History of the Four Georges, and of William IV, Volume 4 — lxvi. The Close of Canning's Career, Part 1

[Sidenote: 1820-30--Sir William Knighton] The King was at first disposed to show some alarm at the bold policy of Canning.

George, to do him justice, was in general a lover of peace, and for a while he did not see how the declarations of his Foreign Minister could lead to anything less than an outbreak of war on the part of the Continental sovereigns, who thus seemed to be challenged to assert what they believed to be their rights.

His doubt and dread took the form of more or less concealed grumblings against Canning, and efforts to induce his other ministers to make a common cause with him against the adventurous Foreign Minister.

Canning, however, saw that the crisis which he had to face was one which makes a bold and resolute policy, frankly avowed on the part of a strong Government, the best or the only means of securing peace.

He was able, after a while, to impress his royal master with the justice of his belief, and the King graciously received the envoy accredited to his Court on behalf of one of the new American Republics.

Then the rest of the work went on smoothly, the lines of the new policy were laid down, and the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance did not venture to transgress them.

The King was, at all times, much in the habit of attempting to make encroachments on the proper domain of any minister who had the courage and the strength to oppose him, and Canning had to endure a good deal of interference of this kind.

The Foreign Minister patiently and steadfastly held his own, and George did not see his way to come to any open rupture.

The King found it hard to make up his mind to settle down to the part of a purely constitutional sovereign.

Perhaps the part had not yet {47} been clearly enough evolved from the conditions of the time, and George, even when he had the best intentions, was always lapsing back into the way of his predecessors.

George was a great letter-writer.

To adopt a modern phrase, he "fancied himself" as a composer of State papers.

It seems marvellous now that a man so lazy by nature should have found the time to pen so many documents of the kind.

Perhaps even in the most commonplace ways of life we are often compelled to wonder at the amount of work a man habitually lazy can sometimes contrive to cram into his day's doings.

George was now as much addicted to indolence, to mere amusement, and to pleasures as he had been during earlier seasons of his career.

He was just as fond of the society of his intimates and of all the pastimes and social enjoyments in which he and they delighted.

He had not reformed any of his habits, and his growing years did not bring him any steady resolve to apply himself to the actual business of his position.

Yet he seemed to be frequently inspired by fitful desires to display himself as the genuine ruler of a State and to let his ministers know they must not attempt to do without him.

One of the King's prime favorites was Sir William Knighton, who had begun by being a physician, had made his way into Court circles, and become the private and confidential adviser of the King.

Sir William Knighton had been appointed to the office of Keeper of the Royal Purse, and in that capacity he had rendered much service to George by endeavoring with skill and pertinacity to keep income and expenditure on something more nearly approaching to a balance than had been the way in former days.

Knighton's was not exactly a State office and it gave him no position among ministers, but the King constantly used him as a go-between when he desired to have private dealings with any of his recognized advisers, and Knighton was the recipient of his most confidential communications.

From the letters and memoranda which belong to this time we are enabled to learn much of the real feelings of King George towards some of his ministers, and to {48} understand the difficulties with which Canning had to deal while endeavoring to make his enlightened policy the accepted and recognized policy of England.

[Sidenote: 1822-27--The war of Greek independence] The condition of Greece began to be a serious trouble to the statesmen of Europe.

Greece was under the sway of the Sultan of Turkey, and its people may fairly be described as in a state of chronic insurrection.

The Greeks, even in their lowest degree of national decadence, were far too intelligent, too ready-witted, and too persevering ever to become the mere slaves of an Ottoman ruler.

There was something inextinguishable in the national life of the country, and it seemed as if no pressure of tyranny, no amount of humiliation, could make the Greeks forget the history of their glorious days and the deeds of their ancestry, or compel them to stifle, even for a season, their hopes of national independence.

A great struggle broke out against the Ottoman rule, and it roused the passionate sympathy of the lovers of freedom all over the world.

Byron threw his whole soul into the cause, and stirred the hearts of his countrymen by his appeals on behalf of the Greek struggle for independence.

Numbers of brave Englishmen gladly risked their lives to help the Greeks.

Lord Cochrane, who was afterwards described as the last of the English sea-kings, rushed over to Greece to give his genius and his daring to the help of the Greeks in their struggle against overwhelming odds.

A speech of Lord John Russell's which he delivered in the House of Commons within the hearing of living men described with admirable effect the enthusiasm which was aroused in England for the cause of Greece and the efforts which were openly made even by members of the ruling class to raise money and to send out soldiers and sailors to enable the Greeks to hold their own against the Ottoman enemy.

Many Englishmen bearing historic names joined with Byron and Cochrane in giving their personal help to the struggling Greeks, and indeed from every civilized country in the world such volunteers poured in to stand by Bozzaris and Kanaris in their desperate fight for the rescue of Greece.

The odds, however, were heavily against the Greeks.

Their {49} supply of arms, ammunition, and general commissariat for the field was poor and inadequate, and they were sadly wanting in drill and organization.

Splendid feats of bravery were displayed on land and on sea, but it seemed only too certain that if the Greeks were left to their own resources, or even if they were not sustained by the open support of some great foreign State, the Ottoman Power must triumph before long.

The best part of the war on the side of Turkey was carried on by Ibrahim Pasha, the adopted son of Mehemet Ali, who ruled over Egypt as a vassal sovereign to the Sultan of Turkey.

Ibrahim Pasha had great military capacity; he was full of energy, resource, and perseverance, and the Turkish Sultan could not have had a better man to undertake the task of conducting the campaign.

The sympathies of Russia went strongly with the Greeks, or perhaps it might be more correct to say that the policy of Russia was directed against the Turks.

At that time, as in later days, the public opinion of Western Europe was not always certain whether the movements of Russian statesmanship were governed more by the desire to strengthen Greece or by the desire to weaken Turkey.

Canning had always been a sympathizer with the cause of Greece.

In his early days his sympathy had taken poetic form, and now at last it had an opportunity of assuming a more practical shape.

He would have wished well to any effort made by Russia for the emancipation of Greece, but he feared that if the effort were to be left to Russia alone the result might be a great European war, and his policy was above all things a policy of peace.

His idea was to form an alliance which should exercise so commanding an influence as to render any prolonged resistance impossible.

He succeeded in impressing his ideas and his arguments so effectively upon the Governments of France and Russia as to induce them to enter into a treaty with England for the avowed purpose of watching events in Eastern Europe, endeavoring to keep the conduct of the war within the limits of humanity, and bringing it to as early a close as possible.

{50} [Sidenote: 1824--Death of Lord Byron] The combined fleets of the three Powers were sent into the Mediterranean for the purpose of watching the movements of the Turkish and Egyptian fleets, which were threatening the shores of Greece.

Sir Edward Codrington, the British Admiral, was in command of the expedition, and his instructions enjoined on him, in the usual official way, the necessity of caution and circumspection in all his movements.

Something happened which brought the policy of caution to a speedy end.

A report, which found some credit at the time, gave out that Sir Edward Codrington had received an unofficial hint that there was no necessity for carrying caution too far; but, however the event may have been brought about, it is certain that a collision did take place between the allied fleets and those which were championing the authority of the Sultan, and the result was that the Turkish and Egyptian war vessels were destroyed.

This was the battle of Navarino, which was afterwards described in the language of British authority as "an untoward event."

Untoward, in fact, it was not, for the purposes which Canning had in view, because it put an end to all the resistance of the Ottoman Power, and the independence of Greece as a self-governing nation was established, and recognized.

We have been somewhat anticipating events in order not to break up the story of the Greek struggle for independence, but it has to be said that Canning did not live to see the success of his own policy.

Before the battle of Navarino had been fought, the career of the great statesman had come to an end.

We shall have to retrace our steps, for there is much still left untold in the story of Canning's career.

That struggle for Greek independence will always be remembered in the history of English literature.

It cost England the life of one of her greatest modern poets.

Lord Byron died of fever in the swamps of Missolonghi on April 19, 1824, not long after he had left the Greek Islands to conduct his part of the campaign on the mainland of Greece.

It was not his good fortune to die sword in hand fighting on the battle-field for the cause which he loved so well.

It was not his good fortune even to have had a {51} chance of doing much of a soldier's work in that cause.

There can be no doubt that if he had been graced with opportunity he would have shown that he had a leader's capacity as well as a soldier's courage--that, as Fortinbras says of Hamlet, "He was likely had he been put on to have proved most royally."

He had only completed his thirty-sixth year shortly before his death, and the poem in which he commemorated his birthday can never be read without feelings of genuine emotion.

His death created a profound sensation, not only in England, but all through the civilized world.

Not long since we were all favored with an opportunity of hearing how the boy, afterwards to be famous as Alfred Tennyson, was thrilled by the news of Byron's death, and how it seemed to him to be like the ending of the world.

The passion of partisanship for and against Byron as a poet and as a man has long since died away, and indeed it might perhaps be said that the reaction which, for a time, followed the outburst of his fame has spent itself as well.

It may be taken now as the common judgment of the world that Byron was one of the great forces of modern poetry, and that his political sympathies sometimes had, as well as his poetic efforts, the inspiration of genius to guide them.

We must now return to the career of Canning as we left it at the time when he had made his great declaration of policy with regard to the revolted colonies of Spain on the American shores, and when he was as yet engaged in shaping the policy which was destined to end in the emancipation of Greece.

There were questions of home government coming more and more to the front every day, which much disturbed the mind of King George, and made the business of keeping an Administration together more and more difficult for his advisers.

The financial policy of the country had been gradually undergoing a change, owing to the foresight and enlightenment of some few among English statesmen.

Lord Liverpool, to do him justice, was always a man of somewhat advanced views on questions of finance, although an inveterate Tory in all that related to popular representation and freedom of speech.

Canning and his {52} friend William Huskisson were leading the way in the movement towards an enlightened financial system.

Huskisson had done more than any other man, with the exception of Canning himself, to improve the systems of taxation.

What may perhaps be called the scientific principle in the raising of revenue was only in process of development, and to many statesmen no better idea of increasing supplies seemed to have occurred than the simple plan of increasing the rate of custom or excise duty on the first article of general consumption which came under notice.

Huskisson represented the new ideas, and put them into action whenever he was allowed a fair chance of making such an experiment.

He had often held administrative office, had been Secretary of the Treasury, President of the Board of Trade, and Secretary for the Colonies, and had accomplished the removal of many restrictions on the commercial dealings of the colonies with foreign countries and the reduction of many antiquated and embarrassing import duties.

[Sidenote: 1770-1830--Daniel O'Connell] Canning and Huskisson were always close friends and often ministerial colleagues, and they two may be said to have led the way towards the system of free trade to which the time had not yet come for Robert Peel to give his complete adhesion.

The great question of electoral reform was coming up, and Charles Grey and Henry Brougham were among its most conspicuous leaders.

Canning did not take to Parliamentary reform, although he was what might be described as an advanced Liberal on most other questions of national importance.

The Duke of Wellington was strongly opposed to any proposals for a change in the Parliamentary system, and this was one of the few great questions on which Canning and he were in habitual agreement.

Then there was the still more pressing question of political equality for the Catholics of the three kingdoms.

Lord John Russell succeeded later on in carrying the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts which precluded Protestant Dissenters from holding political or municipal office, but the attempt to obtain the rights of equal citizenship for subjects of the King who belonged {53} to the Church of Rome had to encounter much greater difficulties.

As might easily be expected, Ireland became the main battle-field of this struggle.

We have already recorded the fact that Pitt had been greatly assisted in passing the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland and abolishing Grattan's Parliament by the hopes which he held out that the union of the legislatures would be followed by a complete measure of Catholic emancipation.

George the Third refused point-blank to give his assent to any such measure, or even to listen to any proposal for its introduction, declaring again and again that his coronation oath absolutely forbade him to entertain an idea of the kind.

In the end, as we have seen, Pitt gave in and undertook never again to worry the mind of his conscientious sovereign by any talk about relief to George the Third's Roman Catholic subjects.

But it soon became evident that in this as in other instances the resolve of the most headstrong monarch, and the promise of the most yielding Prime Minister, cannot always induce a population to put up passively with a manifest grievance.

In Ireland, where six out of every seven of the people belonged to the Church of Rome, and where the demand for Catholic Emancipation had long been championed by the greatest and the most patriotic of Protestant Irishmen, it was utterly impossible that any King and any minister could impose submission on such a question.

By the time at which we have now arrived the Catholics of Ireland had found a political leader of their own faith.

Daniel O'Connell was undoubtedly one of the greatest advocates a popular cause has ever had in modern times.

He was an Irishman who had become one of the most successful advocates in the Irish law courts, and as a popular orator he had no rival in his own country.

He had made himself the leader in Ireland of the movement for Catholic Emancipation, and he had kindled an enthusiasm there which any English statesman of ordinary intelligence and foresight might easily have seen it would be impossible to extinguish so long as there was a struggle to be fought.

{54} Canning had always been in favor of Catholic Emancipation.

Lord Liverpool was, of course, entirely opposed to it, and almost until the last the Duke of Wellington held out against it.

George the Fourth, for all his earlier associations with Fox and Sheridan, declared himself now to have inherited to the full his father's indomitable conscientious objection to any measure of Catholic Emancipation.

George seemed, in fact, to have suddenly become filled with a passionate fervor of Protestant piety when any one talked to him about political equality for his Catholic subjects.

He declared again and again that no earthly consideration could induce him to fall away from the religious convictions of his father on this subject, and the coronation oath had again become, to use Erskine's satirical phrase, "one of the four orders of the State."

When reading some of George's letters and discourses on the subject, it is almost impossible not to believe that he really must have fancied himself in earnest when he made such protestations.

In private life he frequently delivered long speeches, sometimes with astonishing fluency, sometimes with occasional interruptions of stammering, in vindication of his hostility to any proposal for Catholic Emancipation.

[Sidenote: 1827--Lord Liverpool's successor] In the common language of the political world of that time the members of a Government who opposed the Catholic claims were called Protestant ministers, and the members in favor of the Catholic claims were described as Catholic ministers.

In fact, it has had to be explained, for the sake of clearness, by some recent writers, that the word "Catholic" was constantly used in George the Fourth's time merely to signify pro-Catholic.

When Canning was spoken of as a Catholic statesman there was not the least idea of describing him as a member of the Church of Rome, and, indeed, the words "Roman Catholic" hardly come up in the controversies of those days.

When Mr. Lecky spoke during a recent Parliamentary debate of Catholics and Protestants, he was gravely rebuked by some divines of the Established Church who were under the impression that he was in some way or other truckling to the {55} claims of the Papacy when he used the word "Catholic" to describe the worshippers in the Church of Rome.

Mr. Lecky was put to the trouble of explaining that he used the words "Protestant" and "Catholic" in the ordinary significance given to them during long generations of political controversy.

A crisis was suddenly brought about by the illness of Lord Liverpool.

The Protestant statesman was stricken down by an attack which for a time deprived him of consciousness, and even after his partial recovery left him in a state which made it clear to all his friends that his work as an administrator was done.

There was no hope whatever of his resuming official work, and the question which mainly occupied the mind of the King and of those around him was not what was to become of Lord Liverpool, but whom it would be most convenient for the King to appoint as his successor.

Naturally every eye was turned on Canning, whether in hope or in fear.

As Lord Palmerston said of himself many years later, so it might be said of Canning, he was the "inevitable man."

The whole civilized world was filled with his fame.

His course of policy had made England stronger than she had ever been since the death of the younger Pitt.

Even King George could not venture to believe in the possibility of passing him over, and King George's chief objection to him was found in the fact that Canning was in favor of the Catholic claims.

George thought the matter over a few days, consulted Lord Eldon and other advisers, and found that nobody could inspire him with any real hope of being able to form an enduring Ministry without Canning.