally open to grave objection. Lord Ellenborough was Lord Chief Justice of England, and in that chai'acter might quite con- ceivably have to preside over political prosecutions ordered by the Cabinet of which he was a member, being thus in practice judge and accuser. It was, no doubt, intended by the Toryism of the Lord Chief Justice to balance the Liberalism of the Lord Chan- cellor, Lord Erskine. A better arrangement was pro- posed, which would have made Erskine Cliief Justice 94 , George Canning in the Court in which he had won so many victories for constitutional freedom, leaving him out of the Cabinet, and have given the Chancellorship to Ellen- borough, a great lawyer, though, where politics were concerned, an aggressive and tyrannical judge. This plan Ellenborough declined to acquiesce in. Canning, with a true constitutional instinct, saw this fault in the composition of the Ministr}-. On March 3, 1806, Mr. Spencer Stanhope moved a series of resolutions con- demning the admission of the Lord Chief Justice of England to the Cabinet. Sir Samuel Romilly, being Solicitor-General, was officially obliged to defend the arrangement. Mr. Canning, who might on this occa- sion have repeated Pitt's boast and claim to have unw(h)igged the gentlemen opposite, spoke with great vigour and grasp of principle. The most interesting passage of his speech to readers of the present day refutes an absurdity, still sometimes repeated with an air of great wisdom as one of the pleasing j^aradoxes, the tickling pleasantries, of our political system. The government of England being essentially government by the Cabinet, it is considered very piquant to say that the Cabinet is unknown to the Constitution. This was said to Canning, who replied that ' he never heard a more untenable proposition. In a free country such as this, where a control was necessary, and where re- sponsibility must necessarily lodge somewhere, were we at this day to be turned round upon by being told that there was no such thing as a Cabinet ? We had persons who advised with his Majesty, who performed all the functions of government, who were known as the Cabinet, who were known all over London and C.-L\.\7XG ,-i.ViO 77//-: GRENri/JJ-.-PoX Ji//.\VSTJ?]' 95 the country to bo so ; but the moment Wf entered, the door we were told that there was no Cabinet. It mig-lit be true, indeed, that the Constitution recognised nothing under the name of the Cabinet, but it was not the less certain that there was such an assembly, with whom the responsibility for whatever advice they gave his Majesty rested.' In fact, all this talk of the Con- stitution knowing and not knowing, recognising and not recognising, is a misleading metaphor. In the sense in which there is no Cabinet, there is no English Constitution ; in the sense in which the English Con- stitution exists, the Cabinet now exists as a part of it, and as the most essential part. The English Consti- tution is not a paper constitution, though a paper con- stitution is not necessarily a bad thing. It is an affair of growth and usage, of method and practice, and the fact that a usage has grown up, and that a method has been put into habitual practice, makes them constitu- tional. It used to be said, and it is still now often said, that the office of Prime Minister is not known to the Constitution. Next to the existence of the Cabinet, and as an essential part of it, it is the most important element in the Constitution. The office was recognised officially for the first time, it may be, in the recital of the names and ranks of the plenipotentiaries in the pre- amble of the Treaty of Berlin, in which Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, is described as ' Fii'st Lord of her IMajesty's Treasury, Prime Minister of England.' In fact, there are two English Constitu- tions — a constitution of form and ornament, and one of fact and operation ; a constitution of text-writers, and u constitution of actuality. The three powers in ^6 George Caxsixg the arcliaic constitution are the Queen, Lords, and Commons in Parliament assembled. The three powers in the livinof and working^ constitution are the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, and the Commons dispersed through the electoral body. The new Constitution, which may be good or evil, acts through the forms and by the mechanism provided by the old, and may long do so ; but the form ouo'ht not to be confounded with the substance nor the matter with the spirit. Canning, who was afterwards destined to give hia own name to a political school, was now become the leader of the group known as the Pittites. After a short interval of hesitation, based upon his former relations with Lord Grenville, he plunged into opposi- tion. George Pose, who, through their common rela- tions with Mr. J^itt, was verj^ intimate with Canning, says that he agreed with Grenville and was prevented from joining him only by party ties. Canning, in one of the debates in reply to a challenge from Fox, avowed his personal confidence in and esteem for Lord Grenville : ' But to talk of him now as the head of the Government, after all that we have heard, after all we have seen, to consider him as the directing and presiding mind, is impossible. I am sorry for it. But I admit no claim for confidence arising from an ex- pression which was applied to an individual, and which was founded on error as to his Aveight and situation in the Government. In his colleagues I never had, and never professed to have, the confidence which they now demand.' The followinnf verses, entitled ' Elijah's Mantle ' {vide 2 Kings, chap, ii.), are printed in ' The Spirit of Canning and the Grenvillh-Fox Ministry 97 the Public Journals' for 180G. A prefatory note states that, 'though the author's name is withheld, most readers of taste will, we think, make a shrewd guess at the poet.' Canning told Lord Boringdon that, after the formation of Pitt's second Government, he had abjured for ever all communication with the gentlemen of the press ; but these verses did not appear in any newspaper. There can be little doubt that they are from the pen of Mr. Canning, and they express his feeling towards ]\Ir. Pitt and towards j\[r. Pitt's ministerial successors with more than parliamentary freedom. He exhorts the several Ministers to emulate Pitt :— Greaville, to aid the Treasury fiuuo, A portion of his mantle claim, Pitt's generous ardour feel ; 'Bove sordid self resolve to soar, Amidst Excliequer gold be pure ; Thy wealth a nation's weal. Fox, if on thee some remnant fall, The shred may to thy mind recall Tliose hours of loud debate, When thy unhallowed lips oft praisfd The glorious fabiic traitors raised On Bourbon's fallen state. Thy soul let Pitt's example fire, With patriot zeal thy tongue inspire, (Spite of tliy Gallic leaven, And teach thee in thy latest day, ]lis form of prayer, if thou canst pray, ' save my country, Heaven ! ' H 98 George Canning Windham, if e'er thy sorrow flow At private loss or public woe, Thy rigid brow unbend ; Tears over Ctesar Brutus shed, His hatred warr'd not with the dead. And Pitt was once thy friend. Does envy bid thee not to mourn, Hold thou his mantle up to scorn, His well-earn'd fame assail ; Of funeral honours rob his corse, And at his virtues till thou art hoarse, Like the Greek cynic, rail. Illustrious Roscius of the State, Now breech'd and harness'd for debate, Thou wonder of thy age ! Petty or Betty, art thou hight, By Granta sent to strut thy might (night X) On Stephen's bustling stage. Pitt's chequered robe 'tis thine to wear. Take of his mantle, too, a share ; 'Twill aid thy ways and means ; And should fat Jack and his cabal Cry, ' Rob us the Exchequer, Hal,' 'Twill charm away the fiends. Sidmouth, though low that head is laid Which call'd thee from thy native shade And gave thee second birth ; Gave thee the sweets of power and place, The tufted robe and gilded mace, A nd rear'd thy puny woi'th ; Caxx/mg and the Grenviu.e-Fox I\Tjmstry 99 Tliink liow his mantle wi'aj)t tliee round ; Is one of equal virtue found Among thy new compeers ? Or can tliy cloak of Amiens stulF, Once laugli'd to scorn by blue and bulT, Hide thee from Windham's jeers % Mr, Canning's parliamentary compliments to Lord Grenville were sarcasms scarcely masked. A current of steady animosity lay beneath the alternating recon- ciliations and alienations of Canning and his old chief at the Foreign Office. To say that the ostensible Prime Minister is not really the head of the Govern- ment over which he seems to preside, to assume that he is without decisive weight, the directing spirit being with another, is to use the most dexterously chosen topic and language of disparagement and irritation. Fox was obviously sinking when, in 1804, Pitt's plan for a combined Administration broke down. Fox reconciled himself to his proscription by the King on the ground that he was too old for office. His expe- rience two years later confirmed his conclusion. Yet he was then only fifty-five years of age, and was now fiftv-seven, a time of life at which later statesmen — Lord Palmerston, Lord Beaconsfield, and Mr. Glad- stone — have had the most active and distinguished part of their career before them, I leasure and self- indulgence had done in Fox's case what incessant labour (not unaided by the two-bottle habits of the time) had done more rapidly by twelve years in Pitt's. Fox had this advantage over Pitt, that he knew how to take life easily. He enjoyed the retreat of St. Anne's and his book under a tree. Pitt pined and repined H 2 100 George C a nixing out of office, in which more than twenty out of his twenty-three years of parliamentary life had been spent. It was now obvious, however, that Fox must be relieved of a part of his parliamentary labours. Though he still attended to the duties of his depart- ment, he had been compelled towards the middle ot June to give up attendance in the House of Commons. Grenville, through Lord Wellesley, made overtures to Canning, who described their character in a letter to Lord Boringdon, dated August 9. Canning alone was to be admitted into the Cabinet. Professional advancement was to be secured to Perceval, who at this time combined politics with his practice at the bar. Other claims were to be considered as oppor- tunity arose. Canning showed prudence and good sense in rejecting the proposal. ' To be plunged at once,' he said, ' into the midst of the present Cabinet, constituted as it now is, and that not in consequence of any general arrangement on either side, but by Lord Grenville's individual selection of me individually, and without the King's previous knowledge ; in these cir- cumstances to liave the labour of the House of Commons devolved upon me in Fox's absence and (what would be worse) under Fox's occasional superintendence, would, 1 really think, have formed altogether the most un- endurable, the most discreditable, and the most hopeless situation into which any man ever was misguided by an inconsiderate precipitancy of ambition.' In the event of the continuance of the war, Canning intimated that he might get over his difficulties in order to aid the Government, though even then he could not re- coucile himself to the pi'oject vvliich Lord Granville Caxxjxg axd tue Gh'f.xr/i.u:-Fox ^M/x/sfry ioi Leveson-Gower had heard as in contemplation of * Fox's retaining his office, and discontinuing parlia- mentary attendance with a purpose of coming down now and then to see that things were going on rio-lit.' Most of all, the King must be admitted into his own Government 'if the Ministry was to be all that it ought to be for weight, authority, popularity, and con- fidence.' He ' must approve the design and bo seen in the execution.' This doctrine is either harmless or mischievous, as it is interpreted and applied. Canning had seen enough of the relations between the Kinsr and his Ministers to know the necessity of a good understanding between them. It was difficult to carry on the King's Govei'nment with the King in opposi- tion. Canning showed later in life, in combating the attempted proscription of him by George IV., that he could manfully resist the excesses of royal pretensions. But the Canning of 1806-7 was not the Canning of 1824-27 any more than the Pitt of 1781- was the Pitt of 1804. Happily for himself and England, the later was the greater and nobler Canning. That Canning was wise in declining to take the leadership of the House of Commons, subject to the occasional visitations of Fox ' to see that things were going on right,' no one who has witnessed the effects of somewhat similar arrangements in our recent parliamentary history can doubt. Fox's temper was large and generous, but Canning's was sensitive and irritable, and did not brook control even in positions more easily manageable than that which was proposed. Fox's health continued to decline. He told Grev ghortly after taking office that there were two things I02 George Canning on wliich his mind was set — the abolition of the slave trade and the establishment of an honourable and durable peace. The first he put in train for accom- plishment, declaring that in contributing to it he felt that his forty years of public life had not been spent in vain. Happily, perhaps, for him, he did not live to see, though he must have foreseen, the failure of the nego- tiations for peace which he had set on foot. He had come up to Downing Street in September, but he could not bear the journey back to St. Anne's. He broke it at Chiswick, staying at the Duke of Devonshire's villa, where he died in the very room in which, about twenty years later. Canning, whose political fortunes and future were so closely involved in his, breathed his last. Fox died on September 13, 1806. While Fox was still living, Grenville reopened communication with Canning for a reconstruction of the Ministry on a larger scale than he had thought practicable in June. The first proposal had been a seat in the Cabinet for Canning-, a law office for Perceval, and a Privy Coun- cillor's place for whomsoever Canning should name. Afterwards, at Lord Grenville's request, Canning sent in a list of persons ' not who must all have offices, but among whom such offices as could be opened must be distributed, and of whom such as were not included in the distribution must nevertheless be consulted, and excluded only by their own consent.' The list was larger than Lord Grenville had anticipated, and he regarded the pretensions it set forth as extravagant. Two, or at most three, seats in the Cabinet (including Fox's) were all that he thought he could dispose of. Canning did not expect Fox's office for himself; that, Canning and the Grenville-Fox Ministry 103 he tliouglit, would be given by Grenville to his brother Thomas, now for the first time brought into the Min- istry. The seats to be distributed among Canning and his friends were the Presidency of the Council, which Lord Fitzwilliam might be willing to give up, and the Presidency of the Board of Control, and pos- sibly the Secretaryship at War, at the moment held by Lord Minto and General Fitzpatrick respectively without Cabinet rank. Nobody but Lord Fitzwilliam had any thought, according to Canning, of moving. The retention of Lord Ellenborough, of Windham, whom as War Minister Canning had attacked and mercilessly ridiculed, and of the Doctor was unacceptable to him. Canning insisted on five seats in the Cabinet. One of them, without office, he destined for Lord Eldon, whom he thought sufficiently paid by his ex-Chancellor's pen- sion of 4,000/. a year ; Lord Chatham (as his father's son and his brother's brother) was to have another; ' Castlereagh and myself in the House of Commons (even if Yorke could be omitted) make four, and Liver- pool or Westmoreland must be the fifth.' * Less than this,' Canning said, ' he could not propose to his friends ; ' and he proposed even this with the assurance that it would be too much for Grenville, as it proved to be. Lord Malmesbury was in ecstasies with the disinte- rested conduct of Canning. He considered that Gren- ville's proposals were simply intended to disunite Pitt's friends, and that Canning had behaved nobly in reject- ing, from principle, the splendid offers which were made to him. Grenville was reduced by these refusals to follow the course to which Pitt had been driven just be- fore his death, and to strengthen himself from his own 104 Georqe C.i.y.y/xG side. Lord Ilowick (Grey), Fox's most intimate poli- tical friend, succeeded his chief as Foreiorn Secretarv. Thomas Grenville took Howick's place at the Admiralty ; Lord Fitzwilliam gave up the Presidency of the Council for a seat in the Cabinet without office ; Lord Sidmouth becoming Lord President, and vacating the office of Privy Seal for Fox"s nephew, Lord Holland. On the failure of the negotiations with France Ministers ap- pealed to the country. They met the new Parliament on December 15, 1806, with an increased majority. The Whigs, who had opposed what was in its origin a war of aggression and territorial spoliation by the mon- archs of Europe against Republican France, in denial of her right to choose her own form of government, now with perfect consistency opposed the aggression of Imperial France on the liberties and independence of Europe. Mr. Fox had strongly insisted on the main- tenance of the uti possidetis principle, which was the original basis of negotiations. Napoleon, departing from this basis, insisted that, while France kept what she had won, England should surrender her conquests, or nearly all of them. The Ministry seemed to have a long career before it, but it was doomed to perish. It was the King's hand which destroyed the King's Go- vernment. As he had overthrown the Portland Ministry in 1782 and the Pitt Ministry in 1801, so now, in 1807, he overturned the Grenville Ministry. Partly in obedience to what he deemed sound principles, partly with the view of uniting all the subjects of the King in resistance to the common enemy, Lord Howick brought in a Bill removing certain restrictions upon lloman Catholic service and promotion in the army. Canning and the Grexi-uj.e-Fqx Ministry 105 The old steward, whose business it was to play spy on the new servants, gave the alarm. Lord Sidmouth sent in his resignation. The measure had been insuffi- ciently explained to the King. When he learned its real character he insisted on its withdrawal, and re- quired from his ^Ministers a pledge not to raise the Catholic question in future. On their refusal they were dismissed. This was on March 25, 1807, the day on which the Bill for the abolition of the slave trade — ■ the great achievement of the Grenville-Fox Administra- tion — received the roval assent. Canning had been specially bitter in his hostility to the Ministry, which, as Fox politely said, could certainly not claim in his absence the title of ' All the Talents ! ' He showed the thoroughness of his hostilitv bv mov- ing, in December 1806, an entirely new Address as an amendment upon the Address. He attacked Mr. Windham's army schemes as invasions of the royal prerogative. There was something like a revival of the old institution of the King's friends. The Court was whispered to be hostile to the Ministry. The members of the Household were ostentatiously slack in supporting it. The cry that party connections and great families oppressed the King was heard once more. ' Mr. Pitt's friends,' so called to distinguish them from the Adding- tonian Tories, were disunited in that character by the conflicting pretensions of Castlereagh, Perceval, and Canning^ but thev were united as Mr Fox's enemies. If Lord Howick's Bill had not afforded a pretext for the dismissal of the Ministrv another would have been found. io6 George Canning CHAPTER XIV. THE PORTLAND ADMINISTRATION — MR. CANNING FOREIGN SECRETARY. The Duke of Portland had written to tlie King, saying that he hoped he should not offend his Majesty if he opposed Lord Howick's Catholic Relief Bill, and offer- ing his services to the King in forming a new Adminis- tration if it was thought he could be of any use. In spite of his numerous infirmities he was prepared, he said, to serve the King devotedly and faithfully to the end of his existence. Lord Malmesbury made himself active in the business, and Canning was not behind- hand. 'Canning,' Malmesbury writes, 'speaks as if the choice of Cabinet places was at his disposal, and vowed with a threat that he would never sit in the same Cabinet with Addington.' Malmesbury describes a conversation with Canning at his chambers in the Albany, ' settling administrations, castles in the air.' The impression made by Canning on Malmesbury at that time was not altogether favourable. Though clever and plausible, he was not yet, he says, a states- man, and his habit of quizzing was a dangerous one. ' Spoiled as he has been, feared and wanted as he finds himself, no place is high enough for him ; his ambition The Port/axd Admixistratio.y 107 rises beyond tliis visible diurnal sphere.' Yet Canning, the man certainly of the highest political genius and parliamentary eminence whom England has produced since Pitt and Fox, had up to this time been outside the Cabinet, into which Lord Castlereagh had been introduced before him, and into which Lord Henry Petty entered with the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer at the age of twenty-five. His impatience and eagerness now Avere not unnatural. The King expressed his readiness to leave everything to the Duke of Portland, with the reservations which usually follow this unconditional surrender. Lord Westmore- land, a part of the furniture of almost every Cabinet for a quarter of a century, must have a place, and Lord Charles Somerset must be provided for — his claim being that his wife, formerly a Miss Courtney, was a favourite of the princesses, and spoke the English of Parson Trulliber, Out of respect for the memory of the late Mr. Pitt, the King desired that Lord Chatham should be consulted in the formation of the Ministry. "With these trifling restrictions, the Duke of Portland was free to dispose of everything as he pleased. Lord Chatham was the mere mask of a statesman, bearing- a close resemblance in appearance to his illustrious father, but such a resemblance as a waxwork figure shows to its original. What he was in the Walcheren Expedition he was in politics, holding high place with- out capacity, and without consciousness of incapacity, to fill it — luxurious, indolent, and mindless. Canning was offered by the Duke his choice between the Foreign OlEce and the Admiralty. He would have ceded the Foreign Office to Wellcslcy or Lord ^MMlmi'slniry if loS George Caxxixg either of them would have taken it, but he properly declined to waive his claims to men who, like Lord Chichester, were merely ' old hacks of office.' Lord Malmesbury advised him to take the I oreign Depart- ment, and, on his returning to the Duke of Portland to intimate his acceptance of it, he was carried by him straightway to the Queen's house at Windsor to kiss hands. Lord Hawkesbury became Home Secretary ; Lord Castlereagh Colonial and War Secretary (as in Pitts second Administration) ; and Perceval Chancellor of the Exchequer, with the leadership in the House of Commons. Outside the Cabinet Huskisson held the office of Secretary of the Treasury, and Sir Arthur Wellesley was Chief Secretary for Ireland. Of all the Ministerial appointments, that of Canning — probably the best of them all — was the most severely criticised. He was gratified, however, by the reception of ' a very gracious communication ' from the Dean of Christ Church. Whether or not Canning had carried out his project of learning French beyond the point of being able to swear at a waiter and call a cab does not appear. In his letter to Lord Boringdon while he was Under Secretarv, he admits that he could not Avrite it. Now the accusation, well or ill founded, was that he could not speak it. To attack the French of a Foreign Minister is like attacking the chastity of a woman, the courage of a soldier, or the orthodoxy of a clergyman. The satire of the newspapers was directed mainly to this point. Canning is described as unable to make out who a certain ' Monsieur Nong-tong-paw ' is to whom he is referred whenever he speaks French. He i§ told to The Portland Administration 109 Brusli up your very best jokes, I pray ; And tliough you can't speak any French, tliey say, Wliy, as for that matter, Fitzharris can chatter. And you may keep out of the way. Lord Fitzharris was Lord Malmesbury's son, and Canning's under secretary. Canning has The gift of lungs, Without, alas, the gift of tongues. The ' Morning Chronicle,' which was the principal vehicle of these attacks, published an elaborate account of a misunderstanding Avhich had arisen between M. Alopeus, the Russian Minister, who knew every modern language but English, and Mr. Canning, who knew no modern lansfuaofe but English. ' The con- ference was on the point of breaking up re infedd^ but his Excellency M. Alopeus, making one further effort — • it is supposed in Latin — by frequently vociferating the word " Groom, oroom ! " and accompanying the expla- nation with the significant action of turning out the inside of his breeches-pockets with a view, it would seem, of proving them to be both empty, our Minister, whose acuteness has never been doubted, concluded that " aurum " was the word M. Alopeus wished to pronounce, and that the exhibition of the empty breeches-pockets implied the demand of a subsidy for our magnanimous ally his Imperial Majesty. The ques- tion of a subsidy for Russia is therefore now believed to be under the consideration of the new Cabinet.' M. Ragout, who had formerly been ' Chef de Cuisine and Premier Ministre to Milor Hardvic in Ireland,' no George Canning and aftersvards in ' le coniiance of M. le Docteur a Dindon (Addington), dans la rue de Downing Street a Londres/ writes to announce that he has become Chef de Cuisine to Milor le Secretaire Caningue. ' He is ver fine Ministre, but he play de very Diable in de Bureau of de Affaires Etrangeres, He no understand one word of Frangais.' It is officially announced that ' Mr. Canning has taken several lessons of the Duke of Portland's cook, and can already conjugate the verb eire! In the report of a Ministerial dinner, it is stated that ' about eleven o'clock the company became rather turbulent, Mr. Canning having seriously differed with Sir William Grant respecting the accurate pronuncia- tion of the word paroissial, which Mr. Canning insisted should be uttered like " j)arasol." Sir William, be- coming very Avarm,' &c. In a box which Mr; Canning's messenger is supposed to have left behind him in a hacknej'-coach, are found, among other things, a new French grammar and Beyer's Dictionary abridged, French and English, with two French exercises in manuscript. Canning complained bitterly of the disorganised condition of the Foreign Office when he entered it. The abuses were great. Whether from carelessness or from treachery, there was absolutely no secrecy. The messengers were idle and talkative, and the circulation of documents, always dangerous, was especially so in such a Cabinet as that over which the Duke of Portland failed to preside. Canning did not, perhaps, recall the memory of the time when Lord Grenville made the s.ame complaints as he did now, of the want of good faith and reticence in the Foreign Office and in the The Poh'Ti.i.xD Administration hi Cabinet, when a resolution of silence was passed to tie up Pitt's tongue, and when Canning himself was the medium of communications to the press, with the intention of thwarting Grenville himself. He had no assistance from the Duke of Portland, whose appoint- ment was in direct opposition to Pitt's principle that the real Minister should be the ostensible Minister also, and to that which Canning presently evolved for his own benefit, that the Prime Minister should be in the House of Commons. The Duke's colleagues set up on their own account, taking upon themselves functions which really belonged to him, apparently without his resenting it or even perceiving it. He fell into fits of dead silence when any point was raised, and had not a single supporter in the Cabinet upon whom he could rely in the improbable event of his venturing to contest any point. Lord Chatham took airs upon himself as his associate in the formation of the Government, and Lord Hawkesbury and Lord Eldon were more in the confidence of the King than the Duke. Portland suffered agonies from stone, and any attempt to concentrate his attention, whether in reading or in listening, sent hira to sleep. Under such a Prime Minister, unhindered by him if unsupported by him. Canning had a free hand in foreign afiairs. He held office for somewhat less than two years and a half — from March 25, 1807, to September 9, 1809. The period was marked by great events, and Canning played a great part in them. The defeat of the Russian army at Friedland led to the meeting of the Emperors, Napoleon and Alexander, on the raft moored in the Niemen. The Treaty of 112 George Canninc Tilsit with its secret articles was the result, to which Canning replied by the seizure of the Danish fleet at Copenliagen and its transportation to England. The Berlin decree, and the Order in Council which com- bated it, had been issued during the Grenville Admi- nistration. It was under Canning's Foreign Secretary- ship that the further Orders in Council were framed which led to the Milan decree — the one intended to cut off British trade with the Continent, the other to shut out from the Continent all articles carried in vessels which had not touched at a British port. The com- mencement of the Peninsular War and of the great career of Wellington as a European soldier — that is to say, the beginning of the end of the Napoleonic tyranny — • was due to Mr. Canning's genius and boldness in the direction of foreign policy. Personal and ministerial com- plications, in part owing to the imbecility of the nominal chief of the Government, in part to Canning's perception of the real exigencies of the time and to the insuffi- ciency of his colleagues to meet them, in part to hia own too restless and eager ambition, prevented his being the Minister to complete the work he had begun. They made him an exile from power at a time when two years of office were, to use his own phrase, worth ten years of life. But he laid the foundation of the edifice which others built, and sowed the seeds of which others reaped and garnered the harvest. A secret article of the Treaty of Tilsit, by which Russia and France agreed to make common cause agaiust their respective enemies, and especially against England, is said to have arranged for the occupation of Denmark by French troops and for the seizure of the The Portland Administration 113 Danish fleet by Napoleon, for the purpose of destroj'ing the supremacy of England on the sea and of invading the country. The Crown I'rince of Denmark ac- quiesced in this proposal, which had been made to the Kegent of Portugal also, and declined by him. If this measure had been effected, all the navies of Europe ■would practically have been converted into a French fleet. The overture addressed to Portugal was disclosed to the Prince of Wales, who informed the Duke of Portland of it at an audience in Carlton House. By some means (what they were he never would reveal) Mr. Canning was made aware of the project of handing over the Danish fleet to France, and of the acquiescence of the Crown Prince of Denmark in the design. Ho resolved to be beforehand with the enemy. A British fleet, under Lord Gambier, with transports conveying land troops, entered the Sound. A special envoy was sent to the Crown Prince, informing him that the secret article of the Treaty of Tilsit had come to the know- ledge of the English Government, and demanding the surrender of his fleet to Lord Gambier, to be by him conveyed into English ports, and to be there kept in safety until peace should be concluded between England on the one side and France and Russia on the other, when it would be restored in sound condition. Sucli a demand as this, though it may have been right to make and enforce it, could not be granted without ignominy. It was refused. After a four days' bombardment of Copenhagen, in which the city was set on fire, the fleet and arsenal were surrendered. How Mr. Canning became aware of the scheme which he thus defeated is one of the puzzles of history. I 114 George Canning like the identity of tlie Man in the Iron Mask and the authorship of Junius. According to Mr. Stapleton (' George Canning and his Times,' p. 105), ' an indi- vidual was concealed behind a curtain of the tent ' [on the raft on the Niemen], ' and then and there heard Napoleon propose to Alexander, and Alexander consent to the proposition, that the French should take posses- sion of the powerful fleet of Denmark, which was lying in the waters of Copenhagen. The individual who thus acquired a knowledge of the bargain lost no time in communicating it to the British Government, and gave such proofs of the accuracy of his intelligence as left no doubt of its truth in Mr. Canning's mind.' Mr.' Stapleton was in later years Canning's private secretary.' Canning sometimes confided in him ; perhaps some- times with the disposition to quiz which Malmesbury deplored, he hoaxed him. The story reads like a trans- lation of events into the action of the theatre. As on the stage a war between rival countries is represented by making the kings fight in person, so the discovery of an intrigue is made obvious to the eye and mind by introducing a listener behind a curtain. According to Fouche, iSTapoleon, whose outburst of rage when he heard of what had happened at Copenhagen was terrible, suspected Talleyrand of selling the informa- tion as to the secret article. If the accounts of our Secret Service Fund were kept they might throw some light on the matter. Canning may have recollected the negotiations ten years before with the representatives of the French Directory at Lisle, when for 200,000Z. Talleyrand was willing, as Lord Malmesbury reported, to secure to England any of the Dutch colonies. The Portland Administration 115 The conduct of Mr. Cannino- was attacked iu both O Houses of Parliament as a violation of the principles of international law and morality. But the attack was indirect ; it resolved itself into the assertion that the information before the House did not give sufficient grounds for the action of the Government. It was admitted practically that England was not bound to perish with Puffendorff if she could be saved only with- out him. This was the substance of the motion brought forward by Mr. George Ponsonby, formerly Lord Chancellor of Ireland, now, in virtue of his relation- ship to Lord Grey, leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons, the hero, or victim, later, of Lord Palmerstou's squib, ' The Trial of Henry Brougham for calling the Eight Hon. George Ponsonby an Old Woman.' Canning's reply was simple. It was in substance this : If you will not acquit us without further evidence, con- demn us ; for we will never disclose the source of our information. This language goes far to refute the theory of the accidental man behind the tent curtain. It is probable that the information came from someone highly placed in French or Russian political life, and highly paid by England. The Emperor Alexander privately expressed his satisfaction at what had hap- pened at Copenhagen, but it is not legitimate to infer from this that he was a party to the disclosure as well as to the secret. The refusal of the Prince Regent of Portugal to lend his fleet to the maritime coalition ao-ainst EuQ-land brought upon him the Napoleonic decree : ' The House of Braganza has ceased to reign.' Portugal was to be dismembered and divided between France and Spain, I2 ii6 George Canning Spain had become, under the vassal monarchy of Joseph Bonaparte, practically a province of the Em- pire, which thus dominated the whole of the Iberian Peninsula. The Spaniards rose in rebellion, in the name of Ferdinand YII., now a prisoner at Bayonne. The rising, however, was national and not dynastic. Canning saw that to come to the help of the Spanish people was the best means of carrying on the war against France. The invasion of England was still Napoleon's dream, and all his measures were directed towards organising that dream into a reality. It was not in any crusading or knight-errant spirit, but in one of self-defence, that Canning welcomed the Spanish revolt and sent Sir Arthur Wellesley to Corunna to aid and to organise it. The Spaniards were, perhaps, not unnaturally distrustful of the part which England, hitherto at war with them, intended to play in the struggle. They asked for arms and money, but they did not want English soldiers, and they requested that "Wellesley should confine himself to clearing the French out of Portugal. Practically this was done on August 21, 1 808, when the battle of Vimiera was fought and won. The Convention of Cintra followed, which, allowing the French to evacuate Portugal with their arms and with the property which they had plundered from the Portuguese, half undid the victory. Though Wellesley signed the convention he disapproved it, and his name was appended to it merely as a matter of form in obedience to the two generals who had been placed over Ids head, Sir Hew Dalrymple and Sir Harry Burrard. This, happily, was the last of these examples of the principle of commc^nd in virtue of seniority. The Portland Admimstratiox' 117 To Cauning tlie Couveution of Cintvu was a bitter mortification. It was disapproved by everybody in England ; the King himself censured it ; but it could not be undone. Some decision in respect to it — what is not very clear — which was taken in the Cabinet during Canning's absence, was the beginning of that quarrel with Lord Castlereagh which led to the duel on Putney Heath and to Canning's banishment from official life during the six momentous years of war which preceded the settlement of Europe by the Treaty of Vienna. Canning and Castlereagh carried on a conflict of memoranda on the subject of the convention. Canning contended that as the King could not himself plunder his allies, his generals could not authorise their plunder, and that the article on this subject must be annulled. Castlereagh, equally disapproving the stipulation, held that, having been made, it was valid. It is probable that in any case Canning would have quarrelled with Castlereagh sooner or later, as he had done before Avith Addington, and as he did afterwards with Perceval and Wellington. The essential generosity and nobleness of the man's nature were marred by a certain eagerness and paltriness of self-assertion which could not tolerate delay in the recognition of the claims of the highest genius to the highest place, and which involved him in many unworthy wrangles, if not in still more unworthy intrigues. The melancholy fate of Sir John Moore, who was chief in command in Portugal, makes Canning's con- troversy with him — a controversy which survived INfoore's death — a painful passage in the statesman's life. Moore, personally courageous, was constitutionally ii8 George Canning desponding. He was hopeless of" success in the enter- prise which had been entrusted to him, and Canning, knowing Moore's feeling on the subject, saw in this anticipation of disaster the prophecy of its accomplish- ment. ' Remember, my lord,' said Moore, on his set- ting out, to Castlereagh, who was War Minister, ' I protest against the expedition and foretell its failure.' On Castlereagh's repeating this in the Cabinet, Can- ning's indignation broke forth : ' Good God ! and do you really mean to say that you allowed a man enter- taining such feelings with regard to the expedition to go out and assume the command of it ? ' After the Convention of Ciutra, which restored to him forces, arms, and wealth which might have been annihilated, and in the absence of Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had kept the Irish Office while he was in Portugal, Napoleon was proceeding from victory to victory in Spain. Sir John Moore, waiting for men from England, was in- active. Canning's impatience was extreme. His friend Hookham Frere, who was now accredited as Britisli Minister to the Central Junta in Spain, called on Moore to advance on Madrid, confident in his being able to make himself master of the city before the French could get there. Moore obeyed in the hopeless and foreboding spirit which seems to have now taken pos- session of him. ' I mean,' said Moore, ' to proceed bridle in hand, for if the bubble bursts and Madrid falls we shall have to run for it.' The bubble burst, Madrid fell, and Sir John Moore began his retreat to Corunna, harassed by the gathering and combined forces of Napoleon and Soult. He effected his retreat skilfully, and secured the embarkation of his troops, and, as all The Portland Administration 119 tlie world knows, fell hii-nselt' iu a deutli luippier tliau liis recent fortunes had been, or tluui his future life possibly" would have been if he had survived. The prophecy in Wolfe's lines — Little they'll reck of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him — like most prophecies, was descriptive, and was pro- bably suggested by Canning's language and his atti- tude towards the slain hero. Canning thought Moore might have succeeded where he failed, and he defended Hookham Frere's summons of him to Madrid, which Sir William Napier, in his ' History of the Peninsular War,' has denounced as dictated by ' weakness, arro- gance, levity, and ignorance.' A newspaper poet in the ' British Press,' jDarodying Campbell's ' Hohenlindeu ' in ' The Battle of Putnev,' as he calls the duel between Castlereagh and Canning, refers to Canning's possible fate and INIoore's : — But if he falls, will e'er he meet A nation's woe, that solace sweet, When he beneath the winding-sheet Has stabbed a soldier's memory ? The appointment, due to Canning's agency, of Sir Arthur Wellesley to the chief command in the Penin- sula, and the nomination of his brother, the Marquis Wellesley, as British Minister to the Junta, set a new face on matters military and civil. Wellington won battle after battle, and Wellesley contributed to the political reorganisation of Spain. Encouraged by the head which was being made against Napoleon, Austria plucked up heartj and for the fourth time took up arms 120 George Canning against France. In order to effect a diversion on her behalf the expedition to the Scheldt was determined on, and Lord Chatham, as if to give him an oppor- tunity of showing that he combined military with political incapacity, was placed at its head. It is un- necessary to tell the heartrending story of mismanage- ment and failure, of fever and pestilence. The lines often quoted, and almost as often misquoted, iu which the attitude of the two British commanders is described, are as truly historic as anything in CaBsar or Napier. They were printed first in the ' Morning Chronicle ' of February 6, 1810, as 'an abstract and brief chronicle of the documents and evidence concerning the expedi- tion to the Scheldt : ' — Lord Chatham, with his sword undrawn, Kept waiting for Sir Richard Strachan, Sir Richard, eager to be at 'em, Kept waiting too, — for whom ? Lord Chatham. Canning showed during his first tenure of liigh oflice the qualities of a great Foreign Minister and a great War Minister. The seizure of the Danish fleet, technically brigandage, was a splendid audacity of patriotism. To Canning, too, the glory belongs of seeing that France was to be conquered in Spain, and of equipping the conqueror for his task. Canning, Wellington, the Peninsular AVar ; Castlereagh, Chatham (the Second), the Walcheren expedition : these names are decisive of the controversy between the political rivals. 121 CHAPTER XV. CANNING, CASTLEREAGH, AND PERCEVAL. Canning, long before the organisation of humiliation at Walcheren, had come to the conclusion that Lord Castlereagh had not the qualities necessary in a War Minister. In a letter to the Duke of Portland he said that a change either in his own department or in that of Castlereagh was essential, and that he might be him- self no obstacle to the change he offered to resign. But there can be no doubt that the Duke of Portland correctly described his real motive, when writing to Lord Eldon he said : ' The great object, and indeed the sine qua non, with Canning is to take from Lord Castle- reao-h the conduct of the war.' The Duke of Portland was vacillation and timidity itself. He hated a broil, and while promisiiig to communicate Canning's pro posal to Castlereagh through Lord Camden, Castle- reagh's uncle, both he and Camden kept silence about the matter. Canning s project was that Lord Wellesley should be War Minister and that Castlereagh should have some other Cabinet post. This scheme was assented to bv the King, and communicated to Lord Camden, to Lord Eklon, and to Lord Bathurst, but not to Lord Castlereagh, to whom, however, Canning tliought that it had been made known. Xothing was done, and Canning grew tired of waiting. He 122 George Canning spoke to George Kose aud the Speaker (Abbot) on the subject. The Duke of Portland, gathering pro- bably that the matter was being stirred, took Perceval, then leader of the House of Commons, into his con- fidence. The Walcheren expedition was then being organised and was on the point of execution, and Perceval thought that the superintendence of it could not properly or safely be withdrawn from Castlereagh"s hands. He wrote to Canning in this sense, and Canning, while protesting against complicity in the past concealment, and denying knowledge until a cer- tain date that there had been concealment, acquiesced in an adjournment of the matter till the Scheldt expe- dition was over. This personal controversy was com- plicated by another. The declining physical and mental health of the Duke of Portland made his speedy resignation of the Premiership inevitable. Perceval and Canning discussed the matter of the succession to Portland with great freedom and minuteness, Canning insisting on his own claim not in so many words, but advancing to it by a series of steps. ' There must,' he wrote to Perceval, ' be a Minister ' — the Duke of Port- land having been only a dummy or phantasm-Minister — ' that Minister must be in the House of Commons ; he must be either you (Perceval) or myself (Canning) ' — Castlereagh, apparently, not being to be thought of, though that would have solved the War Office diffi- culty — ' and if I can prevent it it shall not,' Canning added in effect, ' be you.' ' I am not so presumptuous as to expect that you should acquiesce in that choice falling on me. On the other hand, I hope and trust that you will not consider it as anv want of esteem aud kind- Canning, Castlekeagh, and Perceval 123 ness on my port (tlian which I do assure you nothing, &c.) if I shoukl not think it possible to remain in office under the change Avhich woukl instantly be pro- duced in my situation by the appointment of a First Minister in the House of Commons — even in your person.' Perceval replied, modestly enough, that nothing could be more natural than that Canning should desire his great personal superiority to be officially marked. Still Perceval could not acquiesce in his own re- moval from his present office and situation— the Chan- cellorship of the Exchequer with leadership of the House of Commons. All things considered, the nomi- nation of a third person was in his view preferable to the breaking up of the Government. Canning himself had at one time pointed to Lord Chatham as the man under whom he would be prepared to serve. But Lord Chatham was coming home disgraced by the failure of the Walchei-en expedition. Canning not unjustly saw in the breakdown a confirmation of his oj^inion as to the necessity of removing Lord Castlereagh from the War Office, and wrote to the Duke of Portland insist- ing that the time had come for the King to give effect to his promise to call Lord Wellesley to that depart- ment. The Duke saw Canning, and proposed that simultaneously with his resignation of the Ti*easury Castlereagh should be shifted to some other office than the War Department. This was what was at first in- tended, and Canning acquiesced. But he was bent on being First Minister, and, this being out of the ques- tion, he felt bound to ask the Duke to convey with his resignation Canning's own also. He absented himself from the next Cabinet — in the circumstances of the case 124 George Canning a critical one. Castlereagli was puzzled, and inquired the reason. The whole secret came out. Lord Camden told Castlereagh what he ought to have told him months before. Canning wrote once more to the Duke of Portland, admittinor that, while he could not consent to serve under Perceval, he could even less expect Perceval to reverse the relations which had existed between them by serving under him, and expressing the greatest personal goodwill to him. But whether he (Perceval) or any third person was to be First Minister, anything, he said, would be better than a ' Government of com- promise, of uncertain preponderance and divided respon- sibility.' Canning's conduct has been denounced as treacherous. But he had openly declared to Perceval his pretensions to the post of First Minister, and the fact that he suggested to one friend that Perceval might be Lord President with a peerage and the Chancellorship of the Duchy for life, and to another — the Duke of Portland — that he might be Lord Chancellor, do not seem enormities of bad faith. This last proposal the Duke innocently made known to Lord PJldon, ' who was outrageous at it.' It accounts for the almost venomous hatred which breaks out whenever, in his letters, Eldon mentions Canning's name. Perceval could not be forced into the House of Lords if he did not want to go there. He had given up law for politics — the Attorney-Generalship for the Chancellorship of the Exchequer — with regret, and he might conceivably have been desirous of a position independent of political accidents. However this may be, the arrangement proposed by Canning had nothing Avicked in it, and might quite conceivably have been the basis of an Canning, Castlereagh, and Perceval 125 accommodation. A certain want of delicacy and nice scruple may, perhaps, be imputed to Canning in his relations with both Perceval and Castlereagh now, as with Grenville and Addington before, but of direct treachery and bad faith there is no evidence or even reasonable suspicion. Castlereagh, while admitting Canning's right to demand his removal if he thought that the public interest required it, impugned as unfair and dishonour- able the secrecy which had been observed. But the secrecy was not Canning's, but Portland's and Camden's. A challenge was sent by Castlereagh under conditions which even the then recognised code of duelling honour held insufficient, and was accepted by Canning. The antagonists met at Wimbledon, Lord Castlereagh being accompanied by Lord Yarmouth (afterwards the Marquis of Hertford), Mr. Canning by Mr. Charles Ellis (afterwards Lord Seaforth), who was so nervous that he could not load Canning's pistol. The first exchange of shots was harmless. In the second, Mr. Canning was struck in the thigh. The dangerous accuracy of his own aim was proved, it is said, by his shooting a button off Lord Castlereagh's coat as he stood sideways. The contemporary bard of ' The Battle of Putney ' thus sung the encounter : — On Putney, when the sun Avas low, The misty vapours, hovering slow, "We mark'd the chariot rattling go, Of Canning driving rapidly. But Putney saw a stranger sight, When Castlereagh burst forth to light, Who came clean-handed forth to fight His foi-mer friend's sinceritv. 126 George Canning The seconds fixed the rivals' place, Each statesman seized the deadly case, And one had laughed to see the face Of Ellis, grinning horridly. The dreaded sign the seconds gave, But Doodle hit not Noodle grave, And Noodle's shot at Doodle brave Whisked by right harmlessly. But once again must Putney's heath Be-echo back the arms of death ; But ne'er before did History's breath Record such deep duplicity. 'Tis true that not their country's weal, Or monarch's honour could unsteel Or make the rancorous bosom feel Of either Secretary. The signal drops, the bullets fly ; ' Haste, Ellis, haste, nay, do not cry, He yet may roll the poet's eye, And still may feed his relatives.' The last Hue contains a taunt, which was the commonplace of the satirists and libellers of the period, from Peter Pindar downwards, on the most honourable feature of Canninof's life — liis constant affection for his mother and his devoted attention to her, shown not simply in gifts but in assiduous personal cares. 127 CHAPTER XVI. THE PEKCEVAL MINISTRY — CANNING OUT OF OFFICE. The Government had lost its head in Portland and its right and left hand in Canning and Castlereagh. The resignation of Canning's friends, Leveson-Gower, Sturges Bourne, Huskisson, Rose, and Long — the four latter the business men of the Ministry, as Lord Eldon described them — followed, though George Rose after- wards changed his mind. Canning, in a conversation with the King, which his Majesty described as the most extraordinary he had ever borne part in, while pointing to the formation of a Government under Perceval as the most rational course to adopt, had offered to undertake the task should his Majesty be pleased to lay his commands upon him. The offer was not accepted. After unsuccessful negotiations with Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, the Cabinet advised the Kino- at once to fill up the office of First Lord of the Treasury, and Lord Eldon was authorised to express orally to his Majesty the unanimous opinion of his colleagues that the new Minister ought to be in the House of Commons. This was in so many words to designate Mr. Perceval, since Canning and Castlereagh, his only possible rivals, were out of the question. 128 George Canning Mr. Perceval was thus entrusted with the task of reconstructing the Administration. After offering the Chancellorship of the Exchequer in succession to Eobert Milnes, Lord Palmerston, George Rose, Vansittart, and Charles Long, who all refused it, Perceval was con- strained to keep it himself, in conjunction with the First Lordship of the Treasury. The Cabinet received only one notable addition, and that was scarcely a gain : the Marquis Wellesley became Foreign Secre- tary in succession to Canning. Lord Liverpool went to the War and Colonial Office in lieu of Lord Castlereagh ; and Richard Ryder, a brother of the Lord Harrowby of that daj^, took the place of Lord Liverpool at the Home Office. Lord Palmerston be- came Secretary at War in succession to Lord G. Leveson-Gower, but without a seat in the Cabinet. The appointment of Lord Wellesley was rather a surprise to Canning, bv whom he had been sent as British Minister to Spain. Wellesley considered his tenure of this office conditional on Canning remaining Foreign Secretary, and had left his resigrmtion in Canning's hands, to be tendered by him in the event of his own resignation. Canning presented them both to the King, and recommended Hookham Frere as Wellesley's successor in Madrid. If these steps were taken, as Canning's enemies alleged, without the cognisance and consent of the colleagues from whom he was parting, they perhaps involve a little sharp practice. The tables were turned upon him. Learning from the King what had happened, Perceval arranged that the vessel which carried to Wellesley the news of Canning's resignation and of his own release from his diplomatic post at The Perceval Ministry 129 Madrid blioald bring- liim the offer of" the Seoi-etary- ship of State, which Cauniug had quitted. Wellehfley promptly accepted it. Without beiug either orator or statesmau, Perceval was a good man of business and a dexterous debater ; but his only Cabinet colleagues in the Commons. Yorke and Kyder, were ineffective. A vote of censure on Lord Chatham's conduct as commander of the Scheldt expedition was followed rather tardily, and under pres- sure, by his resignation of the office of Master-General of the Ordnance. This resignation led to a new effort to strengthen the Perceval Cabinet. Lord Wellesley proposed that overtures should be made to Canning, Sidmouth, and Castlereagh. To make room for them Lord Camden w^as ready to give up the Privy Seal, llyder the Home Office, and Perceval himself the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. Bub Sidmouth ob- stinately refused to sit in the same Cabinet with Canning, and "VVellesley would not hear of Sidmouth and Castlereagh without Canning. The Government was, therefore, fain to patch up the vacancies as best it could, and to blunder on as it had been doing. Lord Mulgrave succeeded Lord Chatham at the Ordnance Office, and Charles Yorke took the Admiralty from Lord Mulgrave. Canning was not very active in debate in the session of 1810. Besides the speeches to which a reference has been made, he spoke energetically in fixvour of the grant to Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had been raised to the peerage as Viscount AVellington after the battle of Talavera, and supported Sir Sanuiel llomilly's effort for the release of Gale Jones, imprisoned for the publication K 1 30 George Canning of a. placard offensive to tlie House of Commons. He spoke in favour of Mr. Bankes' motion against sinecures, wliicli by his aid was carried against the Government, and led to the appointment of a Committee. Feeling bound, perhaps, not to promote a measure which had already disturbed the reason of the King, he opposed Grattan's motion in favour of Eoman Catholic relief. In speaking in favour of the vote of credit for which the Government asked, he surveyed the field of war and of policy, retrospectively justifying his own measures as Foreign Minister, and carefully separating his support of the Executive Government, as the Executive Govern- ment, from the question of personal conhdence. The close of the year 1810 was marked by the constantly returning ti^ouble of George III.'s life. In October of that year his mental faculties again gave way. Domestic distress had, no doubt, hastened this affliction. In 1809, the Duke of York, his favourite son, had been forced to resign the Commandership-in- Chief of the Army in circumstances of scandal painful to the rigid morality of the King, though the charge of venality broke down. In 1810, the murder of the Duke of Cumberland's valet, Stella, made that unpopular Prince the mark of grave imputations. The illness of the Princess Amelia, and the anxiety which it occa- sioned the King, seem, however, to have been the proximate cause of the retui-ning malady. His reason gave way before her life. The first business of Parlia- ment, which met on November 1, was to pass a Regency Bill. Mr. IVrceval's measure Avas a reproduction of that proposed by Mr. Pitt in 1788. It conferred the Regency upon the Prince of Wales, but subject to the The Perceval Ministry 131 restrictions wliicli lie had intensely resented twenty years before, and wliicli, imposed by tlie Eni>;lis]i I'arlianient, and refused by the Irish, might, but for the King's recovery, have raised the question of the Parliamentary Union twelve years before it actually emero-od. The old Whin^ contention, or rather the anti-Whig contention of the Fox Wliigs of that vear, that the Prince had ah hereditary right to the Regency, independent of parliamentary nomination, was now renewed, but without much vigour. The restrictions on the creation of peers and the control given to the Queen over the royal household, on which Mr. Pitt had insisted, were maintained by Perceval. Mr. Canning asserted with emphasis Pitt's doctrine of the control of Parliament, but demurred to the necessity of its being exercised in the same way. The principle sound in 1788 was equally sound in 1810 and for all time, but the mode of enforcing it was a question of present cir- cumstance and convenience, not involving principle and independent of precedent. Now, he contended, the need Avas urofent of a stronjsf Executive Government, which the restrictions proposed wonld unduly fetter. The Bill was carried, the limitations which it imposed being made valid for twelve months only, within which p?riod the chance of the King's recovery would, it was thought, have been determined. If he were restored to heulrh, it was important that he should find things much as ho had left them. When his restoration was shown to be hopeless the need for restriction would disappear. The Prince of Wales was very angry. He thought of dismissinof Perceval, and he entei'ed into nesfotiations with Grey and Grenville ; but the possibility of his 132 George Canning fatlier's recovery determined liim to leuve tlie present Ministers in power. Wlien the King's illness broke out, Perceval saw the necessity of endeavouring to strengthen his weak Government against emergencies, and again opened ne- gotiations with Canning, Castlereagh, and Sidmouth. Lord Castlereagh declined to enter the Ministry on any terms ; Sidmouth was still irreconcilable with Canning, who alone, it was held, would attract more hostility than support to the Government, especially on the part of" the Sidmouth Tories. Thus the negotiations broke down. The commercial distress of 1810 had led to an inquiry into the effects of an inconvertible paper cur- rency. A committee was appointed in that year called the Bullion Committee. The report, drawn up by Mr. Horner, the chairman, recommended a return to cash payments in two years. Mr. Canning had been a member of this committee, and had closely attended to its proceedings. He spoke in the House of Commons on certain resolutions brought forward by Mr. Horner, based on the report of the committee, and again on certain counter-resolutions brought forward by Mr. Vansittart. His speeches, in wliich he showed his conversance with the sagacious currency doctrines, as afterwards with the free-trade principles, of his friend Huskisson, are recognised alike by men of business and theorists as masterpieces of exposition, argument, and illustration. Canning, while, however, he accepted the principles of the bullionists, to which Peel, then their opponent, afterwards became a convert, held that Parliament was bound to adhere to its contract with the Bank, deferring the resumption of cash payments J The Perceval Ministry oo until six years after the termination of the war. The depreciation of Bank notes was due to an excessive issue of them, but a sudden contraction might be equally injurious ; and the true course to be taken was, by the assertion of sound doctrines, to prepare the way for a return to them in practice. Horner's reso- lutions were rejected; Yansittart's, which embodied all the currency fallacies of the time, were passed. On February 18, 1812, the restrictions imposed on the Prince Kegent by the Regency Bill expired, and it was thought tliat he would signalise his independence bv summoning his old AVhitr friends to office. On February 13 the Prince had written a letter to the Duke of York, in which, announcing that he had ' no predilections to indulge, no resentments to gratify,' he practically intimated his intention of keeping Mr. Perceval's Cabinet in power, though desiring that some of his early friends might join the Administration, naming especially Lord Girenville and Lord Grey. The two AVlii"- lords declined office on the "-round of incom- patibility of ]3olitical opinion with Perceval . On hearing of this result, Lord Wellesley tendered his resignation, and the seals of the Foreign Office were placed in the hands of Lord Castlercagli. Lord Sidmouth was ap- pointed Lord Privy Seal in succession to Lord Camden, who remained in the Cabinet without office. Canning does not seem to have borne any part in tliese projects. It must be admitted that, if he was an intriguer, he was a very unlucky one. Perceval, against whom he had pitted his own pretensions to bo First ^[inister, had gained,' ;iiid seemed firmly established in tliat post ; Castlereagh liad stepped into 134 George Canning the office of Foreign Minister, which Canning had held, and would have sacrificed years of his life to hold again at a time so critical. The much-ridiculed ' doctor ' was in place. Canning was wandering disconsolate among the back benches of the House of Commons. To him the end of life was Parliament, and the end of Parliament was office. A parody of Gray's ' Elegy in a Country Churchyard' describes his demeanour and artifices : — For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey A place er pension ever yet resigned ; Quitted the Court, like Canning, as they say, Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind ? On some tried hack at parting he relies. Some well-turned paragraph his case requires ; E'en in retirement we hear his cries. E'en in our paper linger his desires. • • • • • ■ Ilaply some hoary pensioner may say, Oft have we seen him at the approach of eve, Bending with hasty steps his course this way To make a speech would even us deceive. Til ere, underneath the House of Commons' clock, That rears its vile old-fashioned head so high. How often would he his late colleagues mock. And at that distance catch the Speaker's eye. From seat to seat, as if iii pain or scorn, Mutt'ring his wayward fancies would he rove ; And, out of office, seem like one forlorn. Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in liopeless love. '•35 CHAPTER XVII. ASSASSINATION OF MR. PERCEVAL — FORMATION OF THE LIVERPOOL ADMINISTRATION. The bullet of the assassin brought Perceval's political and natural life to a close at the same moment. On May 11, 1812, he was shot clown in the lobby of the House of Commons by Bellingham, a ruined tradesman, maddened by misfortune and by grievances which, so far as they were real, no Government could redress. The difficulties which had confronted the Cabinet on the retirement of the Duke of Portland beset it once more. Hopeless of support from Lord Grenville and Lord Gre}^, j\linisters opened negotiations with Lord AVellesley and ]\Ir. Canning, who refused to join thera — Canning because of their unwillingness to concede the Koman Catholic claims, Wellesley on this ground, and also because of their want of vigour in prosecuting the Spanish war. According to Lord Eldon, the overtures were not sincere. Wellesley and Canning might ' bite ' or not. If they did not, yet to have offered them office would strengthen tlie Government in public opinion, and it could go on without them. But it was brought up short by a resolution promptly carried in the House of Commons, by a majority of four, on the motion of Mr. Stuart-Wortlev, for an 136 George Canning address to the Prince Hegent, pra^nng him to take steps for the formation of a strong and efficient Admi- nistration. Ministers tendered their resio-nation, and the ]\Iarquis Wellesley was entrnsted with the task of forminof a new Government. Thronwh Canninof he sounded Lord Liverpool — who, though not formally the chief of the retirinsr jNIinistrv, seems to have acted for it — as to the willingness of himself and his friends to join some Government based on the concession of Catholic claims and pledged to a strenuous prosecution of the war. The overture, which implied in the latter condition a censure as regards the past, and in the former an abandonment , of the well-known principles of the majority of the Government, was refused. It cannot have been seriously made. Simultaneously with this application through Canning to Lord Liverpool. Wellesley addressed himself in person to Grey and Grenville. After protracted negotiations, in which the Whig lords insisted on a direct invitation from the Prince Regent, and on freedom to deal with the house- hold offices, and in the later course of which Lord Moira took the place of Lord Wellesley, they too declined. According to Canning, the real objection of the Whig chiefs was to the Prince Regent's pretensions to choose his own Ministers. In a debate in the House of Commons upon these negotiations, he attributed to them in so many words the doctrine ' that the great families and connections of this country had a right to interfere "in the nomination of Ministers,' and em- phatically refused to admit ' any such right or preten- sion in the aristocracy.' The choice of Ministers, he said, belonged to th© Crown, Hubject, of course, to th« Assassination of Mr. Perceval 137 control and advice of a free Parliament. The Princn Regent, -svliose conduct in this matter was not ostensibly open to blame, was now at his wits' end. He had recourse at last to a strange expedient. He asked the Cabinet to choose their own First Minister. Their choice fell upon the Earl of Liverpool, who remained in office for fifteen years. Lord Liverpool's first act on receiving his commis- sion from the King was to address himself to Mr. Canning. Castlereagh was magnanimously willing to yield the Foreign Office, and it was proposed that Lord Wellesley should go to Ireland- as Lord Lieutenant. Canning described this offer as .perhaps the handsomest that was ever made to any individual. But it was pro- posed that the leadership of the House of Commons, with the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, should be in Castlereagh's hands, and it required a longer time of exile from office to make any but the first place in that assembly endurable by him. He consented to hold afterwards a post very inferior to that now within his grasp. But he had not yet acquired the proper mood of submission. " How striking,' Wilberforce moralises in his ' Diary,' ' is Canning's example! Had he fairly joined Perceval on the Duke of Portland's death, as Perceval offered, he would now have been acknowledged head, and supported as such. But his ambitious policy threw him out, and he sunk infinitely in public estimation, aiid has since with difficulty kept buoyant.' Canning, according to Stapleton, was wil- ling to acquiesce in Castlereagh's having the leader- ship. ' The point was referred to three members of tU<2 House of Commons, who were supposed to be par- nS George Canning ticularly conversant with the usages of the flouse; they decided that he ought to insist on the lead, and the negotiation fell to the ground.' It is obvious, however, that the ' usages of the House ' have nothing to do with the matter. Canning himself, in a speech which he made at Liverpool this very year, states that the pro- posal was rejected because, in his own view as well as in that of his friends, it was accompanied by conditions which ho could not honourably accept. Writing to Wilberforce, he took yet other ground. It was not that he insisted on the leadership, or that his friends insisted, contrary to his own view, on his not taking office without it, but that he could not take the second place without incurring suspicion of intriguing for the first. ' I will venture to affirm,' he says, ' that no offer on my part to reject for myself or to reserve for Lord C. the station of command would have prevented him from saying in three weeks that I was studiously labouring to deprive him of it. Pray, therefore, be not led astray, nor let others where you can help it, by the notion that I have been squabbling about a trifle.' But even in the compass of the same letter he is unable to be consistent. The following sentence shows that he was resolved not to take office with the lead of the House of Commons in Castlereagh's hands, and that, though he would have tried, he would probably have failed to bring himst^lf to acquiesce in any third person having it. ' If I could have placed this power fairly hh medio I would have conquered, or endeavoured to conquer, nil my other feelings of reluctance ; but to j)lace it, ;uul to engage to maintain it in his hands where it now is, and then to place myself under it, The Liverpool Administration 139 would have been not only a sacrifice of pride but an extinction of utility.' It is not probable, however, that at this time the House of Commons would have accepted Canning's leadership. Castlereagh now, as Perceval before, was regarded as a safer man than Canning. It would not be fair to apply Canning's own contrast between ' placeless proud ability ' and the ' statesman all civility, whom moderate talents raise to fame,' to this controversy. It was not Canning's genius which was disliked, but his imputed duplicity. It was not the mediocrity of Perceval and Castlereagh which Vv'on the confidence of the House of Commons, but their recognised integrit}". Canning was regarded as an unscrupulous intriguer and audacious adventurer, Perceval and Castlereagh as men of unblemished and disinterested character. Their moral authority in council, in the House of Commons, and with the country was greater than his. Canning was misjudged, largely if not entirely ; but his conduct during the past ten years, since Addington's accession to office, gave some basis, and yet more plausibility, to the judgment. Four years later, after the somewhat ignominious embassy to Lisbon, he took oflice under conditions more wounding to his vanity than those which he now rejected with scorn, contenting himself with the Presi- dency of the Board of Control, Avhile Castlereagh led the House as Foreign Secretary. Yet six years later he sought an escape, happily not granted him, from English politics in the Governor-Generalship of India. Castlereagh's melancholy death saved him from tliis splendid exile, restoring to him the Foreign Office, and giving him at fifty-two the leadership of tlie Hou)-e of 140 George Canning Commons, which he had deemed his right twelve years before. He became First ]\Iinister in 1827. He had declined office without tlie Premiership in 1809. With less liaste Canning would have made greater progress. If lie had manoeuvred less he would much sooner have gained more. The lines in which Moore comments on the demand for further reinforcemen^v for Wellington in the Peninsula, and proposes to despatch politicians thither, express the common idea of the fortunes and chai'acter of the rival statesmen : ■ Castlereagh in our sieges might save some disgraces, Being used to the taking and keeping of places ; And volunteer Canning, still ready for joining, Might show us his talent for sly undermining. It is curious how this suspicion of Canning's good faitli haunted him through public life, expressing itself in the misgivings of his friends not less than in the mingled hatred and contempt of his enemies. Pitt, Lord ]}tlalmesbury, and Wilberforce shake their heads over his disposition to manoeuvre, Sturges Bourne, the perfect model of an upright, fair-minded Englishman, adheres to him, but deplores his trickiness. Lady Hester Stanhope charges him at the commencement of his political life with habitually sending to the newspapers what he heard from Mr. Pitt in confidential talk. Lord Shaftesbury, in his Diary, May 20, 1827, has this entry: 'Met Peel: he told me every syllable relating to Canning's intrigues.' Canning was honest and patriotic, but he stood alone, and he believed too much in the arts of management, 1 /. I CHAPTER XVIII. FOUR YEAKS OUT OF OFl'lCE. DuiUMi the first four years of the Liverpool Adminis- tnitioii, with a break occasioned bv the incident of the Lisbon Embassy, Mr. Canning's position was that of a private member of Parliament. On one question, on which he felt strongly, the confirmed insanity of the King had released him from restrictions as galling as those from which the Prince Regent had escaped. He had assented, after 1801, to the rule of action laid down for himself by Pitt, and accepted by Fox in 180G, that \hv King, in the uncertain state of his mental health, should not be troubled by a revival of the Catholic claims. Now that there was no likelihood of his re- covery. Canning felt himself relieved from this volun- tarily imposed obligation of silence. He and Lord Wellesley acted together in this matter. In June 1812, Mr. Canning moved a resolution pledging the House of Commons ' early in the next session of Parliament to take into their consideration the laws affecting the Roman Catholics, with a view to their final and conciliatory adjustment.' 1''he motion was passed by a majority of 129 — 235 against lOG. In the House of Lords the previous question was carried against Lord Wellesley by a majority of only one. 142 Glorge Canning Lord Castlereagli's presence in the Cabinet left the subject an open one with the Government, and Mr. Canning's success did not endanger the Ministry. Parliament was dissolved in July. On September 25, 1812, a number of gentlemen met at the Golden Lion Inn, Liverpool. Mr. John Gladstone, the father of the eminent statesman, then a child three years of age, moved a resolution, which was seconded by Mr. Richard Benson, inviting Mr. Canning to become a candidate for the borough of Liverpool. Mr. Canning, who had sat for Newtown (Hants) in the Parliament of 1806, and for Hastings in 1807, afterward notified his acceptance of the invitation in a letter bearing date October 4. On October 7 he arrived in Liverpool, and the contest began in earnest. His opponents were Mr. Brougham, whose opposition to the Orders in Council recommended him to a commercial constituency, and Mr. Creevy, a member of Parliament well known in that day as the advocate of free trade with India. Mr. Canning stood with General Gascoigne. On the sixth day's poll Mr, Brougham and Mr. Ci^eevy withdrew from the contest ; but the poll was kept open until the eighth day, when Mr. Canning and General Gascoigne were declared to be elected, Mr. Canning being at the head of the poll. He was also elected for Petersfield. In his speeches on the successive declarations of each day's polling, he pro- nounced himself, so far as general politics were con- cerned, in an emphatic manner against Parliamentary Reform — even denouncing afterwards, at a congratula- tory banquet in Manchester, the project of giving re- presentatives to that town — and in favour of the removal of the political disabilities of the Roman Catholics. Four Yuars Out of Office 143 The new Parliament met at the close of November 1812. It lasted till the year 1818. Mr. Canning spoke in February, 1813, in defence of the conduct of the (government in reofard to the rio-ht of search and the institution, under the Orders in Council, of what was called a paper blockade, out of which the war with the United States had sprung. The controversy had begun while Mr. Canninsf held the seals of the Foreign Ofhce. The United States iiad retorted upon France and England In' passing the Non-Intercourse Act, which precluded trade between the Republic and tlie two belligei"ent powers so loug as the Berlin and Milan decrees on the one hand, and the Orders in Council on the other, remained in force. In the meantime feeling on both sides had been embittered bv the affair of the ' Leopard ' and the ' Chesapeake," in which the British claim to the right of search had been enforced by violent measures, involving loss of life. Mr. Canning had of- fered apologies and reparation for the indiscretion of the commander of the ' Leopard,' and set on foot negotiations for the re-establishment of friendly relations between the two countries. Mr. Erskine, the British Minister at Washington, misconceiving his instructions, accepted the proposal of the United States Government to with- draw the Non-Intercourse Act as regards England, on the condition of the British (Jovernment consenting to suspend the Orders as regards United States ships. He was disavowed and recalled ; Mr. Canning insisted on the belligerent right to prevent neutral trading with the enemy. He equally insisted on what was called the right of impressment — that is, of searching in time of war American vessels for British seamen Avho had deserted 144 George Canning the service of their own country. Tlie former principle, whicli was valid in international law when Mr. Cannin"; contended for it, was abolished, so far as the parties to the Treaty of Paris are concerned, by the declara- tion of 1856, which allows a neutral flag to cover enemy's goods while exempting neutral goods under an enemy's flag from capture — excepting, in both cases, contraband of war. This, however, was not the inter- national law nor the national opinion of Mr. Canning's days. After many irritating incidents, war was de- clared by the United States in June 1812. As a private member Mr. Canning defended the course which he had taken in ofiice and that followed by his successors. In 1813 Mr. Canning gave his support to the measure introduced by Mr. Grattan for removing Roman Catholic disabilities. He endeavoured to disarm public alarm by a fantastic scheme for appointing a commission of Koman Catholic notables and Protestant privy coun- cillors, associated with a Secretary of State in England and the Chief Secretary in Ireland, to whom all bulls and other documents were to be communicated, under pain of banishment, by those receiving them ; and who Avere to testify to the loyalty of persons nominated to Roman Catholic bishoprics. The Bill was defeated on the motion of the Speaker (Mr. Abbot) in Committee — Speakers in Committee in those days recovered their freedom of speech and action as members of Parliament — by 251 against 217 votes, and was withdrawn. The Bill for throwing open the India trade to the public preserved to the Hast India Conii)any the monopoly of the China trade for twenty \ears. Mr. Canning, repre- senting the commercial interests of Liverpool and the Four Years Gut of C:'fice 145 commercial principles of Mr. Pitt, did not venture to do more than move (unsuccessfully) the reduction of the term of the China monopoly to ten years. He sup- ported Lord Castlereagh's motion of thanks to Welling- ton (now Marquis) for the victory at Vittoria in -Tuly ; and in November spoke in favour of the grant of three millions to his Majesty for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of the foreign treaties. Tn the election for Liverpool ^Fr. Canning had strongly asserted his individual independence ; in the House of Commons, when he had been returned, he was soon made aware of his personal isolation. Lord Castlereagh, in spite of his halting and incoherent speech, commanded the confidence of the House by dint of character and administrative capacity. His triumph over his more eloquent and brilliant rival was complete. Canning practically gave up the struggle. He renounced concerted action with Lord Wellesley. He formally disbanded his party, bidding them, accord- ing to Whitbread's ungenerous renderintr of his con- duct, to shift for themselves; really telling them not to adhere to his broken fortunes. The party was not very numerous. According to Lord Dudley, it dined 14 and voted 12. The more important of them were absorbed into the Administration. Huskisson becomino; First Commissioner of Woods, or, as it was then called, Land Revenue, without a seat in the Cabinet, and Sturges Bourne taking a place at the Board of Control. Political disappointment and impatience of his position in Parliament led Mr. Canning to commit what he afterwards spoke of as the greatest mistake of L 146 George Canning his life — the acceptance of a special embassy to Lisbon. The ill-health of his eldest son had determined him to go thither in a private character. The Prince Regent was expected to visit Portugal from Brazil, and it occurred to the Ministry that the presence in Lisbon of Mr. Canning would enable them, if he were invested with the rank of ambassador, to give the welcome of England to the Prince through a statesman of Euro- pean reputation invested with the highest diplomatic office. Doubtless they were inspired also by the desire to act with civility and courtesy to Mr. Canning. The Prince Regent, however, did not come to Portugal. Mr. Canning's conduct in taking the embassy was attacked on his return to England by Mr. Lambton and Sir Francis Burdett, especially on the ground of the additional pecuniary expense incurred in his appoint- ment. Mr. Canning's rejsly was admitted by Mr. Lambton to be satisfactory, but he had placed himself in a somewhat equivocal and derogatory position. He had the faculty of putting himself in equivocal posi- tions. While he was playing at public business in a second-rate capital of Europe, Castlereagh was direct- ing the foreign affairs of the country with a success which was mainly due, no doubt, to Wellington's military genius, but which made him politically the foremost man in England and before Europe. Canning resigned his Lisbon Embassy as soon as he learned that the Prince Regent was not coming thither ; but he remained in Lisbon six months longer, bringing up his voluntary exile to seventeen months. During these seventeen months much had happened. Napoleon had escaped from Elba, Waterloo had been Four Years Out of Office 147 fought, the Congress of Vienna, in wliicli Oastlereagh had represented England, had settled Europe after its own fashion. It must have been bitter to (canning to reflect that, but for his own imprudence, lie would probably have been the Minister who would have played the chief part in these great transactions. With his personal regret the conviction, no doubt, mingled that, if he had not forfeited his rank in the councils of the nation, a more just, generous, and durable arrangement might have been arrived at. On his return to England Mr. Canning resumed his place in Parliament. He had offered to resign his scat for Liverpool on his taking the Lisbon Embassy, but his constituents refused to allow their connection with him to be broken. According to the gossip of the time, Canning had intrigued for the invitation to Liverpool. He desired to increase his waning influence in the House of Commons by the weight attaching to the representation of a great commercial constituenc}'. Sir Walter Scott had urged him some time before to take his own ground and to raise liis own standard. At Liverpool he was iinmuzzled. The confidence Avhich this great mercantile constituency showed in him was echoed by the residents of Lisbon and the merchants of Bordeaux, by whom he was entertained at civic banquets. Mr. Canning was something more to them than an illustrious statesman ; he was the representa- tive of the commercial principles of Mr. J?itt, to which the return of peace gave a new opportunity. I, 2 143 George Canning CHAPTER XIX. IN AND OUT OF OFFICE. Powerful m the House of Commons, and populr.r in the country, the Liverpool Administration was hidi- crously weak in debating power. The two members of the Cabinet in the Commons had grown to four. To Castlereagh and Vansittart, at the Foreign Office and at the Exchequer, had been added Bragge Bathurst (Brother Bragge) as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan- caster, and Wellesley Pole, as Master of the Llint. But they did not double the debating power of the Ministry. It was necessary to strengthen it. On Can- ning's return, in the spring of 181G, he was offered, at the instance of the Prince llegent, the Presidency of the Board of Control, in succession to the Earl of Buckinghamshire. The office was not then always a Cabinet one, though the affairs of our Indian Empire were submitted to it. Canning took it. He was humbled; he was regretting his Lisbon mistake, the sequel and crown of many other mistakes. ' In all probability,' he told Stapleton afterwards, ' I should have had the most influential post in the Government in the House of Commons if I had not fliUen into that error.' But ho had acted, he went on to sav, under a sense of duty, and in similar circumstances would do In and Out of Oi-tice 149 again as lie had done then. It is difiicult to see what could have put Castlercagh out of his place, or Canning into it, if Canning had remained in England. Castle- reagh had the confidence, while Canning had only the admiration, qualified by distrust and fear, of the country. Castlereagh was, in fact, believed to be, in spite of his blundering sjDeech, the abler man of action of the two. Mr. Canning held the Presidency of the Board of Control during five years. His term of office w^as covered by that during which the Marquis of Hastings was Governor-General, and was marked by the practical subjugation of the Peninsula by English arras. The government, of course, was that of the East India Company. The Governor-General was its servant, and not that of the Crown. The duties of the Board of Control were those of supervision and not of initiative. They were described by Mr. Canning in a speech which he delivered in reply to a hostile motion of Mr. Creevy's in 1822. By his success in the Mahratta wars the IMarquis of Hastings had revolutionised India, deliver- ing it from anarchy and pillage to order and industry ; and Mr. Canning had his part in the work. He had at first refused to consent to the policy of Hastings. He was not disposed, he said, to run the risk of a general w^ar for the sake of putting down the Pindarees. But to ]jut down the Pindarees, as he soon saw, was essential to general peace. In Indian politics Mr. Can- ning belonged neither to the forward party nor to the party of retreat. He looked, to use his own words, on the extension of our Indian Empire Avith awe, and ex- pressed the hope that what remained of substantive 150 George Canning and independent power in that country miglit stand untouched and unimpaired. He forbade the censorship of the press in India. At home he was a member of a Government in which Sidmouth was Home Secre- tary, and in which Castlereagh was the presiding and animating spirit, and wliich, by its legislative and administrative and judicial tyrannies, recalled the worst days of Pitt. Canning's attitude during this period, or rather at the commencement of it — but the de- scription applies to it throughout — is given in a letter which Lord Dudley wrote to the Bishop of Llandaff early in February 1817: 'Is there a dangerous spirit abroad, or is there not? Canning says there is. But an eloquent ]\Iinister is a bad authority on such a subject. An alarm is the harvest of such a personage.' Canning condescended to be a professional alarmist for his old enemy Sidmouth — to supply the rhetoric which should justify Sidmouth and Castlereagh's policy. The rebellion was a rebellion of the belly, and it was ab- surd to trace it back to those French principles which had formed the rhetorical stock-in-trade of Canning's youth, or to connect, as he did, the movement for parliamentary reform with ulterior purposes of revolu- tion. The Corn Law of 1815, pas-sed wlule Canning was in Lisbon, the bad harvest of 181G, the war prices of the following years, and the distress and famine which those? war prices ]n-oduced, account for the disaffcclion and disturbances which C-anning attri- buted to the presence of a dangerous spirit. There can be little doubt that at the bottom of liis heart Canning disapproved of the ]:)rotective policy to which ho was accessory after the fact. 'J'he soundness of his In and Out of Office 151 economic doctrines had been proved in many discus- sions, and wlicn lie came into real power his action with respect to the Corn Laws shows what his judg- ment of them was. The Corn Laws produced distress, distress produced disaffection and tumult, disaffection and tumult were made the pretext for coercive measures which increased them, and for resistance to those political improvements which would have abated them. It is not necessary to tell the story of Luddism, of the Spencean Societies and Hampden Clubs, of the Blanketeers, of the Derby insurrection, of the Spafields riot, of Peterloo, and of the Cato Street conspiracy, and of the machinations of spies and informers such as Oliver, whose mission it was to manufacture the dan- gerous spirit which it was the business of Sidmouth to suppress. The Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act ; the Sidmouth Circular about seditious and blas- phemous libels, and the arbitrary power with which it invested the magistrates, by assuming them to bo invested with it ; the Six Acts, and prosecutions such as that of Hone, over which Lord Ellenborough, no longer a member of the Cabinet, presided — this scandal at least Avas avoided — proved the little value of coercion as a remedy. It is only necessary sum- marily to recall these things in order to give an idea what the spirit of the Administration was of which Canning consented to be a member. No one, of course, will contend tliat disaffection and tumult, however originating, can be tolerated. To deal with the cause does not exempt you from striking at the effect. But the ordinary laws would probabh'^ have been enough for the purposes of repression, if sober reforms had been 153 George Canning instituted. Acquiescent in Sidinouth's manner of deal- ing with disorder and distress at home, he was sub- missive to Castlereagh's foreign policy, which, so far as it was possible on the part of an Knglish Minister, was the policy of the Holy Alliance, of which Canning was the sworn enemy in heart now as in action after- wards. Towards the close of the vear 1820 Canning re- signed the Presidency of the Board of Control and retired from the Cabinet. He had declined to be a party to the proceedings taken by Lord Liverpool's Government against the Princess of Wales, now Queen ; and he felt that absence i'roni the House or silence in it did not sufficiently relieve him from Ministerial respon- sibility. The death of George III. in 1820 had raised the question of her status as Queen. She was certain to come to England for the assertion of her conjugal rights. She had threatened to visit this country in August 1819, Avhilo she was yet only Princess of Wales, much to the annoyance of her adviser. Brougham, Avho believed that only mischief would come of it, ' not to mention the infernal personal annoyance of liaving such a devil to plague one for six months.' George IV., as he had now become, M-as eager for a Bill of divorce, and appealed to his Ministers to procure one. They represented to him that if the Queen and lie were private persons he could not obtain a divorce in the Courts, and to introduce a Bill not resting upon a judicial decision would be a course attended with grave embarrassment. Canning joined in this ]\Iinisterial meiiioranduin, which conceded the exclusion of the Queen's name from the Liturgy, but he did so byway of In and Out of Office 153 coiii]3i'omise. In a docket on the back of the memo- raiuktm he declared that he coukl not have assented to lliis course if any penal process had been in contempla- tion. If the Queen was to be accused, it would be improper to divest her of privileges before trial. But wliy divest her of them even if niiaccused and without trial ? The only answer is that something had to be conceded to the King if the action he desired was not taken against the Queen. Ministers proposed that an annuity of 35,000L, which the King might raise to 50,000L, should be conferred on the Queen, condition- ally on her consenting to reside abroad and relinquish the title of Queen. She answered the proposal by coming to London, where she took up her residence in the house of Alderman Wood. The gauntlet thus thrown down was promptly lifted. On the day of her arrival Lord Castlereagh brought into the House of Commons the thenceforward celebrated green bag, con- taining papers confirmatory of the accusations against th.Q Queen. On Castlereagh 's moving that they be referred to a Select Committee, Wilberforce tried to prevent the breaking of the seal of the bag. In the discussions which followed Canning spoke twice, con- tending that inquiry was due to the Queen, to whom he referred with regard and affection springing out of old relations, and could not be avoided after she had come to England and expressly demanded it. Thouoli tlius associating himself with his colleagues, Canning's first feeling was that he could not with personal honour remain among them. ' So help me, God/ he exclaimed in the House of Connuons, 'I will never place myself in the position of an accuser towards this individual ! ' 154 George Canning He had an audience of the King, which he described to , a friend in a memorandum, in which, giving scope to his insatiable delight in mock-mysteries, he spoke of the , King as Mars, of the Queen as Dirce, and of himself as ♦ Marcus. Marcus represented to Mars that, owing to the relations of confidence in which he had formerly- stood to Dirce, he could not be a consenting party to criminal proceedings being taken against her. On the other hand, Marcus felt the difficulty of continuing in the service of Mars without taking part in the discus- sions on this vital subject. Mars expressed his sense of Marcus's honourable conduct, but desired a few hours for consideration. Afterwards, through Lord Liverpool, the King requested Canning to remain in office on his own terms, and for the time no action was taken. The reference to Marcus's previous relations with Dirce require a few words of retrospective explanation. When : the Princess of Wales lived at Montagu House, Blackheath, immediately after her separation from the I'rince, Canning, then a very young man, resided near her. He frequently visited her and took part in the rather boisterous amusements of that unceremonious court, playing at blindman's-buff and other romping games, in which Sir William Scott, then a great advocate, and afterwards, as Lord Stowell, a greater magistrate, took part. In 1803, Canning had offered to take any steps in Parliament which she might direct to obtain an increase of her appointments, though he advised lier to depend rather on the kind feeling of the King (George III.), who was disposed to be her good friend and to protect her against her husband's ]-)orse- cutions. In 1811. he advised her to take up her /.v AAD Our 01' Ofi-icE 155 residence abroad, among her friends at Brunswick, or, if she preferred it, elsewhere ; she would be ' the grace, life and heart' of any society which she might join. (Amning finally acquiesced in the suggestion that he sliould remain in office while holdino- aloof from the proceedings of which the Queen was the subject. On July 5, 1820, he wrote to Lord Liverpool, protesting, as a breach of the understanding on which he had con- sented to the exclusion of the Queen's name from the Liturgy, against the introduction of a clause of divorce into the Bill of Pains and Penalties. Towards the close of this month Lord Liverpool offered to Canning the Secretaryship of State for the Home'TTepaftiheut, which Canning declined on the ground that the office would make him an active participant in the proceedings against the Queen^ As Home Secretary all qiiestions of police which might arise out of the agitation on l){^half of the Queen, threatening often to degenerate into tunmlt, would be referred to him; he would have to consider the expediency of jDrosecutions for libel ; in fact he would be innnersed in the details of the matter, as to which he would be brousrht into direct and constant comnmnication with the King. To get clear of the tiling, and especially to avoid the trial, which bl^-an on August 17, 1820, Canning left England earlv in that month. He expressed his view of the business in a letter I0 Huskisson, written from Paris on October 2." There had been some talk of dropping the divorce" clause from the ]>ill. As a parallel case. Canning mentions that in his speech in 1809, defending the IJuke of York from the charge of corruption in the distribution of army patrouiige, he had contended that crime must be proved i5<5 George Canning Lefore penalties were inflicted. But for 'the fatal measure of the Liturgy,' to which, hoSvever, he' was a conditionally though reluctantly assenting -party, he could, he said, have settled the matter last summer. J\Iinisters ought to have been firmer with the King ; the King would then have played fair. ' But there were conferences as well as minutes, and I suspect the unwritten counteracted the •written communications.' However, as the trial had begun, it must be pushed on to conviction or acquittal, and in the event of the Queen's being acquitted, her name must be restored to the Liturgy. There was neither acquittal nor conviction. The second reading of the Bill was carried in the House of Lords by a majority of nine only j it was certain of defeat in future stages, and, in the almost impossible event of its reaching the House of Commons, of re- jection there by an overwhelming majority. Liverpool announced that the measure would be dropped. Can- ning thought his colleagues had got out of the scrape better than they deserved. Canning had remained a member of the Government which was responsible for the Bill of Pains and Penalties, possibly with the idea that, if the issue were a direct acquittal, he might be of service to the Queen in considering the arrangements which would become iiecessary. He returned to England now that the matter was over, and resolved upon resigning office. In a letter to the King, written from the India Board on December 12, 1820, he points out that the House of Commons will unavoidably be engaged in discussions with resjject to the Quden's case, and that those discussions must bo so mixed up with the general business of the session that it would be In axd Out of Office D/ impossible for a Minister to absent liiniself from tlieni, or to avoid taking part in them. Writing ' himself from Carlton House the next day, the King -with promptitude, but with gracious expressions of regret, accepted Canning's resignation. Sidmouth and Castlc- reagh'were warm and generous in their declarations of regard and sorrow ; Sidmouth addressing Tiim as ' My dear Sir,' Castlereagh as ' My dear Canning.' Sidmouth says : ' The loss to the Kingf's service and to vour colleagues will be irreparable ; and let me add that I shall feel it deeply, for your kind, cordial and honour- able conduct has left a deep impression on my mind.' Castlereagh describes himself as ' the individual member of the Government who must feel vour loss the most sei'iously, both in the House of Commons and in the Foreign Office.' ' Allow me,' he adds, ' at the same time most cordially to thank you for the uniform attention with which you have followed up, and the kindness with which you have assisted me in, the de- partment for the conduct of which I am more im- mediately responsible.' The Court of Directors of the East India Company, on being apprised of his retire- ment, sent him a letter of thanks and regret (Decem- ber 20, 1820). Canning, i-eplying in a letter written on Christmas Day from Tuddenham, Norfolk, refers with satisfaction to the fact that he had departed from precedent in conferring the Governments of Bombay and Madras on distinguished servants of the Company, j\Ir. Elphinstone and General Munro. He claims credit for not interfering with the Compan3''s nominations, si ill less urging personal wishes or soliciting personal favours in regard to their exercise of patronage. Can- 15^^ George Canning ning was succeeded in tlie Presidency of the Board of Control by Mr. Bathnrst Bragge (Brother Bragge). who seemed to haunt liini vengefully through his career. At a" meeting specially summoned in the following March, tlie Court of Proprietors of East India Stock passed a formal and unanimous vote of thanks to Canning. Canning remained out of office during the whole of the year 182 1 and the greater part of 1 822. In the'be- ginniiig of the former year Lord Sidmouth resigned the Home Secretaryship, retaining a seat in the Cabinet with- out office. Mr. Peel, who was supposed to represent the principles of Sidmouth, and did so, so far as opposi- tion to the Catholic claims was concerned, became his successor. Sidmouth thought he could now withdraw without endangering public tranquillity. He had co- erced England into quietude. ' It was because my official bed had become a bed of roses that I deter- mined to retire from it. When strewn with thorns I would not have left it.' Lord Liverpool was anxious to regain Canning's aid. 'In June last' (1821), Canning wrote to Lord Morley, ' there "^vas'lTTontest between Liverpool and the King for and against my readmission to the Cabinet. I then begged not to be pressed on the King, as you know. I was so far taken at my word that the pressure was dropped for the time, to be renewed on the King's return from Ireland. On his Majesty's return from Ireland he expressly forbade Liverpool to reopen the subject, and it was adjourned till the return from Hanover.' The Marquis of Hastings had intimated, or was understoodTcniave intimated, his wish to come back to Euro]3e, and his desire that a In and Out of Office 159 successor to hiin in the office of Governor-General of India should be named. The Chairman of the Court of Directors asked Canning to be allowed to propose him, and communications were entered into with Lord Liverpool and the King, who was ready enough to assent to an arrangemeiit which would relieve him of the presence and claims to office in Englaiid of a states- man whose opposition to liim in the matter of the Queen's trial he had not forgiven. To Canning also, who knew himself proscribed, whose fortune, or rather whose wife's fortune, had been diminished, and to whom Parliament without office had little charm, the offer was agreeable. The arrangement was suddenly checked by the announcement that Lord Hastings had been misunderstood. He had not intended to resio-n. The place, therefore, was not vacant. The Marquis of Hastings had sent a letter of resignation to his friend Colonel Doyle, but Colonel Doyle had not presented it. Ultimately, at the King's instance, it was sent in to the Court of Directors, but it w^as found to be invalid, being in contravention of a clause in the Charter Act of 1793. While the aflair of India was uncertain a reconstruction of the Ministry had been going on, which, indepen- dently of the King's hostility to Canning, would have made it difficult to bring him in. Overtures were made to the Grenvilles. Lord Grenville himself had. done with office, and was planting trees in Dropmore. But the claims of the Grenville family were recognised. The Marquis of Buckingham was made aduke ; his kinsman, Mr. Charles Williams Wynn, entered the Cabinet as President of the Board of Control ; and two faithful dependents of the ducal clan found secondary i6o George Canning f places. Canning was indignant at the preference given : to Wynn over his friend Huskisson, though he advised ' Huskisson not to resent it. The difficulty about the Governor-Generalship was at length overcome, and though Mrs. Canning was described as ' furious at India,' Canning accepted the post. He wa§ at Seaforth, the residence of Mr. Jolni Gladstone, near Liverpool, whither he had gone to bid farewell to his old constituents, when the news came that the Marquis of Londonderr}' — -as Castlereagh was now styled, though the marquisate being an Irish one he continued to sit in the House of Commons — had committed suicide. The situation was again changed. Canning, writing on August 20 to the Earl of Morley, to discuss the effect which this event might have on his plans and prospects, declares that he wishes he was well on board the ' Jupiter ' — the vessel which Avas to carry him out to India. No proposal, he says, can be made to him which will make him glad to stay ; but such a proposal may be made as will make it impossible for him not to stay. If the whole inheritance (the Foreign Office with the leadership of the House of Commons) is offered to him, he does not see how he can refuse it ; if, as one of his friends suggested, the Colonial Office is substituted for the Fcr.-ign Office, he will certainly decline it. The whole inheritance was placed promptly at Canning's disposal, Lord Liverpool insisting, and the King submitting, though with a bad grace, to the inevit- able. Canning felt reluctance. His imagination had ' been taken with the idea of India, and he made a money sacrifice in remaining in England. If only the chance had offered ten years earlier! ' Ten years,' he wrote to In and Out of Office i6i Sir Charles Kag'ot, ' have made a world of difference, and have made a very different sort of world to bustle in than that which I should have found in 1812. For fame, it is a squeezed orange, but for public good there is something to do, and I shall try — but it must be cautiously — to do it. You know my politics well enough to know what I mean when T say that for " Europe " I shall be desirous now and then to read " England." ' Canning protested against 'the principle of European questions.' He was aware of the diffi- culties with which he had to contend. The superstition against which he set his face was even more powerful then than it is now. He had to reckon also with strong personal hostility, within the Cabinet and without. The King spoke of him as if he were a convict to whom he had granted a free pardon. He tolerated Canning as Minister on the ground that ' the brightest orna- ment of his Crown was the power of extending grace and favour to a subject who might have incurred his displeasure.' Canning insisted on an explanation of these words, and, learning that they referred to his atti- tude in relation to the prosecution of the Queen, was content to assert the rectitude of his motives. Foreign courts and foreign embassies were against Canning and liis system of reading, instead of Europe, England, and by many of his colleagues he was more thwarted than aided. ~— — - M 1 62 George Canning CHAPTER XX. MINISTERIAL LEADER AND FOREIGN SECRETARY. Finding the representation of Liverpool in addition to the toils of office and of Parliament beyond liis strensfth. Canning, early in 1823, resigned his scat for that borough, and was elected for Harwich. After nearly thirty years of public life, he was at length the leader of the House of Commons. No contrast could bo more strongly marked than that between himself and his im- mediate predecessor. The imposing figure and gallant bearing of Castlereagh, his unyarying courtesy, his knowledge of mankind and of public business, his chi- valry and good sense won the affection and confidence of the House of Commons, in spite of an absolute inca- pacity of colierent speech. The images by which he strove to bring his ideas home to his own mind and to the minds of his hearers have become by-words. He is credited with the phrase ' ignorant impatience of taxa- tion ': he really spoke of 'the ignorant impatience of the relaxation of taxation.' Confounding Alcmena with her son, he told a member that he was mistaken if he thought his Herculean labours would bring forth a Hercules ; he described a defeated adversary as ' stand- ing prostrate.' He laboured, in fact, under a sort of parliiunentary aphasia, The attempts which he made Leader and Foreign Secretary 163 to diso-uisc a strong Irish accent set off liis oratorio in capacity. ' Knowledge ' he called ' nnllige,' the House of Commons Avas the House of ' Cummins,' a ' dis- cussion ' was a ' deskisson." For ten years the House of Comjnons had been led bv a chief whose courao-e in trying to talk English was greater than that which the Duke of AVellington showed in talking French, who was absolutely without the power of expression. For five years to come it was to bo led by probably the greatest master of the art of expression that any English Parliament has ever seen. Canning's speech was as the closely fitting and yet elastic vesture of his thought, at once dress and adornment. Eye and lip, glance and tone, alert movement and well-balanced attitude, prefigured and accompanied the articulate ut- terance of his meaning. In some respects this abso- lute rhetorical sufficiency was an injury to Canning. Because Castlereagh said so little, and said it so ill, he was supposed to have a great deal in his mind wdiich he left unsaid ; because Canning expressed so perfectly all that it was his business to say, it was supposed tliat there was nothing behind which he left unexpressed. The sample was believed to be the whole store. The House of Commons which Canning faced in 1823 was, of course, in its personal constitution a very different assembly from that which he had entered in 1791'. Pitt and Fox and Windham had joined a larger majority than any with which they had divided in the lobby. Addington had transferred his somewhat fretful and uneasy virtue to the Upper House, whither, too. Grey had carried his patri- cian eloquence ; and a later comer, Lord Henry Petty, as Marquis of Lansdowne, his urbane and moderating M 2 164 George C.inn/ng wisdom. In tli"ir place the Whig aristocracy had found reinforcement as worthy in the h.oraely good sense of Lord Altliorp and the pointed sentences of Lord John Russell. In the place of Whitbread, Brougham was ' mashing and pounding,' to use Canning's phrase, as with the flail of Talus. The adroit parliamentary feculty of Peel, the easy and engaging speech of Robin- son, the manly and rational eloquence of Plunket, gave Canninof an aid in debate which he s^enerouslv acknow- 1 edged. G rattan and Romilly and Francis Horner had come and gone. Tierney on the one side of the House and Huskisson on the other survived to remind Can- ning of the comrades and rivals whom he had met on entering Parliament. The Administration had two periods, which may be described as the Castlereagh period, lasting from 1812 to 1822, and the Canning period, from 1822 to 1827. These two statesmen were really its successive chiefs, Lord I/iverpool discharging no other function of the premiership than the important one of holding the Cabinet together. He was the cement which kept the incongruous materials from falling apart. Transitions and differences are never so sudden and sharp in fact as they are in description, and the Castlereao-h administration of the Foreig-n Office eased the passage from the policy forced upon Pitt to that eagerly adopted by Canning. They both claimed to be Pittites — ' the followers of Mr. Pitt ' was the name of which they were proudest — but while Canning repre- sented his inner mind, Castlereagh continued, so far as he could, his external policy. The reaction in England against alliance with the despotic powers of the Con- tinent, which followed the conclusion of tlie Treaty of Leader and Foreign Secretary 165 Vieuua, forced a certain measure of Liljcralisiu on tlic reluctant inind of Castlereagh, and gave new energy to the large conceptions of Canning. Canning had joined the Cabinet which concluded the Treaty of Vienna, but he did not conceal his dis- approbation of its general spirit and of many of its jjrovisions. The rounding off of kingdoms and states by the exchange and barter of territory and the people on it, as country gentlemen might ' swop " farms and tenants to bring their estates into a ring-fence, was distasteful to him. He especially censured the arrange- ments which gave Norway to Denmark and the duchy of Genoa to Sardinia, and restored the Pope and the petty Italian dukes. When Castlereagh, he said, got among princes and sovereigns at Vienna he thought he could not be too tine and complaisant. It was, how- ever, the fault of Canning's hasty ambition, his ex- aggerated personal pretensions, and his too quick resentments, that he lost the chance of remaining con- tinuously at the head of foreign affairs during the whole course of the Perceval and Liverpool Administrations. Otherwise a generous foreign policy might have began fifteen years earlier than it did. As the domestic diffi- culties and disturbances of England were the shadow of her foreign troubles, it is possible that in this case the administrative and legislative oppressions of Sid- mouth and the judicial tyrannies of Ellenborough would have been avoided or mitigated. During this period hovv^ever, when he was not repining on the back benches or fretting beneath the clock, he was absorbed in the Mahratta wars of Hastings. The loss, probably, had its compensating gain. Canning, Foreign Minister 1 66 George Canning from 1807 or 1812 to 1822, niiglit have been narrowed by the conditions nncler which, and the instruments with which, he had to work. The policy would, possibly, have been in some degree better, but the Minister might have been in an equal degree deteriorated. It was an advantage, both to England and to Europe, that in 1822 he came but slightly pledged to the old system, and free to form his own judgment and take his own course. The year 1821, which witnessed the death of Napoleon, gave renewed vigour to the Holy Alliance, The chief of the military dictatorship and democratic despotism wdiich had mastered Europe disappeared, and the old despotisms of divine right acted on their compact of oppression. The sovereigns of Austria, Kussia, and Prussia met at Laybach, by adjournment from Troppau, and revived the pretensions out of which the revolutionary Avar of France ao^ainst the leagued monarchs of Europe had sprung. The manifesto of the Holy Alliance, in 1815, embodied the pretensions set forth nearly a quarter of a century before in the Duke of Brunswick's proclamation of 1792, and reasserted in the circular which the allied sovereigns issued from Laybach in 1821 to their representatives at the various foreign courts. In this document they declared that '• nseful and necessary changes in legislation and in the administration of states could only emanate from the free will, and from the intelligent and well-weighed convictions, of those whom God has made responsible for power. Penetrated with this eternal truth, the sovereigns have not hesitated to proclaim it with frankness and vio-our. Thov have declared that, in respecting the rights and independeuce of h^gitimate Leader and Foa'e/gn S/xketary 167 power, tlicy regarded us legally null, and disavowed by the principles which constituted the public right of Europe, all pretended reforms operated by revolt and open hostilities.' These principles, stated nakedly and without shame, were too much even for Lord Castle- reagh. Tn a despatch, written early in the year 1821, while admitting the rio-ht of a state to interfere in the internal affairs of another state when its own interests were endangered, he protested against the pretension to put down revolutionary movements apart from their immediate bearing on the security of the state so intervening, and denied that merely pos- sible revolutionary movements can properly be made the basis of a hostile alliance. The principles of the Holy Alliance were not intended to remain a dead letter; they were promptly acted upon. Popular movements were suppressed in Naples and Piedmont ; and intervention in iSpain, where the Cortes had been sunnnoned and the despotic rule of Ferdinand VII. had been overthrown, was in contemplation. Greece imitated the example set in the western peninsulas of Europe. The Congress of Verona Avas summoned, and Lord Castlereagh (now the Marquis of Londonderry) was preparing to join it, when in an access of despondency, the origin of which is variously explained, he took his own life. In the interval between this terrible event and his own appointment to the Foreign Office, in Septem- ber 1822, Canning found occasion emphatically but indirectly to contradict the doctrines of the Laybach circular. Peferring to the struggles going on in some Continental countries between the principles of mon- archy and democracy, he exclaimed, ' In that struggle, 1 68 George Canning God be thanked, we have uot any part to take.' On taking possession of the Foreign Office he found that the instructions which Lord Londonderry, as Secre- tary of State, had drawn up for Lord Londonderry as plenipotentiary were such as he could adopt. Be- lieving, perhaps, that the ' three gentlemen of Verona,' as Brougham called the sovereigns of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, would find a colleague more to their mind in the Duke of Wellington than in himself, Canning sent him to represent England in the Congress, and transferred to him the instructions drawn np l)y Londonderry. He had many difficulties with the Duke, whose ideas of foreign policy were much narrower than Canning's, but whose authority as the spokesman of England was too great to be neglected. Londonderry's instructions, interpreted by Londonderry and acted on by him, would probably have proved in practice very different from Londonderry's instructions interpreted by Canning, even though it was the Duke of Wellington who had to act on them. The main topics of the Congress were four : (1) the position of Greece, and the relations to Greece and to each other of Russia and Turkey ; (2) the suppression of the slave trade ; (3) the question of South American independence J and (4) the revolution in Spain. When a boy at Eton, Canning had written and published in the ' Microcosm ' a poem on ' The Slavery of Greece,' which anticipated the Byronic fervour of a later day. It is not necessary to see in his mature statesmanship a growth from this small seed. It is impossible to argue from the boy to the man. Perceval, when a law student in London, had spoken in the Leader and Foreign Secretary 169 debating societies of the day in favour of the cession of Gibraltar to Spain, and of the disestabUslnnent of tlio Church of England. Canning's sympathies were with Greece, but he concurred in the refusal of the Congress to grant her recognition and protection. The maintenance of his doctrine of the non-interference of foreign nations in the internal affairs of other states was vital. If England interfered on the side of freedom, on what pretext could slie deny the right of other states to interfere in behalf of despotism, or, as they would put it, order ? The suppression of the slave trade was a measure in which Canning had always shown a sincere interest from the time of his youthful conver- sations with his West Indian friend Newton at Christ Church, though he had early in his parliamentary career made a speech, in which he said that if he were a negro he should prefer slavery in the West Indies to having his throat cut in Africa — as if that were the alternative. He failed to get more than an abstract adhesion to his views in the Congress. The slave trade was carried on by Brazil and Portugal largely under the French Hag. But his Most Christian J\fa- jesty's representative was not disposed to take steps for its suppression. Canning was not more fortunate at Verona than he Avas four years later at Paris, when he urged upon the Bishop of Hermopolis (Minister of Worship) the desirability of obtaining a Papal Bull against the slave trade. 'When, after describing its anti-Christian character and all its horrors in practice (most eloquently, as I flattered myself), I ended l)y saying, " And it is now with Catholic countries only that the shame and criminality of this monstrous traflic 1^0 George Canning rests," iny convert (as I hoped to lincl him) answered with the greatest mildness and simplicity, " Apparem- ment ils en ont plus de besoin."' ' On the subject of South American independence, the Congress refused to allow the rights of Spain to her colonies to be brought into question, and the Duke of Wellington presented a note, in which he recorded the fact that England had recognised the de facto independence of the Spanish colonies, and had entered into treaties with them. As regards Spain herself, France succeeded in obtain- ing the consent of the other Powers (England excepted) to her intervention, in such time and manner as might seem good to her, for the restoration of order and of what was called legitimate government in that country. Mr. Canning was forced to be content with limiting the intervention to France, and with depriving it of the sanction of a European mandate. He thus reduced it to the level of a war between the two countries, iniquitous on the part of the aggressor, but still not sheltered by the doctrine of the general right of any Holy Alliance or European concert to interpose in the internal affairs of other nations. Mr. Canning pro- tested only against the action of France. In his ' Poli- tique de la Restauration,' M. Marccllus, who was at that time Secretaiy to the French Embassy in London, says that Canning was himself in favour of giving active assistance to Spain, but that a decision of the Cabinet in an opposite sense was carried against him by his young rival, Mr. Peel. But there is a good deal of imagination in M. Marcelluss recollections, personal and political. In the speech from the throne in January 1823, Leader and Foreign Secretary 17 i Louis XVIII. announced to tlie Chambers the invasion of Spain for the purpose of restoring the Crown to the descendant of Henri IV. ; but hostilities, lie said, would cease as soon as Ferdinand VII. should be free to give to his people the institutions which they could not hold except from him. Writing to our ambassador in Paris, ]!ilr. Canning remonstrated against this doctrine as one which no British statesman could hold, and which, in- deed, struck at the root of the British Constitution. The Spanish nation could not, lie urged, be expected to submit to the doctrine that their free institutions de- pended upon the will of the King, first restored to his absolute power, and then voluntarily stripping himself of a portion of it. Mr. Canning's position with regard to Spain was peculiar. Her friend in Europe, he was her enemy in America. But' the principle which actuated him in both cases was the same. The right of Spain to deter- mine her own course could not consistently be denied to the Spanish colonies, of which the mother country had practically lost control. Challenged as to the resem- blance between the French invasion of Spain and the English war with revolutionary France, he denied that there Avas any parallelism. England had made war upon France, not because France had changed her in- ternal institutions, but because she had broken treaties and attacked the independence of other nations. ' What country,' he asked, ' had Spain attempted to seize or revolutionise ? ' On Kussia offering to France to pi'otect her advance in Spain, by moving troops from the Vistula to the Ehine, Canning announced that, though neutral as between France and Spain, England 172 George Canning would see in the interference of other Powers reason for making the cause of Spain her own. Eussia ab- stained from the proposed action. The admission of the jurisdiction of the Holy Alliance over Europe was a course which he deemed it vital at almost any cost to prevent. 'The time for Areopagus and the like of that,' as he put it, ' has gone by.' ' What should we have thought of interference from foreign Europe when King John granted Magna Charta, or of an interposition in the quarrel between Charles I. and his Parliament ? ' The French intervention succeeded. Though Eng- land would have had, if she deemed her interests suffi- ciently involved, the right to interfere, the right was not an obligation. The necessity did not exist. The influence of France in Spain was not dangerous to England. That influence extending across the Atlantic might have been so. Mr. Canning, therefore, to use his own historic phrase, made up his mind that if France had Spain, it should not be the Spain of which our ancestors had been in awe, it should not be Spain with the Indies. He ' called the new world into existence to redress the balance of the old.' British consuls were despatched to the chief ports of the Spanish- American colonies. Buenos Ayres was re- cognised as an independent power. This first step in a new policy shook the Cabinet and detached Lord Sid- mouth from it. Lord Westmoreland was also trouble- some"; a more important op]:)Osition was that of the Duke of Wellington, whom Canning charged with secret communications with the King and laying traps and mines for him. The Duke afterwards boasted that he had delayed the recognition of the South American Leader and Foreign Secretary 173 Republic for three years. The King was akirmed at Canning's determination for 'Europe 'to read 'England," at his denunciation of ' Areopagus and the like of that,' at his refusal to admit the jurisdiction of a league of despotic states, calling themselNcs ■ Europe,' ov^er inde- pendent nations. In a paper which Canning circu- lated among his colleagues lie illustrated the application which might be made of this doctrine by quoting a pas- sage from 'L'Etoile,' the organ of the ultra-Royalist party in France. It began thus : ' La position de llrlande interesse toute TEurope.' It went on to argue that Catliolic Emancipation was necessary to the tranquillity of Great Britain, and that the tranquillity of Great Britain was necessary to the repose of France. Mr. Canning pointed out to his colleagues that the lan- guage used with respect to Ireland was ' identical with that employed by France to justify the invasion, the conquest, and now the retention of Spain. Naples, Pied- mont, Spain, Ireland — who shall draw the line, if the principle of European questions be once admitted?' The recognition of the independence of Mexico and of Colombia followed that of Buenos Ayres. Though the King assented to these measures, he did so with an uneasy mind. The Duke of AVellington was not the only person who laid ' plots and mines ' for Canning. In a letter, dated January 28, ] 825, to the Duke of Buckingham, ]\Ir. Charles Wynn (then a Cabinet Minister) says that foreign influence has been at work with a view of breaking up the Government, but that the unanimity of J\Iinisters is such that the ' chief mover of the discord " must fail. The foreign influence was apparently that of Prince Esterhazy, who was an 174 George Canning intimate of the King's, and one of the coterie of tlie royal cottage at Windsor, as well as Austrian Ambassador. The mover of discord was probably the King himself. He drew up a minute for submission to the Cabinet, complain- ing that their action in regard to the Spanish- American colonies was precisely analogous to that of France in aiding the revolt of the British-American colonies. The Government, he said, were deserting the principles of Mr. I*itt in concert with the Opposition, who were animated by their love of democracy as opposed to a monarchical aristocracy. ' The Jacobins of the world,' said the King, ' calling themselves Liberals,' were anxious to disturb the understanding on which the C[uadruple alliance was based. ' Tiie King desires there- fore distinctly to know from his Cabinet individually (seriatwi) whether the great principles of policy esta- blished by his Government in the years 181 4, ISIS, and 1818 are or are not to be abandoned.' The Cabinet saw in this demand for separate replies from each member of it an attempt on the part of the King to invade the principle of collective Ministerial responsibility, and returned a joint answer. They pointed out that as early as 1815 the dissent of his Majesty's Government from the views of the Allies as to' their engagements for the maintenance of the peace of Europe had been recorded ; that in 1818, at the con- ference of Aix-la-Chapelle, that divergence had been still more emphatically marked ; and that later a cir- cular of Lord Londonderry's had further dwelt on this divergence. In the sense involved in these qualifications, and in no other, they adhered to the principles of policy laid clown in 1814, 1815, mul 1818. The King accepted Leader and Foreign Secretary 175 this explanation subject to the condition that ' the system of confidence and reciprocal communication with his allies be fully and faithfully carried out.' Canning took fire at the words ' fully and faithfully,' regarding them as an imputation upon his honour as the Minister charged with the administration of foreign affairs. It his Majesty suspected his good faith he must ask to be relieved of his office. As to fulness of communication, that is a matter of discrimination, involving respect for the secrets of other Powers. Under a system of respon- sible government such as exists in Eno-land, such com- munications almost inevitably become public, and give rise to parliamentary discussions, and a reserve is therefore necessary of which the Government only can be the judge, and which no foreign Power can ap- preciate. Canning's reference here was to the intrigues which he believed that Metternich, 'the greatest r and the greatest 1 on the Continent, perhaps in the civilised world, has been for a twelvemonth carrying on with the Court through Madame de (Lieven ?), to change the policy of the Government by changing me — " j;our fah'G sauter M. C ," as they frankly jjut it.' The King lived in the Cottage at Windsor in the society of the Austrian and Russian Ambassadors (Prince Esterhazy and Count Lieven), and Sir William Knighton, the King's privy purse, was an active member of the coterie. Canning let it be known that, if these intrigues were persisted in, he would take means of putting the House of Commons and the public in pos- session of the secret. I'rivate communication by Foreign Ministers with tlic King of England was, lie iy6 ' George Canning declared, wliolly at variance with the spirit and practice of the British Constitution. Tlie practice liad been allowed lor tlie first time by his predecessor (Castlereagh), but it would not stand the test of parliamentary dis- cussion. It was, strictly speaking, his duty to be present at e\ery interview between the King- and a foreign representative, and though he would not insist on this, he would take effectual means for putting a stop to Metternich's manoeuvres. These suspicions and intentions were made known to Lord Granville, then English Ambassador at Paris, with the certainty that they would reach Metternich and the King, which they did. Knighton was sent on a message of apology and reconciliation to Canning, who was then confined to his bed by illness, Knighton, formerly a physician, probably carried the talent of society and the arts of personal management to a greater perfection than anyone has done in England since his time. There are lion-tamers and serpent- charmers who can reduce to harmlessncss creatures whom others cannot approach. Knighton was a king- tamer and charmer, and could bring George IV. to reason when no one else could. The gossipings of the Cottage, Knighton said, were of no importance. They seldom touched on serious politics, though, no doubt, Esterhazy and Lieven might instil some thoughts into the Kino-'s mind. But the King had no power of making society for himself, and he liked their society better than any otlier. The King was indisposed to business, and when Knighton urged it on him there were often very painful scenes. ' He is uncertain,' said Knighton ; 'the creature of impulse. When he has got a notion into his head there Leader and Foreign Secri-iarv 177 is no eratliciiliiig it; uiid 1 have known iLiui, when agitated and perfectly fasting, talk himself into as com- plete a state of intoxication as if he had been dining and drinking largely.' But he was now absolutely con- tent with Canning. Knighton had never known him so comfortable and happy, reconciled even to the Span- ish-American recognition. Canning, from whoso nar- rative to Stapleton these details are taken, said that ' it was his object to make the King comfortable and happy by placing him at the head of Europe, instead of being- reckoned fifth in a great confederacy.' But the King, lie said, owed the satisfactory position in which he found himself not to Canning and to Liverpool only, but to the extraordinary efficiency with which Peel, Robinson, and Huskisson filled the great offices of state with which they were charged. Of Peel in particular he spoke as the best Home Secretary this country had ever had, and the most able and honest Minister. The change in Esterhazy was not less. When, towards the close of the year, he bade farewell to the King upon his departure to take up the Austrian Embassy at Paris, Canning was present, and the royal and diplomatic intriguers vied in repentant eulogies upon his success as Foreign Minister. The King was especially pleased with the proposal of Bolivar to make him arbitrator in a dispute between Brazil and Colombia. He took it as a sign of liis weight in the councils of South America. ' When we see our way,' he said, ' and can employ our influence, we can do anything.' ' Qui est-ce ' (turning to Esterhazy) ' qui pourrait faire ce que nous venons d'accomplir au Bresil ? ' Next to the rcocue of the South American States, Canning desired to relieve Greece from Turkish domi- N 178 George Canning nation, and to prepare the way for the recognition of her independence, of which, however, his premature death prevented his seeing the accomplishment. He died some months before Navarino. A conference was held at St. Petersburg in 1825, in which Canning declined to allow England to take a part, thinking that the despotic Powers, who might otherwise quarrel among themselves, would be united in common antagonism to the liberal policy of England. The Porte refused the offer of mediation, and France, Austria, and Prussia declined to join in measures of coercion. What the Emperor of Eussia desired was that he should be authorised by the Holy Alliance to intervene in the Greek insurrection as France had intervened in Spain, in the hope that he would thus find his way to Con- stantinoi^le. But he did not venture to act alone. ' '' Silly Mr. Tomkins," as I heard one of the Lyttelton girls singing the other night,' writes Canning ; ' silly, if he accepts the rebuff of the Porte, sillier if he allows Austria's threats to prevent his making war. Yet the risk was too great with Austria and France protesting, and England looking on. My reflections come back, therefore, like Miss Lyttelton's song, to " silly Mr. Tomkins." Metternich has, therefore, to thank his own finesse if he, and not I, is the cruel Polly Hopkins who steps in between Mr. T. and his desires.' Before the year was at an end ' silly Mr. Tomkins' had been succeeded on the throne by his brother Nicholas. In the divergence between Russia and the other Powers Canning thought he saw a chance of coming to an under- standing with the new Czar. He hoped, as he put it, to be able to save Greece through the agency of the Leader and Foreign SecrETArV i^g Russian name upon the fears of Turkey. He proposed to the King to send tlie Duke of Wellington to St. Petersburg, as the fittest man to deprecate war. The ostensible object of the mission was to convey the King's congratulations to the new Emperor on his accession. The King thought the Duke would object on the ground of his health; but, says Canning, he 'jumped, as I foresaw that he would, at the proposal.' ' Never better in my life ; ready to set out in a week.' The Duke was always sensitive to the imputation of illness, and to the day of his death was never better in his life. There were difficulties, however, in the way of an understanding with Russia. To the Emperor Nicholas, at this time, the Greeks were rather rebels to be put down than co- religionists to be relieved from Mohammedan domina- tion. The personal relations between Canning and the Duke of Wellington had never been satisfactory. There were reciprocal complaints of want of direct and prompt communication. The negotiations dragged on, but in the end a protocol between England and Russia was signed, to which the adhesion of the other Powers was solicited, and by which it was arranged that Greece should be converted into what is now called an autono- mous vassal state, paying tribute to the Turkish Empire, but governed by native authorities, and enjoying free- dom of commerce and conscience. In 1827 the protocol was converted into the treaty to which France becam-e a party. Mr. Canning's last act, though he was then Prime Minister and not Foreign Minister, Lord Dudley and Ward having succeeded him in the latter office, was to take part in the joint declaration of the three Powers calling upon the Porte to enter into an armistice » 2 iCo George Canking with Greece with a view to negotiations for a peace, and threatening to impose the armistice by force if it were not voluntarily adopted. The Greeks accepted the armistice, Turkey refused it. The battle of Navarino followed. It was fought in October, 1827. Canning had died in the August before. Three years after his death the complete independence of Greece v/as recog- nised in the Treaty of London. By old treaties frequently renewed, a defensive and offensive alliance existed between England and Portugal. In 1826 it fell to Mr. Canning to give effect to it. In that year Doni Pedro, Emperor of Brazil and King of Poi'tugal, renounced his European kingdom for his American empire. He granted a con- stitution to Portugal, and abdicated in favour of his infant daughter, Donna Maria da Gloria, the regency being conferred upon her aunt, the Infanta Isabella. Dom Miguel, the younger brother of Dom Pedro, claimed the throne, and, instigated by France, began civil war in Portugal. The Portuguese regiments in his interest deserted into Spain. Instead of being disarmed and interned they were equipped there, and from Spanish territory allowed to organise an invasion of and war in Portugal. The Princess Regent claimed, under the treaties, the aid of England against this aggression. Mr. Canning considered that the casus ficdcris had arisen. On December 11, 1826, a royal message was brought down to Parliament announcing the King's compliance wdtli this demand. Complaint was made that action had been delayed. ' But how,' said Canning, ' stands the fact ? On Sunday, DeceuibL-r o. the Por- tuguese ambassador made a formal demand of assistance Leader and Foreign Secretary i8i ngainst a hostile aggression from Spain. Our answer was tliat, though we had heard rumours to tliat effect, we had not yet received such precise information as justified us in applying to Parliament. It was only on Friday that that information arrived. On Saturday his Majesty's confidential servants came to a decision. On Sunday that decision received the sanction of his Majesty. On Monday it was communicated to the Houses of Parliament : and to-dav, at the hour at w'lich I have the honour of addressing you, the troops of Great Britain are on their march for embarkment.' Recalling to the recollection of the House the prediction which he had made some years ago, that the next war in pAirope would be a war of opinions, Canning added that England did not go to Portugal to take part in a war of opinions. ' We go to Portugal not to rule, not to dictate, not to prescribe constitutions, but to defend and preserve the independence of an ally. We go to plant the standard of England on the well-known lu'ights of Lisbon. Where that standard is planted foreign dominion shall not come.' On Christmas Day, in 1826, the British forces landed in Lisbon. Hos- tilities at once ceased. In eighteen months the troops returned to England without having fired a shot. Next to the King and the Continental gossips of the Cottage, Canning found the main obstacle to his foreign policy in the Duke of Wellington. He visited Paris in the autumn of 1826 and dined with Charles X. The Duke of Wellington, he said, was very angry at his going there, and two years ago had interfered with the King to prevent his doing so. ' But I suppose,' lie wrote to Liverpool, October 16, ' he felt that, after he 1 82 George Canning himself had been here in the interval, and after West- moreland had been preaching here his ultra-philo Turkish principles, I was not likely to be again turned from my purpose.' On the Portuguese business, he complains of the Duke of Wellington's partiality for Spain and his hatred of Liberal institutions, which appear to have led him to incline to Dom Miguel's side. He speaks of unreasonable remonstrances on the Duke's part about the delay of despatches, and adds : — But there is no use discussing these bye questions. There is something else — though I protest I know not what— at the bottom of the D. of W.'s present temper. His extraordinary fretfulness upon this matter, his repeated references and those of his alentours to the approach of critical times, and other language which I know that both he and the Chancellor have held very lately about the state of the Government, satisfy mo that there is a looking forward to some convulsion in the Government ; not wholly unmixed, perhaps, with some intention of bringing it on. Beit so; I confess I have no idea how the Government will be carried on in the House of Commons in the sense in which it has been carried on in the last three years, with the whole patronage of the law, the greater part of the Church, and all the army in the Chancellor's and the D. of W.'s hands. 1^3 CHAPTER XXI. CANNING PRIME MINISTER. The convulsion in tlie Government was not brought on in the manner which Canning anticipated. Lord Liverpool had for some time been ailing, and in the beginning of the year 1827 was in Bath, promising himself, hoAvever, ten years of enjoyable life if he could get clear of office. Canning visited him there in January, he too carrying with him the seeds of the malady which was destined before the year was over to prove fatal to him. He came straio-ht from the funeral of the Duke of York, which had taken place in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. The night was bitterly cold, and Canning never recovered from the effects of the exposure. He found Lord Liverpool better, and no longer talking of resignation. The two men, comrades at Christ Church and rival orators of the Speaking Society, amused themselves and Stapleton, who accompanied Canning, by telling stories of their early years. From Bath, Canning went to Eartham, to see Huskisson. AVliile he was there his cold became worse, and he spent one day in bed. He then went to Brighton, where he had taken a liouse, and wdiere he was attacked hv inflainniatidu ;i! hurst as War and Colonial Minister ; and the Earl of Carlisle became First Commissioner of Woods and Forests, an office in which he was succeeded by Mr. Sturges Bourne when Lord Carlisle took the Privy Seal and Lord Lansdowne the Home Office. Canning prudently strengthened himself at Court by taking the Admiraliy out of Commission, and appointing the Dul.c of Cla- rence Lord High Admiral. Overtures were mrxle to the Duke of Wellington to retain, without a seat in the Cabinet, and therefore without giving in his political adhesion to the Government, the office of Commander- in-Chief, which he had held in conjunction with the Master-Generalship of the Ordnance. But he refused even this neutral support. In the earlier negotiations and correspondence he had accused Canning of failure in personal courtesy towards him. To him Canning was a ' charlatan.' Their secret antagonism now be- came pronounced alienation. They never saw each other after the Duke's resignation. The part taken by Wellington in all this business is by no means clear. Though disclaiming it strongly, he seems to have been attracted by the notion of being Prime Llinister. He denied concert in Peel's suggestion, but not knowledge of it. But the King Avould not hear of Canning's leaving the Government, and Canning was resolved to have the first place in it, or to be out of it alto- gether. The Ministry now formed was practically a Liberal one. In the Tory party, as it was reconstructed by the younger Pitt, there had always been an element of Liberalism derived by Pitt himself on the one hand 190 George Canning from the economic and philosophic Eadicalism of Shel- burne, under whom he entered official life, or rather from Adam Smith, the common teacher of both, and on the other from the bold and generous foreign policy of Chatham. In Canning the spirit of Chatham re- vived; Huskisson, liis most intimate personal friend and official and parliamentary colleague, and Robinson more directly embodied the economic Liberalism of Shclburne. But Canning, though commercial and fiscal subjects were not so familiar to him as foreign questions, correctly apprehended them. This his celebrated speech on the Bullion Committee and his speeches on the Corn Laws sufficiently showed. Free Trade was then in the reciprocity stage, and this is the despatch in cypher with which Canning puzzled Sir Charles Bagot, then Minister at the Hague : — 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. Mr. Brougham, Sir Francis Burdett, and Mr. Tierney, who afterwards became Master of the Mint in Canning's Ministry, and others took their seats behind the new Ministers on their reappearance in Parliament. In the House of Lords, Lord Lansdowne, the son of Shelburne, and Lord Holland, the nephew of Charles James Fox, exhibited similar correctness of insight and largeness of view. There was one remarkable ex- ception to the generous confidence which the AVliigs, Canning Prime Minister 191 as a rule, were disposed to place in Mr. Canning. Lord Grey showed himself incapable of even a magnanimous forbearance. Possibly he had derived from association with the Grenvilles the distrust and dislike with which the brotherhood were inspired towards Mr. Canning. His haughty and arrogant scorn and the vivacious and piercing contempt of Mr. Canning sharpened this animosity. Grev lost no time in makino- a bitter attack on the new Minister, whose foreig-n policy he assailed — that, however, defended itself in the changed aspect of Europe — and whom he charged with betraying the Roman Catholics and his own honour in giving an unconstitutional pledge to the King not to bring forward the question of Roman Catholic Emancipation. It seems probable, from pas- sages in the Duke of Buckingham's ' Memoirs of the Court of George IV.,' that the King amused himself by telling lies on this subject, which Lord Grey believed. But apart from the letters of Canning and the King, which refute the royal story, the anti-Catholic secession of Peel, Wellington and the rest, and the whole history of the formation of Mr. Canning's Ministry contradict it. Canning was cut to the quick, and at one time thought of taking a peerage, in order that he might answer Lord Grey in person. He actually prepared the speech which he intended to deliver, and recited it to Mrs. Canning, who told Greville of the circumstance, adding that she thought Grey's attack had hastened her hus- band's death. The Ministry was weak in the Lords. Lord Goderich, who when he was in the House of Commons some competent if prejudiced and eccentric observers had counted the superior of Canning aiid 19.2 George Caxxing Peel, had not the corn-age to face Grey and Wellington. In Lord Dudley, the Aniiel of politics, great capacity and some ambition were paralysed by a disabling critical fastidiousness. The silver voice and brazen front of Lyndhurst strengthened the debating power of the Ministry in the Lords without adding to its moral weight. In the House of Commons Canning was teased by the pertinacious hostility of the ' yelpers,' as they were called, who barked out coarse insinuations against liim in question and taunt. Canning's health was evidently shattered, his nerves worn, and his temper embittered. The prize for which he had striven so long, and w^hich had so long eluded his grasp, which he had thought to be within his reach twenty years ago, but in the attempt to seize which he had been baffled and driven into isolation, and, so far as was possible to his shining qualities, into obscurity, was now his. But fame was a sucked orange. The great Foreign Minister had no opportunity of proving him- self a great First Minister. Parliament rose early in July. It was hoped that a long recess would revive the flagging spirits and restore the waning strength of the Prime Minister. He had never recovered entirely from the cold which he had caught in January at the Duke of York's funeral. lie increased it by sitting under a tree in the open air at Wimbledon (July 10), where he had dined with Lord Lyndhurst. Ten days later, in reply to a letter from the King, inquiring as to his recover}' from ' the odious lumbago,' Canning says that he has ' happily left his bed for the first time to-day ' (July 20), ' and is ordered to go to Chiswick, which the Duke of Devonshire has kindK- lent him. Canning Prime Minister 193 After a few clays of quiet there he will, with your JNIajesty's kind permission, pay his respects to your Majesty.' Canning visited the King on July 31, and transacted business in Downing Street. The next day he returned to Chiswick, which he never leffc alive. ' Canning,' writes Croker to Lord Hertford, ' looks ill, but his intimates say he is only tired. The Duke of Devonshire has lent him Chiswick, as his father did to Mr. Fox. I hope it may not be an omen.' Canning occupied the room in which Fox had died — ' a small low chamber, once a nursery, dark, and opening into a wing of the building, which gives it the appearance of an opening into a courtyard.' He told Croker that he had not had one day's health since the beginning of the year. ' He ate and drank too heartily,' says Croker, prosaically. But even this habit will not wholly account for the melancholy which, according to Croker himself, was stamped upon Canning's face at this time. Staple- ton says he had suffered paroxysms of pain at Brighton earlier in the year. Formerly he had been able to throw aside everything that harassed him as soon as his head was on his pillow. Now his nights were wakeful. He was, almost literally, worn and stung to death. Sensitive to the paltriest newspaper paragraph, the attacks of Wellington and Grey and the barkings of the yelpers fretted him beyond endurance. Even at an eai^ier period, according to M. Marcellus, he had fore- boded for himself the fate of Castlereagh. But the Canning of Marcellus is evidently a fancy sketch rather than an historic portrait — a Canning after the likeness of Canning's friend and rival in European politics, Chateaubriand. o 194 George Canning CHAPTER XXn. DEATH OF CANNING. During tlie earlier days of his illness he made an efforl to attend to business, but his mind every now and then wandered. Of this he was apparently conscious. He had written a paper on the affairs of Portugal, which, says Croker, he told Stapleton to take to Goderich and Roljinson (Robinson was Goderich), and to desire them to cut it up and not to spare it. This he asked Stapleton to Avrite down, that there might be no mistake. On Stapleton's reading out the words : ' Send this paper to Goderich and Robinson,' Canning said : ' Goderich and Dudley. Now you see how necessary- it was to make you write it down; you would else have thought I was talking nonsense.' Next day he walked about the room and refused to be helped into bed. ' No, no,' he said, ' not so bad as that. I think I can do that without help.' He seemed encouraged by this achievement, and when he had got into bed he said gaily, ' Well, I feel that if I can get through to-day I shall do.' Later in the day this hopeful feeling gave way. He told Sir ]Matthew Tierney, whom Knighton had sent to him, distrusting the old navy surgeon whom Canning had chosen as his medical attendant, that 'he had struggled with tl'e disease for Death of Caxxixg 195 a long wliile, but that now he felt tliat it had quite mastered him.' On August 4 it became evident tliat tlio worst was to be feared, and Stapleton, who was witli liiui, was asked whether there was anytliing in liis public or private affairs which might make it desirable to warn him of his danger. Receiving a negative answer, his physicians thought it advisable not to disturb him. The next day he asked his daughter to read prayers to him ; ' but he began to wander, and it was not done.' Later on, being asked whether he felt better, he replied, ' Yes, a little ; but if all the pain which 1 have suffered throughout my life were collected to- gether it would not amount to the one-hundredth part of the pain I have suffered during the last three days.' He then wandered and dozed. ' When the physicians saw him this evening (Stapleton records) he was in pain, and exclaimed, "My God! my God!" Dr. Farre observed, "You do right, sir, to call upon your God. I hope you pray to Him." "I do, I do," was his answer. " And you ask," added the doctor, " for mercy and sal- vation through the merits of your Redeemer?" "Yes," he replied, "I do, through the merits of Jesus Christ." In the course of the evening he said to Sir William Knighton, whom the King had sent to see him, " This may be hard upon me, but it is harder upon the King." ' On the 7th there was a rally, followed by a relapse. The next day the end came. Stapleton went into his bedroom early and found him unconscious. ' Sir M. Tierney felt his pulse, thought for a second that he was gone, but he still breathed. In a few minutes there ceased to 1m" any signs of breathing. He passed o 2 i(j6 George Canning away so quietly that the exact moment could not be ascertained, but it was between twelve and ten minutes before four.' Even at this hour, before daybreak, a vast crowd of three or four thousand persons was assembled outside the Lodge at Chiswick, waiting for the tidings of life or death. More numerous still was the concourse which lined the streets as the statesman's body was borne in a funeral which, though intended to be private, was followed by princes and ambassadors and members of both Houses of Parliament, to Westminster Abbev, where a statue by Chantrey commemorates him, on the back of 'ss'hich the words, ' Thus Canning stood,' are inscribed. Another statue, which was formerly placed in New Palace Yard, but which has been removed to the farthest recess of what is now called St. Stephen's Square, seems to look with an air of distant and scarcely recognising curiosity, which the original might wear if he returned to earth, at the Houses of Parliament, so changed in their exterior aspect and in their inner furniture, in men and manners, since Can- ning knew them; and at the group of lesser states- men. Peel, Palmerston, Derby, Beaconsfield, which until their turn shall come to be thrust back occupy the foreground from which Canning has retreated. The bitterness of feeling which Canning had roused in his lifetime survived him. Though he had never lived ostentatiously, and had shunned what was ordi- n.'ii-ily called society, the expenses inseparable in those days from office had impaired the fortune whicli he had received with his wife. His personal property at his death was sworn under 20,000/., and it was believed Death of Canning 197 to be very much below that sum. It was proposed tliat an annuity of 3,000/. should be settled iu succession upon his two surviving sons. The proposal was attacked in the House of Commons with an acrimony of dis- paragement greater than that which Canning himself had deprecated in the case of Pitt. One gentleman, Mr. Bankes, one of the party called the Saints, the leadership of which Wilberforce had once invited Canning to take, thought it becoming to propose that the expenses of the battle of Navarino, which had been fought two months after Canning's death, and of the Mediterranean fleet should be charged to Canning's family. After two days' debate the annuity was voted. The elder of the two surviving sons, a captain in the Navy, died in the year following his father's death, being drowned while bathing at Madeira. The second was the Governor-General of India during the Mutiny. Canning's widow, who survived him ten years, was created a Viscountess. Her son w^as raised to an earldom in recognition of his services in India. With his death the male line of George Canning became extinct. Canning's only daughter married the lato Marquis of Clanricarde, afterwards a member of one of Lord Palme rston's Cabinets, and it is in the veins of her descendants only that the blood of Canning still runs. Among them are the present Marquis of Clanricarde, who has added the name of Canning to the family name of De Burgh, and the Countess of Hare- wood, the Countess of Cork, and Lady Margaret AVentworth Beaumont, the grandson and the grand- daughters of the statesman. Since the death of Loi-d Stratford de Redcliffe, the Anglo-Irish famil\- which igS George Canning gave hirtli to tlie great diplomatist, and the greater statesman, lias been represented by tlie Barons Garvagli of Ireland. The Cannings of Foxcote, in Warwick- shire, survived in male representatives until the middle of the present century, one of them being, in contra- diction to the politics of his illustrious kinsman, an ardent parliamentary reformer in 1832. The family merged in heiresses, one of whom married ISIr. Philip Howard, of Corby, in Cumberland, and another Mr. Gordon, of JMilrig, who added the name of Canning to his own. 199 CHAPTER XXIII. ORATOR AND STATESMAN — IN PRIVATE Lll-E. The place of Canning among parliamentary orators is difficult to determine. Contemporaries differed about it, and later critics have shared their differences of opinion. Sir James Mackintosh reckoned him in many respects Pitt's superior. Wilberforce, however, though full of personal liking for the man, says that he never drew you to him in spite of yourself, and Lord Brougham expresses the same opinion. ' An actor stood before us — a first-rate actor, no doubt, but still an actor, and we never forgot that it was a repre- sentation we were witnessing, not a real scene.' On the other hand. Sir George Cornewall Lewis thinks that Canning as an orator has never been sur- ]jassed, and doubts whether he has ever been equalled among English statesmen. It is difficult to judge of Canning's eloquence from his printed speeches. In preparing them for the press he added and altered to excess, requiring a second and third revise. The printers found it easier to reset the matter from be- ginning to end tlian to introduce his corrections. Some of these corrections showed a false taste, worthy of Lily and Florio, or llieir fictitious counterparts in ' Loves Labour's Lost.' Canning was almost literally ^oo George Canning afraid to call a spade a spade. A catspaw became ' the paw of a certain domestic animal ; ' so, for some mysterious reason, a ' Quixotic ' undertaking became ' an enterprise romantic inlts origin and thankless in its end, to be characterised only by a term borrowed from that part of Spanish literature with which we are most familiar.' The nearest parallel to these improve- ments is to be found in the suggestion of the alderman that Canning should substitute for the words ' he died poor,' in his inscription on the monument of Pitt in the Guildhall, the more delicate expression, ' he died in indifferent circumstances.' The correct instinct of the orator was overpowered by the false taste of a man of letters trained in an artificial literary school. Canning's preparation of his speeches was in his later years at least as elaborate as his revision of them in print. At the beginning of his parliamentary career he seems to have been more confident or careless. But, as has been the case with later orators, the weight of a reputation to sustain, and of responsibility for the moulding of opinion, pressed upon him and depressed him. He was uneasy for three or four days when the speech was forming itself in his mind, and at these times, as his private secretary and political apologist, Mr. Stapleton, testifies, it was unsafe to approach him on any matter not bearing upon the discourse which was shaping itself within him. He was taciturn and moody as he went down to the House. The speech once delivered, he recovered his gaiety. Camiing did not write out his speeches, but he jotted down the heads on which he intended to touch with great minuteness of subdivision and in the order of treatment, and he took Orator and Statesman 201 the paper containing these memoranda to the House with him, and spoke from it. Sometimes the heads of the speech, carefully numbered, amounfcVl to between four and five hundred. The following are a part of the memoranda for a speech against a motion of Mr. Lambton's for Parliamentary Reform, which the acci- dental and premature ' drying up ' of Mr. Vansittarb prevented Canning from delivering : — 391. But in or out of office. 392. The Constitution is my object of worship. 393. And in this her temple. 394. For that obloquy. 395. For that demonstration. 396. For that designation, and pretty well know by what pen, to the dagger of the assassin. 397. But let it pass ; the danger and the scorn. 398. Let them i"ail, or let them repent. 399. My cause is the same. 400. And while I have the strength, I desire no other duty than that of doing my best in defence of a form of Government which, if destroyed, could not be I'eplaced, and which may yet afford shelter and glory to generations who will know how to value and preserve it. Canning does not appear, so far as can be judged from the extracts of memoranda for his speeches wdiich have been published, to have put down the good things which he intended to say, the seeming impromptus, the epigrams, the illustrations, the declamatory passages or the passages of sustained banter by which they are now chiefly remembered. For the form and the manner of introduction he seems to have trusted to the chance of the moment. In this he was unlike Sheridan. Before / 203 George Canning Sheridan ventured to tell Duudas that he took his facts from liis imaD-ination and his fancies from his memory, he had tried tlie saying, Avith proper adaptation, on a wine mercliant, and it appears in two or three tentative forms in iiis note-book. Canning's wit seems really to have sprung \oluntarily out of the circumstances of the debate, and not to have been drasra'ed bv a sort of conscription or press-gang into forced service. His theory of parliamentary speaking was sound. ' Speak- ing,' he told Mr. Hush, who was American Minister in 1mi gland during Mr. Canning's second tenure of the Foreign Othce, and who fortunately published a journal of his residence at the Court of St. James's, ' must take conversation as its basis rather than anything studied or stateh^ The House was a business-doing body, and the speaking must conform to its character ; it was jealous of ornament in debate, which, if it came at all, must come as vvithout consciousness. There must be method also, but this should bo felt in the effect rather than felt in the manner ; no formal divisions, set exor- diums, or perorations, as the old rhetoricians taught, would do. First, and last, and everywhere you must aim at reasoning, and if you could be eloquent you might at any time, but not at an appointed time.' Canning's practice in the main conformed to his theory. His speeches were always argumentative speeches. Lord Holland called him the fii'st logician in Europe, and tliei'e is ])robably a nearer approach to truth in this statement than there is in Sir Ceorge Lewis's recognition of lii'.u as the greatest of English parlia- mentary orators. 'J'lie common idea that Canning's eloquence was of the imaginati\'e and sportive rather Orator axd Statesman 203 than of" the reasoning order is due to the fact that the lauev and the wit grew too copiously out of the argument, and that many minds which coukl not follow the one were capable of being tickled and diverted bv the other. The facultv of exact thought, and the mastery over long and difhcult processes of reasoning, wliirli formed the foundation of Canning's intellectual character, were exhibited in their naked simplicity in the speech on tlie Bullion question, which Lord Brougham held to be the most masterlv Canning ever made on any subject, and the most masterly any one ever made on that subject. The same characteristic marks his purely political writings. His despatches during his second tenure of the Foreign Office laid down and vindicated the lines of his European policy with a masculine simplicity of form and grasp of prin- ciple which make them not less classics of international statesmanship than the judgments of Lord Stowell are classics of international law. It is impossible to illustrate by examples a chain of reasoning, or eifectively to exhibit a principle separated from the circumstances in which it is to be applied. But the wit and humour with which Canning enlivened the debates, and the imagination and fancy with wdiich he elevated and adorned them, do admit of being exhibited without being extinguished by the detach- ment. In March 1824 a debate took place, on the motion of Lord John llussell, with respect to the evacuation of k?j)ain by the French army, and a question arose as to the conduct of some Englishmen, !Sir Kobert Wilson, Lord Nugent, and others who had volunteered for service with the Spanish patriots. Lord Nugent, 204 George Canning who belonged to the House of Buckingham, had more than a younger son's or broHrer's portion of the cor- pulence which marked the Grenville family, and espe- cially the 'Phat Duke,'' as Canning loved to spell him. Canning relieved aii elaborate argument on international law and the obligation of neutrality by a narrative of the adventures of Lord Nugent. After describing Sir Robert Wilson as no small breach of neutrality, and speaking of Lord Nugent as a*Tiiost enormous breach of it, he went on : — ^ It was about the middle of last July that the heavy Palraouth coach (loud and long-continued laughter)— that the heavy Falmouth coach was observed travelling to its destination through the roads of Cornwall with more than its usual gravity. (Loud laughter.) There were, according to the best advices, two inside passengers (laughter) — one a lady of no considerable dimensions (laughter), and a gentle- man, who, as it has been since ascertained, was conveying the succour of his person to Spain (cheers and laughter). I am informed— and, having no reason to doubt my in- formant, I firmly believe it —that in the van belonging to the coach (gentlemen must know the nature and uses of that auxiliary to the regular stage-coaches) was a box more bulky than ordinary, and of most portentous contents. It was observed that, after their arrival, this box and the pas- senger before mentioned became inseparable. This box was known to have contained the uniform of a Spanish general of cavalry (much laughter) ; and it was said of the helmet, which was beyond the usual size, that it exceeded all other helmets spoken of in history, not excepting the celebrated helmet in the ' Castle of Otranto ' (cheers and laughter). The idea of going to the relief of a fortress blockaded by sea and besieged by land with the uniform of Orator and Statesman 205 a light cavalry officer was new, to say tlie least of it. About this time the force offered by the hon. gciitlenian, which had never existed but on paper, was in all probability expected. I will not stay to determine whether it was to have consisted of 10,000 or 5,000 men. Xo doubt upon the arrival of the General and his uniform the Cortes must have rubbed their hands with satisfaction, and concluded that now the promised force was come they would have little more to fear (laughter). It did come, as much of it as ever would have been seen by the Cortes and the King ; but it came in that sense and no other which was descril)od by a worthy nobleman, George, Duke of Buckingham, whom the noble lord opposite (Lord Xugent) reckons among his lineal ancestors. In the play of ' The Rehearsal ' there is a scene occupied by the designs of two usurpers, to whom one of their party, entering, says : — Sirs, The army at the door, but in disguise, Entreats a word of both your majesties. (liOud and continued laughter.) Such must have been the effect of the arrival of the noble lord. How he was received, or what effect he operated on the councils and affairs of the Cortes by his arrival, I do not know. Tilings were at that juncture moving too rapidly to their final issue. How far the noble lord conduced to the termination by plumping his weight into the sinking scale of the Coi'tes is too nice"^a question for me just now to settle. (Loud cheers and laughter.) ^^ Mr, Canning then proceeded soberly with his argu- ment as to the impossibility of allowing individuals to carry on a private war with governments with which their own is in amity. But the impression was pro- bably made on not a few Sir Johns and Sir Thomases 2o6 George Canning that the whole thing was a joke, and Canning only a very good joker of jokes. Of Canning's eloquence in its loftier moods, one or two passages have become the commonplaces of rhe- torical extracts. The most celebrated, perhaps, is that in which, in the speech of December 12, 1826, he defended his policy in not going to war with France against her invasion of Spain, and in recognising the independence of the Spanish-American colonics : - — Is the Spain of the present day the Spain of which the ''' statesmen of the times of William and Anne were so much afraid ? Is it, indeed, the nation whose puissance was ex- pected to shake England from her sphere ? No, sir, it was quite another Spain — it was the Spain within the limits of whose empire the sun never set ; it was Spain with the Indies that excited the jealousies and alarmed the imaginations of our ancestors. ... If France conquered Spam, was it necessaiy, in order to avoid the consequences of that occu- pation, that we should blockade Cadiz % No, I looked another way ; I sought the 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. Perhaps these sentences belong to the things which, though ' finely thought,' are ' superfinely said.' There is, moreover, a certain tone of egotism, as if Canning had absolutely created the American continent in recog- nising Spanish- American independence and by sending out consuls to South American ports and ministers to South American capitals, and making commercial trea- ties. Cnrlyle describes \x picture of Maupertuis, who Orator and Staitsman 207 discovered the ilatncss of the cartli at tlic poles, with his hand upon the globe, ' comfortably squeezing the earth and her meridians flat (as if he had done it) with his left hand ; and with the other, and its outstretched finger, asking mankind, " Are you not aware, then ? " ' Perhajjs there was something in this assumption to have created what he recognised — though in diplomacy recognition is sometimes creation — which assimilates Canning's attitude to that of Maupertuis. He seems to stand with his hand on the globe, pointing to South America, as if he had literally called it out of the deep and bid the dry land appear. The phrase and the posture are theatrical. But the momentary impression probably was greater than any that has ever been made in the House of Commons. One who was present says it was terrific : — It was iis if every man in the House liad been electri- fied. Tiorney, wlio before that was shifting in iiis seat, and taking olf his liat and putting it on agam, and taking large and frequent pinches of snuftj and tui-ning from side to side, till, I suppose, he wore his breeches tlu-ougli, seemed petri- fied, and sat fixed, and staring with his mouth open for lialf a minute ! Mr. Canning seemed to have increased in stature, his attitucTe~"wa's so ~majestic. I remarked liis flourishes were made with his left arm ; the efi'ect was new and l)eautiful ; his chest heaved and expanded, his nostrils dilated, a noble pride slightly curved his lips, and age and sickness were dissolved and forgotten in the ardour of youtliful genius ; all the while a serenity sat on Ins brow that pointed to deeds of glory. The occasion was an exception to the rule — if ft was the rule— stated bv Wilberforce and l)i-on2"ham — l[ / 2o8 George Canning that Canning fiiilcd to carry his audience with him. But it does not seem to be an exception to Brougham's statement that Canning never forgot himself. The ' I ' — the ' adsum qui feci ' — is very prominent in it. The theatrical character of Canning's eloquence is conspi- cuous. The electrical effect suggests the triumphs of the stage rather than of the Senate — the pit rising at \ Kean in Shylock rather than Parliament carried away , unresisting and spellbound by the rush of Fox's rapid (and impassioned reasoning. An even finer passage, and one in which there is less of the first person singular — more of England and less of Canning — is that in which, in a speech delivered at Plymouth in 1823, he illustrated the quietude in repose ""which" seems the contradiction, but is yet the guarantee, of streno-th in action : — Our present repose is no more a proof of inability to act than the state of inertness and inactivity in which T liave seen those mighty masses that float in the waters above ■^ your town is a proof that they are devoid of strength and I incapable of being fitted out for action. You well know, 8 gentlemen, how soon one of those stupendous masses, now ' reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness — how soon, upon any call of patriotism or necessity, it would assume the likeness of an animated being, instinct with life and motion — liow soon it would ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage ! How quickly it would put forth all its beavity ,;' and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of strength ^ and awaken its dormant thunder. Such as one of those magnificent machines when springing from inaction into a display of its might — such is England herself, while appa- rently passive and motionless, she silently concentrates the power to be put forth on an adequate occasion. Orator and Statesman 209 111 the physical qualifications of oratory, Cauniii^^- probably has hevCT liacT au equal among Eug-lish states- men. His style and manner may not incorrectly be described as intermediate between that of Pitt and that of Fox, and his mind and temper la}^ in a mean be- tween theirs. Pitt's intelligence, like his figure, was linear — length without breadth — projecting itself for- ward in a narrow channel of thought. His gestures, stiff and angular, were like those of a marionette, and his hearers seemed to feel the shock of the jerking wires. As he turned round to his sujDporters to invite 1 heir cheers, he looked, someone has said, as if he Vere moving on a pivot. He thought in precise and logical alternatives, which seemed a sort of common form pro- vided for the reception of any kind of matter. Fox's corpulence, his black and beetling brows, his ung'ainTy attitudes, his unmanageable voice, now rumbling bass, now shrill treble, his ungraceful movement, swaying and tossing to and fro, his lack of fluency and of order in speech until the impulse of conviction and the force of logic drove him forward — made him in every respect the direct contrast of the mechanical and automatic regu- larity of Pitt. His instantaneous perception of all the ! aspects of a question, if not for purposes of action yet for purposes of debate, his intuition, which seemed to see in one glance the whole of which Pitt thought out ' a part in succession and in logical forms, embarrassed ) him at first and made his speech confused, until order / introduced itself into the thronging crowd of ideas and ) arguments which bore along with it, as in a current steady in its flow thougli stormy on its surface, the con- victions and feelings of his audience. Canning's oratory 210 George Canning had neither the mechanical reo-ularitv of Pitt's nor the disordered force of Fox's ; it fell short in power of either — ^^wanting the majestic self-command and dicta- torial authority of the first, and the rush and sweep of the second. But it was more varied. His demeanour was equally remofe from Pitt's unbending rigidity and Fox's want of control. Canning's presence was striking. He was of commanding height, and though with a little tendency to looseness and weediness of figure, well if sliiji-htlv built. His bearing was elastic — alert in movement, in repose full of gi'ace. Every feature spoke, flashing thought and feeling upon his hearers in advance of the words. His articulation was delicate and precise. His voice, clear and penetrating, though a little veiled, lent itself to every emotion of indigna- tion, of pathos, of drollery ; and the curl of the lips and the glance of the eye interpreted the voice. He hesitated a little in the beginning of his speeches. When animation became excitement, his gestures were the reverse of impressive, consisting of an alternate movement, awkward and vehement, of the two arms, accompanied by a sounding and, it seemed, sometimes bruising slap on the table before him. His return to a quieter mood was marked by folding his arms across his breast — the attitude in which he is painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Canning was a careful observer of the temper of the House of Commons, carrying into this study the minute- ness and patience which he showed in all his pursuits. At times he would sit with hat slouched over his face, keenly noting every incident of a long debate. But some little time before spc'ukiiig it was Canning's Orator and Statesman 2tt liabit. Sir Robert Peel said, to lounge into the lobbies and listen to the conversations to which the previous course of the debate had given rise, and to pick up, as the phrase ~is, the general sense of the House, which, when his turn came to speak, he set himself to express or to combat. Yet, with all this desire to put himself into relations with it, he was worsted in succession by Perceval and Castlereao-h in his contest for the leader- ship ; and when Castlereagh's death left the post free to him, he practically yielded it to Peel and Robinson, whose authority and influence with the Tory party were greater than his own. The fact that during the last live years of the Liverpool Administration Canning was absorbed in foreign affairs, while Peel as Home Secretarv, and Robinson as Chancellor of the Ex- chequer, had naturally more concern with the domestic topics which mainly engage the House of Commons, had much to do, probably, with this virtual abnegation of the leadership on Canning's part. The suspicion and dislike of Eldon and Wellington, who monopolised betwgeii them the legal, ecclesiastical"' and military patronage of the Crown, and who preferred to communicate with Peel, must also be taken into account. The genuineness of Canning's Toryism was dis- trusted ; he was believed to be an intriguer and self- seeker. He was gi'avely suspected of meditating a desertion from the Tory party, and preparing for a coali- tion of himself and his followers with tlie"\Yliigs. His colleagues complained to Lord LiverpoolTitTs said, of the advances which Canning was always making to the Op- position, and of his efforts to ingratiate himself with its younger members by compliment, encouragement, and V 2 / 's^" 21^ {jEorge Caning aclvicer But, above all, JrfTwas the flavour of contempt which ran through Canning's mind, and was impressed on his speech, that alienated men. The House of Com- mons is not, and never has been, jealous of superiority. It recognises it and welcomes it ; it is proud of it as a possession of its own ; but it resents a too conscious superiority. It was irritated by little impertinences of manner and phrase, certain scornful carelessnesses by which, probably, Canning meant nothing, and of which \\ he was not even aware. Richard Sharp said of him that, ^1 up to a certain time, he never made a speech without I making an enemy. Yet he endeavoured, and to some extent succeeded in the effort, to restrain himself. Sir T. Fowell Buxton, who used sometimes to sit near him in the House of Commons, said that during the debate he would keep up a current of whispered criticisms which, if introduced into a speech, would have con- vulsed the House with merriment, and have over- whelmed his opponent. When he got up, though he approached the dangerous ground, he kept off it. But he could not always keep off it ; and this, no doubt, is what one of his candid friends meant when he said that Canning could never be a gentleman for three hours at a" time. The fault is, perhaps, as much with the people who have ridiculous sides to their character, as with those who see the ridiculous sides. Canning, in a word, was not intelligible to the House ; his character and aims were a mystery to them, the heart of which they were unable to pluck out ; and to hate what you do not understand is a common failing. Ignorance is as often the motlier of dislike as of devotion. Canning's political position has been the subject of Orator and Statesman 213 a good deal of controversy. In truth, he cannot pro- perly be assigned to either of the great par'fres of the State. When he began parliamentary life it was as a personal follower of Mr. Pitt; so he describes his mental jiosition in a letter written while he was yet a student at Lincoln's Inn. Even while Mr. Pitt lived he had become tired of this dependence. On Pitt's death he asserted his entire freedom. His allegiance, he said, was buried in Pitt's grave, and he acknowledged no other leader. Like Chatham, and like Pitt himself in his earlier days, he especially set himself against the pretension of the two great aristocratic parties to monopolise the offices and control the policy of the State. ' To this exclusive doctrine,' he said, ' I have never subscribed. To those pretensions I have never listened with submission.' And he declared with Burke, but with more consistency than Burke, that while he had the faculty to think and act for himselt he would ' look those proud combinations in the face.' Lord ^^Holland, as has been already mentioned, told Greville that at college Canning was a great Jacobin, and hated the aristocracy — a feeling which seemf. always to have existed among statesmen who have lived among the aristocracy without being of them. This feeling Lord Holland implied never left Canning, and it was returned with interest, Greville intimates, by its objects. To the principle of conduct asserted at the beginning of his political career, and reasserted with emphasis during its course, he was true to the last. In the last year of his life, whilr he was engaged in the formation of his Ministrv, i\Ir. Croker sent him a list of great Tory lords, with a staTeWmRf of the votes I 214 George Canxing they commanded, and urgent advice to come to an understanding witli them. Canning was indignant. If the King, he said, was to be considered as completely in the hands of the Tories as George IT,' was in those of the Whigs, then George III. had reigned and the two Pitts had administered the Government in vain. Against these pretensions he relies not merely on the Crown, but on the body of the people. ' And whether in or out of office,' he adds, ' I will not act, as I never liave acted, as the tool of any confederacy, however powerful, nor will I submit to insult, without resenting it to the best of my poor ability, from any member of such confederacy, be he who lie may.' As to the votes which the Tory peers command, Croker"s list requires a commentary, and in the spirit of a modern financial reformer he asks Croker to 'add to those names the price that the Government pays for their .supi^ort in army, navy, church and law, eixcise and customs, &c., and then calculate what number of unconnected votes the same price substituted among others would purchase if the Crown were free.' Great aristocratic parties are seldom disposed to recognise the claims of others than those w^ho belong to them by birth, or who are content to place them- selves at their disposal, and to serve them humbly for recognition and for hire. Canning never accepted this position. He asserted himself, and he was called an adventurer. He endeavoured to promote his own interests by personal arrangements and combinations, and he was charged with intrigue and treacherous machinations. Occasionally, perhaps, self-assertion became self-seeking, and he advanced to his aim by Orator and Statesman 215 indirect and secret paths. But he was never a flatterer of any great chief— not even of Pitt ; ho did not conceal his contempt for birth without brains, and the arts of social courtiership were not practised by hira. He kept his social gifts and charms for his own liouse and his friends, and did not hire them out for the entertain- ment of the nobility and gentry. To his resolution to assert himself, and to be independent of chiefs and parties, may be attributed in part at least the personal misunderstandings and jealousies which accompanied liim through his political life. It would be difficult to extract from Canning's speeches or to see in his career any consistent scheme of partisan doctrine. The opponent of parliamentary reform and of the removal of Nonconformist disabilities cannot be called a Liberal ; the advocate of the Ptoman Catholic claims, the antagonist of the Holy Alliance, the promoter of Free Trade cannot be called a Tory. Lord Beaconsfield once said that, while the Tories are a national party the Liberals are a cosmopolitan party. Like most sweeping assertions, the phrase extends into a false historic generalisation, a statement which at the most had a momentary truth of description. Among Whig chiefs, Chatham, Palmerston, and Russell were essentially national. The younger Pitt, in spite of his war policy, Peel, and Aberdeen were, in a certain sense, cosmopolitan. Canning represents the intensest form of national feeling. He was above all things an Englishman. To him a man is an Englishman or a Fi-enchman first, and anything and everything or notliinsf else afterwards. His cliaracter is formed bv his native tongue, with its associations and suggestions, 2i6 George Canning by the historic traditions which he has inherited, by the institutions wliich he sees about him and which give shape and direction to his life. These things are sacred. When you strip them off you get something as unreal as Arbuthnot's abstract idea of a Lord Mayor apart from his ring, his gown, his coach, his stature, liis hair, eyes, and anything else that is his. Each nation has its own law of life, good for itself, bad for any other. Sjpartam nadus es : Jianc exorna. For this reason Canning, while welcoming national uprisings against foreign or external domination in Spain, in Greece, in South America, objected to the propaganda by pen or by sword of French principles and ideas in other countries. In theory, he did not contend for the suppression of French principles in France. They might be good there, though he did not think they were ; but they were bad elsewhere, because they were out of relation with the existing moral and social order, and with the traditions which have become a part not only of the general life of the nation, but of the in- dividual life of every one in it. A D;"s-senter, a Non- conformist was, therefore, in his eyes, though most un- reasonably, an objectionable person — a sort of social and religious rebel, who ought not, perhaps, to be persecuted, but who ought not to be legally acknowledged if it can l)e helped. He might at best be connived "at. The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, at all events in a Roman Catholic country like Ireland, was a great institution moulding the life of its people, and entitled to recognition and to freedom. "^rhe principle which made Canning the antagonist of the propaganda of French principles in Europe during Orator and Statesman 217 the earlier pai'i of his political life made him during his later years in an equal degree the antagonist of the principles of the Holy Alliance, wliicTi it is liis great glory as a statesman to have defeated. The Holy Alliance endeavoured to impose upon other nations principles and a law of life not their own. As Canning objected to the Holy Alliance, so he would have objected to its recent secular substitute, the Concert of Europe, which simply means the agreement of the Great Powers to inflict their will upon the small ones, not allowing them to de- velop according to their native forces and genius, biit constraining them into such forms and confii.* ng them within such limits as suits the convenience of a despotic hexarchy of States, or of a majority of them. The country which is England at home should be England abroad, reserving all its freedom of action. Canning's foi'eign policy, which was for ' Europe ' to read ' Eng- land,' and to ' get rid of Areopagus and all that,' was sound and statesmanlike, and abundantly justified in its results. Viewing the political institutions which he found in existence as the shelter and organs of the national life, supplying the channels through which it flowed and inseparable from it as the body of the spirit. Canning was jealous of any attempt to touch them, and was, therefore, an anti-Reformer. But he did not object to parliamentary reform on this ground only. The ten- dency of the doctrines preached by the parliamentary reformers, he said, ' is not to make a House of Commons such as in theory it has always been defined— a third branch of the Legislature — but to absorb the legislative and the executive powers into one ; to create an imme- 2i8 George Canning diate delegation of the whole authority of the people, to which ])ractically nothing could, and in reasoning nothing ought to, stand in opposition.' Perfectly true ; what Canning foresaw has come to pass. The three powers in the State are now the Prime ^Minister, the Cabinet, and the Commons. A truer enumeration might reduce them to two — the Prime Minister and the Caucus. The authority, not of the Crown only, but of both Houses, is declining. There is little now to prevent a demagogic dictatorship surjDrising the country into decisions which it may take in one Parliament to repent in the next. The need of the age is to restore or supply elements which shall not contradict' public opinion, but which shall give it time to mature itself, and to chasten momentary impulse into deliberate con- viction. Probably Canning would not have dissented from this doctrine if the issue had been near enough to engage his statesmanship. The one check he would not tolerate was an oligarchical domination. AVhen he was preparing to go to India, he told Lord Holland that he saw that reform was inevitable, that he was glad to be away while the question was being mooted, but that if he had any hand in it he would let those gentry (the AYhig aristocracy) know that they should e^ain nothins^ bv it. Accordino- to another version of the same story, he told Lord Holland that, if the \ settlement of the Reform question should fall upon him, lie would give the Radicals a dose too strong for their stomachs, adding that the break-up of the Whig and Tory parties, which he foresaw as the result of the struggle, would give him a position of advantage such as he never Imd 1 )('rore. Both those versions of Cnnning's Orator and Statesman 219 language are given on the direct authority of Lord Holland. Frere protests that Canning, though not a purlianientary reformer, was in other respects a true reformer liiudered by incompetent colleagues. Asked by Frere what had become of the Liberal measures which Pitt and he had contemplated, but of which the Whigs \ claimed the credit. Canning pointed to his colleagues : ' What can I churn out of such skim-milk as that ? ' r In 'the Cabinet, on the testimony of the Duke of W^ellington, Canning was habitually silent, possibly because, having made up his mind, and being deter- mined to take his own wav, and havina' a not verv * respectful estimate of the abilities of his colleagues, ho did not care to talk to them. He could not, however, . according to the Duke, bear the slightest contradiction or difference of opinion, and to avoid outrageous out- breaks the Duke found it necessary to hold his own tongue too. Lord Liverpool was the chief sufferer both from tyanning's tongue and Canning's pen, and used to recognise his handwriting with a pang of apprehension. • As to his despatches, where one would have thought his literary sensitiveness Avould have shown itself, he was very patient, allowing them to be criticised and pulled about with the utmost good nature. The Duke of Wellington, against life-long evidence, represe'nts him as the idlest of men; Greville describes him as never having a moment unoccupied. His power at once of concentrating and dividing attention \Aas so great • that he could dictate simultaneously three despatches > to three secretaries, speaking faster than they could '' write. Whatever his failures of temper in the Cabinet and 220 George Canning in the House of Commons, he was a courteous and deferential host. On the death of the Duchess of Gloucester, in 1807, tlie year in which he became Foreign Secretary, Canning purchased Gloucester Lodge from her daughter, the Princess Sophia. The house stood about two miles from London, as London then was, between Brompton and Kensington, in a spot known as Florida Gardens. It had formerly been known from the name of the Duchess, and from the Italian style in which it was built, as Villa Maria. The Florida Gardens were a sort of minor Ranelao-h, inter- mediate between that place and town, before they became the site of Gloucester Lodge. Mr. Rush, then American Minister in London, describes the place in his Journal. ' The grounds about the house,' he says, ' were not extensive, but they were shut in by trees, so that when the gates were passed the seclusion was complete,' a feature upon which he remarks as the charm of many villa residences near London. He describes Canning as host, noting the cordiality of his welcome and the grace and skill with which, sitting at the head of the table, he contrived to keep all his guests in view, and, saving for an occasional flash of pleasantry, mainly directed his own conversational power to the task of drawing out that of others. He was • in private circles bland, courteous, yielding.' The sort of restraint and subordination of himself to others which Mr. Rush ]iotod in Canning as a host were not, according to a writer in the ' Quarterly Review,' always observed by liiin. The author of this article, which was published less than nine years after Canning's death,' speaks of the charm of his frank, open, nnd cordial manner, In Private Life 221 and of his unafFectcd honliomie. ' Then (he adds) his fund of'animal spirits and the extreme excitability of his temperament were such as invariably to hurry him, noleniem volentem, into the full rush and flush of con- viviality. At the latter period of his life, when his health began to break, he would sit down with an evident determination to be abstinent — eat sparingly of the simplest soup, take no sauce with his fish, and mix water with his wine ; but as the repartee began to sparkle and the anecdote to circulate, his assumed caution was imperceptibly relaxed, he gradually gave way to temptation, and commonly ended by eating of everything and taking wine with everybody — the very beau ideal of an Amphitryon.' The last word indicates that Canning is here described as he showed himself at home ; and he, as already remarked, was seldom to be seen elsewhere in society. Writing from Paris in 1826, and describing the cordiality of his reception by the King, princes, Ministers, and ultras of all parties, he adds : ' Mrs. Canning is well, and has seen more of Paris within this month than of London since she was married. For my own part, I would not run the evening rounds in London which I cannot avoid here for any consideration, whether of politics or pleasure.' In fact, except on those state and ceremonial occasions which commanded his presence. Canning was seldom to be seen elsewhere than at home or in the houses of a very limited circle of friends. When Sydney Smith, in a spiteful and untruthful passage of the ' Letters of Peter Plyniley,' pretends to see nothing more in Canning than ' an extraordinary writer of small poetry and a diner-out of 222 George Cannixg tlie liig-li(3st order,' inferior only to Georg'o Selwyn or Tickell during the last half century, he is, what Sydney Smith seldom was, ridiculous. Peter Plyinley sinks almost to the level of Peter Pindar. Mr. Kush describes Canning's schoolboy playfulness when he was released from the House and from Downing Street. He had no thought of shining. Canning's literary tastes remained with him through life. Wlieu he and Pitt met they were soon buried in some classic. His correspondence with Sir Walter Scott turned mainly upon bookish topics ; and he had literature as much as politics in his mind in promoting the foundation of the ' Quarterly Review.' His poli- tical antagonism with Chateaubriand, for whom he re- sponded at a dinner of the Literary Fund, was softened by common intellectual tastes, thouo-li, unlike Chateau- briand, he was a man of action first and a man of letters second. Like one of the most illustrious of his successors in the I'remiership, he lived in — probably he could not have lived out of — an atmosphere of con- tention, and the noisiest brawls with B]'ougham or Hobhouse were more to his mind than Fox"s book under a tree. Two articles in the ' Quarterly Review ' — one on CTifford's ' Life of Pitt ' and another in ridi- cule of Sir John Sinclair's bullion pamphlets — form, so far as I know, together with his verses of occasion, the complete works of Canning. In contrast with his theory, and especially with his master-passion for Dryden, his style was a little over ornate — the purple patch and the tinsel are in excess. Of Canning in his ])ersonal and domestic relations I have ah-eady spoken, but a iew last words ma\- be In Phi va te Life 22^ --J added. AVilberibrce pays a surprised tribute to his moral purity. "His" p'erstsfent" "care for his mother was touchingly shown in~"flie injunction contained in his will : ' I earnestly entreat Joan [his wife] to pay to my mother 2,000Z., or, what I should prefer if it can be secured, an annuity of oOOL during her life.' The mother died a few months before the son. His aifec- tionate solicitude had accompanied her through life, but it was spared tlie need of posthumous guardianship. His devotion to his wife and children was ardent and tender. The lines with which he expressed his grief and resignation on the loss of his eldest son, who died at nineteen after a life-lono- maladv, leave him in attitude in which friend and foe, detractor and eulogist, may best part with him : — Oil ! mark'd from birth, and destin'd for the skies, In youth Avith more than learning's wisdom Avise, As sainted martyrs, patient to endure, Simple as imweaned infancy, and pure — Pure from all stain, save that of human clay. Which Christ's atoning blood hath washed away 3 By mortal suffering now no more oppress'd. Mount, sinless spirit, to thy destin'd rest, While I, reversed ovir natures' kindly doom, Pour forth a father's sorrows on thy tomb. To these words of peace and benediction, issuing, as it were, from the tranquil centre of a life of outer storm, I will add only a few of the memorial verses in which Frere signalised the struggles and triumphs of his orn Avitli an .ancient name of little worth, L^nd disinherited hofore his birth — / 224 George C a awing A landless orphan — rank and wealth and pride Were freely ranged around him ; nor denied His clear precedence, and the warrant given Of nobler rank, stamped by the hand of IIca\en In every form of genius and of grace, In loftiness of thought, figure, and face. Such Canning was. a^ . INDEX. ABBOT Abbot, Mr. Speaker (afccr- ^ wards Lord Colchester), 1-14 Aberdeen, Earl of, 215 Addington, ' Bolus,' 7!' Addiiigton, Henry (afterwards ^^ Viscount Sidmouth), Speaker of the House of Commons, 48 ; Prime Minister, 74 ; Canning\s intrigues against him and at- tacks on him, 74 acipi. ; their reconciliation, 84 ; his resigna- tion, S.'5 ; raised to the peerage as Viscount Sidmouth, anfl appointed Lord President in Pitt's second Admini.stration, 88 ; joins the Grenville-Fox ^Ministry, OI) ; exchanges the oftice of Privy Seal for that of Lord President, 104 ; resigns office, 105 ; declines ofiice under Perceval, 129, ]o2; be- comes again Lord Privy Seal, 133; Home Secretary under Lord Liveipool, 150; pays tri- bute to Canning's ministerial efiiciencj', 157; resigns Home Seci'etary.ship in favour of Mr. Peel, 158 ; his nneasy virtue, 163 ; his domestic administra- tion, 165 Addington, J. Hilev, 54, 62, 76, 77, 79 Addison, 11, 18 BELGUAVE Alexander L, Emperor of Russia, 114, 115, 178 Alliance, Holy, Canning's hos- tility to, 152, 166-68, i~72, 178, 217 Alopeus, M., Russian Ambas- sador, 109 ^^Ithorp, Viscount (afterwards ^ Earl Spencer), 164 Amelia, Princess, 130 Amiens, Peace of, 55, 85 Ancestry, Canning's, 1-7 'Anti-Jacobin ' (newspaper), 60- ■4^ 68 ; its authors, 62 ; Canning's contributions to, 62-65 ; com- pared with the ' Rolliad ' and with Moore's satires, 65-66 • aims of its writers, 67, 68 Aristocracy, Canning's feeling towards; 39, 136, 2i'3-14 Aust, ;\lr. Thomas, Under Secre- tary for Foreign Affairs, 54 Bagot, Sir Charles, 161, 190 Bankes, Mr., 130, 197 Bar, Canning's intentions as to the, 2:5, 29, 39 Barras, French Director, 57 Bathurst, Mr. Bragge- (formerly y :\Ir. Bragge), 62, 76-77, 148, 158 Bathurst, Lord, 121, 188 Belgrave, Lord, 34 Q 226 George Canning BELL Bell, Mr. Robert, his Life of Canning referred to, 8 r.ellingham, the assassin, 135 Berlin, Decree of, 112 Bexley, Lord. See Vansittart Bishop's Canynge in Wiltsliiro, 1 Board of Control. Sec Control Bolivar, General, 177 Bordeaux, Canning at, 147 Boringdon, Lord (afterwards jff"' Earl of Morlev), his intimacy ^ with Canning, 27, 31, 32 ; Canning's letters to and com- munications to, 41, 42, 51, 'J7, 100,108,158,160 Bourne, Starges,resigus with Can- ^^'- ning in 1809, 1 27 ; disapproves his conduct, 140 ; joins Liver- pool Ad ministration, 1 4 5; Horn e Secretary under Canning, 188; First Commissioner of Woods and Forests, 189 Bragge, I\Ir. See Bathurst Brougliam, Henry (afterwards j^ Lord), candidate for Liverpool, 142 ; legal adviser of Queen Caroline, 152; supports Can- ning's Ministrj^ 190; on Canning's oratory, 199 ; on Canning's Bullion speech, 203 Bryant, Jacob, 27 Buckingham, lirst Duke of, 159 ; memoirs by second Duke, 191 Buckinghamshire, Earl of, 148 Bull-baiting, Canning's speech on, 59 Bullion Committee, 190 ; Can- ning's speech on its report, 132, 203 ^Burdctt, Sir Francis, 50> IKi, X 190 ^Biu-ke, Edmund, 53, 213 ^ Barney, Frances (afterwards Madame d'Arblay), 13, 51 Burrard, Sir Ilarrj', 11 G Bvixton, Sir T. Fowcll, on Can- ning's self-restraint, 212 CANNING Cabinet, mystification of, 56- 57 ; place of, in the Constitu- tion, 93-96, 218 ; collective responsibility of, 174 ^Camden, Lord, 121, 129 •^ Canning family, at Bishop's Canynge, 1 ; at Bristol and at Foxcote, 2 ; settled in Ulster, 3-4 ; surviving branches of, 197, 198 Canning, Earl, 197 Canning, George, the father of the statesman, disinherited and settles in London, 3 ; his poems, pamplilets, and misfor- tunes, 3-7 ; his marriage, 5 ; his death, 7 ^^anning, George, the statesman, his birth, I ; ancestrj', 1-3 ; his father, 3-7 ; his mother, 5, 7, 8, 9 ; adoption by his uncle, Mr. Stratford Canning, 10; his early years, 1 1 seq^q. ; his school life at Hyde Abbey and Eton, 11-lG; verse-maldng, 11, 15, 31, 32 ; fondness for acting, 12, 15 ; indifference to sports, 15, 27 ; industry and good be- haviour, 11, 15; fondness for debating at Eton, 15, at Ox- ford, 27-29, and in London, 39 ; his contributions to the 'Microcosm,' 16-22 ; enters at Lincoln's Inn and at Christ Clnirch, Oxford, 23 ; his fellow- students at Christ Church, 26, 27, 38 ; his liabitsasa student, 27 ; member of the Speaking Society, 27 ; his I'casons for leaving it, 28, 29 ; inlluence of Dean Jackson upon liim, 26, 29 ; a lion in society, 30 ; early interest in the Slavery ques- tion, 32; ignorance of French, 32, 33, 108-10 ; projected tour in France, 32, 33; takes his degrees at Oxford, 33; prize Index 027 CANNING poems, English and Latin, 33, 34 ; his training entirely lite- rary, 3;) seqci. ; his ignorance of natural history, 35; his dislilce of Oxford, 37, 38 ; comes to London, 39 ; his early Whig opinions, 39 ; conversion to Toryism, 40-42 ; his introduc- tion to Mr. Pitt, 4G, 47 ; elect- ed member for Newtown, Isle of Wight, 47 ; politics in Eng- land when Canning enters public life, 42-46 ; ridicules Mr. .'Vddington as Speaker, 48 ; his maiden speech, 51, 52 ; other speeches, 52, 53 ; cha- racter of his early speaking, 51, 53 ; appointed Under Se- cretary for Foreign Affairs, 54 ; receives a valuable sinecure, 54, 71 ; elected for Wendover, 54 ; his official work, ih. ; inti- macy with Mr. Pitt, ih. ; rela- tions with Lord Malmcsbury, 56; intrigue against Lord Grcnville, 56, 57 ; discontent with his official position, 57- 59 ; his dislike of Lord Gren- ville, 57, 58 ; appointed to the Lidia Board, 58; made joint Paymaster of the Forces, 59; on union with Ireland, 59 ; on bull-baiting, ih. ; resigns office on Pitt's retirement, ih.; his contributions to the 'Anti- Jacobin,' 61-63 ; his poem ' The New Morality ' charac- terised and quoted, 63-65 ; his attacks on Coleridge, Lamb, and Sontliey, 65, 67, 68 ; his moral and political aims, 67; his literary judg- ments, 68, 222 ; his domestic relations, 69-73 ; alleged pen- sion to his mother, 69 ; AVolcot (Peter Pindar's) attacks upon him, 70-72 ; his marriage, 70 ; CANNING character of his wife, 70, 73, 222 ; his relations with the Princess of Wales, 73 ; sits in the United Parliament for Tralee, 74 ; intrigues against Addington, ih. ; his attacks on him and others in the ' Oracle,' &c,, 75-84 ; his preparation for his speeches, 75, 200 ; his dissatisfaction with Pitt's second Administration, 84 ; appointed Treasurer of the Navy, 86 ; his sqnibs against the Opposition leaders, 86, 87 ; his annoj-ance at Addington's admission into the Cabinet, 88 ; his expectation of a seat in the Cabinet, 89; his last visit to Pitt, ih. ; his defence of Melville, 90 ; his squib on Whitbread, 90, 91 ; his quarrel with Hawkesbury and Wal- lace, 91 ; his devotion to Pitt's memory, and defence of him in the House of Com- mons, 92 ; his attack on Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough's admission to the Grenville- Fox Cabinet, 94 ; his doc- trine of Cabinet government, 95 ; his attitude towards Grenville and Fox, 96, 99, 105; abjm-es connection witli the press, 97 ; his ' Elijah's Mantle,' 97-99; overtures of Grenville and Fox to, 100-101 ; his ^^ew oE the King's place in tlie Government, 101, 105 : refuses furtlier proposals of Grenville, 102, 103; his ob- jection to Mr. Windham"s military schemes, 105 ; his personal pretensions, 106-7 ; appointed Foreign Minister in the Portland Administra- tion, 107-8 ; disorganisation of Foreign Office, 110; his great ^'"V'l y^ 10.-), 191, y 2.^0 George Canning CHATEAUBRIAND Chateaubriand, 193, 222 .Chatham, first Earl of, England jr under, 42-41 ; contrast be- tween the elder and the younger Pitt, 45 ; Canning the inheritor of Chatham's foreign policy, 190, 215 ; his feeling towards 'connections,' 213, 214 Chatham, second Earl of, 103, y' 107, 111, 120, 123, 129 Chatterton, ' Eowley,' foreeries of, 2 China, Indian trade with, 145 Chiswick, death of Fox at, 102; Canning's illness and death there, 192-96 Christ Church, Oxford, Canning at, 23 scqq. ; the Dean (Cyril Jackson) of, 23-26 ; Speaking Club at, 27-29 ; Canning's associates at, 26-27 ; 37, 38 Churchill, satires of, 6 ^^Cintra, Convention of, IIG-IS Clanricarde, Marquis of, son-in- law of Canning, 197 Clarence, Duke of, Lord High Admiral, 189 Coleridge, tS. T., attacked by ^ Canning, 65, 67, 68 Commons, House of, in 1793, 48-51 ; in 1823, 162-64 : place of, in the Constitution, 217-18 Concert. See European ' Connections,' Canning on, 136, 213-14 Constitution, English, real and ostensible, 94-96, 218 Control, ]?oard of. Canning a Commissioner of, 58 ; President of, 148-50 Copenhagen, bombardment of, 112-15 Corn laws, 150, 190 Costello, Miss Mary Anne. See Hunn, Mrs. Cottage, Royal, cabals at, 174, 175 /t DUNDAS Council, Orders in, 112, 143 Creevy, i\Ir., 142, 149 •brewe, Mrs., 30, 31 foker, J. W., 61, 193, 191, 213, 214 Crown, power of, 96, 101, 136, 218 Cumberland, Duke of, imputa- tions on, 130 Dalrymple, Sir Hew, 116 Danish fleet, seizure of, 112 Davies, Dr. Jonathan, head- master of Eton, afterwards provost, 13, 14 Debating societies at Eton, 15; at Oxford, 27-29 ; in London, 39 Denmark, Crown Prince of, 113 Devonshire, Duke of, 192 Dickens, Sir Guy, 5 ; Mr. Gus- tavus, 8 Disraeli, Benjamin, afterwards ^" Earl of Beaconslield, 18, 37, 39, 95, 99, 215 Dissenters, Canning's feeling to, 215, 216 Distress and disaffection in England, 150-51 Dodsley, bookseller, 3, 6 Drummond, Sir William, 27 Dryden, 5, 222 Oi'dley and "Ward, Lord, on the Canningites, 145; Canning's alarmist speeches, 150 ; For- eign Secretary, 179, 188 ; his fastidiousness, 192 Duel, Canning's, with Castle- reagh, 125-26 Dundas, Henry (afterwards Viscount Melville), his parlia- mentary efficiency, 49 ; Secre- tary of State and Treasurer of the Navj% 58 ; his impeach- ment, 88, 89 ; Canning's de- fence of, 90 y Index 231 ' EDIXBURGH REVIEW ' ^^DiNBURGH Review,' 63 ^^ Edmonds, ^Ir. Charles, on writers in ' xVnti-Jacobin,' ()2 Eldon, Lord Cliancellor, hi^. ^y^ def,n-ce at Oxford, 33 ; liis re- lations with the Princess of Wales, 73 ; his feeling towards Canning, 121, 12i ; on Canning and Perceval, 127 ; on over- tures to Canning, 135 ; on Lord Liverpool's illness, 18i ; on the formation of Canning's Ministry, 186 Illlenborough, Lord Chief Jus- y^ tice, a member of the Cabinet, 93, 94, 103 ; his judicial tj-rannj', 151, 165 ^■Ellis, Charles, afterwards Lord / Seaforth, 27, 73, 125 Ellis, George, 56, 61, 62 y' l'Jlphinstone,Governor of Madras, 157 England under Chatham, 42-44 ; under the younger Pitt, 44-46 ; distress and disaffection in, 150-51 English language, use of, in dip- lomacy, 33 IDrskine, Thomas (afterwards <^ Lord), his eloquence, 51 ; Lord Chancellor, !)3 Erskine, Mr. (Minister at Wash- ington), 143 Esterhazy, Prince, Austrian Ambassador, 173, 176, 177 Eton, Canning at, 12, 15, 22 European concert. Canning on, 172, 173, 217 FAr.r.E, Dr., 195 Ferdinand YII. of Spain, 171 I'itzpatrick, General, 66, 103 Fitzwilliam, Earl, 53, 103 Foreign Affairs, Canning Under Secretary for, 54-59 ; Principal Secretary of State for, 106- 20, 160-82 GEORGE III. Fouche, 114 Fox, Charles James, Cainiing's early relations with, 39, 46 ; his eloquence and debating power, 50, 209 ; his dislike of Can- ning, 54 ; his coalition with North, 66 ; his secession from Parliament, 87 ; on Pitt's funeral and debts, 92; Foreign Minister and parliamentary leader in Grenvillc's Admin- istration, 93, 101, 102, 101 ; attacks of Canning on, 87, 97; his declining health, 99; Can- ning proposed as leader under him, 100, 101; his death, 102, 163, 193 Foxcote, in Warwickshire, Can- nings at, 2 France, Canning's projected visit to, 32, 33 ; revolutionary ty- ranny in, 52; his visit to Paris, 181 ; his feeling towards, 216 Frederick, afterwards the Great, King of Prussia, 6, 42, 43 French language. Canning's early ignorance of, 32, 33 ; ridiculed for, 108-10 Frore, Hookham, at Ei:on, 14; ^' his lilelong attachment to '^ ('anning, 16; on Canning's want of scientific knowledge, 35 ; his contributions to tlie ' Anti-Jacobin,' 62 ; Tdinister at Madrid, 118, 119, 128; verses on Canning's death, 225 Gambier, Lord, 113 Gariick, David, 8, 9 Garvagh, Londonderry, branch of the Cannings at, barony of in Irish peerage, 6, 197 Gasco3'no, General, 140 George III., King, his visits to Eton, 14, 21; his opposition to Catholic claims and his in- sanity, 74; his proscription of 232 George Canning GEORGE, PRINCE OP WALES Fox, 85, 89 ; Canning on his place in the Government, 101; ijis disuiissal of Grenville's Ad- ministration on Catliolic ques- tion, lUl-lOo; his attitude to the second Porthind Ministry, 107, 121 ; appoints Mr. I'erce- val Portland's successor, 127 ; his final attack of insanity, 130 George, Prince of Wales, after- jlf^' wards Prince Picgent and ^ George 17., his readiness of re- partee, l-l: his anger at the regency restriciions, 131 ; feel- ing towards and overtures to Grey and Grenville, Wellesley and Canning, 133, 13G ; his persecution of Queen Caroline, 152-57 ; his jjroscription of Canning, 158; his anger with Canning, 161 ; his discontent with Canning's foreign policy, and intrigues against him. 174 si'tpl- ; becomes reconciled to him, 177; liis wishes in re- gard to Lord Liverpool's suc- ces.sor, 185 scq^q^. ; appoints Canning First Lord of the Treasury, 186; his falsclioods, 11)1 ; his civilities to Canning, 177. 195 ^ Gitford, William, 62, 70 ^^ Gladstone, Mr. (afterwards Sir) y' John, 142, 160 ''^.Gladstone, W. E., 15, 99 ^ Gloucester House, Canning's re- sidcnt;e at, 220 Goddard, Archdeacon, 27 Godwin, William, 40-42 >*' Gra.nville, Earl. /Sir Leveson- Gower Grattan, Henry, i:!0, 144, 164 Gra)% Thomas, 12, 15, 131 *' Greece, liberation of, 19, 168- 69, 178-180 Grenville, Lord, Foreign Secre- tary in Pitt's first Administra- HUNN tion, 56, 57, 58 ; First Lord of the Treasury, 93, 97. 101 ; pro- poses otlice to Canning, 100- 103 ; dismissed by the King, 105 ; negotiations of Perceval with, 127; overtures from the Prince llegent to, 131 ; of Wellesley t(j, 136 ; of Liverpool to, 159 Grenville, Thomas, 89, 103 ^,^Greville, Charles, 191 ■^ ,£irey. Earl (formerly Mr. Grey ^ and Viscount Howicdc), Ins eloquence, 50 ; Foreign Secre- tary in succession to Fox, 104 ; his Catholic Military Service Bill, 104-105 ; negotiations with, 127, 131, 133, 13G; his attack on Canning, 191 Hammond, Mr , 62 Harcourt, Lord, 8 Harrowby, Lord. See Eyder, Dudley Harwich, Canning's election for, 162 Hastings, Canning's election for, 142 Hastings, Mai-quis of (formerly ^ Earl Moira), 136, 149, 158, 159, 165 .Hawkcsburj^, Lord. Sec Jenkin- ^ son Hermopolis, Bishop of, 169-70 Hertford, Marquis of. See Yar- mouth, Earl of Hillsborough, Earl of, 4 Holland, Lord, 26, 39, 104, 190, 202, 213, 218 Homer, 14 Hone, W., 61, 151 Horner, Francis, 132, 133, 164 Plowick, Viscount. See Gre}^, Earl __Jiunn, Mrs. (previously Mrs. >^ Canning, then Mrs. Eeddish, mother of Canning), her first luarriage, 5; her epitaph on Index 233 X* HUSKISSON her husband, 7 ; ^oes on the sta.qc, and marries Reddish the actor ; afterwards marries Mr. Hunn, 69 ; attacks on her after her retirement, 09-72 ; her character, IW ; Canninj^'s affection for, 69, TiJ, 223 ; her death, 69 uskisson, WilUam, Under Secretary for Colonies, 49 ; his ineffectiveness in debate, HO ; Secretary of Treasury, 108 ; adheres to Canning, 127 ; his enlightened fiscal views, i:i2 ; First Commissioner of Land Ilcvenue, 145 ; Canning's friendship for, 160; his minis- terial cflicienc.v, 177 ; visit of Canning- to, 183 Hyde Abbey School, Canning at, 1] India, Canning a Commissioner of, 58 ; trade with China, 141 ; Canning's policy as President of the Board of Control, 149- 50; thanked by the Court of Directors, 157 ; nominated as Governor-General, 159 Ireland, settlement of the Can- nings in, 3 ; parliamentary union with England, 74 ; Irish question a European ques- tion, 173 Irish Office, relations of, with Home Ofiice, 59 ; Canning pro- posed as Chief Secretary, 85 LEIGH Jenkinson, Robert Ranks Cafter- ^.' wards Lord llawkesbury and Earl of Liverpool), at Oxford, 20, 28, 29 ; his maiden speech, 46 ; as man of business and debater, 50; Canning's quar- rel with, 91 ; application of George III. to, 92 ; part in pro- posed Grenville-Canning coali- tion, 103 ; Home Secretary, 108 ; War and Colonial b.e- cretary, ] 28 ; First Lord of Treasury, 137; his relations with Canning during the pro- ceedings against the Queen, 152, 154, 155, 156, 158, 160; his character as Prime Min- ister, 104; his fatal illness, 183, 184 Johnson, Dr., 4, 6, 68 Jones, Gale, 129 Junius, Letters of, 6 Keppel, Admiral, election for Windsor, 39 King. Sec George III. and George 1\'. and Crown King's friends, 105 Knight, Charles, of Windsor, publishes ' Microcosm,' 17 Knighton, Sir W., 40, 175, 170, 177, 194 y ACKSON, Cyril, Dean of Christ Church, his character and in- llnence, 23-20 ; his interest in Canning, and influence on him, 29, 40, 108 Jacobinism, Canning's youthful, 39 James I., his Irish gi-ant to George Canning of Foxcotc, 2 / JL.^MB, Charles, attacked by ^ Canning, 04, 05 Lamb, William, afterwards Vi';- count Alelbourne, attacks 'Anti-Jacobin' writers, 01-02 Lambton, Mr., 10, 140, 201 I^msilowne, first ^larcpiisof. Hvt ^ Slielburno » Lansdowne, third Marquis of. .SVt / Petty La.vbach, circular of, 166 Leigh. Mrs. Canning's verses to 31 234 George Canning LE MARSHALS Le Marshals of Foxcote, 2 ' Leopard ' and ' Chesapeake,' affair of, llo Le Peaiix, La Riiveillere, 64 Leveson-Gower, Lord G., after- ^" wards Earl Granville, 2G, 31, '*^ lOU-101, 127, 128, 17G Liverpool, Canning member for, y 142, 145, 1C2 London, Canning born in, 1 ; Corporation of, 3 ; Canning's return to, 39 ; habits of his life in, 219-21 London, treaty of, 180 Londonderry, settlement of the Cannings in, 2 Long, Charles, afterwards Lord Farnborough, 49, 127 Lopez, Mr. Manasseh, 81 Louis XVIII. of France, 171 Lyndhurst, Lord (Sir John "CoplejO, 188, 192 Lyte, Mr., his ' History of Eton College,' 12 See y Melbourne, Viscount. ^ Lamb Melville, first Viscount. Sl'C ^' Dundas Melville, second Viscount, 188 Moira, Earl of. >s'/,'6' Hastings .(.k Moore, Sir John, 117-19 Moore, Thomas, m, 140 Morniugton, Lord. See AVelles- / ley Morpeth, Viscount (afterwards Earl of Carlisle), 26, 61-62, 189 Mulgrave, Lord, 129 Munroe, General, 157 Musa3 Etonenses, 15 NAriER, Sir William, 119 Napoleon T., 75, 83, 114, 115, 116, 119, 146, 166 Navarino, battle of, 180, 197 PEEL Neutral it \-, oljligations of, 143 Newcastle, Duke of, 184 Newport, Canning's election for, 188 Newspapers, rising importance of, 6 Newton, Mr. John Frank, 27, 28, 29,^2, 37,38, 109 Newtown, Cannings election for, 47, 142 Nicholas, Emperor of Eussia, 178, 179 Non-Intercourse Act (United States), 143 Nugent, Lord, 203, 204, 205 O'Neill, Sir Phelira, his rebel- lion, 1 ' Oracle,' the, and other papers, Canning's squibs in, 75-84 Oxford, Canning goes to, 23; effect of its studies on him, 35-37 ; his dislike of, 37-38 Palmerston, Viscount, 99, 115, ^' 128, 215 Pamphlets, importance of, 6 Parliament, British. See Com- mons, House of Parliament, Irish. See Ireland Paymaster-General (joint). Can- ning appointed, 59 Pedro, Dom, King of Portugal and Emperor of Brazil, 180 Peel, Mr. (afterwards Sii") y Piobert, on Canning's intrigues, ^ 140; Home Secretary, 158; his parliamentary adroitness, 161; opposition to Canning's foreign policy, 170, 215 ; his ministerial cliiciency, 177 ; ne- gotiations with Canning cur Liverpool's resignation, 184, 185, 186 ; his alleged treachery on Catholic question, 187 ; re- Index -'35 PELLEW signs Home Oflice, ISS; his parliamentary rivalry with Canning, 211 Pcllew, Dean, his Life of Sid- raouth, 8i reiiiusula, War in the, began, 112 Perceval, Spencer, his early rc- ^^ lationship witli Princess of Wales, 73 ; Canning's arrange- ments for, 100, 102 ; his rivalry with Canning, 105, 117, 122- 25 ; Prime Minister, 128 ; his qualities as leader, 129; his Regency Bill, 130, 131 ; his assassination, 135 ; his youth- ful Radicalism, 168 Petersfield, Canning elected for, 142 I^ett}-, Lord Henry, afterwards ^^ ]\Iarquis of Lansdowne, 98, 107, 163, 18S, 190 Pindaree war, 149 yitt, William, the younger, Can- ning's sympathy with, 41, 55, 92, 97-99, 213 ; two periods of his administration, 44-46; Can- ning's introduction to him, 47 ; his parliamentary eloquence, 49, 209 ; head of peace party in the Cabinet, 56; attacked in the ' RoUiad,' d^ ; his views (jf the union with Ireland, 74 ; his resignation and return to office, 74, 85 ; his proposals to Fox, Grenville, Canning, and Addington, 85, 86, 88, 89 ; his death, 89 ; his unhappiness out of office, 09, 100; Mr. Pitts fi'iends, 105, 164 ; his commer- cial principles, 45, 147, 189, 1 90 ; his opposition to political 'connections,' 213, 214 Plantation of Ulster, 2 Plunket, Mr., afterwards Lord, J^ 164 Polo, Wclleslcv, 148 y ROBINSON Polignac, Cardinal, 3 * Political Eclogues ' and ' Proba- tionary Odes,' 65 Political literature in England, G Ponsoiibj-, George, 115 Pope, Alexander, 1, 5 Portland, third Duke of. Home Secretary, 59 ; resigns Presi- dency of Council, 88 ; his over- tures to the King, 106 ; Prime Minister, 107 ; his incapacitv, 111, 122; informed of the designs of France on Portugal, 113; his part in the Castle- reagh-Canning quarrel and resignation, 121-23 Portland, fourth Duke of, 70, 188 Portugal, affairs of, 113, IIC, 146, 180, ISl Prime Minister, constitutional position of, 95, 218 Putne.v, battle of, 119, 125-2G y^: UARTERLY REVIEW,' 63, 220, 222 Queen. See Charlotte, and Caro- line Radical reform, 218 Rebellions, Irish, 3 Reddish, the actor, 9, 10, f>9 Reform, parliamentary, 53, 142, 217-19 Regency Bill, 130-32 Regent, Prince. See George Repressive legislation in Eng- land, 150-52 Ricliards, Mr., of Hj'de Abbey School, 11, 12 Roberts, Dr., Provost of Eton, 13 lobinson, ^Ir. Frederick (after- wards Viscount Goderich and Earl of Ripon), his parlia- mentary and business qualities, 2\6 George Canning ' ROLLIAD ' 164, 177, 191, 211; his poli- tical views, 186, 3 90 'flolliad,' the, Go, 66, 71 .. Eomilly, Sir Samuel, 94, 129 y^y' Eose, George, 49, 89, 96, 127 ''^^'llush, Mr., United States Min- •^ ister, 202, 220 Eiissell, Lord John (afterwards v^ ' Earl), 164, 203, 215 ^ Piussia, affairs of, 168, 171, 17.j, 178, 179 Bydcr, Dudley, afterwards Lord ^/^ Harrowby, 59 Eyder, llichard, 128, 129 ^' Salisbuey, Marquis of, 36 Scheldt. See Walcheren Scott, General, his curious will, 70 Scott, Sir Walter, 1, 40, 147, 222 Shaftesbury, seventh Earl of, 140 Sharp, Richard, 212 Shelburne, Earl of (afterwards ^- Marquis of Lansdowne). 190 ^Slieridan, E. B., liis Bob Acres, r ^^ 19 ; his early relations with Canning, 39, 46; his elo- ^ quence, 50, 201-202; Canning's /attacks on, 81, 84, 87 Sinecures, Canning on, 130 Slave trade. Canning's views on, 32, 50, 168-170; abolition of, 102 Smith, Adam, io, 190 Smith, 'Bobus,' 17 Smith, James, 17, 22 Smith, Sydney, 221 Smollett, Tobias, 4 Somerset, Lord Cliarles, 107 South America, atlairs of, 168, 171, 172, 173, 174, 177 Southej% Robert, 67, 68 > Spain, airuirs of, 116, 118, 170, 171, 172, ISO, 181,182 Speaking Club at Christ Church, 27-29," 183 VIMIERA ' Spectator,' the, 13, 15 Spencer, Earl, 53 Spencer, Lord Henry, 17, 27, 29 Spencer, William, 27, 31 StanhoiJc, Lady Hester, 47, 50, 88, 140 Stanhope, Spencer, 94 Stapleton, Augustus, 114, 148, 177, 184, 193, 194, 200 Steele, Sir Richard, 1 Stowell, Lord, 154, 203 Stratford de Redclitfe, Viscount, 6, 197 Talleyrand, 57, 114 Theoi^hilanthropists, sect of, 64 Thompson, Seth, D.D., 4 Tichlield, Marquis of. See Port- land, fourth Duke of Tierney, Mr., 50, 81, 84, 164, 190, 207 Tierney, Sir Matthew, 194, 195 Tilsit, treaty of, 112 'Tomkins, Silly Mr.,' 178 Toryism, Canning's conversion to, 41 ; his later position to- wards, 211 Tralee, Canning elected for, 74 Treasurership of Na^'j', Canning desirous of, 58 ; appointed to, 86 Turkey, affairs of, 168, 178-180 Ulster, plantation of, 2 Union, Act of. See Ireland United States, controversies with, 143, 144 /VAN.siTTART,N.(afterwards Lord y<^ Bexley), 27, 83, 133, 148, 188 Verona, congress of, 167 Vienna, congress of, 147 ; treaty of, 165 Vimiera, battle of, 116 Index 237 ^ WALCHEREN Walcheuex expedition, 122, 12;{ ^Vak's, Princu of. See George IV. ■\\'ales, Princess of. j be ImcI ■post free on (ipplication : — 1. Monthly List of New Work.s AND Xew Editions. 2. QuARiEiir.Y List op Anxoukce- MENTS AN'D New Works. 3. Notes ox Books ; beixg an Analysis ok the Wokks pub- LLSJIED DURING EACHQUARTER. 4. Catalogue op Scdsntipic Works. 6. 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