Thomas Edward Kebbel

“ The choice, therefore, lay between Canning without these, and these without Canning. The duke and his friend contrived to leave an impression on the king's mind that they were trying to dictate to him, and this was quite enough to turn the scale in Canning's favour. George IV, who, if he cared for nothing else, cared a good deal about his own prerogative and his right to name his own ministers, told the Duke of Buckingham, almost in so many words, that this was his reason for giving the seals to Canning, who accordingly on 10 April received his majesty's commands to form a new administration. ”

“ Scott, who was the soul of honour and had access to the best information, did not think that Canning was to blame, and hoped now, he said, that he ‘would take his own ground in parliament, and hoist his own standard,’ as ‘sooner or later it must be successful.’ This tribute to Canning from the old Scotch tory, who had no idea of any coquetting with liberalism, is important, as it indicates the extent of Canning's hold upon the abler section of the tories, unbending conservatives though they were. ”

“ Ten years before, Nottingham, as a member of the House of Commons, had framed a bill on much the same lines, which only failed to become law by an artifice. At the same time he now brought in a less popular measure, a comprehension bill, for enabling dissenters to conform to the church of England. The Bishop of London supported the bill in the House of Lords, where, oddly enough, it was violently opposed by Bishop Burnet. But Nottingham would probably have succeeded in his efforts had it not been for the dissenters themselves. ”

“ Canning himself was chancellor of the exchequer, Huskisson president of the board of trade, and Lord Palmerston, remaining secretary-at-war, was now admitted into the cabinet. The ministry was strong in ability, and commanded a working majority in the House of Commons. Whether, had its existence been prolonged, it would have gathered round itself the confidence of the public and insured a new lease of power to the tory party, once again liberalised by Pitt's pupil as it had been formerly by Pitt himself, is now a matter of pure speculation. ”

“ As Canning said afterwards, our guarantees were territorial, not political. But then arose the further question, whether the treaty of Vienna not only did not enjoin political intervention, but actually forbade it, and entitled neutral powers, if they chose, to interfere to prevent it. Castlereagh and Wellington seem to have answered this question in the negative, Canning in the affirmative. The letter of the treaty is certainly in favour of the former interpretation; for, while it distinctly prohibits aggressive intervention, it is altogether silent on protective. ”

“ It was argued, however, that a man could not be said to marry when he merely went through a ceremony which he knew to be invalid. According to one account, repeated by Lord Holland in his 'Memoirs of the Whig Party,' Mrs. Fitzherbert took the same view, said the marriage was all nonsense, and knew well enough that she was about to become the prince's mistress. ”

“ Canning made mincemeat of his assailant, and no more was ever heard about the Lisbon ‘job.’
Between 1817 and 1820 the English ministry had to deal with two separate conspiracies of which the avowed objects were the plunder of society and the overthrow of the constitution. That the means at the disposal of the conspirators were ridiculously disproportioned to their ends, that they themselves were men of no ability, and that, after their schemes were discomfited, they appeared to be contemptible, may readily be granted. But the swell of the great revolutionary storm was still agitating Europe. ”

“ The circumstances of his appointment to Lisbon gave rise to a vote of censure in the House of Commons, to which Canning's reply is one of the greatest monuments of his genius which he has left behind him. A message had been sent home from Lord Strangford, the English ambassador at Brazil, to the effect that the king of Portugal would like to return to Europe under British protection. The ministers determined to appoint an ambassador extraordinary to receive him at Lisbon, and Canning was selected for the post. ”

“ Though Lord Bathurst did not belong to that class of public men who leave their mark behind them, he was an able and useful minister, and for the improvement in the conduct of the Peninsular war which began contemporaneously with his acceptance of the secretaryship he must be allowed his share of credit. His correspondence with the Duke of Wellington, to be found in the ‘Wellington Despatches,’ is very interesting, and shows great quickness in apprehending the military questions brought before him, as well as promptitude in dealing with them. ”

“ His manner, his aspect, his voice, his elocution, the selection of his words, the beauty of his imagery, and, when the subject called for it, the closeness and clearness of his reasoning, combined to make him the foremost man in the English parliament after the death of Fox. But he does not seem to have possessed in an equal degree what Aristotle calls ēthikē pistis, that quality in virtue of which the orator impresses every one who hears him with an absolute conviction of his sincerity. ”

“ Abbot had always lived on terms of great intimacy with Addington, and on the latter becoming prime minister in February 1801, the member for Helston was selected to fill the post of chief secretary for Ireland. The office of secretary of state for Ireland, which was then held by Lord Castlereagh, was at the time abolished, and to do the work of the office a secretary to the lord lieutenant, and a keeper of the privy seal for Ireland, a sinecure office which might be held for life, were appointed. ”

“ From George III and Queen Charlotte, the Duke of York, William IV, and Queen Adelaide she had always experienced the greatest kindness and attention, and seems never to have been made to feel sensible of her equivocal position. ”

“ He was in favour of the Roman catholic claims and for a vigorous prosecution of the war, and Addington was inclined to neither. Pitt, however, held him in check for the first two or three years, though he could not prevent him from indulging in those flights of humour at the expense of the Addingtonian party, which greatly irritated the minister's own friends, and laid the foundation of that bitter and widespread animosity which pursued him to his grave. ”

“ Seventy years ago the office of speaker was more laborious than it is now, and in 1816 Abbot’s health gave way, and he was obliged to send in his resignation. He retired with a peerage, and selected the title of Colchester; he received a pension of 4,000l. a year for himself, and 3,000l. for his immediate successor.
Abbot is certainly to be classed among the most distinguished men who have ever occupied the chair. Perceval vainly urged him to become secretary of state in 1809. Whitbread said that he was superior to any other speaker he had ever known. ”

“ All three, Canning, Wellington, and Peel, would have been glad to form a neutral government like Lord Liverpool's, but they could find nobody exactly qualified to fill Lord Liverpool's place. The matter, in fact, stood as follows: If an anti-catholic premier was appointed over Canning's head, solely on religious grounds, there was a clear violation of neutrality; if a pro-catholic was appointed, then it could be nobody but Canning. He himself would not accept the first alternative, nor Peel and Wellington the second. ”

“ It was on the nature of the obligations entailed by the congress of Vienna on the contracting powers that England differed from her allies, partially during the lifetime of Lord Castlereagh, and more widely on the accession of Canning. While president of the board of control he had attended the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, which provided for the evacuation of France by the allied troops, and had consented to the pledge given by England to join in resisting any fresh efforts of the French Jacobins to disturb the Restoration government. ”

“ He had, however, bitter enemies in parliament. He was hated by the extreme men of both sides, and was perhaps not much loved even by those who respected him. Much discontent was caused by the failure to follow up the victory of La Hogue in May 1692. The public threw the blame on Admiral Russell, the commander of the allied fleet, and Russell in turn threw the blame on Nottingham, from whom he received his orders. A parliamentary inquiry ended in nothing ; but Russell was acquitted of all blame by the House of Commons, though Nottingham was defended by the lords. ”

“ But the ecclesiastical policy afterwards adopted by the government damped the loyalty of the cavaliers and laid the foundation of that new tory party which held itself aloof from the Jacobites. Nottingham came in time to be recognised as their head. Their distinguishing tenet was devotion to the established church in preference even to hereditary right. In the reign of Anne they were called the Hanoverian tories, and sometimes known by the nickname of the 'Whimsicals.' Nottingham's career was consistent throughout. He was one of the last men in England to accept the revolution settlement ”

“ It is to be added, however, that resistance to political intervention was, in Canning's opinion, a right merely and not a duty, and a question to be determined entirely by our own interests at the moment.
We shall now be able to understand the new point of departure taken by English foreign policy on the return of Canning to the foreign office in 1822. The new revolution, which had begun originally in Spain in 1820, had spread to Portugal and Naples. The Austrians had already intervened, and in 1821 stamped out the movement in Naples. ”

“ After the outbreak of the French revolution Fitzwilliam acted with the ‘old whigs,’ and in July 1794, in company with the Duke of Portland and others, joined the government, and was appointed president of the council.
In December 1794 Pitt sent Fitzwilliam to Ireland as lord-lieutenant, where he became the centre of a political misunderstanding which it is very difficult to unravel. Fitzwilliam was known to be a friend to the Roman catholic claims, and his appointment in the place of Lord Westmorland, a favourer of the protestants, was regarded as an indication of approaching concessions. ”

“ He disliked the principle of a poor law altogether, and seems not to have discerned the real utility of the allotment system, for which it was proposed, in a bill brought in by the government in 1819 but never carried, to enable the parochial authorities to acquire land. Before quitting Copleston's connection with literature we may mention his notice in the ‘Quarterly Review’ of a book very little known, namely, a Latin history of the insurrection of 1745, written by a Scotchman, which Copleston pronounced to be in some parts almost equal to Livy. ”

“ The ‘high powers’ were to use all the means ‘which circumstances should suggest to their prudence, to obtain the immediate effects of the armistice,’ but ‘without taking part in the hostilities between the contending parties.’ It is certain that from first to last Canning had no idea of going to war with Turkey to compel her to acknowledge the independence of Greece. ”

“ When the king pulled a chicken to pieces with his fingers she burst out laughing, upon which his majesty presented her with a box of sugar-plums. She married in 1775 Edward Weld, esq., of Fulworth Castle, Dorsetshire, who died in the same year. In 1778 his widow married Thomas Fitzherbert of Swynnerton in Staffordshire, by whom she was left a widow a second time in 1781. Mrs. Fitzherbert, with a jointure of 2,000l. a year, now took up her abode at Richmond, where she soon became the centre of an admiring circle. In 1785 she first saw the Prince of Wales (born 1762) . ”

“ In Copleston's opinion the better plan would have been to revive the royal prerogative as to issuing and discontinuing writs, a practice by which the processes of enfranchisement were adjusted to the changes of population without any parliamentary agitation. As a politician he is classed by Archbishop Whately as ‘a decided tory.’ But he was certainly more liberal than the bulk of the tory party fifty years ago. ”

“ If French influence was henceforth to predominate in Spain, it should not be ‘Spain with the Indies.’ He called the new world into existence to redress the balance of the old. These words have been supposed to shed immortal lustre on both the eloquence and the principles of Canning. But it is only due to Lord Castlereagh to say that in the instructions which he drew up for the Duke of Wellington on his setting out for the congress of Verona in 1822, occurs the following passage: ‘But the case of the revolted colonies is different. ”

“ John Abbot, D.D., was a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and rector of All Saints, Colchester. His mother was Sarah, daughter of Mr. Jonathan Farr, citizen of London. Dr. Abbot died in 1760, and his widow subsequently became the wife of Jeremy Bentham, Esq., father by a former marriage of the well-known writer on jurisprudence. The Abbots had been settled in Dorsetshire from the year 1100, when Richard Abbot was high sheriff of the county; but the immediate ancestors of the Speaker had resided for some generations at Shaftesbury. ”

“ His speech on that occasion was clever and simple, but was thought by the friends of the ex-emperor to savour too much of pleasantry for so solemn a subject. His name of course will frequently be found in connection with the slave trade; and he was one of the tories who supported in principle the repeal of the Roman Catholic disabilities. ”

“ Fitzwilliam soon made his peace with the government, and in 1798, when the Duke of Norfolk was dismissed from the lord-lieutenancy of the West Riding for a seditious toast, Fitzwilliam was appointed to succeed him. On the formation of the Addington ministry in February 1801 Fitzwilliam, with the other whig conservatives, went into opposition. On Addington's resignation in April 1804 it was intended by Pitt to make Fitzwilliam one of the secretaries of state, but the allies standing out for the admission of Fox, the negotiation came to nothing, and Pitt went on without him. ”