that he had no knowledge whatever “of any arrangements likely to grow out of the present state of things.” There was no other man, however, the Liverpool people said; and they were confident he would not go to India. The unprogressive politicians about the King put off to the last moment their invitation to Canning. It was on the 12th of August that Lord Londonderry died, and it was on the 11th of September that Mr. Canning became Foreign Secretary. He had then only five years to live; but, instead of going to India,—the India of the old Company,—he did such things at home that his son is now in India, carrying that empire through its transition from the rule of the Company to an immediate dependence on the Crown and parliament;—a piece of progression which was not at that time contemplated.
The King had special reasons for wishing Canning at the ends of the earth. Canning had been early a faithful friend and adviser of the Princess of Wales; he would never join in any of the measures of her enemies; and when he found that her affairs were closely implicated with the acts of administration at the time of her trial as Queen, he resigned his office at the Board of Control. It could not be at all agreeable to the King to have for his Foreign Secretary the old servant who had left the government for such a reason, two years before: but there was no alternative.
In spite of “the Anti-Jacobin,” and other protests of Canning’s against the revolutionary ailments of the public mind, during his early life; and in spite of his devotion to Pitt, and his opposition to Pitt himself on the question of parliamentary reform, Canning was now regarded as a progressive statesman, and disliked in high places on that account. He had worked hard to bring about the Irish Union, relying on the virtual pledge that the disabilities of the Catholics should be removed; and he was understood to be bent on the removal of those disabilities. Yet more, he was on the side of each nation which was unhappy under effete or cruel rulers, and this description comprehended so many of the governments of Europe, that the King trembled for the consequences to his own ease, and for the effect on his intercourses with his Imperial and Royal brethren.
The foreign policy of England did in fact turn into a new channel when Canning succeeded Castlereagh. It was believed that the latter, if he had gone to the Congress at Verona, would have protested against certain despotic designs, as Wellington did when sent by Canning; but the fact was universally known that the deceased minister was in sympathy with the monarchs, whereas his successor was in sympathy with their betrayed and outraged subjects. Canning’s intentions were trusted; his acts were liberally construed; his speeches were idolatrously read by the liberals in every country who would have bitterly mocked at every act and word of Castlereagh’s. Canning did not excite to insurrection. On the contrary, he rather precluded it by opening prospects of relief by better means. His dispatches are very quiet, and brief, and clear; and the more quiet and clear his words were, the deeper was the emotion they excited among anxious listeners.
What, then, was his policy? and what his purpose? It is enough to say here that his policy was that of Peace, at a juncture of such interior agitation; and his purpose was, in the first place, to break up the Holy Alliance. He proved himself a progressive statesman by holding these views in such a practical way as that the continental rulers at once found that they would have no aid from England in any scheme of aggression whatever,—against any neighbour, or in coercion of their own subjects, native or newly attached. As the South American provinces were actually released from Spain, Canning treated them as free. Everywhere he accepted dear facts, and acted upon them, instead of wasting time and breaking hearts over political fictions. It required a progressive statesman to do this. So much for his policy, in which he might easily be a representative man. In regard to his oratory, he was altogether exceptional. Statesmen constitute a class; but orators do not, nor ever can. The power is unique in each case; and all that we have to do here with Mr. Canning’s eloquence is to note that it was the organ of the diffusion over the world of his progressive statemanship. In all wild places there was somebody who could recite some speech of Canning’s. In countries where there was no press for the multitude, the multitude had means of reading what he had said. Wherever Englishmen travelled, they were looked at with interest and kindness as countrymen of the Minister who had willed that Princes should keep their word, and that peoples should have a hearing for their claims. If it seems to us now that there was nothing very remarkable in all this,—nothing more than we are now thinking and doing in the case of Italy,—the observation is itself an evidence of what Canning did for us. He excited the civilised world to rage on the one hand, and to transport on the other, by a policy which is to us, at this day, a matter of course; and he opened up the path to the point we have reached.
There was but too little time. When, in the spring of 1827, he became Prime Minister by Lord Liverpool’s illness, it seemed a great blessing to the world. But there were persons enough, who did not think so, to deprive the world of the blessing. The opposition he had to contend with was perhaps the most outrageous on record; and it destroyed him. Everybody who had ever been quizzed by him, disappointed or mortified by him; everybody who feared his courage or his power, or who was tired of hearing him praised; all the foes of progression in general, and of the progressive statesmen of the day in particular, were encouraged to pursue him in full cry. They did it to the death. When he said it was the yellow curtains that made him look ghastly, he was in a ghastly condition. He was too much worn with other opposition to make any stand against disease; and he died, after an agonising illness, on the 8th of August, after five months’ tenure of power as Premier.
The part of a Progressive Statesman has not been made entirely easy in this country, even by such pioneers as these. There was much to be