1827.] MR. CANNING'S ADMINISTRATION. 205 The Bexley, and Mr. Peel. Mr. Canning went into the King's closet and said, presenting these letters of resignation to the King, "Here, sire, is that which disables me from executing the orders I have received from you respecting the formation of a new administration. It is now open to your Majesty to adopt a new course." The King gave Mr. Canning his hand to kiss, and the minister had to look around for new supporters. Lord Bexley afterwards withdrew his resignation. Lord Melville retired from the office of First Lord of the Admiralty, and the duke of Clarence was appointed Lord-High-Admiral. The duke of Wellington, contrary to the desire of the King and his minister, subsequently resigned, in addition to his seat in the Cabinet, his office of Commander-in-Chief. When the Houses met, after the Easter recess, on the 1st of May, Mr. Canning had completed the formation of his ministry.* On that day all the avenues to the House of Commons were crowded by persons anxious to catch a glimpse of the minister so beloved and trusted, so feared and hated. He walked up the old staircase which led to the lobby with a firm and agile step, and one of the crowd, at least, who looked upon his radiant face, thought of Burke's famous description of Conway, "hope elevated and joy brightened his crest."+ House of Commons on that night presented an unusual spectacle. Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Tierney sat immediately behind the minister. Mr. Brougham took his seat on the ministerial side; with other members who three weeks previously had sat on the benches of Opposition. In the House of Peers, lord Lyndhurst was on the woolsack. Three new peers took the oaths, viscount Goderich (late Mr. Robinson), lord Plunkett, and lord Tenterden. Mr. Peel on that night made a most elaborate exposition of the causes which had led to the resignation of himself and other members of the late government. There was no acrimony in his studied oration. Mr. Canning had the gratifying assurance from Mr. Brougham, who in the eminent position which he had won had the right to speak the sentiments of a large and powerful body, that the new government should have his support, without the possibility of his taking office himself. Mr. Canning made his explanation calmly as befitted his great place. He could scarcely then have been prepared for the fury of the tempest with which he was soon to be assailed. In the House of Commons he, with his friend Huskisson by his side, was well able to hold his ground against any assailant. Mr. Peel did not offer any opposition to the minister which could imply a difference of opinion amounting to personal hostility. A few of the immediate friends of Mr. Peel were not so guarded in joining what has been termed a teasing opposition." Some "of that species of orators called the yelpers," of whom Canning was the terror,-for his "lash would have penetrated the hide of a rhinoceros,"‡-were perpetually pestering the minister "to give some explanation of the circumstances which led to the dissolution of the late, and the formation of the present, administration." Canning was contented to say, "I will not answer a single question relative to the late transactions, unless it be brought forward as a motion." Mr. Brougham We give, at the end of this chapter, a list of the Administration as it stood on the 1st of May, and as it was modified before the close of the session. + See ante, vol. vi. p. 284. Scott, Diary in Lockhart's "Life," vol. vii. 206 VIOLENT OPPOSITION IN BOTH HOUSES. [1827. steadily supported Mr. Canning in this determination, declaring that such questions were really suggested for the sake of exciting unfair and irregular discussions. Alluding to the same tactics that had been practised in another place, he could only express his unfeigned regret that a prayer that he had heard on the previous Sunday had not hitherto been fulfilled-that it had not yet pleased Divine providence "to endue all the nobility with grace, wisdom, and understanding." Such an enlightenment might have saved a great statesman from what appeared to many as a blot upon his otherwise high-minded career. One of the most judicious politicians of another country has spared us the pain of expressing our own opinions upon the conduct of the most distinguished amongst the Whigs: "Attacked in the House of Peers by lord Grey with haughty and contemptuous violence, Mr. Canning had been but feebly defended by his unskilful and intimidated friends in that House; and he was so much wounded at this, that for a moment, it is said, he entertained the idea of resigning his seat in the House of Commons and obtaining a peerage, that he might have an opportunity of vindicating his policy and honour in the House of Lords." He might have calmly said, with Lear, "The little dogs and all, see, they bark at me;" but "tooth that poisons if it bite" would leave a rankling wound. The duke of Newcastle might call upon every friend of his country to aid in dispossessing "one who was the most profligate minister who had ever been placed in power." Such impotent rage carried its own antidote. But lord Grey was of another order of minds. Lord Holland stood up boldly to defend himself and his friends from the charge of having given an unworthy support to the minister thus assailed by the strong and the impotent. He showed, as Mr. Brougham had shown, how the liberal opinions of Mr. Canning claimed support from those who professed similar principles. The attack by lord Grey upon Mr. Canning's foreign policy was not difficult of refutation. But there was one point of material importance upon which lord Grey must have known that he could not receive an answer when he said, "I ask of the noble lords opposite, or of any one of them, to answer me, aye or no,-has or has not an engagement been entered into not to bring forward the Catholic question as a measure of government ?" He added, "If such an engagement have been made, that at once settles my mind, because it is a principle which I have always opposed. It is nothing less than that which in 1807 I rejected, and to which nothing shall ever induce me to agree." It is possible that the somewhat loose manner in which George IV. was accustomed to talk of state affairs to his familiar friends, and which thus became the tattle of the Court circle, might have warranted lord Grey in more than insinuating against the conduct of the Prime Minister that he had given an unconstitutional pledge such as had been refused by the ministry of which lord Grey himself formed a part in 1807. ‡ But the confidences of his majesty extended beyond those amongst whom he passed a life of gentle dalliance and practical jokes at the Lodge in Windsor Great Park. The duke of Buckingham, whom he had raised to the loftiest Guizot, "Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel," p. 31. Ante, vol. vii. p. 492. 1827.] CALUMNY, AGAINST MR. CANNING. 207 eminence of the Peerage, relates, in the "Private Diary" which the lapse of thirty-five years has brought to light, that the king unbosomed himself to him in the most unreserved manner as to the recent changes of administration. The duke was very wroth with Mr. Canning, who had not propitiated him by the offer of some great office, although the Grenvilles were represented in the Cabinet; and he was himself friendly to Catholic Emancipation. The conversation turned upon this absorbing question: "Canning," said the king, "has pledged himself never to press me upon that subject, and never to be a member of the Cabinet that does." His majesty added, with an oath, that the moment his minister "changed his line he goes."* We can understand how the king's uncontradicted talk might have provoked the indignation of lord Grey against one whom he deemed ready to sacrifice honour for power. Two years afterwards his majesty repeated the same narrative of what passed in the closet when there was no witness present. On the 28th of March, 1829, when lord Eldon was using his influence over his sovereign to prevent the Catholic Relief Bill proposed by the duke of Wellington and sir Robert Peel becoming law, the ex-chancellor makes this entry in his Diary: "His majesty employed a very considerable portion of time in stating all that he represented to have passed when Mr. Canning was made minister, and expressly stated that Mr. C. would never, and that he had engaged that he would never, allow him to be troubled about the Roman Catholic question." + In the "Memoirs by Sir Robert Peel "-those most interesting revelations published by the trustees of his papers, this passage from the Diary of lord Eldon is quoted by him for the purpose of appending to it a vindication of the character of the man of whom Mr. Peel said in the great debate on the Catholic Relief Bill in 1829,-wishing that Mr. Canning were alive to reap the harvest which he sowed, and to enjoy the triumph which he gained,—“ I was on terms of the most friendly intimacy with my right honourable friend, down even to the day of his death." The testimony to the political integrity of Mr. Canning upon the question of Catholic Emancipation in 1827 is as follows:-" There must, no doubt, have been some misapprehension on the king's mind as to the engagement or intentions of Mr. Canning with regard to the Catholic question. I feel very confident that Mr. Canning would not have accepted office having entered into any engagement, or given any assurances, which would have the effect of placing his government and himself in that relation to George the Fourth with respect to the Catholic question in which preceding ministers had stood to George the Third." What Sir Robert Peel concluded to have been "a misapprehension on the king's mind” has been designated by a coarser term in the "Private Diary" of the Duke of Buckingham, which contains these entries: July 17-Received a letter from George [Lord Nugent]—" He treats the pledge of Canning not to press the Catholic question as a lie of the king's." July 19-"I had a long letter from George, strongly urgent against the line which I have adopted, and declaring the king to tell falsehoods, and to intend to deceive." § * "Private Diary of Richard, Duke of Buckingham," 1862, vol. i. pp. 13 and 14. Twiss, "Life of Lord Eldon," vol. iii. p. 82. "Memoirs by Sir Robert Peel," vol. i. p. 275. § Private Diary," vol. i. p. 21. See Note at end of this chapter. 208 CLOSE OF THE SESSION-DEATH OF MR. CANNING. [1827. During the two months in which the Session was continued after the re-assembling of Parliament on the 1st of May, the irregular discussions in both Houses left but little opportunity for real progress in the nation's business. The personal hostility to Mr. Canning, which the duke of Wellington almost acknowledged, was something strange in parliamentary tactices, and some attributed it to the traditional jealousy of the aristocracy, whether Whig or Tory, that a plebeian-an adventurer-should presume to take the helm of the State instead of one of their "Order." Others ascribed the personal attacks of many peers and commoners to that hatred of genius, too often entertained by mediocrity of understanding. The incessant exhibition of this spirit rendered it impossible for the minister either to make a triumphant display of his oratorical power, or to carry through any measure of great public importance. He spoke for the last time on the 18th of June, on the subject of the Corn-trade. The Session was closed on the 2nd of July. When men were speculating in February on the probable successor of lord Liverpool, lord Eldon wrote, "I should suppose Canning's health would not let him undertake the labour of the situation; but ambition will attempt anything." The prorogation of Parliament did not produce the usual effect of comparative relaxation upon the toil-worn Minister. Four years previous, Mr. Canning, Mr. Huskisson, and Mr. Robinson were described after a prorogation, as "boys let loose from school." The American minister who was thus astonished at the deportment of grave statesmen, was more astonished when the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, after dinner, proposed that the company should play at the game of "Twenty Questions." Complete relaxation, however impaired may be the health of a Prime Minister, is one of the few things which he is utterly powerless to command. Mr. Canning had an interview with the king on the 30th of July, when his majesty was so struck by the looks of the Premier, to whom he had given a cordial support, that he sent his own physician to attend him. The next day Mr. Canning had to work in Downing-street. The duke of Devonshire had lent him his villa at Chiswick, in the belief that change of air would restore him. He occupied the bedroom in which Fox had died. On the 31st a few friends had dined with him; but he retired early. The suffering from internal inflammation which he felt on that last night of July, terminated in his death on the 8th of August. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on the 16th in the most private manner. But the universal display of sorrow told more than any funereal pomp that a great man had departed. The settlement of a treaty between Great Britain, France, and Russia, on the subject of the affairs of Greece, was the latest, as it was amongst the most important, of the official acts of Mr. Canning. That treaty was signed on the 7th of July, 1827. Forty years had elapsed since, a schoolboy at Eton, he had written a very eloquent poem on The Slavery of Greece." He painted the ancient glories of her arms and her arts; he evoked the great names of her philosophers and her poets, to point the contrast of her glories fading into shame,-servitude binding in its galling chain those who had stood up against Asia's millions,-cities mouldering,-the fallen Twiss, vol. ii. p. 583. 1827.] TREATY ON THE AFFAIRS OF GREECE. 209 column on the dusty ground,-worst of all, the sons of the freedom-breathing land sighing in abject bondage, groaning at the labours of the oar or of the mine, trembling before "The glitt'ring tyranny of Othman's sons." * The position of Greece since 1821 was such as to arouse the deepest sympathies of every Englishman who knew anything of her ancient story. The Greeks in that year, seizing the opportunity of a war between the sultan and Ali Pasha, rose in revolt. A proclamation issued by the archbishop of Patras produced a general insurrection. For six years a cruel and devastating war had gone on, in which the Greeks, at first successful, had more and more quailed before the greater force which the Porte was able at last to bring against them, by employing the disciplined troops of the pasha of Egypt. The story of this war has a peculiar interest to us in connection with the individual efforts of Englishmen to promote this struggle for freedom,-of Byron, who died at Missolonghi with "Greece" on his lips,—of Cochrane, whose hopes of rousing the Greek leaders to decisive and unanimous action came to an end when all was lost at the great battle before Athens. In September, 1826, the Divan having obstinately refused to enter into negotiations with those over whom they considered themselves the absolute masters,—those "who form part of the nations inhabiting the countries conquered ages ago by the Ottoman arms,"t-the British Government proposed to Russia that the Porte should be apprised that the result of this obstinacy would be the recognition of the independence of Greece. What, according to international laws, should be the basis of this recognition, was clearly laid down by Mr. Canning. The Turks were to be told that Great Britain and Russia "would look to Greece with an eye of favour, and with a disposition to seize the first occasion of recognizing, as an independent state, such portion of her territory as should have freed itself from Turkish dominion; provided that such state should have shown itself substantially capable of maintaining an independent existence, of carrying on a government of its own, of controlling its own military and naval forces, and of being responsible to other nations for the observance of international laws and the discharge of international duties." Such was the exposition which the British government then adopted, in the affairs of Greece, of the principles which should determine the recognition of the independence of a revolting or separating state. The principle of what should constitute a belligerent was laid down with equal clearness by Mr. Canning at an earlier stage of this conflict: "The character of belligerency is not so much a principle as a fact. A certain degree of force and consistency acquired by any mass of population engaged in war entitles that population to be treated as a belligerent, and even if their title were questionable renders it the interest, well understood, of all civilized nations so to treat them. For what is the alternative? A power or community (whichever it may be called) which is at war with another, and which covers the sea with its cruisers, must either be acknowledged as a belligerent, or treated as a pirate." Upon the conclusion of the treaty of July, 1827, it was agreed that * Microcosm, 1787, No. 5. + Manifesto of the Ottoman Porte, 1827. VOL. VIII. P |