The Renegade Whig
SIR CHARLES Foram has written a readable, if not very distinguished, biography of George Canning. The book is marred in places by the author's " ultraistic " political philosophy. He has a curious admiration for historical figures such as Louis the Fifteenth of France, and he advances the opinion that the South American Republics would have solved all their difficulties if, when they separated from Spain, they had become monarchies and selected their rulers frcm the royal houses of Europe. But, in spite of these prejudices, Sir Charles Petrie has written a very clear and concise account of Canning's extraordinary career.
We need not share his complacent acceptance of Canning's support of measures such as the Six Acts, nor be quite as ccnvinced as Sir Charles Petrie apparently is that Canning's opposition to parliamentary reform was justified by his views regarding the balance of the British Constitution. But we can share his enthusiasm for the extraordinary genius which Canning showed on the two occasions when he occupied the post of Foreign Secretary, and can quite concur in his verdict that Canning was undoubtedly one of the greatest Foreign Ministers that England has ever had. Sir Charles Petrie's account of Canning's conduct of England's foreign policy from 1807 to 1809 and again from 1822 to 1827 is excellent. Canning's achievement at the Foreign Office was indeed an amazing one, and was at once the most glorious period of his political career and the greatest service which he rendered to his country. The influence which he exerted when he was Foreign Secretary in Portland's ministry in preventing Napoleon from achieving the complete domination of Europe and of the world can hardly be over- estimated. Canning's policy was at once bold and clear-sighted, and he displayed throughout it the highest qualities of statesmanship and imagination. That he was ruthless in such strokes of policy as the seizure of the Danish fleet cannot be denied ; but the duel with Napoleon obviously called for such methods, and Canning was not the man to shrink from them.
On the second occasion in which he occupied the post of Foreign Secretary his success was scarcely less striking. He managed to preserve the settlement of Europe which had been arranged at the Congress of Vienna, and yet, at the same time, to detach England from the disastrous projects which the Holy Alliance had attempted to realize in Europe. In this we see the curious paradox of Canning's career. Through the force of circumstances, and owing to his own deep realism, Canning supported Liberal forces in his foreign policy to an extent which earned for him the antagonism of that arch-reactionary Prince Metternich. He was far too clear-sighted to sympathise with the mystical conservatism of Alexander the First or to believe that Metternieh's methods were the proper ones by which revolution could be suppressed
in Europe. And so Canning, the avowed and obstinate opponent of parliamentary reform in England, became something like the champion of Liberal forces abroad, giving another proof of that remarkable capacity he had all his life for seeing things as they were.
The portion of his career which does him the least credit, and for which Sir• Charles Petrie's defence is entirely unconvincing, lies in his attitude towards the question of parliamentary reform. Canning permitted that horror of the principles promulgated by the French Revolution, which in early youth seems to have been mainly responsible for detaching him from his allegiance to the Whig Party and sending him into the ranks of the Tories, to blind him not only to the merits of the case for parliamentary reform, but even to its necessity. He was throughout his life the avowed opponent of all democratic tendencies, and the excuses which his present biographer makes for his attitude are inadequate. Sir Charles Petrie's argument, in which he quotes Canning's own words that the British Constitution was intended "to reform practical abuses and not to aim at theoretical perfection," has the taint of that casuistry which lies in Canning's words. That the representative system in England before the Disenfranchisement of the Rotten Boroughs did constitute a practical grievance it seems very hard not to admit, and that a man of Canning's intellect should have refused to admit it does somehow seem to make that "rooted distrust" a Canning, which Lord Grey admitted that he entertained, seem not unjustified. Canning persistently evaded the issue of parliamentary reform, and all his pleas for maintaining the balance of the Constitution have a very hollow ring when one considers the actual state of affairs at the time and realizes that a man with Canning's powers could not have failed to grasp their significance. Just as his foreign policy displayed all the highest attributes of his genius (save in the one exception where he permitted his personal hostility to the United States of America to embitter unnecessarily the relations of that country and England) and was of inestimable service both to England and to Europe, so his attitude upon the great question of parliamentary reform reflects credit neither upon his talents nor his character. It is a strange thing that, after having done so much for England in the sphere of foreign relations, perhaps his sudden death, which in Lord Grey's opinion made the passage of the Reform Bill possible, was the other great service which he unconsciously rendered to his country. Canning's reputation cannot but be diminished by his attitude towards parliamentary reform. It smacks a little too much of the renegade Whig ; and, while paying every tribute to his genius and allowing him that rank among the greatest states- men whom England has produced, which is his by right, one can only say of him, paraphrasing a famous judgment passed On Mazarin, that among first-rate Men Canning was one of the least.
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