[GEORGE CANNING, born, London, April II, 1770; died, London,
August 8, 1827; educated at Eton and Oxford; Member of
Parliament, 1793; 1797, editor of Anti-Jacobin periodical; 1807-
09, Secretary for Foreign Affairs; 1809, duel with Castlereagh;
1814-16, Ambassador at Lisbon; 1817-20, President of India Board;
1822, appointed Governor-General of India; 1822-27, Minister for
Foreign Affairs; 1827, Prime Minister and First Lord of the
Treasury. Buried in Westminster Abbey.]
During the first twenty years of the nineteenth century Great
Britain, though possessing the most liberal constitution of any
of the powers, was the consistent ally of the absolute monarchies
of Europe. Strange as the situation at first appears, it is not
difficult to trace the causes which produced it.
For the explanation of most of the phenomena of European history
in the first half of the century the student must turn back to
the French Revolution. The social and political ideas which were
at the bottom of that great upheaval were in part suggested by
the success of free institutions in constitutional England, where
parliamentary government had been highly developed while France
lay bound by her Bourbon despots. A large body of Englishmen
numbering some of the greatest names in politics and literature
sympathized deeply with the earlier manifestations of the
revolutionary spirit.
"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven"
sang Wordsworth, whose youthful enthusiasm over that dawn was
soon chilled by the crimes which were committed in the name of
Liberty--the slaughter of the royal pair, the reign of the
guillotine, and the enthronement of reason in the place of God.
The tide of opinion in England was turned by these scenes of
lawless license, and when, in 1793, the revolutionary government
of France offered its armed aid to all oppressed peoples,
England, led by William Pitt, joined Austria and Prussia in a war
to suppress the dangerous republic, and restore the Bourbon
dynasty to its ancient throne. Seven successive coalitions were
thus formed by English diplomacy between 1793 and 1815 to meet
the changing phases of the struggle which, after 1803, had ceased
to be monarchy against democracy and had become a universal war
for self-preservation from Napoleon, the military genius who had
made himself the dictator of revolutionary France. When the great
war seemed to have come to an end, in 1814-15, and Napoleon was
finally caged at St. Helena, England found herself naturally
taking a principal part in re-establishing the Bourbon Louis
XVIII. on the throne of France. She had stood with the other
powers so long against a common foe that she continued to stand
with them now in undoing, as far as might be, the work which the
disturbing and renovating conqueror had wrought in the kingdoms
which he had overrun. Not only were the old boundaries generally
restored and the exiled monarchs brought back to replace the
upstart Bonaparte kings, but the constitutional freedom which the
French arms had introduced in many parts of Europe was annulled
wherever possible. The Congress of Vienna, in which the allied
powers formulated their policy, did its best to turn back the
shadow twenty years on the dial of progress, and England either
joined in the effort or stood by consenting to the death of so
many newly won liberties.
When the allied sovereigns were met in Napoleon's capital after
Waterloo, the Czar of Russia conceived a thought which seemed to
him to be an inspiration. In the ecstasy of the hour of
deliverance from the sword which had been the nightmare of the
continent for a generation Alexander proposed to his fellow
potentates a covenant binding them to be governed by the
principles of Christian justice and charity in their dealings
with their own subjects and in their mutual relations. Sincere
and pious as the Czar undoubtedly was, this agreement, which was
accepted by the other monarchs, excepting George IV. of England,
did not produce the results which one might suppose from its
name, the Holy Alliance. It was used not only to stifle the
spirit of liberty in western Europe, but its baleful influence
was felt in Italy, Spain, and Greece. In effect it was a trades-
union in which the allied crowned-heads undertook to stifle
popular liberty wherever it showed signs of life. When Alexander
explained his proposal to the English commissioners at Paris they
could scarcely keep a straight face at its absurdity. Yet though
England refused to become a member of the Holy Alliance, she did
allow herself for a period of several years to be ruled by its
decisions, or at least to allow them to be enforced without a
protest.
Such in brief was the chain of events which associated the
foreign policy of England with that of the Holy Alliance. The
brilliant statesman who broke away from this foreign policy and
led England out upon a line of independent action was George
Canning.
The future Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister was born in
London, April II, 1770. His father was an Englishman from the
north of Ireland, who had read law, but failed to get clients,
and had succeeded at nothing, from pamphleteering to selling
wine. He died on his babe's first birthday. The widow married an
actor and essayed a stage career. What would have become of
little George had he remained in his mother's company is an
interesting speculation. An actor called the attention of his
uncle, a London banker, to the probability that the lad was on
the high road to the gallows--to which in those days more than
one road led. This uncle, Stratford Canning, assumed the
responsibility of the child's education, sent him to Eton and
later to Oxford. At the former he distinguished himself by his
witty contributions to "The Microcosm'--most famous of school-boy
periodicals--and at the University where he was graduated, B.A.,
in 1791 he won some distinction in literature and oratory, taking
the University prize with his Latin poem. At Oxford he passed
through the "blissful dawn" of which Wordsworth sang, and was an
enthusiastic admirer of the French Revolution of 1789 and of the
British Whigs who supported it--Fox, Sheridan, and their sort. He
came up to London as the tide was turning, and his own opinion
was among the first to change. Pitt, the Prime Minister, had been
apprised of his talent, sent for him, and had him "chosen" to the
House of Commons, a simple matter in those unregenerate days,
when the Tory chieftains had their pockets full of boroughs.
Pitt gave Canning a minor government office--he was not yet
thirty years of age--and treated him almost as a son, the young
man reciprocating the regard with a really filial devotion. He
was ambitious for advancement, and discontented with his slow
promotion. In 1797, in company with other choice spirits, he
began the publication of The Anti-Jacobin, a weekly periodical
which for nearly a year held up to merciless ridicule that
section of the British public which still countenanced the ruling
ideas of the French Revolution. When the King's refusal to yield
on the question of Catholic emancipation (1801) compelled Pitt to
resign, Canning went out of office with him. Addington, the
stupid mediocrity who succeeded Pitt, provoked Canning's pen to
fresh lampoons, some of them long remembered for their savage
personalities.
When Pitt resumed the premiership, in 1804, to direct the new
struggle with Napoleon, he again bestowed office upon Canning,
and when he died, in 1806, Canning became the leader of the group
of Pittites who endeavored to perpetuate his ideas. In 1807 he
entered the cabinet in the important capacity of Foreign
Secretary.
As Foreign Secretary under the spiritless premiership of the Duke
of Portland, Canning was allowed free hand. The two years and a
half during which he directed the foreign office were marked by a
succession of moves which gave a new aspect to the contest with
Napoleon.
Canning entered upon his duties just as the Fourth Coalition was
being hammered to pieces, on the same anvil which had destroyed
the others. By the Treaty of Tilsit (July, 1807), Napoleon
prepared to unite the northern nations in his war on British
commerce. Hearing or divining his purpose to further this project
by seizing the fleet of Denmark, Canning dispatched an armed
force to Copenhagen with a demand for the surrender of the Danish
ships. The order was executed, and the Danish vessels were
brought back to England, though at the cost of a bombardment of
the Danish capital. The French Emperor's eye was fastened on the
fleet of Portugal as another auxiliary, and when the Regent
refused to accede to his request, Napoleon dispatched Marshal
Junot to drive him from his kingdom and hold its ports and
fortresses against England.
England now stood almost alone, and Napoleon hoped to complete
her ruinous isolation by destroying her trade with Europe. His
"Continental System," which was to make the continent
commercially independent of Great Britain, was foreshadowed in
his Berlin Decrees. Fresh decrees were now met by fresh Orders in
Council, "shutting out from the continent all vessels which had
not touched at a British port." It was Canning whose genius
caught at the strategic possibilities of a war in the peninsula
(Spain-Portugal) as a practical opening on the French flank for a
final blow at the Napoleonic power. Napoleon's interference in
the government of Spain by dethroning its monarchs and giving the
crown to his brother Joseph had exasperated that proud nation and
provoked the spirited people to arm against the intruder. The
Portuguese were scarcely less bitter against the French
conqueror. Canning perceived the possibility of gaining a
foothold in these kingdoms, which were easily accessible by sea,
and by utilizing the spirit and resources of the aroused nations
to consolidate a power there which would threaten France itself,
whose borders the great soldier had thus far kept inviolate. How
ably Sir Arthur Wellesley fulfilled Mr. Canning's desire the life
of Wellington has already shown.
The Peninsular Campaign was scarcely under way when Canning and
Castlereagh, the War Secretary, quarreled and the former resigned
from the cabinet. Yet from his place in the House the ex-minister
continued manfully to uphold the general who was doing England's
work in Spain. There was need of all the support his genius could
contribute to this task, for parliament was slow to grasp the
deep purpose of the campaign, was impatient for results, and
prone to grumble at the bill of expense. Yet in the end Canning
enjoyed the satisfaction of pointing to the complete verification
of his hopes. He might have been Foreign Minister in the
Liverpool ministry at its outset (1812) had he been willing to
acquiesce in the leadership of Castlereagh in the House of
Commons. This would have given him the direction of English
policy in those critical years in which the Napoleonic empire was
broken up and European affairs rearranged by the powers at
Vienna. He lived to regret this as the greatest error of his
career. He was sufficiently humbled after four years to join the
government forces as president of the India board, resigning in
1820. In 1821, when on the point of going out to India, of which
he had been appointed governor-general, his prospects suddenly
changed. On the death of his rival, Castlereagh, Canning became
Foreign Secretary and leader of the Commons. The prize which he
had long schemed to secure, and had finally given up, suddenly
fell into his hand. Canning's mind could not but revert to the
lost opportunity of 1812. Not in a century would the Foreign
Minister again have a world to set in order. He wrote to a
friend, "Ten years 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 I say that for 'Europe' I shall be
desirous now and then to read 'England.'" The closing sentence
was the keynote of his policy. For years it had been customary
for representatives of the powers to treat all important matters
as "European questions," and England had become habituated to a
diplomacy which kept English interests in the background for the
sake of the commonweal of Europe--Europe and the Holy Alliance
being synonymous. "When Castlereagh," said Canning, "got among
princes and sovereigns at Vienna, he thought he could not be too
fine and complaisant."
When Canning began to represent England in her relations with
foreign countries, he found the Holy Alliance in full vigor. In
fact, the Czar, Kaiser, and King had just met at Laybach (1821)
and issued a manifesto declaring that "useful 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 vigor. They
have declared that, in respecting the rights and independence of
legitimate power, they regarded as legally null and disavowed by
the principles which constituted the public right of Europe, all
pretended reforms operated by revolt and open hostilities." In
plain terms the three monarchs, claiming to rule by divine
right, reasserted their determination to interfere in the
private affairs of any state to suppress movements which seemed
to their majesties to be revolutionary. The powers had already
acted according to this program in Piedmont and Naples, and were
preparing to interfere in behalf of the Bourbons in Spain, the
Spaniards in the revolted American republics, and the Turks in
Greece when Canning came to power. To the Congress of Verona,
where these and other questions were to be considered by the
powers, Canning sent Wellington to speak for England. In
accordance with his instructions the duke stood for non-
intervention. Europe had no business to restore the Bourbon to
the throne from which the nation had thrust him; on the same
principle Greece must be allowed to fight out her own cause with
the Turk; as for the Spanish-American colonies, why they were
already lost to Spain, and England had recognized them as
independent states. France undertook to do alone for the Spanish
monarch what the Holy Alliance wished to do in the name of
Europe. In this England acquiesced, but Russia's attempt to
second the French in their Spanish project by military support
was stopped by Canning's threat that such an act would only
result in England's making the Spanish cause her own. "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," says Hill. "The time for Areopagus and the like of
that," as Canning put it, "has gone by." And again, "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?" To bring his colleagues
around to his view, Canning showed them that the interference of
the Holy Alliance in the affairs of Ireland might be justified
upon the same grounds on which the argument for intervention in
Spain was based. The King, never too fond of the brilliant
commoner, whose presence in the ministry he considered scarcely
less than a personal affront, had the temerity to criticise the
policy which was so obnoxious to his fellow crowned heads. He
thought that the English recognition of Spanish-American
independence was as wicked as the French alliance in 1778 with
the insurgent English colonists under Washington. Canning's
recognition of Spanish-American independence was a sagacious
stroke. It not only gave strength to his contention that peoples
had a right to decide for themselves who should rule them,
without consulting the despots of Europe, but its timeliness was
masterly. Glorifying his own course in one of his most famous
Parliamentary orations, in December, 1826, he explained why he
had not joined the Spaniards in making armed resistance to the
French invasion. He said: "Is the Spain of the present day, the
Spain of which the statesmen of the time and William and Anne
were so much afraid? Is it, indeed, the nation whose puissance
was expected 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 which
excited the jealousies and alarmed the imaginations of our
ancestors. . . . If France conquered Spain, was it necessary in
order to avoid the consequences of that occupation that we
should blockade Cadiz? No, I looked another way: I sought the
material 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!"
Greece began her struggle for independence in 1821. The heroism
which her people displayed in their unequal battle with the
Turks attracted the attention and sympathy of many persons all
over the world, especially those who saw in the modern Greek the
representative of the race which had once been the intellectual
leader of Europe. The powers of the Holy Alliance, however, were
inclined to regard the outbreak with coldness, seeing in it a
fresh manifestation of the then growing disposition of European
peoples to rise against the tyranny of their anointed kings.
England held aloof from their conferences in regard to the
matter, trusting to their discordant interests to break up their
concert of action, since the Russian czar, as the head of the
Greek faith, might be counted upon in the long run to befriend
the Greeks, especially as such a step would carry the Russian
influence into the Balkan Peninsula and mark a full stride
toward Constantinople, then as now the goal of Russian ambition.
Canning employed Wellington to negotiate an agreement at St.
Petersburg for the rescue of Greece. Ultimately England, Russia,
and France signed a protocol which was to establish Greece as a
self-governing state, tributary to the Porte, but free in
matters of commerce and religion. In 1827 the three powers
demanded an armistice looking toward a treaty settlement, and
threatened to use force to compel a cessation of hostilities. The
Porte defied the powers, and his fleet having fired upon the
allied vessels, the battle of Navarino was precipitated in
October, 1827. The result was the expulsion of the Turks from
the country, and the early establishment of the complete
independence of the kingdom of Greece. Canning did not live to
see the consummation of his hopes in Greece. His health, which
had for several years been much enfeebled, gave way completely,
and on August 8, 1827, he died, at the age of fifty-seven. He
had then for six months held the highest office in the gift of
the nation.
In February, 1827, the illness of Lord Liverpool had made it
necessary to reorganize the cabinet and choose a new Prime
Minister. After much hesitation the King sent for Canning. Most
of his former colleagues declined to serve under him because he
was a professed pro-Catholic, and they were still of the opinion
that the Protestant constitution of England would be endangered
if the Irish demand for Roman Catholic emancipation should be
granted. Others were found to take the place of Wellington, Peel,
Eldon, and the other Tory leaders, and the Canning ministry got
under way, only to be abruptly halted at the grave. The remains
of the Prime Minister were deposited in Westminster Abbey, where
a statue by Chantry recalls his manly form and expressive
countenance.
Even in so slight a sketch as the foregoing, some characteristics
of the man stand forth. Canning's wit, while its mordancy cost
him many friends, distinguishes him among English statesmen. The
talent which had stood him in good stead as boy-editor of "The
Microcosm" at Eton, and which is to be seen in the slings and
arrows of "The Anti-Jacobin," he never quite lost. His pen was
always ready to dash off a scrap of lampooning verse, and
flashes of wit and extended passages of humor enlivened the
brilliant orations by means of which he explained and defended
his policies in Parliament. As an orator his speeches were of
exquisite polish, and the voice, gesture, countenance and entire
bodily presence of the speaker contributed to their tremendous
effect. There were not wanting those who criticised his oratory
as savoring more of the stage than the rostrum, but such persons
were aristocratic political opponents who would not let the
world forget that this man whose genius outshone them all was
the son of a third-rate actress. Be it said to Canning's credit
that he did not forget his mother, but made her comfort in her
declining days the object of his solicitous care.
Mr. Hill, whose study of Canning has been of great assistance in
the preparation of these pages, thus goes to the heart of his
foreign policy: "The principle which made Canning the antagonist
of the propaganda of French principles in Europe during the
early part of his political life made him during his later years
in an equal degree the antagonist of the principles of the Holy
Alliance which it is his great glory as a statesman to have
defeated. The Holy Alliance endeavored 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
present 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 develop according to
their native forces and genius, but constraining them to such
forms and confining 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 foreign
policy, which was for 'Europe' to read 'England,' and to 'get
rid of Areopagus and all that,' was sound and statesmanlike and
abundantly justified by its results."