George Canning

Preface

JN preparing this little book I have used principally Stapleton's Political Life of George Canning (1831), Stapleton's George Canning and hiit Times (1835), Bell's Life of Canning and the memoir prefixed to Therry's edition of Canning's speeches (1828). Much of Canning's official correspondence is contained in the Supplementary Despatches of the Duke of Wellington, to which may be added Mr. E. J. Stapleton's Some Official Correspondence of George Canning (1887).

To the kindness of the Countess of Cork and Orrery I am indebted for the permission to republish the Lines addressed to Miss Scott before Marriage, while I have to thank the Marquis of Clanricarde for allowing me to reproduce the beautiful portrait by Gainsborough of George Canning as a boy, and the Earl of Crewe for permission to include the interesting picture by Hickel of Canning as a young man.

W. A. P.

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Chapter I Page

EARLY YEARS i

The Canning family — George Canning the elder — Canning's mother — Canning at Eton — The Microcosm — At Oxford.

Chapter II Pitt And Canning - - .'-•„'. . - 15

Canning and the Whigs — The French Revolution — He enters Parliament — His maiden speech — Character of his eloquence — Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs — Bonaparte and the Revolutionary Wars — Policy of Pitt — Canning and the new Humanitarianism — The Anti-Jacobin — The Coup (U Etat of i8th Brumaire.

CHAPTER II J CANNING AND THE IRISH QUESTION • • - - 37

Grattan's Parliament — The Rebellion of 1798— Pitt and Ireland — The Union proposed— Canning and the Union— The question of Catholic Emancipation- Resignation of Pitt, viii CONTENTS

Chapter IV Page

Marriage — Canning and Addington — Speech on the island of Trinidad (Slave Trade) — Canning an Irish member —The Peace of Amiens — Pitt's last Administration — Napoleon Emperor of the French — The new Coalition — Battles of Trafalgar, and Austerlitz— Death of Pitt — "Ministry of all the Talents" — Death of Fox — Portland Administration — Canning at the Foreign Office.

Chapter V At The Fokeign Office 66

Napoleon and Alexander — Treaty of Tilsit — Bombardment of Copenhagen — The Continental Blockade — England and the United States — Napoleon and Spain — The Peninsular War — The Walcheren Expedition — Canning's duel with Castlereagh.

CHAPTER VI CANNING AS A POLITICAL FREE-LANCE So

Canning and Journalism — His poems — Madness of George III. — The Regency question — Murder of Perceval — Lord Liverpool Premier — Canning refuses office — Catholic Emancipation — Member for Liverpool — Canning and Parliamentary Reform — Free Trade — Speech on the prosecution of the war — Embassy to Lisbon — President of the Board of Control.

CONTENTS ix

Chapter VII Page

Castlereagh and the European Alliance— Condition of England— Canning and democracy— The Six Acts — Personal incidents — Death of George III. — Queen Caroline — Resignation of Canning — Offer of the Governor-Generalship of India — Suicide of Londonderry— Canning returns to the Foreign Office.

Chapter VIII The Affajrs Of Spain And Portugal - - - 116

Congress of Verona — Canning and the European Alliance — The doctrine of Non-intervention — Ferdinand VII. and the Spanish Liberals — Attitude of France — England and the Spanish colonies— French invasion of Spain — Troubles in Portugal — Intervention of Great Britain— Canning and the Monroe doctrine — Recognition of the South American Republics — Speech on the British intervention in Portugal.

CHAFFER IX THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE .... 143

The ' ' Eastern question " and the Continental Alliance — Insurrection in Greece — Metternich and Alexander I. — Canning and the Greek question — The Flag of Greece recognised — Intervention of Mehemet Ali — Death of Alexander I. — Mission of Wellington to St. Petersburg— The ' ' Protocol of St. Petersburg " — Canning and Nicholas I.— Appeal of the Greeks to Great Britain — Conference of London — The Treaty of London.

b x CONTENTS

Chapter X Page

Split in the Tory Cabinet— The Free Trade party— The "Reciprocity of Duties Act" — Canning's rhymed despatch — Illness of Lord Liverpool — Canning's motion on the Corn Laws — Canning at the head of a Coalition Government — Illness and death.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

George Canning as a Boy (from the Picture by Gainsborough in the possession of the Marquis of Clanricarde)

Frontispiece

George Canning (after Hoppner) . . .to face p. 18 George Canning (from an Engraving by B. Lane) to face p. 49 George Canning as a Young Man (from the Picture by A. Hickel in the possession of the Earl of Crewe)

to face p. 66 Lord Castlereagh (from the Portrait by Lawrence in the

National Portrait Gallery) . . .to face p. 78 Interior of the House of Commons in 1812 . to face p. 91 George Canning (from an Engraving by Wm. Say after the

Portrait by Lawrence) . . . .to face p. Ill George Canning (from an Engraving by Turner after the

Portrait by Lawrence) . . . .to face p. 166 The Great Battle for the Championship between Black

George and Dubious Jack . . . .to face p. 170 "The Struggle," or a Long Pull, a Strong Pull and a Pull

All Together to face p. 171

The Rats at the Corn . ". . ..- . . to face p. 172 A Head for the Cabinet to face p. 174

Chapter I

The Canning family — George Canning the elder — Canning's mother — Canning at Eton — The Microcosm — At Oxford.

THE family of Canning is of a respectable antiquity, and characteristically British. To nobility of blood, in that narrower sense which confines this virtue to the offshoots of the peerage, it could lay no claim ; but for centuries it had enjoyed that mysterious quality of distinction which is inseparably associated with the possession of real estate. The original seat of the race, indeed, at Bishop's Cannynges, in Wiltshire, devolving upon two coheiresses, passed from the name in the reign of Henry VII. Long before this, however, when Edward II. was King, a cadet of the family setting out — as the custom was for younger sons of country gentlemen in England — to seek his fortune in trade, had established at Bristol a branch of the Cannynges, which was destined in time to overshadow the parent stem. Under Edward III. 1

William Cannyinge was six times Mayor of Bristol, and six times represented the city in Parliament. His descendants continued to be notable citizens of the second city in England until, in the fifth generation, Thomas Cannynge regained territorial rank for his branch of the family by marrying the heiress of the Le Marshalls of Foxcote, in Warwickshire. Here the family continued, in dignified obscurity, down to our own days. Again it was a junior branch which was destined to outgrow the elder. In the year 1618 King James I. granted to George, youngest son of Richard Canning of Foxcote, the manor of Garvagh, in Ireland. Here, for six generations, the Cannings continued, through good and evil fortune, to represent that stern principle of Protestant ascendency to which they had owed their position in the country. Then came a change, as unexpected as it was unwelcome. Infected by I know not what quality in the Irish atmosphere, which has proved fatal to so much Macchiavellian statecraft, by tending to make Teutonic Irishmen more Celtic than the Celts, George, eldest son of Stratford Canning of Garvagh, revolted from the traditions of his race. Confused by a vivid imagination, he lost himself in those attractive mists of political idealism which at that time were beginning to spread over Europe from their birthplace on the abstract heights of the Paris salons. In short, he adopted democratic principles ; and to this crime, so unpardonable by a parent of stern character and just views, he added another, hardly less heinous, by falling in love with an attractive, but wholly ineligible, young woman. For a conscientious father there was but one course open. George Canning was dismissed from the paternal roof.

The unfortunate young man elected to carry once more across the Channel the fortunes of the Cannings; and these for the moment looked unpromising enough. He was endowed by nature with every amiable quality that makes for ill success, and by his father with an allowance of £150 a year. In 1757 he settled in London, entered the Middle Temple, and was, in due course, called to the Bar. But, for a youth of his temperament, the law had less than no attraction. He preferred to spend his time writing political pamphlets, under the fashionable form of " Epistles " to men of eminence, or in the composition of verses which were as rich in lofty sentiment as they were poverty-stricken in nearly every quality of art. These activities, though sometimes gratifying to his vanity, added nothing to his purse. Moreover, being attractive and sociable, he had been admitted to the intimacy of several of the leaders of his own political persuasion ; and since, in the days of Wilkes and Sheridan, Spartan simplicity was not as yet associated with the profession of

Radical opinions, his expenditure soon exceeded his income, and he fell hopelessly into debt. This was the opportunity for which his father had been waiting. Mr. Canning, intent on saving Garvagh from passing to one who would make it a centre of destructive propaganda, consented to pay his eldest son's debts on condition of his joining with him in cutting off the entail, and so becoming a party to his own disinheritance. The luckless youth, having eaten his mess of pottage, had no choice but to sell his birthright. The entail was cut off, the debts were paid, and George Canning, thrown once more upon his allowance of £150 a year, resumed his old inconsequent mode of life, and so fell rapidly again upon evil days. Debts once more accumulated, and by way of improving matters he could think of nothing better than to marry. Unfortunately, Miss Costello, though the daughter of a sufficiently honourable Irish house, brought as her only dowry charm and good looks. To the Squire of Garvagh this was the last straw. The estate had already been settled on his second son, Paul. With his eldest son he would henceforth have no dealings, beyond the regular remittance of the stipulated annuity.

George now, under the dire pressure of necessity, was fain to exchange his unremunerative Muse for that perennial hope of the destitute, the wine trade. But for all the personal popularity of the young couple, George Canning's taste in wines inspired no more confidence than his taste in poetry, and the new venture fared as ill as the old. The many-coloured world of dreams had hardened into the dull world of cruel reality ; and life, which had begun with a reckless battle for impossible ideals, had shrunk into a sordid struggle for the means to live. Under these unpromising auspices, on 1 1th April, 1770, George Canning, the subject of this memoir, and only child of the outcast of Garvagh, was born into the world. Exactly a year after his birth, on llth April, 1771, his father, worn out by anxiety and disappointment, died ; and with him passed the pitiful allowance of £150, which had stood between him and absolute ruin.

Mrs. Canning, left absolutely without means, with great spirit determined to seek a livelihood on the stage. The influence of friends, culminating in royal patronage, procured for her at the outset a leading part at Drury Lane with David Garrick ; but her talents were unequal to the place she had assumed, and when the momentary success won by her beauty and simplicity had passed, she rapidly sank to filling minor parts, and ultimately, disappearing from the London stage altogether, earned a precarious livelihood in provincial theatres. She soon, however, remarried, her second husband being the actor Reddish ; and after his death she took as her husband a Mr. Hunn, a wealthy linen draper and amateur of Plymouth. This latter step, which had seemed to end her pecuniary troubles, in the end only added to them ; for the linen draper failed, and the amateur in his turn had to attempt to earn a living on the boards. When he too died he left his widow with three more children, two daughters and a son. Since this lady, for reasons shortly to be stated, had very little influence in moulding her eldest son's career, it will, perhaps, be well at once to dismiss her from the story with the briefest account of her subsequent fate. Happily, the rapid rise of George Canning soon placed him in a position where he was able to give her assistance, which he did with characteristic generosity, devoting to her maintenance the whole of the pension of £500 to which he became entitled on retiring from his first office as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. As long as she lived, indeed, he never forgot the love and duty he owed to her, visiting her, as often as public affairs permitted, in her retirement at Bath, and never under any circumstances of public anxiety or work forgetting to write to her once a week. She had the happiness of living to see her son Prime Minister, and of dying a few months before the premature close of his career.

From the above sketch of his parentage and birth, it is clear that never infant came into this world with less apparent chances of carving out of it a successful career. There was, however, another side to the picture. That the boy very early displayed conspicuous talent would perhaps not alone have served him ; for talent often starves. But he possessed a sounder basis for worldly success in an influential and wealthy uncle. Mr. Stratford Canning, youngest brother of the unhappy George, though he shared to a certain extent the latter's liberal proclivities, had avoided his prodigality, and, as a member of the respectable banking firm of French, Burrows & Canning, had accumulated a respectable fortune. This gentleman, learning from the actor Moody of his nephew's precocious talents, and that they were in danger of running to waste in the unwholesome atmosphere of provincial green-rooms, determined to withdraw him from the guardianship of Reddish, and himself to become responsible for his education. The offer was, as might be expected, gratefully accepted ; and young Canning started life anew under conditions which placed no obstacles in the path of his ambition, save those of his own creation.

There is no need to linger over the incidents of Canning's boyhood. In general it is a somewhat colourless record of unbroken and deliberate success. When, in due course, he passed from the preparatory school at Winchester, which he had attended, to Eton, he took with him a reputation already established for writing elegant verse both in Latin and English. At Eton, then even more than now the nursery of statesmen, his activities added to his fame. His native eloquence, already brought under the discipline of conscious art, made him a power in the debating club ; and in the school paper, the Microcosm, of which he was editor, he " marshalled the rising talents of that celebrated seminary into emulative excellence ". In this publication he certainly displayed, if not genius, at any rate a precocious culture. His wit, which in after days was to bite so trenchantly, lacks, indeed, as yet the fine edge which a wider experience alone could give ; but in these youthful effusions the leading characteristics of his later style are already perfectly represented. The sonorous periods of these early efforts in English prose are as carefully balanced, and furnished with as fine a Ciceronian polish, as anything produced by his later years. Of his verse contributions, too, one at least has been found worthy of inclusion in more than one anthology of Canning's poetical works, and — though this may-be is no great praise — it more than holds its own amongst its fellows. This poem, "The Slavery of Greece," has, in view of the part played subsequently by its author in European politics, an interest quite apart from its literary qualities, and I shall therefore quote from it sufficiently for the purpose of illustrating its spirit and style : —

THE SLAVERY OF GREECE

Unrivall'd Greece ! thou ever honour'd name, Thou nurse of heroes dear to deathless fame ! Though now to worth, to honour all unknown, Thy lustre faded, and thy glories flown, Yet still shall memory with reverted eye Trace thy past worth, and view thee with a sigh.

Thee freedom cherish'd once with fostering hand,

And breathed undaunted valour through the land.

Here the stern spirit of the Spartan soil

The child of poverty inured to toil.

Here loved by Pallas and the sacred nine,

Once did fair Athens' towery glories shine.

To lift the bulwark of the brazen shield,

To toss the terror of the whizzing spear,

And join the maddening battle's loud career,

How skilled the Greeks ; confess what Persians slain

Were strew'd on Marathon's ensanguined plain ;

When heaps on heaps the routed squadrons fell,

on Greece each science shone, Here the bold statue started from the stone ; Here warm with life the swelling canvas glow'd ; Here big with thought the poet's raptures flow'd ; Here Homer's lip was touch' d with sacred fire ; And wanton Sappho tuned her amorous lyre.

This was thy state ! but oh ! how changed thy fame, And all thy glories fading into shame. What ! that thy bold, thy freedom-breathing laud Should crouch beneath a tyrant's stern command ! That servitude should bind in galling chain Whom Asia's millions once opposed in vain ;

Who could have thought ? who sees without a groan Thy cities mouldering, and thy walls o'erthrown ?

Thy sons (sad change !) in abject bondage sigh ; Unpitied toil, and unlamented die.

The glittering tyranny of Othman's sons,

The pomp of horror which surrounds their thrones,

Has awed their servile spirits into fear,

Spurn'd by the foot they tremble and revere.

Compare this with Byron's treatment of the same theme : —

The isles of Greece ! The isles of Greece !

Where burning Sappho loved and sang, Where grew the arts of war and peace,

Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprang. Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their sun, is set.

In general it would, of course, be idle to compare the work of a clever lad with a talent for versification with that of a poetic genius at the maturity of his powers. In this case, however, the comparison is not without its interest ; for the contrast lies deeper than the mere difference between mature and immature art. Of none was the saying that " the boy is father to the man " truer than of George Canning ; and in this youthful poem are already conspicuous all the essential characteristics of his later attitude towards life. The inspiration in Byron's poetry is the same as that which sent him to Missolonghi, and kept him there, through disillusionment and disappointment, to die. On Canning's nature no such tongues of fire had fallen. No erratic impulses, however generous, were ever allowed to disturb the equal balance of his mind. " The Slavery of Greece " is but the academic expression of an academic sympathy, not with the Greece of actual fact — which, indeed, to Canning's generation was but little known — but with the ideal Greece of the schools ; and when the time came to give this sympathy practical expression Canning's attitude is not that of the poet, but of the statesman. Sentiment had but little place in his nature. It had none in his policy.

For the rest, it must be confessed that Canning's boyhood would seem to have been characterised by a singular absence of boyishness. For games and sports he cared nothing, and the whole admirable energy of his mind seems to have been set on selfimprovement ; and this, not so much from the model boy's sense of present duty, as a process consciously directed by definite ambitions. The determination to succeed was, in fact, already the dominant motive of his life ; and already he had by instinct or by art acquired that first essential of success : the talent of the skilful chess-player for looking many moves ahead, so as to avoid the first false step that leads to ultimate failure.

Throughout his school career, if we may trust the records, his portentous progress was unrelieved by a single escapade.

At the age of eighteen he passed from Eton to Oxford, matriculating as a commoner of Christ Church. Mr. Stratford Canning was now dead, but by this time George Canning had ceased to be dependent upon the generosity of his uncle ; for, at the instance of his grandmother, his grandfather, old Mr. Canning of Garvagh, had so far relaxed as to bequeath to him a small estate in Ireland, which brought him in an annual sum of ,£200, sufficient to cover the expenses of his education. This income was not, of course, wealth even for an undergraduate of those days ; but it was sufficient to enable him to hold his own in the aristocratic set to which the reputation he brought with him from Eton served to introduce him. The boy had never been indiscriminate in his friendships. He selected his acquaintance, as he selected his books : not — to be just — solely for their worldly use, but for their style and their general agreement with his own instincts and aspirations. And so, at Oxford, his circle, if small, was decidedly select. It included the names of many destined, later on, to play a part in the world of affairs : Lord Holland, Lord Carlisle, Lord Seaford, Lord Granville, Lord Boringdon (afterwards Earl of Morley) and the Hon. Charles Jenkinson, afterwards created Earl of Liverpool. Of these young gentlemen and a few other chosen spirits, it would seem, there was formed within the college a sort of close corporation for mutual improvement, if not for mutual admiration. Its atmosphere exactly suited Canning's temper; and in the little world of the University he tasted by anticipation some of the joy which in after days he was to drain to the dregs : the joy of the self-made man, whose talents have raised him above the level of those who were born to power.

For power seemed to him, even at this early age, the one thing in this world supremely worth having. The boyish pleasures of the average young Oxonian had for him no attraction ; he despised the undisciplined state of mind of which they were the outcome, and spoke contemptuously of "the utter emptiness and unamiableness of the generality of good folks Christ Church can boast ". He himself had already made up his mind what he wanted of the world, and was calculating the means for attaining it. The House of Commons, indeed, " the only path to the only desirable thing in this world — the gratification of ambition," he recognised as, for the present, beyond his reach ; but there remained the Law, "a profession which, in this country, holds out every inducement that can nerve the exertions, and give vigour to the power of a young man. The way, indeed, is long, toilsome and rugged ; but it leads to honours, solid and lasting ; to independence, without which no blessings of fortune, however profuse, no distinctions of station, however splendid, can afford a liberal mind true satisfaction ; to power, for which no task can be too hard, no labours too trying." Surely a remarkable epistle to be penned by a boy of eighteen to a college friend !

The letter, from which the above is an extract, was written in September, 1788. Three years later George Canning left Oxford and entered as a student of Lincoln's Inn.

Chapter II

Canning and the Whigs — The French Revolution — He enters Parliament — His maiden speech — Character of his eloquence— Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs — Bonaparte and the revolutionary wars — Policy of Pitt — Canning and the new Humanitarianism — The Anti-Jacobin — The coup d'£tat of 1 8th Brumaire.

TO the young student, chafing over his law books, the prospect of ever realising his ambitions seemed for the moment distant enough. Yet, though his circumstances bound him to follow a profession, his eyes were ever fixed on the great world of affairs beyond the shadow of the courts. For a youth of his temper, indeed, it would have been impossible at that time to concentrate his attention on the subtleties of the law. The French Revolution had shaken the world of politics to its foundations ; every day it assumed new shapes ; every day it seemed to bring to birth fresh forces, strange, portentous, terrifying. The sober judgment of men was overset by a phenomenon incalculable and menacing ; and, amid the death of old (15)

ideas, and the loosening of old allegiance, civilisation seemed to many to be reeling to its ruin.

The constitutional movement of 1789 in France had been greeted by Englishmen with fairly general approval ; but when the demand for the removal of abuses developed into open defiance of all the principles on which society was held to rest, and Reform had become Revolution, approval gave place to anger and alarm, which the Terror turned into fanatic hate. For the moment, indeed, it seemed as though the sickness of France were about to infect the English body politic. The mass of the people, unrepresented in Parliament, were suffering and ill content. To the more intelligent the cruel anachronisms of the Statute Book : the Test Act, the barbarous penal code, above all the scandals of the parliamentary franchise, were an ever present source of irritation. To these the catch-words of the French Revolution were welcome as giving voice to their own grievances ; societies, of which the most respectable was that of " The Friends of the People," were formed in the great towns to agitate for change ; at Sheffield and Dundee riots broke out, and the cry went up for " Equality " and "The Republic ". Amid these alarming symptoms the old party cries rang hollow and unreal, and soon ceased to be heard. Burke, hitherto the protagonist of freedom, revolted from a liberty that tended to degenerate into licence, and headed a Whig secession into the Tory camp.

The parliamentary balance was upset ; and when Pitt took up the gage of defiance flung down by revolutionary France, he had behind him a vast and docile majority, while on the Opposition benches a sorry remnant of the once all-powerful Whig party championed the seemingly forlorn hope of a Liberalism as yet unweaned.

The Opposition, however, though weak in numbers, was powerful in talent. To meet the burning eloquence of Fox, the biting wit of Sheridan, the cultivated common sense of Grey, Pitt could rely upon himself only. It is true that no artillery of argument, however well directed, could have shaken the stolid battalions of country gentlemen who supported the Government ; but the situation was discreditable, and might prove perilous. Pitt, too, was beginning to feel the strain of this singlehanded battle against intellectual odds ; and since Parliament could not supply him with lieutenants, he began to look abroad for young men of talent to help him in his need. It was under these circumstances that his attention was directed to George Canning, of whom he had already heard as a young man of parts and avowed ambitions ; and realising that here was exactly what he wanted, he offered him a seat in Parliament, in return for his support.

The opportunity, so ardently longed for, had come ; and but one apparent obstacle stood in the way of Canning's accepting an offer as grateful as it was unlocked for. This obstacle was, at first sight, a serious one to a youth of high principle. At his uncle's house he had been brought up a Whig amongst Whigs. On first coming to town, he had been greeted as a coming hope of the Opposition, welcomed in the circle of Fox and Sheridan, and introduced as a young man of talent into the rarefied atmosphere of Devonshire House. Under these circumstances, to accept the first offer of the Tory Government, at a time when the Tory allegiance was the sole apparent avenue to success, would infallibly expose him to the obvious charge which was actually flung in his face. Yet the charge was as shallow as it was unjust. In any case it would have been no great treason in a boy of twenty - three to exchange a fortuitous and doubtful allegiance to principles fallen obsolete for the certainty of a brilliant and useful career ; but, as a matter of fact, whatever Canning's views may have been before the Revolution, this catastrophe had wrought in him the same change which it had produced in so many of the Whig leaders. With the abstract political principles of the new " French " school his nature, practical and British to the core, was thoroughly out of sympathy. Offers, tempting enough to the vanity of youth, had been made to him by the party of Reform ; but he recognised in " The Society of

GEORGE CANNING After Hoppner the Friends of the People" the organ of what he called "not at random, but deliberately," the French party; and in a letter of 13th December, 1792, addressed to his friend, Lord Boringdon, he declared that he could attach himself to neither section of the Opposition, and that, should he ever succeed in entering Parliament, it would be as a follower of Pitt. When, therefore, he received the Prime Minister's offer of a seat, he accepted it without hesitation, and in the session of 1793 made his entry into Parliament as member for the borough of Newport.