THE CLOSE OF CANNING'S CAREER.
[Sidenote: 1820-30--Sir William Knighton]
The King was at first disposed to show some alarm at the bold policy of
Canning. George, to do him justice, was in general a lover of peace,
and for a while he did not see how the declarations of his Foreign
Minister could lead to anything less than an outbreak of war on the
part of the Continental sovereigns, who thus seemed to be challenged to
assert what they believed to be their rights. His doubt and dread took
the form of more or less concealed grumblings against Canning, and
efforts to induce his other ministers to make a common cause with him
against the adventurous Foreign Minister. Canning, however, saw that
the crisis which he had to face was one which makes a bold and resolute
policy, frankly avowed on the part of a strong Government, the best or
the only means of securing peace. He was able, after a while, to
impress his royal master with the justice of his belief, and the King
graciously received the envoy accredited to his Court on behalf of one
of the new American Republics. Then the rest of the work went on
smoothly, the lines of the new policy were laid down, and the
sovereigns of the Holy Alliance did not venture to transgress them.
The King was, at all times, much in the habit of attempting to make
encroachments on the proper domain of any minister who had the courage
and the strength to oppose him, and Canning had to endure a good deal
of interference of this kind. The Foreign Minister patiently and
steadfastly held his own, and George did not see his way to come to any
open rupture. The King found it hard to make up his mind to settle
down to the part of a purely constitutional sovereign. Perhaps the
part had not yet {47} been clearly enough evolved from the conditions
of the time, and George, even when he had the best intentions, was
always lapsing back into the way of his predecessors. George was a
great letter-writer. To adopt a modern phrase, he "fancied himself" as
a composer of State papers. It seems marvellous now that a man so lazy
by nature should have found the time to pen so many documents of the
kind. Perhaps even in the most commonplace ways of life we are often
compelled to wonder at the amount of work a man habitually lazy can
sometimes contrive to cram into his day's doings. George was now as
much addicted to indolence, to mere amusement, and to pleasures as he
had been during earlier seasons of his career. He was just as fond of
the society of his intimates and of all the pastimes and social
enjoyments in which he and they delighted. He had not reformed any of
his habits, and his growing years did not bring him any steady resolve
to apply himself to the actual business of his position. Yet he seemed
to be frequently inspired by fitful desires to display himself as the
genuine ruler of a State and to let his ministers know they must not
attempt to do without him.
One of the King's prime favorites was Sir William Knighton, who had
begun by being a physician, had made his way into Court circles, and
become the private and confidential adviser of the King. Sir William
Knighton had been appointed to the office of Keeper of the Royal Purse,
and in that capacity he had rendered much service to George by
endeavoring with skill and pertinacity to keep income and expenditure
on something more nearly approaching to a balance than had been the way
in former days. Knighton's was not exactly a State office and it gave
him no position among ministers, but the King constantly used him as a
go-between when he desired to have private dealings with any of his
recognized advisers, and Knighton was the recipient of his most
confidential communications. From the letters and memoranda which
belong to this time we are enabled to learn much of the real feelings
of King George towards some of his ministers, and to {48} understand
the difficulties with which Canning had to deal while endeavoring to
make his enlightened policy the accepted and recognized policy of
England.
[Sidenote: 1822-27--The war of Greek independence]
The condition of Greece began to be a serious trouble to the statesmen
of Europe. Greece was under the sway of the Sultan of Turkey, and its
people may fairly be described as in a state of chronic insurrection.
The Greeks, even in their lowest degree of national decadence, were far
too intelligent, too ready-witted, and too persevering ever to become
the mere slaves of an Ottoman ruler. There was something
inextinguishable in the national life of the country, and it seemed as
if no pressure of tyranny, no amount of humiliation, could make the
Greeks forget the history of their glorious days and the deeds of their
ancestry, or compel them to stifle, even for a season, their hopes of
national independence. A great struggle broke out against the Ottoman
rule, and it roused the passionate sympathy of the lovers of freedom
all over the world. Byron threw his whole soul into the cause, and
stirred the hearts of his countrymen by his appeals on behalf of the
Greek struggle for independence. Numbers of brave Englishmen gladly
risked their lives to help the Greeks. Lord Cochrane, who was
afterwards described as the last of the English sea-kings, rushed over
to Greece to give his genius and his daring to the help of the Greeks
in their struggle against overwhelming odds. A speech of Lord John
Russell's which he delivered in the House of Commons within the hearing
of living men described with admirable effect the enthusiasm which was
aroused in England for the cause of Greece and the efforts which were
openly made even by members of the ruling class to raise money and to
send out soldiers and sailors to enable the Greeks to hold their own
against the Ottoman enemy. Many Englishmen bearing historic names
joined with Byron and Cochrane in giving their personal help to the
struggling Greeks, and indeed from every civilized country in the world
such volunteers poured in to stand by Bozzaris and Kanaris in their
desperate fight for the rescue of Greece. The odds, however, were
heavily against the Greeks. Their {49} supply of arms, ammunition, and
general commissariat for the field was poor and inadequate, and they
were sadly wanting in drill and organization. Splendid feats of
bravery were displayed on land and on sea, but it seemed only too
certain that if the Greeks were left to their own resources, or even if
they were not sustained by the open support of some great foreign
State, the Ottoman Power must triumph before long.
The best part of the war on the side of Turkey was carried on by
Ibrahim Pasha, the adopted son of Mehemet Ali, who ruled over Egypt as
a vassal sovereign to the Sultan of Turkey. Ibrahim Pasha had great
military capacity; he was full of energy, resource, and perseverance,
and the Turkish Sultan could not have had a better man to undertake the
task of conducting the campaign. The sympathies of Russia went
strongly with the Greeks, or perhaps it might be more correct to say
that the policy of Russia was directed against the Turks. At that
time, as in later days, the public opinion of Western Europe was not
always certain whether the movements of Russian statesmanship were
governed more by the desire to strengthen Greece or by the desire to
weaken Turkey. Canning had always been a sympathizer with the cause of
Greece. In his early days his sympathy had taken poetic form, and now
at last it had an opportunity of assuming a more practical shape. He
would have wished well to any effort made by Russia for the
emancipation of Greece, but he feared that if the effort were to be
left to Russia alone the result might be a great European war, and his
policy was above all things a policy of peace. His idea was to form an
alliance which should exercise so commanding an influence as to render
any prolonged resistance impossible. He succeeded in impressing his
ideas and his arguments so effectively upon the Governments of France
and Russia as to induce them to enter into a treaty with England for
the avowed purpose of watching events in Eastern Europe, endeavoring to
keep the conduct of the war within the limits of humanity, and bringing
it to as early a close as possible.
{50}
[Sidenote: 1824--Death of Lord Byron]
The combined fleets of the three Powers were sent into the
Mediterranean for the purpose of watching the movements of the Turkish
and Egyptian fleets, which were threatening the shores of Greece. Sir
Edward Codrington, the British Admiral, was in command of the
expedition, and his instructions enjoined on him, in the usual official
way, the necessity of caution and circumspection in all his movements.
Something happened which brought the policy of caution to a speedy end.
A report, which found some credit at the time, gave out that Sir Edward
Codrington had received an unofficial hint that there was no necessity
for carrying caution too far; but, however the event may have been
brought about, it is certain that a collision did take place between
the allied fleets and those which were championing the authority of the
Sultan, and the result was that the Turkish and Egyptian war vessels
were destroyed. This was the battle of Navarino, which was afterwards
described in the language of British authority as "an untoward event."
Untoward, in fact, it was not, for the purposes which Canning had in
view, because it put an end to all the resistance of the Ottoman Power,
and the independence of Greece as a self-governing nation was
established, and recognized. We have been somewhat anticipating events
in order not to break up the story of the Greek struggle for
independence, but it has to be said that Canning did not live to see
the success of his own policy. Before the battle of Navarino had been
fought, the career of the great statesman had come to an end. We shall
have to retrace our steps, for there is much still left untold in the
story of Canning's career.
That struggle for Greek independence will always be remembered in the
history of English literature. It cost England the life of one of her
greatest modern poets. Lord Byron died of fever in the swamps of
Missolonghi on April 19, 1824, not long after he had left the Greek
Islands to conduct his part of the campaign on the mainland of Greece.
It was not his good fortune to die sword in hand fighting on the
battle-field for the cause which he loved so well. It was not his good
fortune even to have had a {51} chance of doing much of a soldier's
work in that cause. There can be no doubt that if he had been graced
with opportunity he would have shown that he had a leader's capacity as
well as a soldier's courage--that, as Fortinbras says of Hamlet, "He
was likely had he been put on to have proved most royally." He had
only completed his thirty-sixth year shortly before his death, and the
poem in which he commemorated his birthday can never be read without
feelings of genuine emotion. His death created a profound sensation,
not only in England, but all through the civilized world. Not long
since we were all favored with an opportunity of hearing how the boy,
afterwards to be famous as Alfred Tennyson, was thrilled by the news of
Byron's death, and how it seemed to him to be like the ending of the
world. The passion of partisanship for and against Byron as a poet and
as a man has long since died away, and indeed it might perhaps be said
that the reaction which, for a time, followed the outburst of his fame
has spent itself as well. It may be taken now as the common judgment
of the world that Byron was one of the great forces of modern poetry,
and that his political sympathies sometimes had, as well as his poetic
efforts, the inspiration of genius to guide them.
We must now return to the career of Canning as we left it at the time
when he had made his great declaration of policy with regard to the
revolted colonies of Spain on the American shores, and when he was as
yet engaged in shaping the policy which was destined to end in the
emancipation of Greece. There were questions of home government coming
more and more to the front every day, which much disturbed the mind of
King George, and made the business of keeping an Administration
together more and more difficult for his advisers. The financial
policy of the country had been gradually undergoing a change, owing to
the foresight and enlightenment of some few among English statesmen.
Lord Liverpool, to do him justice, was always a man of somewhat
advanced views on questions of finance, although an inveterate Tory in
all that related to popular representation and freedom of speech.
Canning and his {52} friend William Huskisson were leading the way in
the movement towards an enlightened financial system. Huskisson had
done more than any other man, with the exception of Canning himself, to
improve the systems of taxation. What may perhaps be called the
scientific principle in the raising of revenue was only in process of
development, and to many statesmen no better idea of increasing
supplies seemed to have occurred than the simple plan of increasing the
rate of custom or excise duty on the first article of general
consumption which came under notice. Huskisson represented the new
ideas, and put them into action whenever he was allowed a fair chance
of making such an experiment. He had often held administrative office,
had been Secretary of the Treasury, President of the Board of Trade,
and Secretary for the Colonies, and had accomplished the removal of
many restrictions on the commercial dealings of the colonies with
foreign countries and the reduction of many antiquated and embarrassing
import duties.
[Sidenote: 1770-1830--Daniel O'Connell]
Canning and Huskisson were always close friends and often ministerial
colleagues, and they two may be said to have led the way towards the
system of free trade to which the time had not yet come for Robert Peel
to give his complete adhesion. The great question of electoral reform
was coming up, and Charles Grey and Henry Brougham were among its most
conspicuous leaders. Canning did not take to Parliamentary reform,
although he was what might be described as an advanced Liberal on most
other questions of national importance. The Duke of Wellington was
strongly opposed to any proposals for a change in the Parliamentary
system, and this was one of the few great questions on which Canning
and he were in habitual agreement. Then there was the still more
pressing question of political equality for the Catholics of the three
kingdoms. Lord John Russell succeeded later on in carrying the repeal
of the Test and Corporation Acts which precluded Protestant Dissenters
from holding political or municipal office, but the attempt to obtain
the rights of equal citizenship for subjects of the King who belonged
{53} to the Church of Rome had to encounter much greater difficulties.
As might easily be expected, Ireland became the main battle-field of
this struggle. We have already recorded the fact that Pitt had been
greatly assisted in passing the Act of Union between Great Britain and
Ireland and abolishing Grattan's Parliament by the hopes which he held
out that the union of the legislatures would be followed by a complete
measure of Catholic emancipation. George the Third refused point-blank
to give his assent to any such measure, or even to listen to any
proposal for its introduction, declaring again and again that his
coronation oath absolutely forbade him to entertain an idea of the
kind. In the end, as we have seen, Pitt gave in and undertook never
again to worry the mind of his conscientious sovereign by any talk
about relief to George the Third's Roman Catholic subjects. But it
soon became evident that in this as in other instances the resolve of
the most headstrong monarch, and the promise of the most yielding Prime
Minister, cannot always induce a population to put up passively with a
manifest grievance. In Ireland, where six out of every seven of the
people belonged to the Church of Rome, and where the demand for
Catholic Emancipation had long been championed by the greatest and the
most patriotic of Protestant Irishmen, it was utterly impossible that
any King and any minister could impose submission on such a question.
By the time at which we have now arrived the Catholics of Ireland had
found a political leader of their own faith.
Daniel O'Connell was undoubtedly one of the greatest advocates a
popular cause has ever had in modern times. He was an Irishman who had
become one of the most successful advocates in the Irish law courts,
and as a popular orator he had no rival in his own country. He had
made himself the leader in Ireland of the movement for Catholic
Emancipation, and he had kindled an enthusiasm there which any English
statesman of ordinary intelligence and foresight might easily have seen
it would be impossible to extinguish so long as there was a struggle to
be fought. {54} Canning had always been in favor of Catholic
Emancipation. Lord Liverpool was, of course, entirely opposed to it,
and almost until the last the Duke of Wellington held out against it.
George the Fourth, for all his earlier associations with Fox and
Sheridan, declared himself now to have inherited to the full his
father's indomitable conscientious objection to any measure of Catholic
Emancipation. George seemed, in fact, to have suddenly become filled
with a passionate fervor of Protestant piety when any one talked to him
about political equality for his Catholic subjects. He declared again
and again that no earthly consideration could induce him to fall away
from the religious convictions of his father on this subject, and the
coronation oath had again become, to use Erskine's satirical phrase,
"one of the four orders of the State." When reading some of George's
letters and discourses on the subject, it is almost impossible not to
believe that he really must have fancied himself in earnest when he
made such protestations. In private life he frequently delivered long
speeches, sometimes with astonishing fluency, sometimes with occasional
interruptions of stammering, in vindication of his hostility to any
proposal for Catholic Emancipation.
[Sidenote: 1827--Lord Liverpool's successor]
In the common language of the political world of that time the members
of a Government who opposed the Catholic claims were called Protestant
ministers, and the members in favor of the Catholic claims were
described as Catholic ministers. In fact, it has had to be explained,
for the sake of clearness, by some recent writers, that the word
"Catholic" was constantly used in George the Fourth's time merely to
signify pro-Catholic. When Canning was spoken of as a Catholic
statesman there was not the least idea of describing him as a member of
the Church of Rome, and, indeed, the words "Roman Catholic" hardly come
up in the controversies of those days. When Mr. Lecky spoke during a
recent Parliamentary debate of Catholics and Protestants, he was
gravely rebuked by some divines of the Established Church who were
under the impression that he was in some way or other truckling to the
{55} claims of the Papacy when he used the word "Catholic" to describe
the worshippers in the Church of Rome. Mr. Lecky was put to the
trouble of explaining that he used the words "Protestant" and
"Catholic" in the ordinary significance given to them during long
generations of political controversy.
A crisis was suddenly brought about by the illness of Lord Liverpool.
The Protestant statesman was stricken down by an attack which for a
time deprived him of consciousness, and even after his partial recovery
left him in a state which made it clear to all his friends that his
work as an administrator was done. There was no hope whatever of his
resuming official work, and the question which mainly occupied the mind
of the King and of those around him was not what was to become of Lord
Liverpool, but whom it would be most convenient for the King to appoint
as his successor. Naturally every eye was turned on Canning, whether
in hope or in fear. As Lord Palmerston said of himself many years
later, so it might be said of Canning, he was the "inevitable man."
The whole civilized world was filled with his fame. His course of
policy had made England stronger than she had ever been since the death
of the younger Pitt. Even King George could not venture to believe in
the possibility of passing him over, and King George's chief objection
to him was found in the fact that Canning was in favor of the Catholic
claims. George thought the matter over a few days, consulted Lord
Eldon and other advisers, and found that nobody could inspire him with
any real hope of being able to form an enduring Ministry without
Canning.
Then the King sent for Canning, and Canning made his own course quite
clear. He came to the point at once. He assumed that the great
difficulty was to be found in the pressure of the Catholic question,
and he advised the King to form a Ministry of his own way of thinking
on that subject and to do the best he could. The King, however,
explained that it would be futile for him to think that any Ministry so
composed could carry on the work of administration just then, and he
gave Canning many {56} assurances of his own entire approval of his
foreign policy, and declared that no one knew better than he did how
much the power of England had increased with Continental States since
Canning had obtained the conduct of her foreign affairs. Thus urged,
Canning consented to undertake the formation of a Ministry, but he did
so on the express condition that he should not only have the King's
full confidence and be free to take his own course, but that he should
be known to hold such a position and to have the absolute authority of
the sovereign to sustain him. Canning's mind was, in fact, clearly
made up. He would either be a real Prime Minister, or he would have no
place in the new Administration, and would become once again an
independent member. There was nothing else to be done, and the King
gave Canning full authority to make his own arrangements.
[Sidenote: 1827--Defection among Canning's supporters]
The task which Canning had nominally undertaken was the reconstruction
of the Ministry, but no one knew better than he did that it really
amounted to the formation of a new Ministry. Canning was well aware
that the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel would not consent to
serve under him in any Administration. The Duke of Wellington was at
this time entirely opposed to any recognition of the Catholic claims,
and, more than that, he had never been in favor of the principles of
foreign policy adopted and proclaimed by Canning. Between the two men,
indeed, there was very little political sympathy, and Canning had got
it into his mind, rightly or wrongly, that the Duke of Wellington had
done his best to disparage him and to weaken his authority as Foreign
Minister. Sir Robert Peel occupied a somewhat different position. He,
too, was opposed to the Catholic claims; but he was a statesman of a
far higher order than the Duke of Wellington, and it might always
safely be assumed of him that he would rightly estimate the force of
public opinion, and that when a great movement of political reform had
proved itself to be irresistible Peel would never encourage a policy of
futile resistance.
Peel's attitude is well described in the admirable life of {57} George
Canning published by Mr. Frank Harrison Hill in 1887. "Peel," says Mr.
Hill, "did not believe in governing against Parliamentary and public
opinion." "To him the art of government was the measurement of social
forces, and the adaptation of policy to their direction and intensity.
When it was clear to him that a thing must be done, and that his help
was essential to the doing of it, his duty was plainly marked out." Up
to this time, however, Peel did not see that the Catholic question had
reached such a stage, and he probably did not believe that it would
ever reach such a stage. He had opposed Catholic claims thus far
whenever the opportunity arose, and he could not undertake to serve
under a Prime Minister who was openly in favor of recognizing those
claims. We shall have to tell, before long, in the course of this
history, how Peel came to see that Canning was right in his policy, and
how he came to be the Prime Minister by whom it was carried to success,
and how he brought the Duke of Wellington along with him. But at the
time which we have now reached Peel still believed his own policy on
the subject of Roman Catholic Emancipation to be the rightful policy
for the guidance of the sovereign and the State, and he therefore found
it impossible to serve in the new Administration. Five other members
of the existing Government, besides Sir Robert Peel, resigned their
places on the same grounds. One was, of course, the Duke of
Wellington, and another was Lord Chancellor Eldon. Some influential
peers who were not members of the Government made it known that they
could not give their support to any Administration which admitted the
possibility of recognizing the Catholic claims.
Canning's heart might well have sunk within him for a time when he
found himself abandoned by such colleagues and thrown over by such
supporters. He actually waited upon the King, and asked his permission
to give up the undertaking for the formation of a new Ministry. The
King, however, probably felt that he had gone too far in his support of
Canning to draw back at such a moment. It is very likely that he was
displeased by the pertinacity of {58} the resistance which men like
Wellington and Peel and Eldon offered to any act of policy approved by
him, and he had undoubtedly by this time come to have a strong faith,
not only in Canning's capacity, but also in Canning's good fortune.
Whatever may have been his chief inspiration, he certainly had an
opportune season of enlightenment, and he refused to allow Canning to
withdraw from the task assigned to him. Accordingly Canning became
Prime Minister, and united in his own person the offices of First Lord
of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
[Sidenote: 1827--Canning and Lord Grey]
Sir John Copley, raised to the peerage under the title of Lord
Lyndhurst, became Lord Chancellor in succession to Lord Eldon, and the
House of Lords thus obtained a member who was destined to be one of its
foremost orators, to maintain a rivalry in Parliamentary debate with
Brougham and the great Tory orator and leader, Lord Derby, and to be
listened to with admiration by men still living, who are proud to
remember that they heard some of his great speeches. It may be
observed that Lord Eldon, whose retirement made way for Lord Lyndhurst,
had been Lord Chancellor for twenty-six years, with the exception of
one year when he was out of office. Huskisson became Treasurer of the
Navy and President of the Board of Trade in the new Administration.
Lord Palmerston was Secretary at War, and Frederick Robinson, now made
Lord Goderich, who was in thorough sympathy with Canning and Huskisson
on questions of financial policy, was Colonial and War Secretary, the
latter office according to the arrangements of that time a position
having quite different functions from those of the Secretary of War.
The arrangements for the new Ministry were completed in April, 1827.
Canning had now reached the highest point of his career. His policy
had already been marked out for him, for England, and for Europe. The
treaty between England, France, and Russia for the protection of
Greece, which became a formal instrument after his accession to the
office of Prime Minister, was the result of the efforts which he had
made before Lord Liverpool's sudden illness {59} led to the break-up of
the Liverpool Administration. Canning had little time left him to turn
his new and great position to account. Fame, as Mr. Hill well says,
was a sucked orange to George Canning when he accepted the office of
Prime Minister.
The difficulties against which the new Ministry had to contend were
many and great. Canning had the support of such Whigs as Brougham in
the House of Commons, but in the House of Lords he had many powerful
opponents, and the influence of the House of Lords then counted for
more than it does at present. In the House of Lords, too, Lord Grey
bitterly and pertinaciously opposed him. Grey was then one of the
leading advocates of Parliamentary reform, and Canning could not see
his way to ally himself with the Parliamentary reformers. Lord Grey,
moreover, seems to have distrusted the sincerity of Canning's support
of Catholic emancipation, a distrust for which no possible reason can
be suggested; and, indeed, Grey would appear to have had a feeling of
personal dislike to the great statesman. Accordingly he made several
attacks on Canning and Canning's policy in the House of Lords, and Grey
was an eloquent speaker, whose style as well as his character carried
command with it. Canning was a man of singularly sensitive nature.
Like many other brilliant humorists and satirists, he was somewhat
thin-skinned and very quick of temper. He could bear a brilliant and
even a splendid part in the Parliamentary battle, but it was a pain to
him to endure in silence when he had no chance of making a retort. The
attacks of Lord Grey exasperated him beyond measure, and it is believed
that he had at one time a strong inclination to accept a peerage and
take a seat in the House of Lords, thereby withdrawing forever from the
inspiriting battle-ground of the House of Commons for the mere sake of
having an opportunity of replying to the attacks of Lord Grey, and
measuring his strength against that of the great Whig leader. The
fates, however, denied to Canning any chance of making this curious
anticlimax in his great political career. His health had always been
more or less delicate, and he was {60} never very careful or sparing in
the use of his physical powers. He was intensely nervous by
constitution, and was liable to all manner of nervous seizures and
maladies. In the early days of 1827 he caught a severe cold while
attending the public funeral of the Duke of York in the Chapel Royal,
Windsor.
[Sidenote: 1827--Death of Canning]
The Duke of York was the second son of George the Third, and for some
time had been regarded as heir-presumptive to the crown. The Duke's
public career was in almost every way ignoble. He had proved himself
an utterly incapable commander, although a good War Office
administrator, and his personal character was about on a level with his
military capacity. His death in January, 1827, may be said to have had
two serious consequences at least--it made the Duke of Clarence the
next heir to the crown, and it brought on Canning the severe cold from
which he never recovered. It may be mentioned here, although the fact
is of little political importance, that Canning when he became Prime
Minister made the Duke of Clarence Lord High Admiral. The office was
probably bestowed as a token of Canning's gratitude to the King who had
stood by him, not indeed to the last, but at the last. It certainly
could not have been given because of any conviction in Canning's mind
that the Duke of Clarence was likely to render signal benefit to the
royal navy, to the State, or to the country by his services in such an
office.
Canning seemed for a while to rally from the cold which he had caught
at the Duke of York's funeral, but the months of incessant anxiety
which followed cast too heavy a burden on his shattered nerves and
feeble physical frame. It was hoped by his friends that the
adjournment of the Houses of Parliament, which took place after the
Ministry had been formed, might give him rest enough from official work
to allow him to repair his strength. But Canning's was not a nature
which admitted of rest. The happy faculty which he had once possessed
of getting easily to sleep when the day's work was done had long since
deserted him, and of late he took his official cares to bed with him,
and they kept him long awake. The early {61} summer of 1827 brought
him no improvement, and his friends already began to fear for the
worst. He suffered from intense agonies of nervous pain, and the
agonies seemed to grow worse and worse with each return. The Duke of
Devonshire offered him the use of a summer residence which he had at
Chiswick, and Canning gladly accepted the offer. It was remarked at
the time by some of his friends that an evil omen hung over this summer
retreat. The former Duke of Devonshire, father of Canning's friend,
had offered the same villa as a temporary retreat to Charles James Fox;
the offer was accepted by him, and Fox actually died in the bedroom
which was now occupied by Canning.
The omen soon made good its warning. Canning gradually sank under the
influence of his fatal illness. He said to a friend that during three
days he had suffered more pain than all that had been compressed into
his life up to that time, and we know that his was a frame which was
always liable to acute pain. He sank and sank, and on August 7 he
talked for the last time coherently and composedly to those who were
around him. Then he met his approaching death with a resigned and
cheerful spirit, and his latest words showed that he knew where to
repose his trust for the great change which was so near. Shortly
before four o'clock on the morning of August 8, 1827, the struggle was
over and the great statesman was at rest. Even at that early hour the
villa was surrounded by a large crowd of anxious watchers, who could
not leave the grounds until they heard the last tidings that were to
come from the sick-chamber. The funeral of Canning in Westminster
Abbey, although it was in name a private ceremonial, was followed by a
throng of sorrowing admirers, among whom were princes and nobles,
statesmen and prelates, politicians of all orders, and men and women of
all ranks down to the very poorest, who thus bore their spontaneous
tribute to the services and the memory of the great Prime Minister, and
expressed in the only way left to them their sense of the loss which
his country and the cause of peace and freedom had sustained by his
death.
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[Sidenote: 1827--Canning and the English ministers]
Canning had only just completed his fifty-seventh year when his career
came to a close. He died before his old friend and colleague whose
sudden illness had left open to him the place of Prime Minister, for
Lord Liverpool did not die until December 4 of the following year. The
place of Canning in English history is more clear to us now than it was
to the world even when the anxious crowd was watching round the villa
at Chiswick and when the throng followed his remains to Westminster
Abbey. He was, as we have already said, the founder of that system of
foreign policy which English statesmanship has professed ever since his
time. His was that doctrine of conditional non-intervention for which,
in later days, men like John Stuart Mill contended as the doctrine
which ought to be the governing principle of a great council of
European States, if such could be established. Canning's idea was not
that England should proclaim such a principle of non-intervention as
that which Cobden and Bright, and other men equally sincere and
patriotic, endeavored to impress on public opinion at a later day.
Canning's principle was that England should not intervene even on the
right side of any Continental struggle in which she had no direct
concern, unless some other State equally free from any direct share in
the controversy were making preparation to intervene on the wrong side.
Then, according to his doctrine, England was bound to say to the
interposing State: "If you, an outsider to this controversy, are making
up your mind to intervene on what we believe to be the wrong side, then
it may become our duty to intervene on what we believe to be the right
side." It was in accordance with this principle that Canning prevailed
upon the Governments of France and Russia to enter into that engagement
with England which secured the independence of Greece, as it was in
accordance with this principle that he had made the proclamation of
policy which secured the independence of the Spanish-American colonies,
and thus called in the New World to redress the balance of the Old.
Canning must, on the whole, be ranked among great Liberal statesmen,
although there were some passages in {63} his career which showed that
he had not advanced quite so far in Liberal principles as some of the
statesmen of his own day. It is hard now to understand how such a man
could have stood out against the principle of Parliamentary reform and
popular suffrage, and could have resisted the efforts to give full
rights of citizenship to the members of dissenting denominations. It
is especially hard to understand why a man who was in favor of
abolishing religious disqualifications in the case of Roman Catholics
should have thought it right to maintain them in the case of Protestant
Dissenters. The explanation of this latter inconsistency may be found,
perhaps, in the assumption that when Canning thought of the grievance
to Roman Catholics he had in his mind the grievances to the Roman
Catholics of Ireland, a separate country with a nationality and
traditions of her own, and a country in which the vast majority of the
population belonged to the one religious faith. He may have thought
that the English Protestant Dissenters who did not see their way to
class themselves with the Protestants of the English State Church had
not so distinct a claim to the recognition of their grievance. It may
seem strange that a mind like Canning's could have been beguiled from
the acceptance of a great principle by a curious distinction of this
kind, but it must be remembered that down to a much later day many of
the professed supporters of religious equality contended for some
limitation of the principle where political privileges were concerned,
and that only in our own time has admission to the House of Commons
been left open to the professors of every religious faith, and even to
those who profess no religious faith at all. So far as Parliamentary
reform in the ordinary sense of the words is concerned, we may feel
quite sure that if Canning had lived a few years longer his mind would
have accepted the growth of public opinion and the evidences which
justified that growth, and he would not have been found among the
unteachable opponents of popular suffrage and a well-adjusted
Parliamentary representation.
As a financial reformer he was distinctly in advance of {64} his time,
and even such men as Sir Robert Peel only followed slowly in the path
which Canning and Huskisson had opened. Canning's fame as a
Parliamentary orator is now well assured. He has been unduly praised,
and he has been unduly disparaged. He has been described as the
greatest Parliamentary orator since the days of Bolingbroke, and he has
been described as a brilliant and theatric declaimer who never rose to
the height of genuine political oratory. The common judgment of
educated men now regards him as only inferior, if inferior at all, to
the two Pitts and Fox among great Parliamentary orators, and the rival
of any others belonging to his own, or an earlier, or a later day in
the history of the English Parliament. Of him it may fairly be said
that his career made an era in England's political life, and that the
great principles which he asserted are still guiding the country even
at this hour.
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