their way than his pleasantries on Mr. Whit-] He was called a traitor and an apostate, a bread? Here is one of them-less known | Judas, who for the loaves and fishes had sold than his Anti-Jacobin sallies, and therefore his faith. For many years whenever he rose justifying reproduction :

FRAGMENT OF AN ORATION.

Part of Mr. Whitbread's speech on the trial of Lord Melville, put into verse by Mr. Canning, at the time it was delivered :

"I'm like Archimedes for science and skill, I'm like a young prince going staight up a hill;

to speak Grey and Tierney left the House.
Such conduct was absurd. To make a boy
responsible for the immature opinions which
family tradition or youthful vanity may lead
him to adopt, is ridiculous and offensive. Nor
is there any proof that Canning had expressed
the sentiments imputed to him. He originally
sympathized with the French reformers, but
their excesses quickly alienated his moderate

I'm like (with respect to the fair be it said),
I'm like a young lady just bringing to bed.
If you ask why the eleventh of June I remem-temper and his refined tastes, and the com-
ber,

manding genius of Pitt at an early period at

Much better than April, or May, or Novem-tracted his admiration. "Were I in parliaber,

ment," he writes to one of his Oxford friends,

On that day, my lords, with truth I assure ye," where I sometime hence hope to be-my
My sainted progenitor set up his brewery;
On that day, in the morning, he began brew-
ing beer;

On that day too commenced his connubial ca

reer;

On that day he received and he issued his bills;

On that day he cleared out all the cash from his tills;

On that day he died, having finished his summing,

And the Angels all cried, 'Here's old Whit-
bread a-coming!'

So that day still I hail with a smile and a sigh
For his beer with an E, and his bier with an I;
And still on that day, in the hottest of weather,
The whole Whitbread family dine all togetl.er.
So long as the beams of this house shall sup-

support and opinion would go with Mr. Pitt." mons; and in the following session made his In 1793, he entered the House of Comfirst speech, which was subdued but effective. The narrative of his feelings on this occasion, as given by Mr. Stapleton, is very graphic.

"I intended to have told you, at full length, ing pointed at by the Speaker, and hearing what were my feelings at getting up, and behow I trembled lest I should hesitate, or mismy name called from all sides of the House; place a word in the two or three first sentences; while all was dead silence around me, and my own voice sounded to my ears quite like some other gentleman's; how, in about ten minutes, or less, I got warmed in collision twopence for anybody or any thing; how I with Fox's arguments, and did not even care So long as the sun shall shine in at those win-pleasing state of self-sufficiency, by accidentwas roused, in about half an hour, from this

port

The roof which o'er-shadows this respectable

court,

Where Hastings was tried for oppressing the
Hindoos;

dows,

My name shall shine bright as my ancestor's

shines,

Mine recorded in journals, his blazoned on signs!"

ally casting my eyes towards the opposition bench, for the purpose of paying compliments to Fox, and assuring him of my respect and admiration, and there seeing certain members Canning's early associations were with the quizzing me; how this accident abashed me, of opposition laughing (as I thought) and Whig party. At the house of his uncle, Mr. and, together with my being out of breath, Stratford Canning, he became acquainted with rendered me incapable of uttering; how those its most eminent members. The beautiful who sat below me on the treasury bench, seeand vivacious Mrs. Crew, who, with the ing what it was that distressed me, cheered Duchess of Devonshire, adorned and inspired in less than a minute, straining every nerve in loudly, and the house joined them; and how, the Whig society of the metropolis, was one my body, and plucking up every bit of resoluof his personal friends. Before he had left tion in my heart, I went on more boldly than Oxford, he was looked upon as " one of them- ever, and getting into a part of my subject selves," and Sheridan, on the occasion of Mr. that I liked, and having the house with me, Jenkinson's first speech, announced his com- got happily and triumphantly to the end.”— ing to the House of Commons. When, there- Pp. 16-17.

fore, he entered parliament as a supporter of

Canning had almost every quality fitted to the minister, the resentment and mortification make him a favorite with the House of Comof the connection were angrily manifested. mons. His manner was always indeed some

what haughty and authoritative; he was an was something like a war between France and unsparing antagonist; he exhausted himself Prussia, "by the trifling circumstance that at all times-these are his own words-"in the Prussian army was annihilated "—the acendeavors to give vigor and sharpness to po- count of Mr. Windham's expeditions-[" a litical hostility." The Whigs, moreover, as firework before Boulogne and yet that we have seen, regarded him at first with wanted confirmation-an embarkation on the bitter aversion; but they constituted at that Paddington canal. But for the uncommon time a small minority in the house, and their openness of the weather, it is probable that influence was not sufficient to make their his army would have been frozen up at Uxhostility very prejudicial to its object. bridge," are capital specimens of this vein of grave and good-humored banter.

Canning's presence was singularly graceful. His figure was slight and wiry; his features, finely cut and decisive, were at the same time very mobile, and capable of a subtle play and variety of expression-a union seldom met with. "There is a lighting up of his features, and a comic play about the mouth," Wilberforce said, "when the full force of the approaching witticism strikes his own mind, which prepares you for the burst which is to follow." His head, altogether, was one of great intellectual power and beauty; the kind of head that is more frequently found on Greek statues than on English members of parliament. His voice was low, but so rich and clear, and perfectly modulated, that it was heard distinctly in every part of the house. There was an air of high-breeding and aristocratic culture in every gesture, which those who dubbed him an "adventurer" did not sometimes possess.

His eloquence was calm, serene, and luminous. He was seldom passionate; rarely yielded to excitement or emotion; but when he did the effect was electrical. The vehemence struck all the more keenly, from the contrast it presented to his passionless demeanor, his sarcastic temper, and his habitual reserve. With the lighter artillery of parliamentary defence and attack he was completely furnished. His irony was swift and stealthy-it stabbed like the stiletto. "I can excuse him," he said when Mr. Windham's military measures were supported by his colleagues on grounds which he himself had repudiated, "for having disdained to answer the attacks of his opponents, but I am surprised that he should not have vindicated himself from the support of his friends." He particularly excelled in that refined pleasantry-that indirect and gentlemanly quizzing-which is so much relished by the House of Commons. The heavy Falmouth coach "conveying the succor of Lord Nugent's person to Spain"the government discovering that there really

Mr. Stapleton gives some very interesting details of the manner in which he prepared for a great speech.

"His whole mind was absorbed in it for two or perhaps three days beforehand. He spared no labor in obtaining and arranging his materials. He always drew up a paper (which he used in the house) with the heads, in their order, of the several topics on which he meant to touch, and these heads were numbered, and the numbers sometimes extended to four or even five hundred."

Some of these "headings" have been preserved, and they are very curious. We have only room for one-the unused notes of a speech in reply to Mr. Hobhouse, who, Mr. Canning believed, had, in an anonymous pamphlet, suggested his assassination.

"391. But in or out of office.

392. The constitution is my object of wor ship.

393. And in this her temple.
394. For that obloquy.

395. For that demonstration.

well know by what pen, to the dagger of the 396. For that designation, and I pretty assassin.

397. But it is past-the danger and the scorn.

398. Let them rail, or let them repent. 399. My course is the same.

400. And while I have the strength, I dein defence of a form of government which, if sire no other duty than that of doing my best destroyed, could not be replaced, and which may yet afford shelter and glory to generations who will know how to value and preserve it."

Not only were these adjuncts in his favor; the temper of his mind was peculiarly fitted to win the confidence of the House of Commons. He was brave, intrepid, and honorable; no stain of baseness ever soiled his reputation. To such a one an assembly of English gentlemen can forgive much. And the moderation of his character attuned with their own. This moderation was intimately allied with his

fastidiousness. His severe and dainty taste, | Canning maintained the even tenor of his the extreme care with which he lingered over mind. He was a fine scholar, and was not the structure of a sentence, or the exact ety-insensible to the classical associations which mological significance of a word-sometimes, the struggle evoked; but he would not allow perhaps, degenerated into prudery. He his imaginations to take his judgment captive, scanned a royal speech till the faintest tinge or divert him from prudent and temperate of color was bleached out of it. The king's counsels; and he expressed nothing save conmessage upon the affairs of Portugal was dis- tempt for those who, to reconstruct the basecovered at the eleventh hour to contain a less fabric of a vision, blindly perilled the slight grammatical error: Mr. Canning would practical well-being of Europe. "I have not present it to the house until the inaccu- traced Chateaubriand's agents," he writes, racy had been carefully erased. Some people scornfully, "perplexing the unhappy Greeks may be disposed to resent this jealous atten- with I know not what absurd fancies of election to verbal niceties; we are not. Mental slovenliness is as obnoxious as bodily; and scrupulous neatness, both in dress and language, is a virtue of the first magnitude. Confusion in speech is commonly the index of confused thinking; and the philosopher and the statesman should weigh the precise import of words as rigorously as the lawyer. A man so constitutionally fastidious as Canning was, could not help being temperate. He had a horror of excess in every shape; whatever shocked good taste was repugnant to him; the extravagances of enthusiasm were regarded with critical dislike by his fair and unimpassioned intellect. A shade of medita- On his foreign policy the fame of Mr. Cantive irony runs perhaps through his mind; ning must ultimately depend. He was the but he had no very deep convictions, nor the ablest foreign minister that England has had stuff of which bigots and martyrs are made. for a century. The principles on which his Yet with all his epicurean delicacy and meteor-policy rested were admirably conceived, and like brilliancy he possessed a remarkably most skilfully executed. From the beginning sound understanding, and a rare fund of com- to the end of his career they are evolved with mon sense. His great speech upon the bul- dramatic consistency. lion question showed the most profound acquaintance with the intricacies of practical finance. "He played," says Horner, "with its most knotty subtleties."

tive monarchies, and crusades against the infidel, with new knighthoods of Malta, at three shillings and sixpence a head." He himself tried to accommodate the dispute between the Greeks and their Mussulman masters by a reasonable compromise. He negotiated a treaty which provided that, on the payment of a moderate fixed duty to the Porte, the Turkish army should be removed from Greece. But this wise and politic middle course was of course unacceptable to the imaginative politicians who, except the republic were restored in its antique integrity, were content to abet the ambitious designs of Russia.

We must briefly justify this assertion.

Canning entered heart and soul into Mr. Pitt's contest with France. He held that the conflict was unavoidable, and that it had been forced upon a minister "whose fame as well as power rested upon the basis of the financial prosperity of the country." The indecent excesses of the French Republicans, moreover, shocked his taste; and when the republic was at length destroyed by one of its own offspring, he bursts into an Io pœan of triumph.

This moderation was the key-note of Canning's character, and determined his political career. He was liberal and yet a Tory, the adversary of reform, and yet the ardent advocate of toleration. Wherever a tangible grievance existed, he devoted his energies to its redress; but he opposed every scheme of theoretical amelioration. He was the lifelong advocate of Catholic emancipation: he "Huzza! huzza! huzza! (he exclaims, in was the life-long opponent of constitutional 1799) Buonaparte, an apostate from the cause change. During the time he was in office, of liberty-Buonaparte, the avowed tyrant of the question of Greek independence arose. his country, is an object to be contemplated The attitude he assumed towards it strikingly miration and gratitude of mankind. Tell me with enthusiasm-to be held up to the adillustrates the habitual temperance of his dis-not that he will make France more powerful position. When all Europe had gone crazy that he will make war with more vigor, or about the "degenerate offspring of the free," peace with more dexterity than the exploded

Directory have done; I care not. No! no! it gen, the fleet was captured, and conveyed to is the thorough destruction of the principles Portsmouth. of exaggerated liberty-it is the lasting ridicule thrown upon all systems of democratic equality-it is this that makes the name of Buonaparte dear to me-this his one act has done, let him conduct himself as he may hereafter; let him be a general, or a législator, or a monarch, or a captive, crowned or beheaded, it is all the same for this purpose. Buonaparte may flourish, but the idol of Jacobinism is no more."-P. 43.

Like Pitt, he did not believe in the possibility of peace. The conflict, he held, was unappeasable until its cause was removed. The military despotism of Napoleon was a volcanic power which, even when at rest, perpetually threatened the tranquillity of Europe The peace of Amiens-"the never, never to be excused or atoned for, this most disgraceful and calamitous treaty of peace"-he bitterly condemned. "I would never have signed it," he wrote; "I would have cut off my right hand rather."

Both the great leaders of the great English parties died in 1806,-Fox with his last breath urging the vigorous prosecution of the war he had so often denounced; and towards the close of that year the Portland administration was formed, in which, for the first time, Canning occupied the post of Foreign Secretary.

The times were times of peril and disaster. Napoleon was at the climax of his power. The whole continent lay at his feet, and the imperial dictator had remodelled the map of Europe. The only government, except the English, which had hitherto opposed an obstinate resistance to his ambition had at length succumbed; and the French and Russian au

tocrats were now, to all appearance, firmly united. England alone remained, and the secret article of the treaty of Tilsit-by which Napoleon and Alexander agreed that the fleets of the neutral powers should be taken possession of by them-aimed a blow at her naval supremacy which, had it taken effect, would have irretrievably crippled her resources. Fortunately the ambitious intrigue was disclosed to the English government. The situation was one of instant peril. Whatever

This was a daring blow; one which a fearless and audacious genius alone could have dictated; one, therefore, which the timid and the sanctimonious have not been slow to condemn. Heavy sermons have been preached upon the violation of the law of nations which it involved; ponderous speeches have denounced the man who sanctioned this profligate attack upon a friendly or at least a neutral power. The world has declined to endorse these vapid platitudes and weak sentimentalisms. Emergencies unquestionably arise, alike in the life of men and of nations, for the solution of which the ordinary rules of moral action do not serve. The conduct of the men who have to encounter these crises must be estimated by another standard and by a different code. That code has justified Mr. Canning. It is possible to kill without being guilty of murder; it is possible to rob without being a thief; and a man may break the law of nations without becoming a buccaneer. The great man sees through the thin sophistries and fictions which society has erected for its protection. The Danish fleet was the property of Denmark, with whom we were at peace; but it was practically in the possession of the allies, with whom we were at war. If it was not used by us, it would certainly be used against us. Strength imposes certain obligations, but so does weakness; and if a feeble government neglects to observe these obligations, it must take the consequences. Denmark was unable to resist the coercion of the continental powers; and if she chose to retain a weapon of offence which she could not herself use, but which take it out of her hands, and place it beyond could be used by others, we were entitled to reach of danger. England was in great and imminent peril; to the supreme moral fearlessness of Mr. Canning she owed in no small

measure her deliverance.

The effect of the blow was great. It "stunned" the Russian autocrat into his senses. The French emperor was exasper"Since the death of ated beyond measure.

Paul," says Fouché, "I never saw Napoleon abandon himself to such violent transports of was to be done must be done at once. Mr. Canning did not hesitate. The Danish fleet passion." While the issue hung in the balwas the object of the confederates; an English ance, Canning remained in a state of keen force was instantly despatched to Copenha- anxiety. "It is a most wearying suspense,"

he writes in one letter. In another-"Noth-1 on a better defined and more natural basis ing yet. It is very extraordinary; and very, the distribution of power in Europe-might very anxious." At length, after an interval have been averted. of intense disquietude, the news of complete victory arrived. The Foreign Secretary had effectually deranged the aggressive policy of Tilsit.

On Lord Castlereagh's death Canning returned to the Foreign Office. Great changes had taken place since he had quitted it. "The mighty deluge by which the continent Canning felt keenly that either England or was overwhelmed had subsided; the limits the emperor must go down; and so, disre- of nations were again visible, and the spires garding all subordinate friendships and enmi- and turrets of ancient establishments had reties, he bent the whole force of his mind to appeared above the subsiding wave." But a defeat the ambition of Napoleon, and deliver new peril now threatened Europe. Three of Europe from the incubus which smothered the allied sovereigns had been frightened out her. "It is evident his head is turned; it is of their wits by the monstrous progeny of the for us to cure the vertigo;" "Whoever is the revolution, and they entered at Paris into an enemy of Napoleon is the friend of England;" offensive and defensive alliance. The prowere the mottoes of his policy. The capture gramme of the "Holy Alliance" was suspiof the Danish fleet had saved England; the ciously vague and fantastic, but its real morevolt of the Spanish people saved Europe. tives were quickly penetrated. Its authors The whole significance of that outburst was elected themselves the constitutional police of immediately apprehended by Canning. "A Europe. Whenever a popular insurrection nation like that," he said, "may be extermi- against a tyrannical ruler broke out, whenever nated, but cannot be subdued: " and he confi- a free government was demanded, whenever a dently backed the sluggish and tenacious pat- liberal institution was established, the alliriotism of the Spaniard against the rapid ance was up and doing. These and similar sweep and brilliant genius of the Corsican. movements were pregnant with danger to the Money and troops were forwarded to the peace of the world; and it was the duty of Peninsula; and Sir Arthur Wellesley, whose the constitutional police to secure order and pre-eminent military capacity Canning was to preserve tranquillity. Such was the speamong the first to recognize, was despatched cious scheme which "the craft of the Boheto take the command. No disasters could mian," "the ferocity of the Tartar," and "the shake the minister's confidence. "While obstinacy of the Vandal," had devised, and Cadiz is safe, Spain is not lost; and while all which for many years arrested the expression is not lost, all is ultimately retrievable." A of independent thought and national life over noble confidence nobly redeemed. the continent of Europe.

But though Canning organized the policy Castlereagh had tacitly acquiesced in the which ultimately proved fatal to the empire, policy of the alliance. The prestige and auhe did not remain to complete it. After his thority of the ancient monarchies represented unlucky duel with Lord Castlereagh he re- in the association, had produced their natural signed the foreign secretaryship, and did not, effect upon a mind obstinately hostile to libuntil 1822, again hold the office. The inter- eral institutions. But to Canning the alliance regnum was unfortunate, both for his own was utterly repugnant-repugnant to his Engfame and for England. For himself, because lish feelings and to his liberal inclinations. the years between were years crowded with Gradually, imperceptibly, with fine skill, he brilliant military achievements and important detached England from the connection. He diplomatic transactions, which would have thwarted its policy, he ridiculed its anger, he crowned the minister's reputation. For England, because on his retirement Castlereagh assumed the conduct of our foreign relations. Had Canning remained in office, we may rest assured that he would not have sanctioned the settlement of 1815. Had he remained in office the "Holy Alliance" would have been nipped in the bud, and the struggle we have lately witnessed-a struggle to re-adjust

defied its threats. He won, but it was a hard fight. The king was against him; the Duke of Wellington was against him. Metternich, the great champion of legitimacy, employed all his vast influence and all the

The complimentary epithets used by Mr. the king of Prussia, and the emperors of Austria Brougham to describe the members of the alliance and Russia.