CANNING'S RHYMING- DESPATCH TO SIR C. BAGOT.
rTO Tfili EDITOR OF TIM "SPECTATOR'] BIR,—R would be interesting to know the authority for any
of the variations of Canning's oft-quoted rhyming despatch to Sir Charles Begot, our Minister in Holland. According to Mr. Marriott in his "George Canning and his Times" it runs thus :—
" Dear Bagot, in commerce the fault of the Dutch Is giving too little and asking too much,
So since on this policy Mynheer seems bent, We'll clap on his vessels just 20 per cent."
But surely the true Canning ring is not to be found here, as it is in the version of it given to me by our Minister at the Hague, to whose Legation I was attached before the
middle of last century. I bad in vain searched the archives of the Legation for a trace of the precious document, but my chief, who had himself been employed under Canning, gave me what he declared to be the correct text, which was as follows :-
"In matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch Is giving too little and asking too much. Witli equal advantage the French are content, So we'll clap on Dutch bottoms a 20 per cent.
Chorus of Custom House officers : Twenty per cent., twenty per cent.,
NOUS frapperons Falke with twenty per cent."
(Falke was the Dutch Minister.) My chief's story was that
during the Union of Holland and Belgium our Ministers resided alternately at the Hague and at Brussels, and that
Bagot, being at the former when this despatch arrived, found that it was in a cipher, of which he had left the key at Brussels, and could not be read till the return of the Attaché despatched, post-haste, for the decipher.—I am, Sir, &c.,
AN OLD DIP.
We have always understood our correspondent's version- i.e., that with Falke's name—to be the true one.—En. Spectator.]
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