The device he adopted for this object was disinterring, or saying

he had disinterred, the bones of Thomas Paine, whom he had formerly

assailed as “the greatest disgrace of mankind,” and now declared to be

“the great enlightener of the human race,” and carrying these bones

over to England as the relics of a patron saint, under whose auspices

he was to carry on his future political career.

Now, Paine had been considered the enemy of kingly government and the

Christian religion in his time, and had greatly occupied the attention

of Cobbett, who had styled him “an infamous and atrocious miscreant,”

but he had never been a man of great weight or note in our country;

many of the existing generation scarcely knew his name, and those who

did felt but a very vague retrospective interest in his career. In vain

Cobbett celebrated him as “an unflinching advocate for the curtailment

of aristocratical power,” and “the boldest champion of popular

rights.” In vain he gave it clearly to be understood that Paine did

not believe a word of the Old Testament or the New; nobody, in spite

of Cobbett’s damning encomiums, would care about Paine, or consider

a box of old bones as anything but a bad joke. So that after vainly

offering locks of hair or any particle of the defunct and exhumed

atheist and Republican at a low price, considering the value of the

relics, he let the matter drop; and, rubbing his hands and chuckling

with that peculiar sardonic smile which I well remember, began to treat

the affair as the world did, and the inestimable fragments of the

disinterred Quaker suddenly disappeared, and were never heard of more.

But though his stage trick had failed to give him importance, his

sterling unmistakable talent and unflagging energy were sufficient to

secure him from insignificance. Cobbett in England, carrying on his

_Register_, charlatan as he might be, unreliable as he had become, was

still a personage and a power. He supplied a sort of writing which

every one read, and which no one else wrote or could write. People had

no confidence in him as a politician, but, in spite of themselves,

they were under his charm as an author. He was not, however, satisfied

with this; he now pretended to play a higher part than he had hitherto

attempted. In his own estimate of his abilities--and perhaps he did not

over-rate them--his talent as an orator might, under cultivation and

practice, become equal to that which he never failed to display as a

pamphleteer.

A seat in the House of Commons had become then the great object of

his ambition, and with his usual coolness, which might, perhaps, not

unadvisedly be termed impudence, he told his admirers that the first

thing they had to do, if they wanted reform, was to subscribe 5000_l._,

and place the sum in his hands, to be spent as he might think proper,

and without giving an account of it to any person. “One meeting,” he

says, arguing this question--“one meeting subscribing 5000_l._ will be

worth fifty meetings of 50,000 men.”

On the dissolution of Parliament, at the demise of George III., he

pursues the subject. “To you”--he is speaking to his partisans--“I do

and must look for support in my public efforts. As far as the press can

go, I want no assistance. Aided by my sons, I have already made the

ferocious cowards of the London press sneak into silence. But there is

a larger range--a more advantageous ground to stand on, and that is

the House of Commons. A great effect on the public mind I have already

produced, but that is nothing to the effect I should produce in only

the next session of June in the House of Commons; yet there I cannot be

without your assistance.”

Coventry was the place fixed on as that which should have the honour

of returning Cobbett to the House of Commons. Nor was the place

badly chosen. In no town in England is the class of operatives more

powerful, and by this class it was not unnatural to expect that he

might be elected. The leading men, however, amongst the operatives,

whilst admiring Cobbett, did not respect him. The Goodes and the

Pooles--men whom I remember in my time--said in his day, “He is a man

who will assuredly make good speeches, but nobody can tell what he will

speak in favour of, or what he will speak about. That he will say and

prove that Cobbett is a very clever fellow, we may be pretty sure; but

with respect to every other subject there is no knowing what he will

say or prove.”

Nor did the story of Paine and his bones do Cobbett any service with

the Coventry electors. Some considered his conduct in this affair

impious, others ludicrous. “I say, Cobbett, where are the old Quaker’s

bones?” was a question which his most enthusiastic admirers heard put

with an uncomfortable sensation.

He puffed himself in vain. His attempt to enter the great national

council was this time a dead failure, and clearly indicated that though

he might boast of enthusiastic partisans, he had not as yet obtained

the esteem of an intelligent public. This, however, did not prevent

his announcing not very long afterwards that bronze medals, which

judges thought did justice to his physiognomy, might be had for a pound

apiece--a price which he thought low, considering the article. The

medals, however, in spite of their artistic value, and the intrinsic

merit of the person they represented, were not considered a bargain;

and some of Mr. Cobbett’s most devoted friends observed that they had

had already enough of his bronze. This was preparatory to his starting

to contest Preston (1826). But he was no better treated there than

at Coventry, being the last on the poll, though as usual perfectly

satisfied with himself, notwithstanding a rather remarkable pamphlet

got up by a rival candidate, Mr. Wood, which placed side by side his

many inconsistencies.

Mr. Huish, in a work called “Memoirs of Cobbett,” published in 1836,

states that this singular man now appeared in a new character that

required no constituents; coming forth “as a vendor of meat, and weekly

assuring his readers that there never was such mutton, such beef, or

such veal, as that which might be seen in his windows, an assurance

which continued uninterruptedly,” says this author, “until one

inauspicious day, when it was replaced by the announcement of William

Cobbett, butcher, at Kensington, having become a bankrupt.”[107] But

this story, though told thus circumstantially (I have not, for the

sake of brevity, copied the exact words, but in all respects their

meaning), though generally repeated, and apparently confirmed by

other contemporaneous writers, is incorrect; and we are not to count

amongst Cobbett’s eccentricities that of cutting up carcases as well as

reputations.

IV.

But whatever the other pursuits Cobbett had indulged in since his

return to England, none had interfered with those which his literary

talents suggested to him.

“A Work on Cottage Economy,” a Volume of Sermons, “The Woodlands,”

“Paper against Gold,” “The Rural Rides,” “The Protestant Reformation,”

were all published between the years 1820 and 1826. His “Rural Rides,”

indeed, are amongst his best compositions. No one ever described the

country as he did. Everything he says about it is real. You see the dew

on the grass, the fragrance comes fresh to you from the flowers; you

fancy yourself jogging down the green lane, with the gipsy camp under

the hedge, as the sun is rising; you learn the pursuits and pleasures

of the country from a man who has been all his life practically engaged

in the one, and keenly enjoying the other, and who sees everything he

talks to you of with the eye of the poet and the farmer.

“The History of the Protestant Reformation” turned out a more important

production than the author probably anticipated--for his chief aim

seems to have been to volunteer a contemptuous defiance to all the

religious and popular feelings in England. The work, however, was

taken up by the Catholics, translated into various languages, and

widely circulated throughout Europe. The author’s great satisfaction

seems to consist in calling Queen Elizabeth, “Bloody Queen Bess,”

and Mary, “Good Queen Mary,” and he, doubtless, brought forward much

that could be said against the one, and in favour of the other, which

Protestant writers had kept back; still his two volumes are not to be

regarded as a serious history, but rather as a party pamphlet, and

no more racy and eloquent party pamphlet was ever written. I quote a

passage of which those who do not accept the argument may admire the

composition:

“Nor must we by any means overlook the effects of these institutions

(monastic) on the mere face of the country. That man must be low and

mean of soul who is insensible to all feeling of pride in the noble

edifices of his country. Love of country, that variety of feelings

which altogether constitute what we properly call patriotism, consist

in part of the admiration of, and veneration for, ancient and

magnificent proofs of skill and opulence. The monastics built as well

as wrote for posterity. The never-dying nature of their institutions

set aside in all their undertakings every calculation as to time and

age. Whether they built or planted, they set the generous example of

providing for the pleasure, the honour, the wealth, and greatness of

generations upon generations yet unborn. They executed everything in

the very best manner; their gardens, fishponds, farms, were as near

perfection as they could make them; in the whole of their economy

they set an example tending to make the country beautiful, to make it

an object of pride with the people, and to make the nation truly and

permanently great.

“Go into any county and survey, even at this day, the ruins of its,

perhaps, twenty abbeys and priories, and then ask yourself, ‘What have

we in exchange for these?’ Go to the site of some once opulent convent.

Look at the cloister, now become in the hands of some rack-renter the

receptacle for dung, fodder, and fagot-wood. See the hall, where for

ages the widow, the orphan, the aged, and the stranger found a table

ready spread. See a bit of its walls now helping to make a cattle-shed,

the rest having been hauled away to build a workhouse. Recognise on

the side of a barn, a part of the once magnificent chapel; and, if

chained to the spot by your melancholy musings, you be admonished of

the approach of night by the voice of the screech-owl issuing from

those arches which once at the same hour resounded with the vespers

of the monk, and which have for seven hundred years been assailed by

storms and tempests in vain; if thus admonished of the necessity of

seeking food, shelter, and a bed, lift up your eyes and look at the

whitewashed and dry-rotten shed on the hill called the ‘Gentleman’s

House,’ and apprised of the ‘board wages’ and ‘spring guns,’ which

are the signs of his hospitality, turn your head, jog away from the

scene of former comfort and grandeur; and with old-English welcoming

in your mind, reach the nearest inn, and there, in a room, half-warmed

and half-lighted, with a reception precisely proportioned to the

presumed length of your purse, sit down and listen to an account of the

hypocritical pretences, the base motives, the tyrannical and bloody

means, under which, from which, and by which, the ruin you have been

witnessing was effected, and the hospitality you have lost was for ever

banished from the land.”

V.

The popularity of Mr. Canning had now become a grievous thorn in

Cobbett’s side. That of Mr. Robinson (afterwards Lord Goderich) had

at one time sorely galled him. But Mr. Robinson’s reputation was on

the wane; the reputation of Mr. Canning, on the contrary, rose higher

every day; and when that statesman, after being deserted by his

colleagues, stood forward as premier of a new government, being taken

up by Sir Francis Burdett, and many of the Whig leaders, Mr. Cobbett

set no bounds to his choler; and, in company with Mr. Hunt, made at a

Westminster dinner (in 1827) a foolish and ill-timed display of his

usual hostility to the popular feeling.

His character, in sooth, was never so low as about this period, and in

1828, when he offered himself as a candidate for the place of common

councilman (for Farringdon Without), he did not even find one person

who would propose him for the office.

It is needless to add that he was now an utterly soured and

disappointed man, and in this state the year 1830 found him. The close

of that year was more full of melancholy presage for England than

perhaps any which the oldest man then alive could remember. The success

of the insurrection at Paris had shaken the political foundations

of every state in Europe. Scarcely a courier arrived without the

bulletin of a revolution. The minds of the intelligent classes were

excited; they expected, and perhaps wished for, some great movement

at home, analogous to those movements which a general enthusiasm

was producing on the Continent. The minds of the lower classes were

brutalized by the effects of a Poor Law which had taught them that

idleness was more profitable than labour, prostitution than chastity,

bad conduct, in short, than good. Consequently, there was on the one

hand a widely-spread cry for parliamentary reform, and on the other a

general rural insurrection. Amidst this state of things the ministry of

the Duke of Wellington retired, and Lord Grey’s, composed of somewhat

discordant materials, and with a doubtful parliamentary majority, took

its place. Fires blazed throughout the country; rumours of plots and

insurrections were rife, and the _Register_ appeared with an article

remarkable for its power, and which indirectly excited to incendiarism

and rebellion. The Attorney-General prosecuted it. I had then just

entered Parliament, and ventured to condemn the prosecution, not

because the article in question was blameless, but because I thought

that the period for newspaper prosecutions by government was gone by,

and that they only excited sympathy for the offender. I was not wrong

in that opinion; for the jury being unable to agree as to a verdict,

Cobbett walked triumphantly out of court, and having gained some credit

by his trial, was shortly afterwards returned to Parliament for Oldham,

being at the same time an unsuccessful candidate for Manchester.

The election, however, was less the effect of public esteem than of

private admiration, since the veteran journalist owed his success

mainly to the influence of a gentleman (Mr. Fielden) who had the

borough of Oldham pretty nearly under his control. Still, it was a

success, and not an inconsiderable one. The ploughboy, the private

of the 54th, after a variety of vicissitudes, had become a member

of the British Legislature. Nor for this had he bowed his knee to

any minister, nor served any party, nor administered with ambitious

interest to any popular feeling. His pen had been made to serve as a

double-edged sword, which smote alike Whig and Tory, Pitt and Fox,

Castlereagh and Tierney, Canning and Brougham, Wellington and Grey,

even Hunt and Waithman. He had sneered at education, at philosophy,

and at negro emancipation. He had assailed alike Catholicism and

Protestantism; he had respected few feelings that Englishmen respect.

Nevertheless, by force of character, by abilities to which he had

allowed the full swing of their inclination, he had at last cut his

way, unpatronized and poor, through conflicting opinions into the great

council chamber of the British nation. He was there, as he had been

through life, an isolated man. He owned no followers, and he was owned

by none. His years surpassed those of any member who ever came into

Parliament for the first time expecting to take an active part in it.

He was stout and hale for his time of life, but far over sixty, and

fast advancing towards three score years and ten.

It was an interesting thing to most men who saw him enter the House

to have palpably before them the real, living William Cobbett. The

generation amongst which he yet moved had grown up in awe of his name,

but few had ever seen the man who bore it.

The world had gone for years to the clubs, on Saturday evening, to find

itself lectured by him, abused by him; it had the greatest admiration

for his vigorous eloquence, the greatest dread of his scar-inflicting

lash; it had been living with him, intimate with him, as it were, but

it had not seen him.

I speak of the world’s majority; for a few persons had met him

at county and public meetings, at elections, and also in courts

of justice. But to most members of Parliament the elderly,

respectable-looking, red-faced gentleman, in a dust-coloured coat

and drab breeches with gaiters, was a strange and almost historical

curiosity. Tall and strongly built, but stooping, with sharp eyes,

a round and ruddy countenance, smallish features, and a peculiarly

cynical mouth, he realized pretty nearly the idea that might have

been formed about him. The manner of his speaking might also have

been anticipated. His style in writing was sarcastic and easy--such

it was not unnatural to suppose it might also be in addressing an

assembly; and this to a certain extent was the case. He was still

colloquial, bitter, with a dry, caustic, and rather drawling delivery,

and a rare manner of arguing with facts. To say that he spoke as well

as he wrote, would be to place him where he was not--among the most

effective orators of his time. He had not, as a speaker, the raciness

of diction, nor the happiness of illustration, by which he excels as

a writer. He wanted also some physical qualifications unnecessary

to the author, but necessary to the orator, and which he might as a

younger man have naturally possessed or easily acquired. In short, he

could not be at that time the powerful personage that he might have

been had he taken his seat on the benches where he was then sitting,

when many surrounding him were unknown--even unborn. Still, I know no

other instance of a man entering the House of Commons at his age, and

becoming at once an effective debater in it. Looking carelessly round

the assembly so new to him, with his usual self-confidence he spoke on

the first occasion that presented itself, proposing an amendment to the

Address; but this was not his happiest effort, and consequently created

disappointment. He soon, however, obliterated the failure, and became

rather a favourite with an audience which is only unforgiving when

bored.

It was still seen, moreover, that nothing daunted him; the murmurs,

the “Oh!” or more serious reprehension and censure, found him shaking

his head with his hands in his pockets, as cool and as defiant as

when he first stuck up the picture of King George in his shop window

at Philadelphia. He exhibited in Parliament, too, the same want of

tact, prudence, and truth; the same egotism, the same combativeness,

and the same reckless desire to struggle with received opinions, that

had marked him previously through life, and shattered his career into

glittering fragments, from which the world could never collect the

image, nor the practical utility of a whole.

A foolish and out-of-the-way motion, praying his Majesty to strike

Sir Robert Peel’s name off the list of the Privy Council, for having

proposed a return to cash payments in 1819. was his wildest effort and

most signal defeat, the House receiving Sir Robert, when he stood up in

his defence, with a loud burst of cheers, and voting in a majority of

298 to 4 in his favour.

Cobbett, however, was nothing abashed; for this motion was rather a

piece of fun, in his own way, than anything serious; and in reality

he was less angry with Sir Robert Peel, on account of his financial

measures in 1819, than on account of his being the most able speaker in

Parliament in 1833.

VI.

In the new Parliament elected in January 1835, and which met on the

19th February, Cobbett was again member for Oldham. But his health was

already much broken by the change of habits, the want of air, and the

confinement which weighs on a parliamentary life. He did not, however,

perceive this; it was not, indeed, his habit to perceive anything to

his own disadvantage. He continued his attendance, therefore, and was

in his usual place during the whole of the debate on the Marquis of

Chandos’s motion for a repeal of the Malt Tax, and would have spoken

in favour of the repeal but for a sudden attack of the throat, to

which it is said that he was subject. On the voting of Supplies, which

followed almost immediately afterwards, he again, notwithstanding his

indisposition, exerted himself, and on the 25th of May persisted in

voting and speaking in support of a motion on Agricultural Distress.

At last, he confessed he was knocked up, and retired to the country,

where for some little time he seemed restored. But on the night of the

11th of June, 1835, he was seized with a violent illness, and on the

two following days was considered in extreme danger by his medical

attendant. He then again rallied, and on Monday, the 15th, talked

(says his son in an account of his death, published on the 20th of

June), in a collected and sprightly manner, upon politics and farming,

“wishing for four days’ rain for the Cobbetts’ corn and root crops,”

and on Wednesday could remain no longer shut up from the fields, but

desired to be carried round the farm, and criticised the work which

had been done in his absence. In the night, however, he grew more and

more feeble, until it was evident (though he continued till within the

last half-hour to answer every question that was put to him) that his

agitated career was drawing to a close. At ten minutes after one P.M.

he shut his eyes as if to sleep, leant back, and was no more--an end

singularly peaceful for one whose life had been so full of toil and

turmoil.

The immediate cause of his death was water on the chest. He was buried,

according to his own desire, in a simple manner in the churchyard of

Farnham, in the same mould as that in which his father and grandfather

had been laid before him. His death struck people with surprise, for

few could remember the commencement of his course, and there had seemed

in it no middle and no decline; for though he went down to the grave an

old man, he was young in the path he had lately started upon. He left

a gap in the public mind which no one else could fill or attempt to

fill up, for his loss was not merely that of a man, but of a habit--of

a dose of strong drink which all of us had been taking for years, most

of us during our whole lives, and which it was impossible for any one

again to concoct so strongly, so strangely, with so much spice and

flavour, or with such a variety of ingredients. And there was this

peculiarity in the general regret--it extended to all persons. Whatever

a man’s talents, whatever a man’s opinions, he sought the _Register_

on the day of its appearance with eagerness, and read it with

amusement, partly, perhaps, if De la Rochefoucault is right, because,

whatever his party, he was sure to see his friends abused. But partly

also because he was certain to find, amidst a great many fictions and

abundance of impudence, some felicitous nickname, some excellent piece

of practical-looking argument, some capital expressions, and very often

some marvellously-fine writing,[108] all the finer for being carelessly

fine, and exhibiting whatever figure or sentiment it set forth, in the

simplest as well as the most striking dress. Cobbett himself, indeed,

said that “_his popularity was owing to his giving truth in clear

language_;” and his language always did leave his meaning as visible as

the most limpid stream leaves its bed. But as to its displaying truth,

that is a different matter, and would be utterly impossible, unless

truth has, at least, as many heads as the Hydra of fable; in which case

our author may claim the merit of having portrayed them all.

This, however, is to be remarked--he rarely abused that which was

falling or fallen, but generally that which was rising or uppermost.

He disinterred Paine when his memory was interred, and attacked him

as an impostor amongst those who hailed him as a prophet. In the heat

of the contest and cry against the Catholics--whom, when Mr. Pitt was

for emancipating them, he was for grinding into the dust--he calls the

Reformation a devastation, and pronounces the Protestant religion to

have been established by gibbets, racks, and ripping-knives. When all

London was yet rejoicing in Wellington hats and Wellington boots, he

asserts “that the celebrated victory of Waterloo had caused to England

more real shame, more real and substantial disgrace, more debt, more

distress amongst the middle class, and more misery amongst the working

class, more injuries of all kinds, than the kingdom could have ever

experienced by a hundred defeats, whether by sea or by land.” He had

a sort of itch for bespattering with mud everything that was popular,

and gilding everything that was odious. Mary Tudor was with him

“Merciful Queen Mary;” Elizabeth, as I have already observed, “Bloody

Queen Bess;” our Navy, “the swaggering Navy;” Napoleon, “a French

coxcomb;” Brougham, “a talking lawyer;” Canning, “a brazen defender of

corruptions.”

His praise or censure afforded a sort of test to be taken in an inverse

sense of the world’s opinion. He could not bear superiority of any

kind, or reconcile himself to its presence. He declined, it is said, to

insert quack puffs in his journal, merely, I believe, because he could

not bear to spread anybody’s notoriety but his own; while he told his

correspondents never to write under the name of subscriber--it sounded

too much like _master_. As for absurdity, nothing was too absurd

for him coolly and deliberately to assert: “The English government

most anxiously wished for Napoleon’s return to France.” “There would

have been no national debt and no paupers, if there had been no

Reformation.” “The population of England had not increased one single

soul since he was born.” Such are a few of the many paradoxes one could

cite from his writings, and which are now before me.

Neither did his coarseness know any bounds. He called a newspaper

a “cut-and-thrust weapon,” to be used without mercy or delicacy,

and never thought of anything but how he could strike the hardest.

“There’s a fine Congress-man for you! If any d----d rascally rotten

borough in the universe ever made such a choice as this (a Mr. Blair

MacClenachan), you’ll be bound to cut my throat, and suffer the _sans

culottes_ sovereigns of Philadelphia--the hob-snob snigger-snee-ers of

Germanstown--to kick me about in my blood till my corpse is as ugly

and disgusting as their living carcases are.” “Bark away, hell-hounds,

till you are suffocated in your own foam.” “This hatter turned painter

(Samuel F. Bradford), whose heart is as black and as foul as the liquid

in which he dabbles.”

“It is fair, also, to observe that this State (Pennsylvania) labours

under disadvantages in one respect that no other State does. Here is

precisely that climate which suits the vagabonds of Europe; here they

bask in summer, and lie curled up in winter, without fear of scorching

in one season, or freezing in the other. Accordingly, hither they come

in shoals, just roll themselves ashore, and begin to swear and poll

away as if they had been bred to the business from their infancy. She

has too unhappily acquired a reputation for the mildness or rather

the feebleness of her laws. There’s no gallows in Pennsylvania. These

glad tidings have rung through all the democratic club-rooms, all the

dark assemblies of traitors, all the dungeons and cells of England,

Scotland, and Ireland. Hence it is that we are overwhelmed with the

refuse, the sweeping, of these kingdoms, the offal of the jail and the

gibbet. Hence it is that we see so many faces that never looked comely

but in the pillory, limbs that are awkward out of chains, and necks

that seem made to be stretched.”

It would be difficult to put together more pithy sentences, or more

picturesque abuse than is set forth in the scurrilous extracts I have

been citing; yet Cobbett’s virulence could be conveyed in a more

delicate way whenever he thought proper:

“Since then, Citizen Barney is become a French commodore of two

frigates, and will rise probably to the rank of admiral, if contrary

winds do not blow him in the way of an enemy.”

His mode of commencing an attack also was often singularly effective

from its humour and personality: “He was a sly-looking fellow, with a

hard, slate-coloured countenance. He set out by blushing, and I may

leave any one to guess at the efforts that must be made to get a blush

through a skin like his.” Again: “Having thus settled the point of

controversy, give me leave to ask you, my sweet sleepy-eyed sir!”

The following picture is equal to anything ever sketched by Hogarth,

and is called “A Summary of Proceedings of Congress,” November, 1794:

“Never was a more ludicrous farce acted to a bursting audience. Madison

is a little bow-legged man, at once stiff and slender. His countenance

has that sour aspect, that conceited screw, which pride would willingly

mould into an expression of disdain, if it did not find the features

too skinny and too scanty for its purpose. His thin, sleek air, and the

niceness of his garments, are indicative of that economical cleanliness

which expostulates with the shoeboy and the washerwoman, which flies

from the danger of a gutter, and which boasts of wearing a shirt for

three days without rumpling the frill. In short, he has, take him

altogether, precisely the prim, mean, prig-like look of a corporal

mechanic, and were he ushered into your parlour, you would wonder why

he came without his measure and his shears. Such (and with a soul which

would disgrace any other tenement than that which contains it) is the

mortal who stood upon his legs, confidently predicting the overthrow

of the British monarchy, and anticipating the pleasure of feeding its

illustrious nobles with his oats.”

Again, let us fancy the following sentences, imitating what the

gentlemen of the United States call “stump speaking,” delivered with

suitable tone and gesture on the hustings: “The commercial connection

between this country (America) and Great Britain is as necessary as

that between the baker and the miller; while the connection between

America and France may be compared to that between the baker and

the milliner or toyman. France may furnish us with looking-glasses,

but without the aid of Britain we shall be ashamed to see ourselves

in them; unless the _sans culottes_ can persuade us that threadbare

beggary is--a beauty. France may deck the heads of our wives and

daughters (by the bye, she shan’t those of mine) with ribbons, gauze,

and powder; their ears with bobs, their cheeks with paint, and their

heels with gaudy parti-coloured silk, as rotten as the hearts of the

manufacturers; but Great Britain must keep warm their limbs and cover

their bodies. When the rain pours down, and washes the rose from the

cheek, when the bleak north-wester blows through the gauze, then it is

that we know our friends.”

Cobbett’s talent for fastening his claws into anything or any one,

by a word or an expression, and holding them down for scorn or up

to horror--a talent which, throughout this sketch, I have frequently

noticed--was unrivalled. “Prosperity Robinson,” “Œolus Canning,”

“The Bloody _Times_,” “the pink-nosed _Liverpool_,” “the unbaptized,

buttonless blackguards” (in which way he designated the disciples of

Penn),[109] were expressions with which he attached ridicule where he

could not fix reproach, and it is said that nothing was more teasing

to Lord Erskine than being constantly addressed by his second title of

“Baron Clackmannan.”

VII.

I have alluded, at the commencement of this sketch, to the fact that

if the life of Mackintosh was in contradiction to his instincts, and

forced to adapt itself to his wishes or ideas, that of Cobbett was

ruled by his instincts, to which all ideas and wishes were subordinate.

His inclinations were for bustle and strife, and he passed his whole

life in strife and bustle. This is why the sap and marrow of his

genius show themselves in every line he sent to the press. But at

the same time his career warns us how little talents of the highest

order, even when accompanied by the most unflagging industry, will do

for a man, if those talents and that industry are not disciplined by

stedfast principles and concentrated upon noble objects. It is not to

be understood, indeed, when I say that a man should follow his nature,

that I mean he should do so without sense or judgment; your natural

character is your force, but it is a force that you must regulate and

keep applied to the track on which the career it has chosen is to be

honourably run. I would not recommend a man with military propensities

to enter the church; I should say, “Be a soldier, but do not be a

military adventurer. Enlist under a lawful banner, and fight for a good

cause.”

Cobbett acknowledged no banner; and one cannot say, considering the

variety of doctrines he by turns adopted and discarded, that he

espoused any cause. Nor did he consider himself bound by any tie of

private or political friendship. As a beauty feels no gratitude for the

homage which she deems due to her charms, so Cobbett felt no gratitude

for the homage paid to his abilities. His idea of himself was that

which the barbarian entertains of his country. Cobbett was Cobbett’s

universe; and as he treated mankind, so mankind at last treated him.

They admired him as a myth, but they had no affection for him as a

person. His words were realities, his principles fictions.

It may indeed be contended that a predominant idea ran winding through

all the twistings and twinings of his career, connecting his different

inconsistencies together; and that this was “a hatred for tyranny.” “He

always took his stand,” say his defenders, “with the minority:” and

there is something in this assertion. But there is far less fun and

excitement in fighting a minority, with a large majority at one’s back,

than in coming out, at the head of a small and violent minority, to

defy and attack a body of greater power and of larger numbers. It was

this fun and excitement which, if I mistake not, were Cobbett’s main

inducements to take the side he took in all the contests he engaged

in, whether against the minister of the day, or against our favourite

daughter of the eighth Henry, who reigned some centuries before his

time. Still the tendency to combat against odds is always superior to

the tendency to cringe to them, and a weak cause is not unfrequently

made victorious by a bold assertion.

It must be added also, in his praise, that he is always a hearty

Englishman. He may vary in his opinions as to doctrines and as to men,

but he is ever for making England great, powerful, and prosperous--her

people healthy, brave, and free. He never falls into the error of

mistaking political economy for the whole of political science. He does

not say, “Be wealthy, make money, and care about nothing else.” He

advocates rural pursuits as invigorating to a population, although less

profitable than manufacturing. He desires to see Englishmen fit for war

as well as for peace. There is none of that puling primness about him

which marks the philosophers who would have a great nation, like a good

boy at a private school, fit for nothing but obedience and books. To

use a slang phrase, there was “a go” about him which, despite all his

charlatanism, all his eccentricities, kept up the national spirit, and

exhibited in this one of the highest merits of political writing. The

immense number of all his publications that sold immediately on their

appearance, sufficiently proves the wonderful popularity of his style;

and it is but just to admit that many of his writings were as useful as

popular.

A paper written in 1804, on the apprehended invasion, and entitled

“Important Considerations for the People of this Kingdom,” was placed

(the author being unknown) in manuscript before Mr. Addington, who

caused it to be printed and read from the pulpit in every parish

throughout the kingdom. For many years this paper was attributed to

other eminent men; and it was only when some one thought of attacking

Cobbett as an enemy of his country, that he confessed the authorship of

a pamphlet, to the patriotism of which every Englishman had paid homage.

Again, in 1816, the people of the northern and midland counties being

in great distress, attributed their calamities to machinery, and great

rioting and destruction of property was the consequence. Cobbett came

forward to stop these vulgar delusions. But he knew the nature of the

public mind. It was necessary, in order to divert it from one idea,

to give it another. So, he ridiculed the idea of distress proceeding

from machinery, and attributed it to misgovernment. Of his twopenny

pamphlet, called “A Letter to Journeymen and Labourers,” 30,000 copies

were sold in a week, and with such advantage that Lord Brougham, in

1831, asked permission to republish it. Much in his exaggerations and

contradictions is likewise to be set down to drollery rather than to

any serious design to deceive. I remember the late Lady Holland once

asking me if I did not think she sometimes said ill-natured things; and

on my acquiescing, she rejoined: “I don’t mean to burn any one, but

merely to poke the fire.” Cobbett liked to poke the fire, to make a

blaze; but in general--I will not say always--he thought more of sport

than of mischief.

At all events, this very spirit of change, of criticism, of

combativeness, is the spirit of journalism; and Cobbett was not only

this spirit embodied, but--and this renders his life so remarkable

in our history--he represented journalism, and fought the fight of

journalism against authority, when it was still a doubt which would

gain the day.

Let us not, indeed, forget the blind and uncalculating intolerance with

which the law struggled against opinion from 1809 to 1822. Writers

during this period were transported, imprisoned, and fined, without

limit or conscience; and just when government became more gentle to

legitimate newspapers, it engaged in a new conflict with unstamped

ones. No less than 500 vendors of these were imprisoned within six

years. The contest was one of life and death. Amidst the general din

of the battle, but high above all shouts more confused, was heard

Cobbett’s bold, bitter, scornful voice, cheering on the small but

determined band, which defied tyranny without employing force. The

failure of the last prosecution against the _Register_ was the general

failure of prosecutions against the Press, and may be said to have

closed the contest in which government lost power every time that it

made victims.

Such was Cobbett--such his career! I have only to add that, in his

family relations, this contentious man was kind and gentle. An

incomparable husband, an excellent father; and his sons--profiting by

an excellent education, and inheriting, not, perhaps, the marvellous

energies, but a great portion of the ability, of their father--carry

on with credit and respectability the name of a man, who, whatever

his faults, must be considered by every Englishman who loves our

literature, or studies our history, as one of the most remarkable

illustrations of his very remarkable time.

CANNING, THE BRILLIANT MAN.

PART I.

FROM BIRTH AND EDUCATION TO DUEL WITH LORD CASTLEREAGH.

Proper time for writing a biography.--Mr. Canning born

(1770).--Education at Eton and Oxford.--Early literary

performances.--Brought into Parliament by Mr. Pitt.--Politics

he espoused.--His commencement as a speaker.--Writes for the

_Anti-Jacobin_.--Quits office with Mr. Pitt.--Opposes Mr.

Addington.--Returns to office with Mr. Pitt.--Distinguishes

himself in opposition to “All the Talents.”--Becomes Minister

of Foreign Affairs on their fall.--Foreign policy.--Quarrel

with Lord Castlereagh, and duel.

I.

There is no period at which an eminent person is so little considered,

so much forgotten and disregarded, as during the few years succeeding

his decease. His name, no longer noised above that of others by the

busy zeal of his partisans, or the still more clamorous energies of his

opponents, drops away suddenly, as it were, from the mouths of men. To

his contemporaries he has ceased to be of importance--the most paltry

pretender to his place is of more;--while posterity does not exist for

him, until the dead are distinctly separated from the living; until the

times in which he lived, and the scenes in which he acted, have become

as a distant prospect from which the eye can at once single out from

amidst the mass of ordinary objects, those which were the memorials of

their epoch, and are to become the beacons of after-generations.

The French, who are as fond of putting philosophy into action as we are

coy of connecting theory with practice, marked out, at one moment, a

kind of intermediate space between the past and the present, the tomb

and the pantheon; but the interval of ten years, which they assigned

for separating the one from the other, is hardly sufficient for the

purpose.

We are, however, now arrived at the period that permits our considering

the subject of this memoir as a character in history which it is well

to describe without further procrastination. Every day, indeed, leaves

us fewer of those who remember the clearly-chiselled countenance

which the slouched hat only slightly concealed,--the lip satirically

curled,--the penetrating eye, peering along the Opposition benches,--of

the old parliamentary leader in the House of Commons. It is but here

and there that we find a survivor of the old day, to speak to us of the

singularly mellifluous and sonorous voice, the classical language--now

pointed into epigram, now elevated into poesy, now burning with

passion, now rich with humour--which curbed into still attention a

willing and long-broken audience.

The great changes of the last half-century have, moreover, created

such a new order of ideas and of society, that the years preceding

1830 appear as belonging to an antecedent century; and the fear now

is--not that we are too near, but that we are gliding away too far

from the events of that biography which I propose to sketch. And yet

he who undertakes the task of biographical delineation, should not be

wholly without the scope of the influences which coloured the career he

desires to sketch. The artist can hardly give the likeness of the face

he never saw, nor the writer speak vividly of events which are merely

known to him by tradition.

II.

It is with this feeling that I attempt to say something of a man,

the most eminent of a period at which the government of England was

passing, imperceptibly perhaps, but not slowly, from the hands of an

exclusive but enlightened aristocracy, into those of a middle class,

of which the mind, the energy, and the ambition had been gradually

developed, under the mixed influences of a war which had called forth

the resources, and of a peace which had tried the prosperity, of our

country;--a middle class which was growing up with an improved and

extended education, amidst stirring debates as to the height to which

the voice of public opinion should be allowed to raise itself, and the

latitude that should be given, in a singularly mixed constitution, to

its more democratic parts.

Mr. Canning was born on the 11th of April, 1770, and belonged to an

old and respectable family originally resident in Warwickshire.[110]

A branch of it, obtaining a grant of the manor of Garvagh, settled in

Ireland in the reign of James I., and from this branch Mr. Canning

descended; but the misfortunes of his parents placed him in a situation

below that which might have been expected from his birth.

His father, the eldest of three sons--George, Paul, and Stratford--was

disinherited for marrying a young lady (Miss Costello) without fortune;

and having some taste for literature, but doing nothing at the bar,

he died amidst the difficulties incidental to idle habits and elegant

tastes.

Mrs. Canning, left without resources, attempted the stage, but she had

no great talents for the theatrical profession, and never rose above

the rank of a middling actress. Her son thus fell under the care of

his uncle, Mr. Stratford Canning, a highly respectable merchant, and

an old Whig, much in the confidence of the leaders of the Whig party

and possessing considerable influence with them. A small inheritance

of 200_l._ or 300_l._ a year sufficed for the expenses of a liberal

education, and after passing through the regular ordeal of a private

school, young Canning was sent to Eton, and subsequently to Christ

Church, Oxford. At Eton no boy ever left behind him so many brilliant

recollections. Gay and high-spirited as a companion, clever and

laborious as a student, he obtained a following from his character,

and a reputation from his various successes. This reputation was the

greater from the schoolboy’s triumphs not being merely those of school.

Known and distinguished as “George Canning,” he was yet more known

and distinguished as the correspondent of “Gregory Griffin;”--such

being the name adopted by the fictitious editor of the _Microcosm_,

a publication in the style of the _Spectator_, and carried on solely

by Eton lads. In this publication, the graver prose of the young

orator was incorrect and inferior to that of one or two other juvenile

contributors, but some of his lighter productions were singularly

graceful, and it would be difficult to find anything of its kind

superior to a satirical commentary upon the epic merits of an old

ballad:

“The queen of hearts

She made some tarts

_All on a summer’s day_,” &c[111]

“I cannot leave this line,” says the witty commentator, “without

remarking, that one of the Scribleri, a descendant of the famous

Martinus, has expressed his suspicions of the text being corrupted

here, and proposes, instead of ‘All on,’ reading ‘Alone,’ alleging,

in the favour of this alteration, the effect of solitude in raising

the passions. But Hiccius Doctius, a High Dutch commentator, one

nevertheless well versed in British literature, in a note of his usual

length and learning, has confuted the arguments of Scriblerus. In

support of the present reading, he quotes a passage from a poem written

about the same period with our author’s, by the celebrated Johannes

Pastor (most commonly known as Jack Shepherd), entitled, ‘An Elegiac

Epistle to the Turnkey of Newgate,’ wherein the gentleman declares,

that, rather indeed in compliance with an old custom than to gratify

any particular wish of his own, he is going

“‘_All hanged_ for to be

Upon that fatal Tyburn tree.’

“Now, as nothing throws greater light on an author than the concurrence

of a contemporary writer, I am inclined to be of Hiccius’ opinion, and

to consider the ‘All’ as an elegant expletive, or, as he more aptly

phrases it, ‘elegans expletivum.’”

The other articles to which the boyish talent of the lad, destined

to be so famous, may lay claim, are designated in the will of the

supposed editor, Mr. Griffin (contained in the concluding number of the

_Microcosm_), which, amongst special bequests assigns to “Mr. George

Canning, now of the college of Eton, all my papers, essays, &c., signed

B.”

III.

It is needless to observe that an Eton education is more for the man

of the world than for the man of books. It teaches little in the way

of science or solid learning, but it excites emulation, encourages and

gratifies a love of fame, and prepares the youth for the competitions

of manhood. Whatever is dashing and showy gives pre-eminence in that

spirited little world from which have issued so many English statesmen.

It developed in Canning all his natural propensities. He was the show

boy at Montem days with master and student.

“Look, papa,--there, there;--that good-looking fellow is Canning--such

a clever chap, but a horrible Whig. By Jupiter, how he gives it to

Pitt!”

Nor was this wonderful. The youthful politician spent his holidays with

his uncle, who only saw Whigs; and then, what clever boy would not

have been charmed by the wit and rhetoric of Sheridan--by the burning

eloquence of Fox?

The same dispositions that had shown themselves at Eton, carried to

Oxford, produced the same distinctions. Sedulous at his studies, almost

Republican in his principles, the pride of his college, the glory of

his debating society, the intimate associate of the first young men in

birth, talents, and prospects, young Canning was thus early known as

the brilliant and promising young man of his day, and thought likely

to be one of the most distinguished of those intellectual gladiators

whom the great parties employed in their struggles for power; struggles

which seemed at the moment to disorder the administration of affairs,

but which, carried on with eloquence and ability in the face of the

nation, kept its attention alive to national interests, and could not

fail to diffuse throughout it a lofty spirit, and a sort of political

education.

IV.

From the University Canning went to Lincoln’s Inn. It does not appear,

however, that in taking to the study of the law he had any idea of

becoming a Lord Chancellor. There was nothing of severity in his plan

of life--he dined out with those who invited him, and his own little

room was at times modestly lit up for gatherings together of old

friends, who enjoyed new jokes, and amongst whom and for whom were

composed squibs, pamphlets, newspaper articles, in steady glorification

of school and college opinions, which the Oxonian, on quitting the

University, had no doubt the intention to sustain in the great battles

of party warfare.

But events were then beginning to make men’s convictions tremble under

them; and, with the increasing differences amongst veteran statesmen,

it was difficult to count on youthful recruits.

At all events, it is about this time that Mr. Canning’s political

career begins. It must be viewed in relation to the particular state of

society and government which then existed.

From the days of Queen Anne there had been a contest going on between

the two aristocratic factions, “Whig” and “Tory.” The principles

professed by either were frequently changed. The Tories, such as Sir

William Windham, under the guidance of Bolingbroke, often acting as

Reformers; and the Whigs, under Walpole, often acting as Conservatives.

The being in or out of place was in fact the chief difference between

the opposing candidates for office, though the Whigs generally passed

for being favourable to popular pretensions, and the Tories for being

favourable to Royal authority.

In the meantime public opinion, except on an occasional crisis when

the nation made itself heard, was the opinion of certain coteries, and

public men were the men of those coteries. It not unfrequently happened

that the most distinguished for ability were the most distinguished

for birth and fortune. But it was by no means necessary that it should

be so. The chiefs of the two conflicting armies sought to obtain

everywhere the best soldiers. Each had a certain number of commissions

to give away, or, in other words, of seats in Parliament to dispose of.

They who had the government in their hands could count from that fact

alone on thirty or forty. It matters little how these close boroughs

were created. Peers or gentlemen possessed them as simple property, or

as the effect of dominant local influence. The Treasury controlled them

as an effect of the patronage or employments which office placed in its

hands. A certain number were sold or let by their proprietors, and even

by the Administration; and in this manner men who had made fortunes

in our colonies or in trade, and were averse to a public canvass, and

without local landed influence, found their way into the great National

Council. They paid their 5000_l._ down, or their 1000_l._ a year, and

could generally, though not always, find a seat on such terms. But a

large portion of these convenient entries into the House of Commons

was kept open for distinguished young men, who gave themselves up to

public affairs as to a profession. A school or college reputation, an

able pamphlet, a club, or county meeting oration, pointed them out.

The minister, or great man who wished to be a minister, brought them

into Parliament. If they failed, they sank into insignificance; if they

succeeded, they worked during a certain time for the great men of the

day, and then became great men themselves.

This system had advantages, counterbalanced by defects, and gave to

England a set of trained and highly educated statesmen, generally

well informed on all national questions, strongly attached to party

combinations, connected by the ties of gratitude and patronage with the

higher classes, having a certain contempt for the middle: keenly alive

to the glory, the power, the greatness of the country, and sympathising

little with the habits and wants of the great masses of the people.

They had not a correct knowledge of the feelings and wants of the poor

man,--they understood and shared the feelings of the gentleman. Bread

might be dear or cheap, they cared little about it; a battle gained

or lost affected them more deeply. A mob might be massacred without

greatly exciting their compassion; but the loss of a great general or

of a great statesman they felt as a national calamity.

Such were the men who might fairly be called “political adventurers:”

a class to which we owe much of our political renown, much of our

reputation for political capacity, but which, in only rare instances,

won the public esteem or merited the popular affections. Such were our

political adventurers when Mr. Pitt sent for Mr. Canning, a scholar of

eminence and a young man of superior and shining abilities, and offered

him a seat in the House of Commons.

The following is the simple manner in which this interview is spoken of

by a biographer of Mr. Canning:[112]

“Mr. Pitt, through a private channel, communicated his desire to see

Mr. Canning; Mr. Canning of course complied. Mr. Pitt immediately

proceeded, on their meeting, to declare to Mr. Canning the object of

his requesting an interview with him, which was to state that he had

heard of Mr. Canning’s reputation as a scholar and a speaker, and that

if he concurred in the policy which the Government was then pursuing,

arrangements would be made to bring him into Parliament.”

The person to whom this offer was made accepted it; nor was this

surprising.

I have already said that events were about this period taking place,

that made men’s convictions tremble under them; and in fact the mob

rulers of Paris had in a few months so desecrated the name of Freedom,

that half of its ancient worshippers covered their faces with their

hands, and shuddered when it was pronounced.

But there were also other circumstances of a more personal nature,

which, now that young Canning had seriously to think of his entry into

public life, had, I have been assured, an influence on his resolutions.

The first incident, I was once told by Mr. John Allen, that disinclined

Mr. Canning (who had probably already some misgivings) to attach

himself irrevocably to the Whig camp, was the following one: Lord

Liverpool, then Mr. Jenkinson, had just made his appearance in the

House of Commons. His first speech was highly successful. “There is a

young friend of mine,” said Mr. Sheridan, “whom I soon hope to hear

answering the honourable gentleman who has just distinguished himself:

a contemporary whom he knows to possess talents not inferior to his

own, but whose principles, I trust, are very different from his.”

This allusion, however kindly meant, was disagreeable, said Mr. Allen,

to the youthful aspirant to public honours. It pledged him, as he

thought, prematurely; it brought him forward under the auspices of a

man, who, however distinguished as an individual, was not in a position

to be a patron. Other reflections, it is added, followed. The party

then in opposition possessed almost every man distinguished in public

life: a host of formidable competitors in the road to honour and

preferment, supposing preferment and honour to be attainable by talent.

But this was not all. The Whig party, then, as always, was essentially

an exclusive party; its preferments were concentrated on a clique,

which regarded all without it as its subordinates and instruments.

On the other side, the Prime Minister stood almost alone. He had

every office to bestow, and few candidates of any merit for official

employments. Haughty from temperament, and flushed with power, which he

had attained early and long exercised without control, he had not the

pride of rank, nor the aristocratic attachments for which high families

linked together are distinguished. His partisans and friends were his

own. He had elevated them for no other reason than that they were his.

By those to whom he had once shown favour he had always stood firm;

all who had followed had shared his fortunes; there can be no better

promise to adherents.

These were not explanations that Mr. Canning could make precisely to

the Whig leaders, but he had an affection for Mr. Sheridan, who had

always been kind to him, and by whom he did not wish to be thought

ungrateful. He sought, then, an interview with that good-natured

and gifted person. Lord Holland, Mr. Canning’s contemporary, was

present at it, and told me that nothing could be more respectful and

unreserved than the manner in which the ambitious young man gave his

reasons for the change he was prepared to make, or had made; nothing

more warm-hearted, unprejudiced, and frank, than the veteran orator’s

reception of his retiring _protégé’s_ confession: nor, indeed, could

Mr. Sheridan help feeling the application, when he was himself cited as

an example of the haughtiness with which “the great Whig Houses” looked

down on the lofty aspirations of mere genius. The conversation thus

alluded to took place a little before Mr. Pitt’s proposals were made,

but probably when they were expected. Mr. Canning, his views fairly

stated to the only person to whom he felt bound to give them, and his

seat in Parliament secured, placed himself in front of his old friends,

whom Colonel Fitz-Patrick avenged by the following couplet:

“The turning of coats so common is grown,

That no one would think to attack it;

But no case until now was so flagrantly known

Of a schoolboy turning his jacket.”

V.

There was little justice in Colonel Fitz-Patrick’s satire. Nine-tenths

of Mr. Fox’s partisans, old and young, were deserting his standard

when Mr. Canning quitted him. The cultivated mind of England was, as

it has been said in two or three of these sketches, against the line

which the Whig leader persisted to take with respect to the French

Revolution--even after its excesses; and it is easy to conceive that

the cause of Liberty and Fraternity should have become unfashionable

when these weird sisters were seen brandishing the knife, and dancing

round the guillotine. Admitting, however, the legitimacy of the horror

with which the assassins of the Committee of Public Safety inspired the

greater portion of educated Englishmen, it is still a question whether

England should have provoked their hostility; for, after the recall

of our ambassador and our undisguised intention of making war, the

Republic’s declaration of it was a matter of course.

“Where could be the morality,” said Mr. Pitt’s opponents, “of bringing

fresh calamities upon a land which so many calamities already

desolated? Where the policy of concentrating and consolidating so

formidable an internal system by an act of foreign aggression? And if

the struggle we then engaged in was in itself inhuman and impolitic,

what was to be said as to the time at which we entered upon it?

“The natural motives that might have suggested a French war, were--the

wish to save an unhappy monarch from an unjust and violent death; the

desire to subdue the arrogance of a set of miscreants who, before

they were prepared to execute the menace, threatened to overrun the

world with their principles and their arms. If these were our motives,

why not draw the sword, before the Sovereign whose life we wished to

protect had perished? Why defer our conflict with the French army

until, flushed with victory and threatened with execution in the event

of defeat, raw recruits were changed into disciplined and desperate

soldiers? Why reserve our defence of the unhappy Louis till he had

perished on the scaffold--our war against the French Republic until

the fear of the executioner and the love of glory had made a nation

unanimous in its defence? Success was possible when Prussia first

entered on the contest: it was impossible when we subsidized her to

continue it.”

The antagonists of the First Minister urged these arguments with

plausibility. His friends replied, “that Mr. Pitt had been originally

against all interference in French affairs; that the conflict was not

of his seeking; that the conduct of the French government and the

feelings of the English people had at last forced him into it; that he

had not wished to anticipate its necessity; but that if he had, the

minister of a free country cannot go to war at precisely the moment he

would select; he cannot guard against evils which the public itself

does not foresee. He must go with the public, or after it; and the

public mind in England had, like that of the Ministers, only become

convinced by degrees that peace was impossible.

“As to neutrality, if it could be observed when the objects at stake

were material, it could not be maintained when those objects were

moral, social, and religious.

“When new ideas were everywhere abroad, inflaming, agitating men’s

minds, these ideas were sure to find everywhere partisans or opponents,

and to attempt to moderate the zeal of one party merely gave power to

the violence of the other.

“It was necessary to excite the English people against France, in order

to prevent French principles, as they were then called, from spreading

and fixing themselves in England.”

Such was the language and such the opinions of many eminent men with

whom Mr. Canning was now associated, when, after a year’s preliminary

silence, he made his first speech in the House of Commons.

VI.

This first speech (January 31, 1794), like many first speeches of

men who have become eminent orators, was more or less a failure. The

subject was a subsidy to Sardinia, and the new member began with a

scoff at the idea of looking with a mere mercantile eye at the goodness

or badness of the bargain we were making. Such a scoff at economy,

uttered in an assembly which is the especial guardian of the public

purse, was injudicious. But the whole speech was bad; it possessed in

an eminent degree all the ordinary faults of the declamations of clever

young men. Its arguments were much too refined: its arrangement much

too systematic: cold, tedious, and unparliamentary, it would have been

twice as good if it had attempted half as much; for the great art in

speaking, as in writing, consists in knowing what should not be said or

written.

This instance of ill success did not, however, alienate the Premier;

for Mr. Pitt, haughty in all things, cared little for opinions which

he did not dictate. In 1795, therefore, the unsubdued favourite was

charged with the seconding of the address, and acquitted himself with

some spirit and effect.

The following passage may be quoted both for thought and expression:

“The next argument against peace is its insecurity; it would be the

mere name of peace, not a wholesome and refreshing repose, but a

feverish and troubled slumber, from which we should soon be roused

to fresh horrors and insults. What are the blessings of peace which

make it so desirable? What, but that it implies tranquil and secure

enjoyment of our homes? What, but that it will restore our seamen and

our soldiers, who have been fighting to preserve those homes, to a

share of that tranquillity and security? What, but that it will lessen

the expenses and alleviate the burdens of the people? What, but that it

explores some new channel of commercial intercourse, or reopens such

as war had destroyed? What, but that it renews some broken link of

amity, or forms some new attachment between nations, and softens the

asperities of hostility and hatred into kindness and conciliation and

reciprocal goodwill? And which of all these blessings can we hope to

obtain by a peace, under the present circumstances, with France? Can

we venture to restore to the loom or to the plough the brave men who

have fought our battles? Who can say how soon some fresh government may

not start up in France, which may feel it their inclination or their

interest to renew hostilities? The utmost we can hope for is a short,

delusive, and suspicious interval of armistice, without any material

diminution of expenditure; without security at home, or a chance

of purchasing it by exertions abroad; without any of the essential

blessings of peace, or any of the possible advantages of war: a state

of doubt and preparation such as will retain in itself all the causes

of jealousy to other states which, in the usual course of things,

produce remonstrances and (if these are answered unsatisfactorily)

war.”

VII.

In 1796, Parliament was dissolved, and Mr. Canning was returned

to Parliament this time for Wendover. He had just been named

Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; and it has been usual

to refer to this appointment as a proof of his early parliamentary

success. He owed the promotion, however, entirely to the Prime

Minister’s favour; for though his late speech, better than the

preceding one, had procured him some credit, there was still a careless

impertinence in his manner, and a classical pedantry in his style,

which were unsuitable to the taste of the House of Commons. Indeed, so

much had he to reform in his manner, that he now remained, by, as it is

said, Mr. Pitt’s advice, silent for three years, endeavouring during

this time to correct his faults and allow them to be forgotten.

It does not follow that he was idle. The _Anti-Jacobin_, started in

1797, under the editorship of Mr. Gifford, for the purpose which its

title indicates, was commenced at the instigation and with the support

of the old contributor to the _Microcosm_, and did more than any

parliamentary eloquence could have done in favour of the anti-Jacobin

cause.

“Must wit,” says Mr. Canning, who had now to contend against the most

accomplished humorists of his day, “be found alone on falsehood’s

side?” and having established himself as the champion of “Truth,” he

brought, no doubt, very useful and very brilliant arms to her service.

The verses of “New Morality,” spirited, exaggerated, polished, and

virulent, satisfied the hatred without offending the taste (which does

not seem to have been at that time very refined) of those classes who

looked upon our neighbours with almost as much hatred and disgust as

were displayed in the verses of the young poet; while the “Friend of

Humanity and the Knife-grinder”--almost too trite to be quoted, and

yet too excellent to be omitted--will long remain one of the happiest

efforts of satire in our language:

“IMITATION SAPPHICS.

“THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GRINDER.

“_Friend of Humanity_:

“Needy Knife-grinder, whither are you going?

Rough is the road,--your wheel is out of order;

Bleak blows the blast,--your hat has got a hole in’t,

So have your breeches.

“Weary Knife-grinder, little think the proud ones,

Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike

Road, what hard work ’tis crying all day, ‘Knives and

Scissors to grind, O!’

“Tell me, Knife-grinder, how came you to grind knives?

Did some rich man tyrannically use you?

Was it the squire, or parson of the parish,

Or the attorney?

“Was it the squire, for killing of his game? or

Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining?

Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little

All in a lawsuit?

“Have you not read the ‘Rights of Man,’ by Tom Paine?

Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids,

Ready to fall as soon as you have told your

Pitiful story.

“_Knife-Grinder_:

“Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, sir;

Only last night, a-drinking at the ‘Chequers,’

These poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were

Torn in a scuffle.

“Constables came up for to take me into

Custody; they took me before the justice:

Justice Aldmixon put me in the parish

Stocks for a vagrant.

“I should be glad to drink your honour’s health in

A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence;

But, for my part, I never love to meddle

With politics, sir.

“_Friend of Humanity_:

“I give thee sixpence? I’ll see thee damn’d first.

Wretch, whom no sense of wrong can rouse to vengeance!

Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,

Spiritless outcast!”

[_Exit, kicking over the wheel, in a

fit of universal philanthropy._]

An instance of the readiness of Mr. Canning’s Muse may be here related.

When Frere had completed the first part of the “Loves of the

Triangles,” he exultingly read over the following lines to Canning, and

defied him to improve upon them:

“Lo! where the chimney’s sooty tube ascends,

The fair Trochais from the corner bends!

Her coal-black eyes upturned, incessant mark

The eddying smoke, quick flame, and volant spark;

Mark with quick ken, where flashing in between,

Her much-loved _smoke-jack_ glimmers thro’ the scene;

Mark how his various parts together tend,

Point to one purpose,--in one object end;

The spiral grooves in smooth meanders flow,

Drags the long chain, the polished axles glow,

While slowly circumvolves the piece of beef below.”

Canning took the pen, and added:

“The conscious fire with bickering radiance burns,

Eyes the rich joint, and roasts it as it turns.”

These two lines are now blended with the original text, and constitute,

it is said, the only flaw in Frere’s title to the sole authorship of

the first part of the poem, from which I have been quoting: the second

and third parts were both by Canning.

In prose I cite the report of a peroration by Mr. Erskine, whose

egotism could hardly be caricatured, at a meeting of the Friends of

Freedom.

“Mr. Erskine concluded by recapitulating, in a strain of agonizing and

impressive eloquence, the several more prominent heads of his speech:

He had been a soldier, and a sailor, and had a son at Winchester

School; he had been called by special retainers, during the summer,

into many different and distant parts of the country, travelling

chiefly in post-chaises; he felt himself called upon to declare that

his poor faculties were at the service of his country--of the free and

enlightened part of it, at least. He stood here as a man; he stood

in the eye, indeed in the hand, of God--to whom (in the presence of

the company, and waiters) he solemnly appealed; he was of noble,

perhaps royal blood; he had a house at Hampstead; was convinced of

the necessity of a thorough and radical reform; his pamphlet had gone

through thirty editions, skipping alternately the odd and even numbers;

he loved the Constitution, to which he would cling and grapple; and he

was clothed with the infirmities of man’s nature; he would apply to the

present French rulers (particularly _Barras_ and _Reubel_) the words of

the poet:

“‘_Be to their faults a little blind;_

_Be to their virtues ever kind,_

_Let all their ways be unconfined,_

_And clap the padlock on their mind!_’

and for these reasons, thanking the gentlemen who had done him the

honour to drink his health, he should propose ‘_Merlin_, the late

Minister of Justice, under the Directory, and Trial by Jury.’”

I refer those who wish to know more of the literary merits of Mr.

Canning to an article, July, 1858, in the “Edinburgh Review,” in which

article the accomplished writer has exhausted the subject he undertook

to treat.

Nor was Mr. Canning’s reputation for wit, at this time, gained solely

by his pen. Living with few, though much the fashion, who could be

more charming in his own accomplished circle--when, the pleasant

thought lighting up his eye, playing about his mouth, and giving an

indescribable charm to his handsome countenance, he abandoned himself

to the inspiration of some happy moment, and planned a practical joke,

or quizzed an incorrigible bore, or related some humorous anecdote?

No one’s society was so much prized by associates; no one’s talents

so highly estimated by friends; and his fame in the drawing-room,

or at the dining-table, was at least as brilliant as that which he

subsequently acquired in the senate.

This, indeed, was the epoch in his life at which perhaps he had the

most real enjoyment; for though he felt conscious that his success in

Parliament had not yet been complete, the feeling of certainty that it

would become so, now began to dawn upon him, and the triumphs that his

ardent nature anticipated went probably even beyond those which his

maturer career accomplished.

VIII.

On the 11th of December, 1798, Mr. Tierney made a motion respecting

peace with the French Republic. The negotiations at Lille, never

cordially entered into, were at this time broken off. We had formed

an alliance with Russia and the Porte, and were about to carry on the

struggle with new energies, though certainly not under very encouraging

auspices. The coalition of 1792-3 was completely broken up. Prussia

had for three years been at peace with France; nor had the Cabinet of

Vienna seen any objection to signing a treaty which, disgracefully to

all parties, sacrificed the remains of Venetian liberty.

France, in the meanwhile, distracted at home, had, notwithstanding,

enlarged her empire by Belgium, Luxemburg, Nice, Savoy, Piedmont,

Genoa, Milan, and Holland. There were many arguments to use in

favour of abandoning the struggle we had entered upon: the uncertain

friendship of our allies; the increased force of our enemy; and the

exhausting drain we were maintaining upon our own resources. In six

years we had added one hundred and fifty millions to our debt, by which

had been created the necessity of adding to our annual burdens eight

millions, a sum equal to the whole of our expenditure when George III.

came to the throne.

But the misfortunes which attend an expensive contest, though they

necessarily irritate and dissatisfy a people with war, are not always

to be considered irrefutable arguments in favour of peace. This

formed the substance of the speech which Mr. Canning delivered on Mr.

Tierney’s motion. Defective in argument, it was effective in delivery,

and added considerably to his reputation as a speaker.

In the meantime, our sworn enmity to France and to French principles,

encouraged an ardent inclination to both in those whom we had offended

or misgoverned. The Directory in Paris and the discontented in Ireland

had, therefore, formed a natural if not a legitimate league. The result

was an Irish rebellion, artfully planned, for a long time unbetrayed,

and which, but for late treachery and singular accidents, would not

have been easily overcome.

Mr. Pitt, taking advantage of the fears of a separation between Great

Britain and the sister kingdom, which this rebellion, notwithstanding

its prompt and fortunate suppression, had created, announced, in a

message from the Crown, a desire still further to incorporate and

consolidate the two kingdoms. Whatever may have been the result of the

Irish Union, the promises under which it was passed having been so long

denied, so unhappily broken, there was certainly at this period reason

to suppose that it would afford the means of instituting a fairer and

less partial system of government than that under which Ireland had

long been suffering.

As for the wail which was then set up, and which has since been

re-awakened, for the independent Legislature which was merged into that

of Great Britain, the facility with which it was purchased is the best

answer which can be given to the assertions made of its value.

The part, therefore, that Mr. Canning adopted on this question (if with

sincere and honest views of conferring the rights of citizenship on our

Irish Catholic fellow-subjects, and not with the intention, which there

is no reason to presume, of gaining their goodwill and then betraying

their confidence) is one highly honourable to an English statesman. But

another question now arose. That Catholic Emancipation was frequently

promised as the natural result of the Union, has never been disputed.

As such promises were made plainly and openly in Parliament, the King

could not be supposed ignorant of them. Why, then, if his Majesty had

such insuperable objections to their fulfilment, did he allow of their

being made? And, on the other hand, how could his Ministers compromise

their characters by holding out as a lure to a large majority of the

Irish people a benefit which they had no security for being able to

concede? Mr. Canning’s language is not ambiguous:

“Here, then, are two parties in opposition to each other, who agree

in one common opinion; and surely if any middle term can be found to

assuage their animosities, and to heal their discords, and to reconcile

their jarring interests, it should be eagerly and instantly seized and

applied. That an union is that middle term, appears the more probable

when we recollect that the Popery code took its rise after a proposal

for an union, which proposal came from Ireland, but which was rejected

by the British government. This rejection produced the Popery code.

_If an union were therefore acceded to, the Popery code would be

unnecessary._ I say, if it was in consequence of the rejection of an

union at a former period that the laws against Popery were enacted,

it is fair to conclude that an union would render a similar code

unnecessary--that an union would satisfy the friends of the Protestant

ascendency, without passing new laws against the Catholics, and without

maintaining those which are yet in force.”[113]

The Union, nevertheless, was carried; the mention of Catholic

Emancipation, in spite of the language just quoted, forbidden. Mr. Pitt

(in 1801) retired.

IX.

There will always be a mystery hanging over the transaction to which

I have just referred,--a mystery difficult to explain in a manner

entirely satisfactory to the character of the King and his minister.

One can only presume that the King was willing to let the Union be

carried, on the strength of the Premier’s promises, which he did not

think it necessary to gainsay until he was asked to carry them into

effect; and that the Minister counted upon the important service he

would have rendered if the great measure he was bringing forward became

law, for the influence that would be necessary to make his promises

valid. It cannot be denied that each acted with a certain want of

candour towards the other unbecoming their respective positions,

and that both behaved unfairly towards Ireland. Mr. Pitt sought

to give consistency to his conduct by resigning; but he failed in

convincing the public of his sincerity, because he was supposed to have

recommended Mr. Addington, then Speaker of the House of Commons, and

the son of a Doctor Addington, who had been the King’s physician (to

which circumstance the son owed a nickname he could never shake off),

as his successor; and Mr. Addington was only remarkable for not being

remarkable either for his qualities or for his defects, being just that

staid, sober sort of man who, respectable in the chair of the House of

Commons, would be almost ridiculous in leading its debates.

Thus an appointment which did not seem serious, perplexed and did not

satisfy the public mind; more especially as the seceding minister

engaged himself to support the new Premier, notwithstanding their

difference of opinion on the very question on which the former had

left office. The public did not know then so clearly as it does now

that the King, who through his whole life seems to have been on the

brink of insanity, was then in a state of mind that rendered madness

certain, if the question of the Catholics, on which he had morbid and

peculiar notions, was persistingly pressed upon him; and that Mr. Pitt

thus, rightly or wrongly, thought it was his duty, after sacrificing

office, to stop short of driving the master he had so long served into

the gloom of despair. This, however, was a motive that could not be

avowed, and consequently every sort of conjecture became current. Was

the arrangement made on an understanding with the King, and would Mr.

Pitt shortly resume the place he had quitted? Did Mr. Pitt, if there

was no such arrangement, really mean to retain so incapable a person as

Mr. Addington, at so important a time, at the head of the Government of

England, or was his assistance given merely for the moment, with the

intention of subsequently withdrawing it?

At first the aid offered to the new Premier by the old one was

effective and ostentatious; but a great portion of the Opposition

began also to support Mr. Addington, intending in this way to allure

him into an independence which, as they imagined, would irritate his

haughty friend, and separate the _protégé_ from the patron. The device

was successful. The Prime Minister soon began to entertain a high

opinion of his own individual importance, Mr. Pitt to feel sore at

being treated as a simple official follower of the Government, which he

had expected unofficially to command, and ere long he retired almost

entirely from Parliament. He did not, however, acknowledge the least

desire to return to power.

In this state of things, the conduct of Mr. Canning seemed likely to

be the same as Mr. Pitt’s, but it was not so. He did not, even for a

moment, affect any disposition to share the partiality which the late

First Lord of the Treasury began by testifying for the new one. Sitting

in Parliament for a borough for which he had been elected through

government influence, his conduct for a moment was fettered; but

obtaining, at the earliest opportunity, a new seat (in 1802) by his own

means--that is, by his own money--he then went without scruple into the

most violent opposition.

His constant efforts to induce Achilles to take up his spear and issue

from his tent, are recorded by Lord Malmesbury, and though not wholly

disagreeable to his discontented chief, were not always pleasing to

him. He liked, no doubt, to be pointed out as the only man who could

direct successfully the destinies of England, and enjoyed jokes

levelled at the dull gentleman who had become all at once enamoured

of his own capacity; but he thought his dashing and indiscreet

adherent passed the bounds of good taste and decorum in his attacks,

and he disliked being pressed to come forward before he himself felt

convinced that the time was ripe for his doing so. Too strong a show

of reluctance might, he knew, discourage his friends; too ready an

acquiescence compromise his dignity, and give an advantage to his

enemies.

He foresaw, indeed, better than any one, all the difficulties that lay

in his path. The unwillingness of the Sovereign to exchange a minister

with whom he was at his ease, for a minister of whom he always stood

in awe; the unbending character of Lord Grenville, with whom he must

of necessity associate, if he formed any government that could last,

and who, nevertheless, rendered every difficulty in a government more

difficult by his uncompromising character, his stately bearing, and

his many personal engagements and connections. More than all, perhaps,

he felt creeping over him what his friends did not see and would not

believe--that premature decrepitude which consigned him, in the prime

of life, to the infirmities of age. Thus, though he felt restless at

being deprived of the only employment to which he was accustomed, he

was not very eager about a prompt reinstatement in it, and preferred

waiting until an absolute necessity for his services, and a crisis, on

which he always counted, should float him again into Downing Street,

over many obstacles against which his bark might otherwise be wrecked.

His real feelings, however, were matter of surmise; many people, not

unnaturally, imagined that Mr. Canning represented them; and the

energetic partisan, mixing with the world, derived no small importance

from his well-known intimacy with the statesman in moody retirement.

His marriage, moreover, at this time with Miss Joan Scott, one of the

daughters of General Scott, and co-heiress with her sisters, Lady Moray

and Lady Titchfield, brought him both wealth and connection, and gave a

solidity to his position which it did not previously possess.

X.

In the meantime the Addington administration went on, its policy

necessarily partaking of the timid and half-earnest character of the

man directing it. Unequal to the burden and the responsibility of

war, he had concocted a peace, but a peace of the character which Mr.

Canning had previously described: “a peace without security and without

honour:” a peace which, while it required some firmness to decline,

demanded more to maintain, since the country was as certain to be at

first pleased with it as to be soon ashamed of it. No administration

would have had the boldness to surrender Malta; few would have been so

weak as to promise the cession.

Indeed, almost immediately after concluding this halcyon peace, we

find the Secretary of War speaking of “these times of difficulty and

danger,” and demanding “an increased military establishment.” Nor was

it long before an additional 10,000 men were also demanded for our

naval service. On both these occasions Mr. Canning, supporting the

demand of the Minister, attacked the Administration; and after stating

his reasons for being in favour of the especial measure proposed, burst

out at once into an eloquent exhibition of the reasons for his general

opposition:

“I do think that this is a time when the administration of the

Government ought to be in the ablest and fittest hands. I do not think

the hands in which it is now placed answer to that description. I

do not pretend to conceal in what quarter I think that fitness most

eminently resides. I do not subscribe to the doctrines which have been

advanced, that, in times like the present, the fitness of individuals

for their political situations is no part of the consideration to

which a Member of Parliament may fairly turn his attention. I know not

a more solemn or important duty that a Member of Parliament can have

to discharge than by giving, at fit seasons, a free opinion upon the

character and qualities of public men. _Away with the cant of measures,

not men--the idle supposition that it is the harness, and not the

horse, that draws the chariot along._ No, sir; if the comparison must

be made--if the distinction must be taken--measures are comparatively

nothing, men everything. I speak, sir, of times of difficulty and

danger--of times when systems are shaken, when precedents and general

rules of conduct fail. Then it is that not to this or that measure,

however prudently devised, however blameless in execution, but to the

energy and character of individuals a state must be indebted for its

salvation. Then it is that kingdoms rise and fall in proportion as they

are upheld, not by well-meant endeavours (however laudable these may

be), but by commanding, overawing talent--by able men. And what is the

nature of the times in which we live? Look at France, and see what we

have to cope with, and consider what has made her what she is--a man!

You will tell me that she was great, and powerful, and formidable

before the date of Bonaparte’s government--that he found in her great

physical and moral resources--that he had but to turn them to account.

True; and he did so. Compare the situation in which he found France

with that to which he has raised her. I am no panegyrist of Bonaparte;

but I cannot shut my eyes to the superiority of his talents--to the

amazing ascendency of his genius. Tell me not of his measures and his

policy. It is his genius, his character, that keeps the world in awe.

Sir, to meet, to check, to curb, to stand up against him, we want

arms of the same kind. I am far from objecting to the large military

establishments which are proposed to you. I vote for them with all

my heart. But, for the purpose of coping with Bonaparte, one great

commanding spirit is worth them all!”[114]

Mr. Canning was right. No cant betrays more ignorance than that

which affects to undervalue the qualities of public men in the march

of public affairs. However circumstances may contribute to make

individuals, individuals have as great a share in making circumstances.

Had Queen Elizabeth been a weak and timid woman, we might now be

speaking Spanish, and have our fates dependent on the struggle between

Prim and Narvaez. Had James II. been a wise and prudent man,--instead

of the present cry against Irish Catholics, our saints of the day would

have been spreading charges against the violence and perfidy of some

Puritan Protestant, some English, or perhaps Scotch, O’Connell. Strip

Mirabeau of his eloquence, endow Louis XVI. with the courage and the

genius of Henry IV., and the history of the last eighty years might be

obliterated.

Mr. Canning, I repeat, was right; the great necessity in arduous times

is a man who inspires other men; and the satirist, in measuring the two

rivals for office, was hardly wrong in saying:

“_As London to Paddington,_

_So Pitt is to Addington._”

XI.

Well-adapted ridicule no public man can withstand, and there seems

to have been something peculiar to Mr. Addington that attracted it.

Even Mr. Sheridan, his steady supporter to the last (for the main

body of the Whigs, under Mr. Fox, when they saw a prospect of power

for themselves, uniting with the Grenvillites, went into violent

opposition)--even Mr. Sheridan, in those memorable lines:

“I do not love thee, Doctor Fell,

The reason why I cannot tell;

But this I know, and know full well,

I do not love thee, Doctor Fell”:

quoted in defence of the Minister whom so many attacked without saying

why they disapproved, furnished a nickname that too well applied to

him, and struck the last nail into the coffin that a mingled cohort of

friends and enemies bore--a smile on their faces--to the tomb.

Previous to this, the war, which had been suspended by mutual bad

faith, was recommenced, each party complaining of the other.

_The man_ to whom Mr. Canning had been so long pointing now came

into power, but was not precisely the man, in spite of Mr. Canning’s

eulogium, for the sort of crisis in which he assumed it. There was,

indeed, a singular contrast in the life of Lord Chatham and that of

his son. The first Pitt was essentially a war minister; he seemed

to require the sound of the clarion and trumpet and of the guns

proclaiming victory from the Tower, to call forth the force and

instincts of his genius. In peace he became an ordinary person. The

second Pitt, on the contrary, was as evidently a peace minister. In

quiet times his government had been eminently successful. Orderly,

regular, methodical, with a firm and lofty soul, and the purest

motives for his guides, he had carried on the business of the country,

steadily, prudently, and ably--heedless of the calumnies of envy, or

the combinations of factions: but he wanted that imagination which

furnishes resources on unexpected occasions. The mighty convulsion

which made the world heave under his feet did not terrify him, but it

bewildered him; and nothing could be more unfortunate, or even more

wavering, than his conduct when he had to deal with extraordinary

events. Still, in one thing he resembled his father--he had unbounded

confidence in himself. This sufficed for the moment to give confidence

to others; and his stately figure, standing, in the imagination of the

nation, by the side of Britannia, added to the indomitable courage of

our mariners, and shed a kindred influence over the heroic genius of

their chief. But though Mr. Pitt had in a supreme degree the talent of

commanding the respect of his followers and admirers, he had not the

genial nature which gives sway over equals; and Mr. Fox had of late won

to himself many eminent persons who by their opinions and antecedents

were more naturally disposed to join his rival. The Premier felt this

difficulty, and being wholly above jealousy, would have coalesced with

Mr. Fox, and formed a ministry strong in the abilities which at that

critical time were so required. But George III., with a narrowness

of mind that converted even his good qualities into defects, said,

“Bring me whom you please, Mr. Pitt, except Fox.” This exception put an

end to the combination in view; for, in spite of Fox’s disinterested

remonstrances, or, perhaps, in consequence of them, none of his friends

would quit his side.

Nevertheless, proud, accustomed to power, careless of responsibility,

defying all opponents, inspiring awe by his towering person and

sonorous voice, as well as by the lofty tone of his eloquence and the

solitary grandeur of his disposition, alone in front of a stronger

phalanx of adversaries than ever, perhaps, before or since, were

marshalled against a minister,--Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Windham,

the Grenvilles, Mr. Grey, Mr. Tierney--as daring and undaunted in

appearance as in the first flush of his youthful glory, stood this

singular personage, honoured even in his present isolation with

the public hopes. But Fortune, which in less eventful moments had

followed, chose this fatal moment for deserting him. In vain he turned

to his most able supporter for assistance; that early friend, more

unfortunate than himself, stood disabled, and exposed to a disgraceful

impeachment. The struggle was too severe; it wore out a spirit which

nothing could bend or appal. On the 23rd of January, 1806, immediately

after the news of the fatal battle of Austerlitz, which chilled the

remains of life within him, and on the anniversary of the day on which,

twenty-five years before, he had been returned to Parliament, Mr. Pitt

died.

XII.

Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox (the King’s antipathy was this time

overborne by necessity) formed the new Ministry, in which Lord Sidmouth

(late Mr. Addington), who, Mr. Canning said, “was like the small-pox,

since everybody must have him once in their lives,” was also included.

During the short time that Mr. Canning had lately held office, his

situation as Treasurer of the Navy had invested him with the defence

of Lord Melville, a defence which he conducted with much tact and

ability, and to this his parliamentary labours had been confined. The

employment of “All the Talents” (as the new Administration, comprising

men of every party, was called) now left him almost alone amongst the

parliamentary debaters in opposition. This position was a fortunate one.

In the most formidable and successful attacks against Lord

Ellenborough’s seat in the Cabinet, which was indefensible--against

Mr. Windham’s Limited Service Bill, of which party spirit denied the

merits--he led the way. His success on all these occasions was great,

and the style of his speaking now began to show the effects of care

and experience. A less methodic mode of arguing, a greater readiness

in replying, had removed the unprepossessing impression of previous

study; while an artful rapidity of style permitted that polish of

language which is too apt, when unskilfully employed, to become prolix,

monotonous, and languid. It was this peculiar polish, accompanied by

a studied though apparently natural rapidity, which, becoming more

and more perfect as it became apparently more natural, subsequently

formed the essential excellence of Mr. Canning’s speaking; for his

poetical illustrations required the charm of his delivery, and his

jokes, imitated from Mr. Sheridan, were rarely so good as their model;

although, even in his manner of introducing and dealing with these, we

may trace, as he advanced, a very marked improvement.

The coalition between parties at one time so adverse as those enlisted

under the names of Fox, Grenville, and Addington, could only be

maintained by the ascendency of that master-spirit which had been so

long predominant in the House of Commons. But when Mr. Fox undertook

the arduous duties of the Foreign Office, his health (that treasure

which statesmen often spend with improvidence, and which he had wasted

more than most men) was already beginning to fail, rendering heavy the

duties of public life; and in 1806--while our diplomacy at Paris was

making a last attempt to effect that honourable peace which had so

long been the object of the worn-out minister’s desires--that great

statesman, whose generous and noble heart never deceived him, but whose

singular capacity in debate was often marred by a remarkable want of

judgment in action, followed his haughty predecessor to an untimely

grave.

The Grenville Administration, after the death of Mr Fox, was no

more the former Administration of Lord Grenville than the mummy,

superstitiously presumed to preserve the spirit of the departed,

is the real living body of the person who has been embalmed. It

avoided, however, the ignominy of a natural death, by being the first

Administration which, according to Mr. Sheridan, “not only ran its head

against a wall, but actually built a wall for the purpose of running

its head against it.” This instrument of suicide was the well-known

bill “for securing to all his Majesty’s subjects the privilege of

serving in the Army and Navy.” A measure which, by permitting Irish

Catholics to hold a higher military rank than the law at that time

allowed them, showed the Whig government to be true to its principles,

but without tact or ability in carrying them out; for this bill,

brought forward honourably but unadvisedly, withdrawn weakly, alarming

many, and never granting much, dissatisfied the Catholics, angered the

Protestants, and gave the King the opportunity of sending a ministry he

disliked about their business, on a pretext which there was sufficient

bigotry in the nation to render popular. A dissolution amidst the yell

of “No Popery!” took place; and it was by this cry that the party with

which Mr. Canning now consented to act reinstalled itself in power.

XIII.

A person well qualified to know the facts of that time, once told me

that, not very long before the dissolution of the Ministry to which

he succeeded, at a time certainly when that dissolution was not so

apparent, Mr. Canning had privately conveyed to Lord Grenville, who

had previously made him an offer, his wish to secede from opposition,

and had even received a promise that a suitable place (Mr. Windham’s

dismissal was at that time arranged) should be reserved for him.

Reminded of this when affairs had become more critical, he is said to

have observed, “it was too late.” Whatever may be the truth as to this

story--and such stories are rarely accurate in all their details--one

thing is certain, the brilliant abilities of the aspiring orator,

though then and afterwards depreciated by the dull mediocrity which

affects to think wit and pleasantry incompatible with the higher and

more serious attributes of genius, now became apparent, and carried him

through every obstacle to the most important political situation in the

country.

LIST OF MINISTERS.

------------------------+--------------------+---------------------

| In March, 1807. | In April, 1807.

| |

President of the } | Viscount Sidmouth | Earl Camden.

Council } | |

| |

Lord High Chancellor | Lord Erskine | Lord Eldon.

| |

Lord Privy Seal | Lord Holland | Earl of Westmoreland.

| |

First Lord of the } | Lord Grenville | Duke of Portland.

Treasury } | |

| |

First Lord of the } | Right Hon. T. } | Lord Mulgrave.

Admiralty } | Grenville } |

| |

Master-General of } | Earl of Moira | Earl of Chatham.

the Ordnance } | |

| |

Secretary of State } | Earl Spencer | { Lord Hawkesbury

for the Home Office } | | { (afterwards Lord

| | { Liverpool).

| |

Secretary of State } | Lord Howick | Mr. Canning.

for Foreign Affairs } | |

| |

Secretary for War } | Right Hon. W. } | Lord Castlereagh.

and the Colonies } | Windham } |

| |

President of the } | Lord Auckland | Earl Bathurst.

Board of Trade } | |

| |

Lord Chief Justice | Lord Ellenborough. |

| |

Chancellor of the } | Lord H. Petty } | Hon. Spencer Perceval.

Exchequer } | (afterwards } |

| Marquis of } |

| Lansdowne) } |

| |

A seat in the Cabinet } | Earl Fitzwilliam. |

without office } | |

------------------------+--------------------+-----------------------

It is remarkable enough that in the Whig or popular cabinet there was

only one person (Mr. Windham)--a gentleman of great landed property, as

well as of remarkable ability--who was not a lord or a lord’s son. In

the Tory cabinet Mr. Canning formed the only similar exception.

The principles on which the new Government stood in respect to the

Irish Catholics were soon put to the test by Mr. Brand, afterwards Lord

Dacre, who moved:

“That it is contrary to the first duties of the confidential servants

of the Crown to restrain themselves by any pledge, expressed or

implied, from offering to the King any advice which the course of

circumstances may render necessary for the welfare and security of any

part of his Majesty’s extensive empire.”

This motion was caused by the King having required the late Government

to pledge itself not to bring forward any future measure of Catholic

relief, and having dismissed it when it refused thus to fetter its

judgment.

Mr. Canning rose amidst an unwilling audience. The imputations to which

his early change of principles had exposed him were rather vividly

confirmed by the recklessness with which he now appeared to be rushing

into office amongst colleagues he had lately professed to despise, and

in support of opinions to which he was known to be opposed. The House

received him coldly, and with cries of “Question,” as he commenced an

explanation or defence, marked by a more than usual moderation of tone

and absence of ornament. The terms on which he had been with the former

Administration were to a great degree admitted in the following passage:

“For myself, I confidently aver that on the first intimation which I

received, from authority I believed to be unquestionable, of the strong

difference of opinion subsisting between the King and his Ministers, I

took the determination of communicating what I had learnt, and I did

communicate it without delay to that part of the late Administration

with which, in spite of political differences, I had continued, and

with which, so far as my own feelings are concerned, I still wish to

continue in habits of personal friendship and regard. I communicated

it, with the most earnest advice and exhortation, that they should

lose no time in coming to such an explanation and accommodation on the

subject at issue as should prevent matters from going to extremities.”

This statement, it is acknowledged, was perfectly correct; but it

leaves untouched the tale just alluded to, and which represented the

Minister, who was then making his explanations, as having been ready

to join an Administration favourable to the Catholic claims, previous

to his joining an Administration hostile to those claims. But though

I have related this tale as I heard it, I do not pretend to vouch for

its accuracy. But without denying or vouching for the truth of this

tale (though the authority on which it rests is highly respectable), I

may observe, it may be said that “no coalition can take place without

previous compromise or intrigue,” and that almost every Administration

is formed or supported by coalition.

How, indeed, had the Administration which now gave way been originally

composed? Of Mr. Windham, the loudest declaimer for war; of Mr. Fox,

the most determined advocate of peace; of Lord Sidmouth, the constant

subject of ridicule to both Mr. Windham and Mr. Fox. There was Mr.

Sheridan, the champion of annual Parliaments; Lord Grenville, opposed

to all reform! Besides, it was at that time accepted as an axiom by a

large number of the supporters of the Catholics, that the Sovereign’s

health created a justifiable reason for leaving the Catholic question

in abeyance, and that the attempt to push it forward at an untimely

moment would not really tend to its success.

Nor did Lord Castlereagh, who had always shown himself an honest

champion of the Catholic cause, evince more scruples on this matter

than the new Foreign Secretary. But if Mr. Canning’s friends made

excuses for him, Mr. Canning himself, always saying “that a thrust was

the best parry,” felt more disposed to attack the enemy than to defend

himself; and many of the political squibs which turned the incapable

Administration of “All the Talents” into ridicule, were attributed to

his satirical fancy. From 1807 to 1810, he remained in office.

XIV.

The period just cited was marked by our interference in Spain, our

attack on Copenhagen, and that expedition to the Scheldt, which hung

during two years over the debates in Parliament, like one of the dull

fogs of that river.

Our foreign policy, though not always fortunate, could no longer

at least be accused of want of character and vigour. As to the

intervention in Spain, though marked by the early calamity of Sir John

Moore, it was still memorable for having directed the eye of our nation

to the vulnerable point in that Colossus whom our consistency and

perseverance finally brought to the ground.

The Danish enterprise was of a more doubtful character, and can only be

judged of fairly by carrying our minds back to the moment at which it

took place. That moment was most critical; every step we took was of

importance. Before the armies of France, and the genius of her ruler,

lay the vanquished legions of the north and south of Germany. From the

House of Hapsburg the crown of Charlemagne was gone; while the throne

of the Great Frederick was only yet preserved in the remote city of

Königsberg. In vain Russia protracted an inauspicious struggle. The

battle of Friedland dictated peace. There remained Sweden, altogether

unequal to the conflict in which she had plunged: Denmark protected

by an evasive neutrality, which it was for the interest of neither

contending party to respect. On the frontiers of Holstein, incapable

of defence, hung the armies of France. Zealand and Funen, indeed,

were comparatively secure, but people do not willingly abandon the

most fertile of their possessions, or defy an enemy because there are

portions of their territory which will not sink before the first attack.

Ministers laid some stress on their private information, and it is

said that Sir R. Wilson, returning, perhaps it may be said escaping,

with extraordinary diligence from Russia after the Peace of Tilsit,

brought undeniable intelligence as to the immediate intentions of our

new allies. But private information was useless. We do not want to

know what a conqueror intends to do, when we know what his character

and interests imperatively direct him to do. It would have been

absurd, indeed, not to foresee that Napoleon could not rest in neutral

neighbourhood on the borders of a country, the possession of which,

whether under the title of amity or conquest, was eminently essential

to his darling continental system, since through Tonningen were passed

into Germany our manufactures and colonial produce. Had this, indeed,

been disputable before the famous decree of the 21st of November,[115]

that decree removed all doubts.

Denmark, then, had no escape from the mighty war raging around her, and

had only to choose between the tyrant of the Continent or the mistress

of the seas. If she declared against us, as it was likely she would

do, her navy, joined to that of Russia, and, as it soon would be, to

that of Sweden, formed a powerful force--not, indeed, for disputing

the empire of the ocean; there we might safely have ventured to meet

the world in arms; but for assisting in those various schemes of sudden

and furtive invasion which each new continental conquest encouraged and

facilitated--encompassed, as we became, on all sides by hostile shores.

But if the neutrality of the Danes was impossible, if their fleet,

should they become hostile to us, might add materially to our peril,

was it wrong to make them enter frankly into our alliance, if that were

possible, or to deprive them of their worst means of mischief, if they

would not?

After all, what did we say to Denmark?--“You cannot any longer retain a

doubtful position; you must be for us, or we must consider you against

us. ‘_If a friend, you may count on all the energy and resources of

Great Britain._’” Denmark had offered to sell a large portion of

her marine to Russia, and we offered to purchase it manned. It was

required, she said, to defend Zealand; we offered to defend Zealand for

her.

But our negotiation failed, and finally we seized, as belonging to a

power which was certain to become an enemy, the ships with which she

refused to aid us as an ally. A state must be in precisely similar

circumstances before it can decide whether it ought to do precisely a

similar thing.

Some blamed our conduct as unjust, whilst others praised it as bold.

What perhaps may be said is, that if unjust at all, it was not bold

enough. War once commenced, Zealand should have been held; the stores

and supplies in the merchant docks not left unnoticed; the passage

of the Sound kept possession of. In short, our assault on Copenhagen

should have been part of a permanent system of warfare, and not

suffered to appear a mere temporary act of aggression.

Still it showed in the Minister who planned and stood responsible

for it, three qualities, by no means common: secrecy, foresight and

decision.

XV.

But if our conduct towards the Danes admits of defence, luckily for Mr.

Canning the odium of that miserable expedition against Holland--in which

“Lord Chatham, with his sword undrawn,

Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan;

Sir Richard, longing to be at ’em,

Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham;”

an expedition equally disgraceful to ministers and commanders--fell

chiefly on his colleague, who had originated and presided over it,

having himself been present at the embarkation.

It is necessary here to say a word or two concerning that statesman,

who, though agreeing with Mr. Canning upon the principal question of

their time, was never cordially united with him. Lord Castlereagh

joined to great boldness in action,--great calm and courtesy of manner,

long habits of official routine, and a considerable acquaintance with

men collectively and individually. He lived in the world, and was

more essentially a man of the world than his eloquent contemporary;

but, on the other hand, he was singularly deficient in literary

accomplishments, and this deficiency was not easily pardoned in an

assembly, the leading members of which had received a classical

education, and were as intolerant to an ungrammatical phrase as to a

political blunder. His language--inelegant, diffuse, and mingling every

variety of metaphorical expression--was the ridicule of the scholar.

Still the great air with which he rose from the Treasury Bench, threw

back his blue coat, and showed his broad chest and white waistcoat,

looking defiance on the ranks of the Opposition, won him the hearts

of the rank and file of the government adherents. In affairs, he got

through the details of office so as to satisfy forms, but not so as to

produce results: for if the official men who can manufacture plans on

paper are numerous, the statesmen who can give them vitality in action

are rare; and Lord Castlereagh was not one of them.

There was never, as I have just said, any great cordiality or intimacy

between two persons belonging to the same party and aspiring equally to

play the principal part in it. The defects of each, moreover, were just

of that kind that would be most irritating to the eye of the other;

but they would probably have gone on rising side by side, if they had

not now been thrown together and almost identified in common action.

The success of most of Mr. Canning’s schemes as Minister of Foreign

Affairs depended greatly upon the skill with which Lord Castlereagh,

as Minister of War, carried them into execution; any error of the

latter affected the reputation of the former; thus the first difficulty

was sure to produce a quarrel. Mr. Canning indeed was constantly

complaining that every project that was conceived by the Foreign Office

miscarried when it fell under the care of the War Office; that all

the gold which he put into his colleague’s crucible came out, somehow

or other, brass; and these complaints were the more bitter, since,

involuntarily influenced by his rhetorical predilections, he could not

help exaggerating the consequences of mistakes in conduct, which were

aggravated by mistakes in grammar.

Nevertheless, wishing, very probably, to avoid a public scandal, he

merely told the head of the Government privately that a change must

take place in the Foreign or in the War Department, and, after some

little hesitation, the removal of Lord Castlereagh was determined on;

but some persons from whom, perhaps, that statesman had no right to

expect desertion, anxious to keep their abandonment of him concealed

as long as possible, requested delay; and the Duke of Portland, a man

of no resolution, not daring to consent to the resignation of one of

the haughty gentlemen with whom he had to deal, was glad to defer the

affront that it was intended to put on to the other. Such being the

state of things, Mr. Canning was prevailed upon to allow the matter to

stand over for a while, receiving at the same time the most positive

assurances as to his request being finally complied with. At the end

of the session and the conclusion of the enterprise (against Flushing)

already undertaken, some arrangement was to be proposed, “satisfactory,

it was hoped, to all parties.” Such is the usual hope of temporising

politicians. But, in the meantime, the Secretary of War was allowed to

suppose that he carried into the discharge of the duties of his high

post, all the confidence and approbation of the Cabinet.

This was not a pleasant state of things to discover in the moment of

adversity; when the whole nation felt itself disgraced at the pitiful

termination of an enterprise which had been very lavishly prepared and

very ostentatiously paraded. Yet such was the moment when Mr. Canning,

fatigued at the Premier’s procrastination, disgusted by the calamity

which he attributed to it, and resolved to escape, if possible, from a

charge of incapacity, beneath which the whole Ministry was likely to be

crushed, threw up his appointment, and the unfortunate Secretary of War

learnt that for months his abilities had been distrusted by a majority

of the Cabinet in which he sat, and his situation only provisionally

held on the ill-extorted acquiescence of a man he did not like, and who

underrated and disliked him. His irritation vented itself in a letter

which produced a duel--a duel that Mr. Canning was not justly called

upon to fight; for all that he had done was to postpone a decision

he had a perfect right to adopt, and which he deferred expressly in

order to spare Lord Castlereagh’s feelings and at the request of Lord

Castlereagh’s friends. But the one of these gentlemen was quite as

peppery and combative as the other, though it appeared he was not quite

so good a shot, for Mr. Canning missed his opponent and received a

disagreeable wound, though not a dangerous one; the final result of

the whole affair being the resignation of the Premier and of the two

Secretaries of State, the country paying twenty millions (the cost of

the late barren attempt at glory) because the friends of a minister had

shrunk from saying anything unpleasant to him until he was prostrate.

PART II.

FROM MR. PERCEVAL’S ADMINISTRATION TO ACCEPTANCE OF THE

GOVERNOR-GENERALSHIP OF INDIA.

Mr. Perceval, Prime Minister.--Lord Wellesley, Minister of

Foreign Affairs.--King’s health necessitates regency.--The

line taken by Mr. Canning upon it.--Conduct with respect to

Mr. Horner’s Finance Committee.--Absurd resolution of Mr.

Vansittart.--Lord Wellesley quits the Ministry.--Mr. Perceval

is assassinated.--Mr. Canning and Lord Wellesley charged to

form a new Cabinet, and fail.--Further negotiations with Lords

Grey and Grenville fail.--Lord Liverpool becomes head of an

Administration which Mr. Canning declines to join.--Accepts

subsequently embassy to Lisbon, and, in 1816, enters the

Ministry.--Supports coercive and restrictive measures.--Resigns

office at home after the Queen’s trial, and accepts the

Governor-Generalship of India.

I.

A new Administration brought Lord Wellesley to the Foreign Office, and

Mr. Perceval to the head of affairs.

In 1810 the state of the King’s health came once more before the

public. Parliament met in November; the Sovereign was this time

admitted by his courtiers to be unmistakedly insane. A commission had

been appointed, but there was no speech with which to address the

Houses; no authority to prorogue them. Mr. Perceval moved certain

resolutions. These resolutions were important, for they furnished a

text for debate, and settled the question so much disputed in 1788-9,

deciding (for no one was found to take up the old and unpopular

arguments of Mr. Fox) that Parliament had the disposal of the Regency;

and that the Heir-apparent, without the sanction of the Legislature,

had no more right to it than any other individual. These first

resolutions were followed by others, expressive of a determination to

confer the powers of the Crown on the Prince of Wales, but not without

restrictions. Here arose a new question, and of this question Mr.

Canning availed himself. Interest and consistency alike demanded that

he should stand fast to the traditions of Mr. Pitt, whose name was

still the watchword of a considerable party. But Mr. Pitt had alike

contended for the right of Parliament to name the Regent, and for the

wisdom of fettering the Regency by limitations. Whereas Mr. Canning,

though advocating the powers of Parliament to name the Regent, was not

in favour of limiting the Regent’s authority. Through these confronting

rocks the wary statesman steered with the skill of a veteran pilot:[116]