GEORGE CANNING

		On April 12, 1827, his appointment to be prime minister was announced, but his administration was terminated by his death on the following 8th of August. On all the leading political questions of his day, he took the high Tory side arranging the triple alliance for the preservation of Greece, opposing parliamentary reform and the Test and Corporation Acts - He continued to support the propositions in favour of Catholic emancipation, and the recognition of the South American republics -. It took him the greater part of four months to form his government, and the task had not been completed at his death. His premiership was a brief and tragic struggle for power, it was an attempt to save the unreformed Parliament and system of government.
George Canning

There has been but one man for many years past " Greville wrote during the reform agitation, " able to arrest this torrent, and that was Canning; and him the Tories - idiots that they were, and never discovering that he was their best friend - hunted to death with their besotted and ignorant hostility."

There is substance in Greville's remark. Canning possessed unique qualifications for saving the old order, but few of the members of that order regarded him as a saviour. The reasons for this distrust lay deep in his past.

Pitt, to whom Canning owed all his promotion, referred to his protege's " ungovernable ambition ". Unlike Disraeli, Canning was never able to conceal his impatience to reach the top of the greasy pole. At various times in the eighteen-fifties Disraeli offered to surrender the party leadership in the Commons to Gladstone, Palmerston and Graham. Canning, at a comparable period in his career, was demanding a higher place than even his splendid talents merited. In 1809, while still under forty, he refused to serve under Perceval, who had led the Commons in the previous government and was nearly eight years his senior. Three years later he declined the Foreign Office because the leadership of the House was not coupled with it. These inordinate demands, which kept him out of office during the years of victory, were combined wit dubious manoeuvres. When Pitt resigned in 1801, he determined to give his successor Addington a fair run, and pressed his colleagues to do the same; Canning refused, and made bitter enemies of the Addingtonians. In 1807, though a supporter of Catholic emancipation, Canning was part-author of a highly successful dissolution on the " no popery " cry. Throughout the spring of 1809, while still a member of Portland's moribund cabinet, he angled for the co.-operation of the Whig opposition, expecting that the King would make him Portland's successor. " The real truth is ", Richard Ryder wrote to Harrowby, "that he considers politics as a game and has no idea of any regard to principle interfering with his object of getting into power." And this was the opinion of a sympathetic observer who, like Canning, belonged to Pitt's personal following.

Although towards the end of his life Canning acquired more circumspection and restraint, he never had complete command over his feelings and temper. His emotions were easily roused even by the standards of his own day, and his tears, it is said, " flowed at Chalmers' sermons or at the recollection of his own speeches". In debate it was not difficult to enrage him, and after his death Wellington gave Greville the following account of his behaviour in cabinet:

"Any difference of opinion or dissent from his views threw him into ungovernable rage, and on such occasions he flew out with a violence which, the Duke said, had often compelled him to be silent that he might not be involved in bitter personal altercation."
He could no more control his wit than his anger. Most of his best jokes were made against those whose help he would some day need. It was not wise to suggest that Charles Wynn, who had a piping voice, should be addressed as " Mr. Squeaker ", if elevated to the Chair, since Wynn was a member of the powerful Grenville clan. It was injudicious to lampoon Addington's promotion of his brother Hiley and brother-in-law, Bragge Bathurst:

If the Bathursts and Addingtons were ridiculous, they were also influential. But Canning was an Irishman, and could not help letting fly. Even when his wit did not wound, it gave him a dangerous reputation for flippancy, of being "a light, jesting, paragraph-making man". By the time he fought his duel with Castlereagh, Canning had gained a reputation for several characteristics disastrous in British politics - derisive wit, voracious ambition, and a love of intrigue.

The distrust which Canning faced when he became premier was not therefore due solely to his being " the son of an actress ".
( When Canning was a year old, his father died, and his mother, Mary Anne, tried to make her living on the stage without much success. In 1827 Grey thought Canning, as the "son of an actress", " de facto incapacitated from being premier." ) ' It had been amused by his defects and mistakes at least as much as by his origins.

The unreformed Parliament, boasted it gave a flying start to talented young men, even if they had been born outside the charmed circle. Many of the leading Tories of Canning's day - Croker, Herries, and Lyndhurst, for instance - were of relatively humble birth. Canning was born in London in 1770; educated at Eton and at Oxford, it was his Eton reputation that gained him an early introduction to Pitt, who brought into parliament in 1793. The Prime Minister secured his unopposed return for a rotten borough at the age of twenty-three, and two years later, became under-secretary for Foreign Affairs helped to make a wealthy match for him, and gave him a Privy Councillorship when he was thirty. The brilliant young men without connections of Disraeli's generation were less fortunate: there were no nomination boroughs for them.

In 1797 he projected, with some friends, the Anti-Jacobin, of which Gifford was appointed editor, and to which Canning contributed the Knife - grinder and other poems and articles. In 1798 he supported Wilberforce's notion for the abolition of the slave-trade.

In 1807 he was appointed secretary of state for foreign affairs in the Portland administration, and was slightly wounded in a duel with lord Castlereagh arising out of the dispute which occasioned the dissolution of the ministry.

In 1810 he opposed the reference of the Catholic claims to the committee of the whole house, on the ground that no security or engagement had been offered by the Catholics, but supported in 1812 and 1813 the motion which he had opposed in 1810. In 1814 he was appointed minister to Portugal, and remained abroad about two years. He refused to take any part in the proceedings against the Queen .

Nevertheless, there were limits to the willingness to admit outsiders to their ranks. It was one thing to enlist the aid of a " lackland " adventurer, another to serve under him. The deplorable sneers at Canning's government made by those born in the purple did not derive merely from snobbery and outraged pride. Behind them lay the belief that Canning and his like, who were not themselves men of substantial property, would not serve the interests of the great proprietors faithfully. When Canning's followers were searching for a Prime Minister after his death, Lord George Bentinck wrote to the Duke of Portland:
" Huskisson holds the opinion that the country requires that a man of rank, property and consideration should be at the Head of the Administration... (his) opinion and I think that of the World is that were a man of your consideration and moderate Principles at the Head of Affairs ... the Govt. would be pretty secure."

The Duke of Portland had never taken a leading, or even an active, part in politics ; but it may well be that his " rank, property and consideration" would have proved weightier assets in the premiership than all Canning's genius.

In 1822 Canning was determined to quit politics, having been nominated Governor-general of India, he was on the point of embarking when the death of Castlereagh called him to the cabinet as foreign secretary. His survival in the front rank therefore owed something to chance; but in the main it was due to an array of talents seldom equaled in British public life. He possessed a complete equipment for the parliamentary eloquence most admired in his day. After Fox's death he had no rival as an orator, though most hearers thought him a little theatrical and consequently sometimes wanting in the power to convince the House of his sincerity. "Canning's .......... speeches excellent," Wilberforce noted in his journal in 1811, " but not like Pitt's; rather exciting admiration than calling forth sympathy." No one denied, however, their immense effectiveness. Allied to an open and generous disposition which his outbursts of temper never destroyed, they gave him complete command of the House, which he was said to rule "as Alexander ruled Bucephalus ".

He was equally effective in his department. " Canning, I think," said Wellington, " was readier at writing than even at speaking; I never m my life knew so great a master of his pen." This facility was reinforced by great powers of hard work and concentration. Dudley, who succeeded Canning as Foreign Secretary, wrote: " His habits of industry must appear quite incredible to those who did not know him,"

" He could not bear to dictate," one of his secretaries told Greville, " because nobody could write fast enough for him; but on one occasion, when he had the gout in his hand and could not write, he stood by the fire and dictated at the same time a despatch on Greek affairs to George Hentinck and one on South American politics to Howard de Walden, each writing as fast as he could while he turned from one to the other with out hesitation or embarrassment."

His seizure of the Danish fleet in 1807, and the recognition of the revolted Spanish colonist show his decision and tenacity in action. every sphere he displayed the same radiant rapidity of mind.

When he became Foreign Secretary in 1822 one of his earliest acts in this situation was to cheek the French influence in Spain, he faced the King's bitter hostility for his part in the affair of Queen Caroline's trial, and he was without an ally in the cabinet. The King was quickly won round by adroit courtiership Canning appointed Lord Francis Conynghm the royal mistress's son, his under secretary and also, if Greville may be believed, secured an appointment in Buenos Aires for a subject whose continued presence in England would have been inconvenient to his sovereign. But these personal services were only part of the story: George IV longed for popularity, and Canning could give it to him. There had be violent royal opposition to recognizing the revolted Spanish colonies, but, in Greville words, " when the King found that none of the evils predicted of this measure had come to pass, and how it raised the reputation of his Minister, he liked it very well, and Canning dexterously gave him all the praise of it, that he soon fancied it had originated with himself and became equally satisfied with himself and with Canning ".

In the cabinet Canning established alliance with the Prime Minister, whose friend he had been at Christ Church. Liverpool though opposed to him on the great political question of the day, Catholic emancipation soon enraged the Protestant wing of cabinet by siding with him regularly. " The Duke said Ld. Liverpool had really no opinion of his own," Mrs. Arbuthnot noted in February 1824, " that he was completely under dominion of Canning . . . Mr. Peel said that Ld. Liverpool's meanness and subjection Canning was beyond expression contemptible and disgusting."

More remarkable than either of these victories was the speed with which Canning won the support of commercial circles, and of the educated public in general, for his foreign policy. From 1812 to 1822 he had been member for Liverpool, and he knew far more about mercantile opinion than his predecessor or any of his colleagues. He was the first Foreign Secretary to explain his policy in platform speeches. In 1824 a Whig paper, the Morning Herald, thought " that no minister, since the Revolution, excepting only the great Lord Chatham, has acquired the same national popularity which is at this moment possessed by Mr. Canning ". Within three years of joining the Government, Canning had won the confidence and support of the King, the Prime Minister, and the great majority of the public.

These accomplishments would not in themselves prove Greville to have been right in suggesting that Canning was the Tories' best friend, who could have arrested the reform torrent had he lived. The outline of Canning's qualities given above is compatible with the view of his detractors that he was merely an un principled adventurer of great abilities and ambition, whose mind, whether he was acting as courtier or demagogue, worked quicker than other men's. But this view cannot be supported. From the time he enlisted with Pitt, Canning adhered to certain political principles with complete consistency. " Jacobinism," wrote Charles Bagot, "that is the antagonist of Canning." The periodical which he inspired in his youth was well named "The Anti-Jacobin". His career, like that of every statesman of his time, was passed in the shadow of the French revolution. Like Eldon and Wellington he was the undeviating foe of revolutionary ideas. Like them he opposed parliamentary reform to the end, and denounced "pure democracy" and a House of Commons that should be "a direct effectual representative of the people". but, unlike them, he did not think these negatives enough. He had grasped in part, as they had not, the significance of the commercial and industrial changes of his day.

Canning realized that, with the revolution and war no more than a memory, concessions had become essential. The fear of a revolutionary upheaval, which had united the propertied classes in resisting all change, was fading. If the unreformed Parliament did nothing to meet the reasonable demands of merchants and manufacturers, they would not tolerate it long. " They who resist indiscriminately all improvements as innovations," he told the Commons, "may find themselves compelled at last to submit to innovations although they are not improvements". It requires artistry to kindle enthusiasm for a programme of judicious concessions, and Canning was a considerable artist. " He flashed such a light around the constitution ", said Coleridge, " that it was difficult to see the ruins of the fabric through it." Canning boasted that the arguments for reform of Parliament rested solely on electoral theory, and that there were no " practical grievances " against the existing system. The boast seemed largely justified : after five years of Canning at the Foreign Office and Huskisson at the Board of Trade, the grievances found no more than faint utterance. During Canning's premiership Grey confessed that parliamentary reform had little hold upon the country.

This liberal brand of Toryism, which reestablished Canning's prestige with the public, only increased his colleagues hostility. To long-standing personal distrust of him was now added a belief that his craving for popular applause would lead him into dangerous concessions. Canning was fully equipped by his abilities and past to frame a policy that would keep his party in power, but he was not equipped to make them adopt it. Liverpool had a stroke in February 1827 and eight weeks of manoeuvring for the premiership followed. The high Tories played their cards badly, giving the King the impression that they were trying to dictate to him. In the end he commissioned Canning to form a government. The choice was no mere caprice: probably, with Canning on his flank, no other statesman would have made the attempt. Six cabinet ministers, including Wellington and Peel, refused to serve under Canning and resigned, Wellington even throwing up the command of the army as well as his cabinet post. In all there were forty-two resignations from the government and royal household. The old Tory party of Pitt and Liverpool was broken beyond repair.

It would be a mistake to attribute this secession entirely to personal distrust of Canning and dislike of his methods. The quarrel went deeper. In 1827 Canning was in rather the same position as Peel in 1845, or Joseph Chamberlain in 1903. All three, at those dates, belonged to governments which had long been in the ascendant ; in all three cases the ascendancy had been due chiefly to alarm; in all three the alarm had grown faint. By 1827 Jacobinism seemed a distant danger; by 1845 Peel's "great Conservative party" no longer feared the Radicals ; by 1903 there seemed little likelihood that the liberals would carry home rule. In each case the party's cohesion had been due to fear, and in each, as fear diminished, the rifts appeared. All three statesmen concerned were turning towards new policies, which might have won their parties new support - Canning to liberalism, Peel to Cobdenism, Chamberlain to tariff reform. To the less forward-looking members of those parties, all three seemed more dangerous than the opposition. None of them succeeded in winning the whole party round, and two of them, of whom Canning was one, were killed by the effort to do so.

From 1822 to 1827, in 1845 and 1846, and from 1903 to 1905, the crucial struggle for power was fought out, not between the parties, but within the party forming the government. Liverpool's cabinet were thoroughly used to finding their worst enemies on their own side of the House. " The real opposition of the present day ", wrote Palmerston in 1826, " sit behind the Treasury Bench." Canning's elevation to the premiership transferred this battle into the open, but did not decide it. During the short time that he faced the Commons as premier, his enemies avoided a trial of strength. It is impossible, therefore, to say whether his government would have stood had he lived. The forces in the Commons were evenly matched. He had the Crown's influence, his personal following, most of the Whigs, and a good deal of independent support. His opponents included the Ultra Tories, most of the nominees of the great borough owners, and a small section of the Whigs. In the Lords he was weaker, and there his opponents, led by Wellington, passed a wrecking amendment to his corn bill by four votes.

Whichever side wins, a battle in the party forming the government must benefit the opposition. In 1830, as in 1846 and 1905, the opposition were the great gainers. It is difficult to believe that, had Canning lived, this result would have been affected. In any case Canning's death, unlike Peel's, was no sudden accident. His health had long since shown signs of failing. In January 1824 he was not expected by Liverpool to " last many sessions in the House of Commons ". In September 1825 Sir Walter Scott was shocked by his appearance. Only a year after his return to office he had written to a friend: " The two functions of For. Sec. and Leader of the House of Commons are too much for any man and ought not to be united; though I of course would rather die under them than separate them." He needed to hold both posts to establish his pre-eminence, and the double burden wore him out. When he became Prime Minister he was a dying man, drugging himself with laudanum.

Nor would a government retaining power by Whig support have represented success for Canning's plans. Its continuance could not have canceled the effect of the secession of his Tory colleagues. He had not converted his party to accept his leadership and his ideas. This failure was final, and immensely disruptive. His attempt to lead and save the Tories had weakened them and increased their feuds. His legacy, as Wellington rightly said, Was a " divided government party ".

Transcending all other causes of this failure was the fact that in 1827 the Tories felt safe. They would only accept Canning and Canning's policy of concession in the face of obvious danger, and in 1827 the danger, though great, was not apparent. To succeed, Canning had to persuade the party that only he could save them. Those who seceded from his government believed the exact reverse of this.

" Whatever may happen ", Wellington wrote to Hardinge the day after Canning's death, " the 'Child and Champion' of Radicalism (under the Mask of a Protector of the Rights of the Crown) is gone. Those who remain cannot assume that mask; and have it not in their Power to do a tithe of the Mischief which he could and would have done. I think his death has been so far premature as that neither had the King felt the Inconvenience of the step he took in April, nor are the public yet aware of the false pretences on which the Govt. was founded ..........
Mr. Canning's death therefore will not do all the good it might have done at a later period. But it is still a great public advantage."

Most of the Tory aristocracy would have agreed with this view. At first Canning hoped to defy these magnates. When Croker wrote to him, pointing out how many votes they controlled in the Commons, he replied:

"Am I to understand, then, that you consider the King as completely in the hands of the Tory aristocracy as . . . George II was in the hands of the Whigs? If so, George III reigned, and Mr. Pitt ................. administered the Government in vain.
" I have a better opinion of the real vigour of the Crown when it chooses to put forth its own strength, and I am not without some reliance on the body of the people."

But Croker was uncomfortably near the truth. The borough owners held the key position, as Canning recognized in his final despairing prophecy.

" We are on the brink", he said, a few weeks before his death, "of a great struggle between property and population. Such a struggle is only to be averted by the mildest and most liberal legislation .............. If the policy of the Newcastle's and Northumberlands is to prevail, that struggle cannot be staved off much longer."

A large part of the unreformed Parliament was in the hands of the Newcastle's and Northumberlands, and they would not be warned. With Canning dead the system crumbled quickly. The Tories salvaged a good deal from the reform torrent but not the nomination boroughs. Canning, as Greville suggested, had been the borough owners last chance.