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1821.

CHAP. oratorical and literary talents such as he possessed fail in acquiring distinction at a university, though still greater powers and more profound capacity rarely do attain it. Bacon made no figure at college; Adam Smith was unknown to academic fame; Burke was never heard of at Trinity College, Dublin; Locke was expelled from Cam

approved of the general policy of Government, arrangements would be made
to procure him a seat in Parliament. Mr Canning declared his concurrence in
the views of the minister, acting in this respect on the advice of Mr Sheridan,
who dissuaded him from joining the Opposition, which had nothing to offer him.
Mr Canning's previous intimacies had been chiefly with the Whigs; and, like Pitt
and Fox, he had hailed the French Revolution at its outset with unqualified
hope and enthusiasm. He was returned to Parliament in 1793 for the close
borough of Newport, in the Isle of Wight, entering thus, like all the great
men of the day, public life through the portals of the nomination boroughs.

His first speech was on the 31st January 1794, in favour of a loan to the
King of Sardinia; and it gave such promises of future talent that he was selected
to second the Address. In spring 1796 he was appointed Under-Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs; and on 1st March 1799 delivered a speech against
the slave-trade, which has deservedly obtained a place in his collected speeches.
At this time he became the most popular contributor to the Anti-Jacobin
Review, of which Mr Gifford was the editor. His pieces are chiefly of the
light, sportive, or satirical kind, and contributed to check, by the force of
ridicule, the progress of French principles in the country. In 1799 he deli-
vered two brilliant speeches in favour of the union with Ireland, which led to
his afterwards becoming the warm and consistent advocate of the Catholic
claims in Parliament; and in 1801 went out of office with Mr Pitt. He did
not oppose Mr Addington's administration, but neither did he support it, and
wisely discontinued almost entirely his attendance in Parliament during its
continuance. In July 1800 he married Miss Joan Scott, daughter and co-
heiress of General Scott, who had made a colossal fortune chiefly at the gam-
ing-table. This auspicious union greatly advanced his prospects. Her
fortune, which was very large, made him independent, her society happy,
her connections powerful; for her eldest sister had recently before married
the Marquis of Titchfield, eldest son of, and who afterwards became, Duke of
Portland.

In spring 1803, Mr Canning took a leading part in the series of resolutions condemnatory of the conduct of ministers, which led to the overthrow of Mr Addington's administration, and on the return of Mr Pitt to power was appointed Treasurer of the Navy, an office which he held till the death of that great man, in December 1805. On the accession of the Whigs to office he was of course displaced, and became an active member of that small but indefatigable band of opposition which resisted Mr Fox's administration. Such was the celebrity which he thus acquired, that when the Tories returned to power, in April 1807, he was appointed Secretary of State for the Foreign Department, and for the first time became a Cabinet Minister.

In this elevated position he not only took the lead in conducting the foreign affairs of the country, but was the main pillar of administration in resisting the attacks with which it was assailed, particularly on the Orders in Council and the Copenhagen expedition. The breaking out of the Spanish war in May

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bridge. On the other hand, there has been scarcely a great CHAP. orator or a distinguished minister in England for a century and a half whose reputation did not precede him from the university into Parliament. The reason is, that there is a natural connection between eminence in scholarship and oratorical power, but not between that faculty and depth

1808, and the active part which Great Britain immediately took in that contest, gave him several opportunities for the display of his eloquence in the generous support of Liberal principles and the independence of nations, of which through life he had been the fervent supporter. To the vigour of his counsels in the cabinet, and the influence of his eloquence in the senate, is, in a great degree, to be ascribed the energetic part which England took in that contest, and its ultimately glorious termination. He conducted the able negotiation with the Emperors Alexander and Napoleon, when, after the interview at Erfurth in 1808, they jointly proposed peace to Great Britain; and the complicated diplomatic correspondence with the American government relative to the affair of the Chesapeake, and the many points of controversy concerning maritime rights which had arisen with the people of that country. In all these negotiations his despatches and state papers were a model of clear, temperate, and accurate reasoning. Subsequent to this he became involved in a quarrel with Lord Castlereagh, arising out of the failure of the Walcheren expedition in 1809, and Mr Canning's attempts to get him removed from the Ministry, which terminated in a duel, and led to the retirement of both from office at the very time when the dangers of the country most imperatively called for their joint services. He did not, however, on resigning, go into opposition, but continued an independent member of Parliament; and it was after this that he made his celebrated speech in support of the Bullion Report —a speech which displays at once the ease with which he could direct his great powers to any new subject, however intricate, and the decided bias which inclined him to Liberal doctrines.

At the dissolution of Parliament, in the close of 1812, Mr Canning stood for Liverpool, on which occasion he made the most brilliant and interesting speeches of his whole career; for they had less of the fencing common in Parliament, and more of real eloquence in them than his speeches in the House of Commons. In 1814 he was sent into a species of honourable banishment as ambassador at the court of Lisbon, from whence he returned in 1816; and in the beginning of 1817 he was appointed President of the Board of Control on the death of the Earl of Buckinghamshire. In the spring of 1820 he sustained a severe loss by the death of his eldest son George, who expired on the 31st March. Overwhelmed with this calamity, and desirous to be absent during the discussions on the Queen, he took but little part in public affairs during 1821 and 1822, during which years he resided chiefly in France and Italy; but the capacity he evinced as President of the Board of Control, coupled with a secret desire on the part of the Prince-Regent to get him removed from the Cabinet, pointed him out as the fit person to be appointed Governorgeneral of India, which situation he had agreed to accept, and even attended the farewell dinner of the East India directors on his appointment, when the unexpected death of Lord Londonderry, and the general voice of the public, on the 20th August, in a manner forced him upon the Government as Foreign Secretary.—Memoir of Mr Canning, i. 29. Life and Speeches, vol. i.

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CHAP. of thought; both rest upon the same mental faculties, and cannot exist without them. Quickness of perception, retentiveness of memory, a brilliant imagination, fluent diction, self-confidence, presence of mind, are as essential to the debater in Parliament as to the scholar in the university. Both are essentially at variance with the solitary meditation, the deep reflection, the distrust of self, the slow deductions, the laborious investigation, the generalising turn of mind, which are requisite to the discovery of truth, and are invariably found united in those destined ultimately to be the leaders of opinion. The first set of qualities fit their possessors to be the leaders of senates, the last to be the rulers of thought.

4.

liar style of

When Mr Canning first entered Parliament, the native His pecu- bent of his mind, and the aspirations which naturally eloquence. arise in the breast of one conscious of great intellectual power and destitute of external advantages, inclined him to the Liberal side. But as its leaders were at that period in opposition, and Mr Canning did not possess an independent fortune, they generously advised him to join the ranks of Mr Pitt, then in the midst of his struggle with the French Revolution. He did so, and soon became a favourite élève of that great man. It was hard to say whether his poetry in the Anti-Jacobin, or his speeches in Parliament, contributed most to aid his cause. Gradually he rose to very high eminence in debate—an eminence which went on continually increasing till he obtained the entire mastery of the House of Commons, and commanded its attention to a degree which neither Mr Burke, Mr Pitt, nor Mr Fox had done. The reason was, that his talents were more completely suited to the peculiar temper and average capacity of that assembly: they neither fell short of it, nor went beyond it. Less philosophical than Burke, less instructive than Pitt, less impassioned than Fox, he was more attractive than any of them, and possessed in a higher degree the faculty, by the exhibition of his varied powers, of permanently

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keeping alive the attention. He neither disconcerted his CHAP. audience by abstract disquisition, nor exhausted them by statistical details, nor terrified them by vehemence of declamation. Alternately serious and playful, eloquent and fanciful, sarcastic and sportive, he knew how to throw over the most uninteresting subjects the play of fancy, and the light of original genius. Whatever the subject was, he touched it with a felicity which no other could reach. He never rose without awakening expectation, nor sat down without exciting regret. Gifted by nature with a poetic fancy and a brilliant imagination, an accomplished scholar, and a felicitous wit, he knew how to enliven every subject by the treasures of learning, the charms of poetry, and the magic influence of allusion. At times he rose to the very highest strains of eloquence; and if the whole English language is searched for the finest detached passages of splendid oratory, they will be found in the greatest number in his | collected speeches.

5.

If Mr Canning's reach of thought and consistency of conduct had been equal to these brilliant qualities, he His defects. would have been one of the very greatest statesmen, as unquestionably he was one of the first orators that England ever produced. But unfortunately this was very far from being the case; and he remains a lasting proof that, if literary accomplishment is one of the most important elements in oratorical power, it is very far from being the same in statesmanlike wisdom. Perhaps they cannot coexist in the same mind. Mr Burke himself, the greatest of political philosophers, was by no means an equally popular speaker-his voice seldom failed to clear the House of Commons. Mr Canning had too much of the irritability of genius in his temper, of the fervour of poetry in his thought, of the restlessness of ambition in his disposition, to be, when intrusted with the direction of affairs, either a safe or a judicious statesman. statesman. Passionately fond of popularity,

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CHAP. accustomed to receive its incense, and reap at once the rewards of genius by the admiration which his brilliancy in conversation, his versatility in debate, awakened, he forgot that immediate applause is in general the precursor, not of lasting fame, but of dangerous innovation and permanent condemnation. He mistook the cheers of the multitude for the voice of ages. He forgot the reproof of the Greek philosopher, when his pupil was intoxicated with the applause of the mob: " My son, if you had spoken wisely, you would have met with no such approbation." Hence he yielded with too much facility to the bent of the age in which he was called to power; he increased, instead of moderating, its fervour. His career as a statesman, in mature life, is little more than a contrast to his earlier speeches as a legislator. He was the first of that school, unfortunately become so numerous in later times, who sacrifice principle to ambition, and climb to power by adopting the principles which they have spent the best part of their life in combating. Unbounded present applause never fails to attend the unlooked-for and much-prized conversion. Time will show whether it is equally followed by the respect and suffrages of subsequent ages.

6.

Viscount Chateaubriand.

Mr Canning rose to power in England, by embodying in the most effective and brilliant form the spirit and wishes of his country at the time: as Napoleon said of himself, "Il marchait toujours avec l'opinion de cinq millions d'hommes." By a singular coincidence, another man of similar talents and turn of mind at the same time was elevated by the influence of the ruling party at the moment in France to the direction of its foreign affairs, and, equally with his English rival, embodied the ideas and wishes of the ruling majority on the other side of the Channel. VISCOUNT CHATEAUBRIAND has attained to such fame as a writer, that we are apt to forget that he was also a powerful statesman; that he ruled the foreign affairs of his country during the most momentous period which

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