that, he perceived, was doomed, and he constantly recommended reforms, not as a cure for a bad system, but as a palliative, to ‘retard the evil hour,’ which he foresaw clearly enough. His interest in Turkey had always been stimulated, not by any liking for the Turks, but by the necessity of restraining Russian ambition, and by his earnest sympathy with the christian populations, for whom he had always consistently exerted his influence. He still believed that such steady and effective pressure, ‘not to be trifled with,’ as he had been able to employ would have kept the Turks in their reforming policy, and he ascribed much of the ruin that had fallen on Turkey to the want of a united and consistent influence on the part of England and Europe. As it was, he saw that the Porte, in its demoralised state, could not be supported; he welcomed the establishment of a belt of practically independent christian states from the mouth of the Danube to the Adriatic, and admitted that ‘the very idea of reinstating any amount of Turkish misgovernment in places once cleared of it is simply revolting.’ To the man who had guided the reforms of Abd-el-Mejid, and produced the liberal hatti-humayun of 1856, the retrogression of Turkey was a grievous disappointment. He admitted the facts and adjusted himself to the new situation; but his policy remained what it had been during his long sway at Constantinople, the termination of which was the signal for the dismemberment of the empire he had so long held together.
A favourite employment of his old age was poetical composition, to which he had always been partial. His poem on Bonaparte, which pleased Byron, was published as early as 1813; and when his diplomatic occupation was over, he published ‘Shadows of the Past,’ 1866, ‘The Exile of Calauria,’ and ‘Alfred the Great in Athelnay, an historical play,’ of about 3,000 lines of blank verse, in 1876. Devout in the highest sense, he endeavoured to counteract the freethinking tendencies of the age by his treatise ‘Why am I a Christian?’ (1873), which went to five editions, and with the same object he wrote (1876) of ‘The Greatest of Miracles,’ or the human nature of Christ. To the last he retained his ancient vigour and alertness of intellect. He drew up a paper on the Greek claims in the summer of 1880, and a few days before his death (which occurred 14 Aug. 1880) Sir Robert Morier, the son of his old friend David, found him as clear in mind and memory, as incisive in speech, and as keenly interested in poetry and politics as if he were nineteen instead of ninety-three. He looked back over eighty years with the same clear statesman's eye that had made him the trusted colleague of Canning and Peel, of the great Duke, of Palmerston and Newcastle, and the deadliest enemy of tyrants, whether Bonaparte, Nicholas, or Louis Napoleon. The great ambassador died with the memories of nearly a century of high transactions of state still vivid in his unclouded mind. His body lies in the little churchyard at Frant; his statue stands beside his two kinsmen in Westminster Abbey.
[The principal authority for this life of Lord Stratford is his Memoirs, at present in manuscript, which have been placed at the writer's disposal by his daughters. These valuable papers cover the greater part of his career up to his mission to Spain in 1832, with a few, sometimes detailed, notes on the later periods. For the American negotiations, Rush's Court of London from 1819 to 1825 has been consulted; and for the Crimean period Mr. Kinglake has, of course, been the leading authority. The parliamentary papers have been examined throughout, and a few characteristic incidents have been drawn from Skene's With Lord Stratford in the Crimean War.]
CANNON, RICHARD (1779–1865), compiler of regimental records, was born in 1779. On 1 Jan. 1802 he was appointed to a clerkship at the Horse Guards, and attained the grade of first-clerk in 1803. About thirty years afterwards, a Horse Guards order, dated 1 Jan. 1836, having signified the royal commands that an historic account of the services of every regiment in the British army should be published under the superintendence of the adjutant-general, the work of compilation was entrusted to Cannon, at that time principal clerk in the adjutant-general's office. During the ensuing seventeen years ‘historical records’ of all then existing regiments of cavalry, and of forty-two regiments of infantry of the line, were thus issued ‘by authority,’ all of which were prepared under Cannon's direction, except the history of the Royal Horse Guards or Oxford Blues (issued as part of the series in 1847), which was written by Captain Edmund Packe, of that regiment. The work of compilation was then discontinued, some regimental histories which had been announced as in preparation at various times having, apparently, not been proceeded with. After a service of nearly fifty-two years Cannon retired in January 1854, on his full salary of 800l. a year. He died in 1865.
[War Office Lists; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Preface to Cannon's Historical Records of the British Army.]
