Of his various offices his Presidentship of the Board of Trade is the one which will be remembered as his proper seat. As he sat there, with his thoughtful face, and his prominent eyes, shrewd and gentle at once, and his business-like manners, he was in fact the master and the servant of a new generation and of many nations,—the teacher and the helper by whom British industry has been made free, and colonial wealth and security have sprung up with magical speed; and even France and other countries are letting go their corn-laws and other burdens, and allowing themselves a fair chance in the race of industry.
On the 18th of July, 1827, the two friends bade each other good-bye for the recess, after the stormy session they had had to pass through, on Mr. Canning’s accession to the Premiership. For him there was little prospect of holiday; but Huskisson was going abroad. He went up to Canning’s bedside; and he observed that his friend seemed to need the trip the most of the two: but Canning replied that it was only the reflection from the yellow bed-curtains that made him look ill. This was their last meeting. The Huskissons turned homewards from Switzerland on hearing of Canning’s serious illness: and on the road they heard of his death. Mr. Huskisson believed his own political career to be closed. He no doubt lamented afterwards that he allowed himself to be overpersuaded by the King and Lord Goderich to take office among Canning’s enemies. He had shrunk. from endangering the continuance of Mr. Canning’s policy; and the consequence of his infirmity of purpose was the retirement of all the “Canningites” from the ministry within nine months of the death of their chief. He upheld to the last his friend’s policy towards the Catholics, assisting and witnessing their emancipation in 1829. From that time the tide of progression in politics flowed strongly; but Huskisson’s task in life was just done. He voted in the next session for a limited measure of parliamentary reform; he witnessed the death of the obstructive King George IV., and presently after died himself. It was by an accident on the railway,—the opening of the Liverpool railway; but the accident itself was occasioned by his frail and feeble condition of health and nerve; and it was as well that he should go to his rest before that tremendous series of reforms was brought forward which would have been too much for him. Each progressive statesman reaches his limit within perhaps an assignable time. Mr. Huskisson had done a great and singular work, and placed it beyond the reach of reactionary mischief. However heartily therefore he was mourned, it was from natural emotion at the loss of such a man in such a way, and not from any calculation of what more he might have done for us, if he had lived another ten years.
In contemplating the man it is impossible to overlook the light thrown upon his character by the devotedness of his wife. She was always his best support and aid in his work. She never recovered from the shock of his death: but she lived several years, eager to be spared till she should have secured his fair fame by the publication of his speeches under every advantage, and provided for his having such honour as noble monuments could give. The statue in the Liverpool cemetery, among others, is her gift.
In the one friend, progressive statesmanship took the form of practical insight into the great material interests of the community. In the other, it manifested itself by diplomacy and oratory in the interests of liberty, international and domestic. A middle-class man was requisite in the one case as in the other, though it was as true as ever that an aristocracy like ours has been, and continues to be, an indispensable safeguard of our liberties. The state of European society during the period which succeeded the peace was one which required the advent of what haughty people would call a political adventurer; a man who came fresh upon the scene, without hereditary entanglements. So Canning was there, with his genius, and his generous sympathies, and his ambition which had nothing sordid in it, and his unequalled powers of expression, by which to convey to the general mind and heart the needs, the aspirations, and the peril and promise of the time. It was impossible to put him down among the demagogues, as some people tried to class Mr. Huskisson with the bagmen. Old men remember how the demagogues abused him as an aristocrat, and how regularly he appeared in lampoons and caricatures as “the spouter of froth” on behalf of tyrants. It was at once necessary for the haters of political adventurers to accept Mr. Canning as a scholar and a gentleman, while the most crusty radical of that seditious time had “to own the soft impeachment” of a mutual sympathy on behalf of oppressed peoples, in both hemispheres. Thus was Canning the statesman for a progressive period, when the fate of nations might hang on the quality of the man who should virtually rule this country.
At the critical time of 1822, when the European peoples were trying to wrench themselves from under the heel of the Holy Alliance, we were so near losing Canning from his proper place, that nothing but the fitness of things could have kept him here. He had bidden good-bye to his friends generally, and had everything ready for going to India. Many grieved that he should go where his special gifts would be half wasted. Some of us may remember how we read in the daily papers of his last movements, as we had before read his last words in parliament. We read that he was at Liverpool, among his old constituents,—staying at his friend Gladstone’s. There he was indeed,—sitting one day for hours at his chamber-window, looking over the sea. There was a little boy playing on the strand that day; and perhaps he glanced up at the window, and may remember the face that looked out there. That little boy was the Mr. Gladstone of our day. Mr. Canning was pondering some news which was on the way to the King in Scotland. Lord Londonderry had destroyed himself; and there might now be an opening for changing the political aspect of all Europe. He did not know,—nobody knew what would be done next. The King dreaded above everything the necessity of accepting Canning as a member of the Cabinet: Canning himself told his Liverpool friends, when the news was in all mouths,