Читать книгу Sketches of Reforms and Reformers, of Great Britain and Ireland - Henry B. Stanton - Страница 11

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Pitt's Continental Policy—Mr. Tierney—Mr. Whitbread—Lord Castlereagh—Lord Liverpool—Mr. Canning.

In examining a little further among the statesmen who opposed the continental policy of Mr. Pitt and his successors—though by no means intending to notice all who thus distinguished themselves—a less notorious person than Mr. Sheridan attracts the eye; but one who, when we regard the solid, every-day qualities of the mind, greatly surpassed the showy blandishments of that celebrated orator. I allude to Mr. Tierney. Like Mr. Perceval, he was bred to the bar; but unlike him, he was not a mere lawyer, nor was his comprehension hemmed in by narrow prejudices, nor his soul shriveled by bigotry. Though his reputation in this country is dim when compared with other luminaries that shone in that Whig constellation in the dawn of the present century, yet it would be difficult to name one who shed a more steady and useful light along the path of the liberal party, during the first ten years of that century—always excepting Mr. Fox. Mr. Tierney was foremost among the reformers in the perilous times of the treason trials, in 1794—was a prominent member of the society of "Friends of the People"—penned the admirable petition to Parliament, in which that association demonstrated the necessity and safety of an enlarged suffrage, and an equal representation—and, having attained a highly respectable standing at the bar, entered Parliament in 1796, the year before Fox and the heads of the Opposition unwisely abandoned their attendance upon the House, because they despaired of arresting the course of Pitt. Mr. T. was at once brought into a prominent position. He took up the gauntlet, and during two or three sessions was the main leader of the remnant of the Whigs, who stood to their posts; and he showed himself competent to fill the occasion thus opened to him. Night after night he headed the diminished band, arraying the rigid reasoning powers and tireless business habits which he brought from the bar, against the haughty eloquence of Pitt and the dry arguments of Dundas, blunting the cold sarcasms of the former with his inimitable humor, and thrusting his keen analytical weapon between the loose joints of the latter's logical harness. He was solicitor general of Mr. Addington's mixed administration; but the dissolution of that compound soon relieved him from a cramped position, whence he gladly escaped to the broader field of untrammeled opposition. Here he did manful service in the popular cause, effectually blocking up all avenues to advancement, both in the comparatively secluded walks of the profession which he ornamented, and the more rugged and conspicuous paths of politics, which he delighted to tread. During a part of the dark night of the Continental Coalition, he guided the helm of his party with a skill and vigilance which its more renowned chiefs might have profitably imitated. His ability to master the details, as well as trace the outlines, of a complicated subject, (so essential to success at the bar,) induced his colleagues to devolve upon him the labor of exposing those exhausting schemes of finance by which Pitt and his successors drained the life-blood of England's prosperity, and swelled a debt which the sale of its every rood of soil could hardly discharge. Thus he acquired a knowledge of trade and finance, second only to that of the later Mr. Huskisson. It is meet that the unassuming talents and services of such a man, "faithful among the faithless," should not be overlooked when naming the modern reformers of England.

I have spoken of Mr. Whitbread. Some who have not looked into the Parliamentary history of the times we are now glancing over, suppose him to have been merely a great brewer, purchasing an obscure seat in the House of Commons by his ill-gotten wealth, who held his tongue during the session, and sold beer in vacation. But he possessed an intellect of the most vigorous frame, which had been garnished by a complete education, and liberalized by extensive foreign travel. He was the companion and counselor of Fox, Erskine, Sheridan, Grey, Mackintosh, Romilly, and Brougham—a frequent visitor at Holland House—a ready and strong debater, always foremost in the conflicts of those violent times—for a short period the trusted leader of his party in the House—and in 1814, when the quarrel between the imprudent Caroline and her lewd husband came to an open rupture, he was selected, with Brougham, to be her confidential adviser and friend. Generous in the diffusion of his vast wealth—gentle and kindly in his affections—the warm friend of human freedom, and the sworn foe of oppression in all its forms—he gave his entire powers to the cause of progress and reform, and resisted, in all places, at all seasons, and when others quailed, the foreign policy of Pitt, Perceval, and Castlereagh. The return of Napoleon from Elba alarmed all classes of Englishmen, and for the moment swept all parties from their moorings. An Address to the Throne for an enlargement of the forces was immediately moved by Grenville in the Lords, and Grattan in the Commons, (both Whigs,) and supported by a large majority of the panic-struck Opposition. Whitbread stood firm; and, though denounced as a traitor and a French Jacobin, made an able speech in favor of his motion that England ought not to interfere for the restoration of the Bourbons. Such a fact illustrates the inflexible metal of the man, more than a column of panegyric. His political principles approached the standard of democracy; and this, with his plebeian extraction and rather blunt manners, gave him less favor with some of the full-blooded patricians of his party than with their common constituency. He died in 1815, and like Romilly and Castlereagh, fell by his own hand.

Many worthy and not a few illustrious names might find a place here. Grey, the dignified and uncompromising—Romilly, the sagacious and humane—Mackintosh, the classical and ornate—Grattan, the chivalrous and daring—Burdett, the manly and bold—Horner, the learned and modest—Holland, the polished and generous—Brougham, the versatile and strong—all of whom, with others scarcely less notable, sustained the drooping cause of freedom against the policy of Pitt and his followers, and kept alive the sacred fires, to break out brightly in happier times. But, each may be noticed in other connections. We will now speak of three statesmen of a different school.

Lord Castlereagh was the life and soul of Pitt's continental policy during the six years before Napoleon fell. Like Sheridan, he was an Irishman. But, unlike him, he resisted every measure which promised to bless his native country, with the skill of a magician and the venom of a fiend. Ever ready to bribe, bully, or butcher, he plunged England deeper and deeper into debt and into blood, and seemed to regret when there was no more money to be squandered, and no more fighting to be done. As the best atonement he could make for permitting her to come out of the conflict with a free Government, and without being utterly ruined, he went to the Congress of Vienna, and humbly begged leave to lay her constitution and her honor at the feet of the allied despots whom she had impoverished herself in sustaining against the arms of France. It has been contended that Perceval was an honest bigot; at least as honest as any man could be who performed so many bad deeds. But, beyond all question, Castlereagh is one of the most atrocious and despicable Englishmen of the nineteenth century. The name of no other modern statesman is so cordially and so justly detested by the mass of the people. With no more eloquence than a last year's almanac—utterly incapable of cutting even a second-rate figure as a Parliamentary debater—yet, because of his intimate acquaintance with the affairs of that vast kingdom, his blunt sense, promptness in council, unflinching courage, and his unfaltering attachment to the Throne, and his unscrupulous execution of its decrees, he led the Tory party in the Commons, and controlled the counsels of the King through eleven of the most turbulent years in England's recent history. Though not the nominal Premier, he was the real head of its ministry during the war with this country, and in the times which preceded and followed the overthrow of Bonaparte, and bore a leading share in the subsequent despotic transactions which assumed the soft name of "the pacification of Europe." At the Congress of Vienna he represented the Power which had staked all, and nearly lost all, in restoring the Bourbons. This gave him the right to demand, in her name, that the victories she had bought or won should redound to the advancement of constitutional liberty. But this cringing tool of anointed tyranny, so far from bearing himself in a manner worthy of his great constituency, succumbed to the dictation of Russia and Austria—aided them in forming the diabolical Holy Alliance, that politico-military Inquisition for "the settlement of Europe"—and, decked out in his blazing star and azure ribbon, seemed to take as vulgar a satisfaction in being permitted to sit at the council-board of these monarchs, as did Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse, when admitted to the table of the Earl of Dreddlington. His subsequent course in endorsing the military surveillance which this Holy Inquisition exercised over the people of Europe, encountered the tireless hostility of the liberal party of England, whose leaders made the island ring with their protests. At length, this bold, bad man, this "ice-hearted dog," as Ebenezer Elliott called him, having opposed the abolition of the slave trade, the amelioration of the criminal code, the modification of the corn laws, Catholic emancipation, Parliamentary reform, and every other social and political improvement, during twenty-five years, suddenly finished a career which had been marked at every step by infamous deeds. Immediately thereupon, Mr. Canning, who succeeded to his place as Foreign Secretary, filed his protest against certain proceedings of the Holy Alliance, and England withdrew from that conspiracy of royal rogues.

Throughout the period just mentioned, Lord Liverpool was the nominal head of the Ministry. He was a very respectable nobleman, with a large purse and few talents; an easy, good-for-nothing, James-Monroe sort of a body, whom every Whig and Tory made a low bow to, but whom nobody feared or cared for; a pilot that could steer the ship of state tolerably well in quiet waters, but who quit the helm for the cabin the instant the sky was overcast, or the waves raged. He was in office so long that he became a sort of ministerial fixture—a kind of nucleus around which more ambitious, showy, and potent materials gathered. People had become so accustomed to see him at the head of affairs, where he did so little as to offend no one, that they looked upon him as almost as necessary to the working of the governmental machine as the King himself. This commonplace man, under the successive names of Mr. Jenkinson, Lord Hawkesbury, and Lord Liverpool, held important stations in the Cabinet more than thirty years, nearly half of which he was Premier.

As has been remarked, Mr. Canning succeeded Lord Castlereagh as Foreign Secretary in 1823, and Lord Liverpool as Premier in 1827. Like Castlereagh, Canning was of Irish descent; but, unlike him, he had some Irish blood in his veins. Like him, he sustained the continental policy of Pitt; but, unlike him, he did not desire to degrade England, after she had destroyed Napoleon. Like him, he exercised great sway in the councils of the country; but, unlike him, it was not so much the influence of mere official station, as the voluntary tribute paid to a splendid and captivating genius. For thirty-five years, this remarkable man participated in public affairs; and whatever opinion may be formed of his statesmenship, he was undoubtedly the most brilliant orator (I use the term in its best and in its restricted sense) which has appeared in the House of Commons the present century.

Canning's father was a broken-down Irish barrister, who, having little knowledge of law, and less practice, quit Ireland for London, where he eked out a scanty existence by writing bad rhymes for the magazines, and tolerable pamphlets for the politicians. He died the day George was a year old—April 11, 1771. The mother, left penniless, listened to the flatteries of Garrick, went upon the stage, tried to sustain first-rate characters, failed, sunk silently into a secondary position, married a drunken actor, who then had two or three wives, and who, after strolling about the provinces a few years, died in a mad-house, when she married a stage-smitten silk mercer, who had a little more money than her late husband, and a rather better character. Failing in business soon after, he tried the stage in company with his wife, where he speedily broke down, and she continued for some years to figure in third-rate characters at the minor theaters. In such company as would naturally surround such guardians, the future Prime Minister of England spent the first nine or ten years of his life. He had a respectable paternal uncle in London—a merchant of some wealth. An old actor, by the name of Moody, detected the glittering gem of genius in the unpromising lad, went to this uncle, and urged him to take his nephew (whom he had never seen) under his care. He complied, sent him to a grammar school, then to Eton, and, dying, left the means of educating his ward at Oxford. Young Canning shone conspicuously at the University, as a wit, an elocutionist, and a poet, and contracted some aristocratic friendships which served his turn in subsequent life, especially that with Mr. Jenkinson, afterwards Lord Liverpool.

After he left the University, he became intimate with Sheridan, who knew something of his mother and his own history, and by him was introduced to Fox and other leading Whigs. Though impregnated with liberal principles, his ambitious eye saw that Whigism was an obscured luminary, and so he turned and worshiped the ascendant star of Pitt. Entering Parliament in 1793, just at the bursting of the continental storm, he at once took his seat on the Treasury benches, and soon became a polished shaft in the quiver of the great anti-Gallican archer. In or out of office, he followed the fortunes of Pitt and his successors, till he quarreled and fought a duel with Castlereagh, in 1809, when they both left the Cabinet, and Canning remained under a cloud till 1814, when he was banished as minister to the Court of Lisbon. From this time, he never had the full confidence of the old school Tories, though he was their most brilliant advocate in Parliament, and generally shared office with them, and sustained their measures. After Castlereagh died, Mr. Canning drew closely around him the more liberal Tories—such as Lords Melbourne, Palmerston, Glenelg—and made up, in conjunction with Mr. Huskisson, a "third party," called "Canningites," who, through the auspices of Brougham, in 1827, formed a quasi coalition with the Whigs. After the death of their chief, many of his followers went completely over to the Whigs, aided Earl Grey in carrying the reform bill, took office under him, and subsequently, in an evil hour, became the leaders of that party.

With the exception of giving a hearty support to the abolition of the slave trade, and advocating the cause of Catholic emancipation, Mr. Canning sustained the worst Tory measures from his entrance into Parliament to the death of Castlereagh—a period of thirty years—bringing to bear against the People's cause all the resources of his classical learning, vivid wit, vigorous reasoning, captivating manners, and unrivaled oratory. Undoubtedly, he despised the truckling course of Castlereagh towards the Holy Alliance; and, either because he wished to escape from "a false position," or because his colleagues desired to cripple his influence, he was just about to go out to India as Governor General, when the suicide of Castlereagh altered his destination, and he exchanged a subordinate foreign station for the chief control of that department of affairs. Immediately, England took a nobler position toward the continental alliance in which she had been entangled by his wily predecessor. The new Secretary protested against the interference of the Allied Sovereigns with the popular movements in Spain, and early the next year (1824) stated in his place that Ministers had refused to become parties to another Congress. This was the longest stride toward progress for thirty years, and well might the House of Commons ring with enthusiastic plaudits. This was promptly followed by the virtual recognition of the independence of the new South American Republics—another blow at the Holy Military Inquisition. Calling Mr. Robinson to his aid as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Huskisson as President of the Board of Trade, the reörganized ministry (good, easy Lord Liverpool being its nominal head) adopted a more liberal policy in commerce and finance, which, coupled with its course in foreign affairs, drew to it a large share of confidence in the middle classes, and softened the asperities of the Opposition. During the four years that Canning controlled Liverpool's ministry, taxes were reduced, several restrictions removed from trade, the endless delays in chancery inquired into, the death penalty curtailed, resolutions passed looking toward slave emancipation, the corn laws slightly modified, and a bill for the relief of the Catholics was carried in the Commons, but thrown out by the Lords. Liverpool died early in 1827. After a quarrel with Wellington and Peel, Canning, in May of that year, reached the culminating point of his ambition, the Premiership of England. But, at the end of four months of vexed and troublesome rule, he died, much lamented by the people, who were expecting good things from his administration.

Viewed from one point of observation, Mr. Canning's later policy was favorable to the cause of reform; but, in another aspect, it may be doubted whether his half-way measures were not, in the long run, detrimental to that cause. He was raised up to save the Tory party, if they would have consented to be saved by him; for, had he lived, he would have continued gradually to yield to the advancing spirit of the age, and kept them in power many years. But their distrust of him after the peace of 1815 crippled his genius, mortified his pride, and determined him in due time to rend the party which would not permit him to rule. Through the aid of his personal adherents, his "third party," he did for the Tories in 1826-7, what Peel did for them twenty years later—yielded to liberal opinions—split the party in twain—and formed a quasi coalition with his ancient opponents. Though by this means some measures, such as Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary reform, were sooner carried (though only to a partial extent) than they otherwise might have been, yet it is hardly to be doubted that the liberal cause is now more depressed than it would have been, had no such coalition been formed and no such resulting concessions made. Though the secession of the Canningites weakened the Tories, the accession diluted the Whigs. It ultimately gave them such leaders as Melbourne and Palmerston—men who, down to 1828, had been among the most strenuous opponents of reform—men who have made Whigism popular at Court, by arraying it in purple and fine linen, and other soft clothing—who have stripped it of its rugged aspect, and decked it in the high-bred airs which it wore in the days of the elder Georges and the Walpoles, when a few noble families controlled its affairs. But, on the other hand, Mr. Canning broke the power of old-fashioned John Bull Toryism—the remorseless, insolent, statu-quo Toryism of French revolutionary times—and introduced the more complying, civil, progressive Toryism, which emancipates Catholics and repeals corn laws.

Mr. Canning was like Mr. Fox in one respect. Each introduced a new era in his party. The aristocratic Whigism of the last century, to which I have alluded, is graphically hit off by Brougham, when he says the heads of the few great families who controlled the party "never could be made to understand how a feeble motion, prefaced by a feeble speech, if made by an elderly lord and seconded by a younger one, could fail to satisfy the country and shake the Ministry!" Fox, the Jefferson of English liberalism, opened the door for men without ancestry or wealth to enter the party, and find the place to which their talents assigned them, whether at its head or its foot. He introduced the Whigism of the type of Grey, Brougham, Romilly, Russell, and the Edinburgh Review. It has served its day and generation, and has become so like modified, Canningized Toryism, that the chief distinction between them is in the different modes of spelling their names. Within the last twenty years, the people of England have advanced a century, while the Whig leaders have not kept pace even with the calendar. English liberalism looks with longing eye for "the coming man;" and when he appears, he will be as far in advance of the Palmerstons and Russells of to-day, as they are before the Pitts and the Percevals of past times.

To return to Mr. Canning. During the last five years of his life, he occupied a sort of middle-ground between the ancient and the modern regime; or, rather, was the connecting-link between the old and the new order of things. Having served under Pitt in his youth, he formed an alliance with the disciples of Fox in his maturity. Having advocated the complete destruction of the Irish Parliament in 1799 and 1800, he proposed a qualified emancipation of its Catholics in 1823 and 1827. Having sustained the European coalition for the overthrow of Napoleon, he repudiated its legitimate offspring, the Holy Alliance. Having drained England of her wealth to nourish and maintain absolutism on the continent, he shrunk from permitting her to pluck the fruit of her own culture. In these latter years, he might have been properly called either a liberal Tory or a Conservative Whig. He was the friend of Catholic emancipation; but though public sentiment was not ripe enough during his administration to accomplish this reform, his efforts tended to bring it to that maturity which, soon after his death, enabled this proscribed sect to gather the fruit from that tree of religious toleration which his hand had aided to plant in the breast of English Protestantism. But, on the vital subject of Parliamentary reform, he would yield nothing. It was in reference to this that he had his famous quarrel with Brougham, who, by the bye, was for many years the pitted antagonist of Canning. The point in controversy was the disfranchisement of a rotten borough, which had been convicted of bribery. Both girded themselves for the contest. Never was the rugged intensity of the one, nor the polished strength of the other, more conspicuous than on that occasion. Brougham's attack was compared to the concave speculum, in which every ray was concentrated with focal intensity, and poured in a burning stream upon his shrinking victim. Canning's, to the convex mirror, which scattered the rays, and showered them down upon his foe with blinding fervor.

Turning from the statesman to the orator, we find him occupying a place equaled by few of his cotemporaries; surpassed by none. He was the Cicero of the British Senate; and, using the term oratory in its precise sense, he shines unrivaled among the English statesmen of our day. He is an admirable refutation of the somewhat popular error, that a reasoner must necessarily be as dull and uninteresting as the Rev. Dr. Dryasdust—that wit, raillery, vivid illustration, and suggestive allusions, are incompatible with sound argument—that to be convincing, one must be stupid—that logic consists in a lifeless skeleton of consecutive syllogisms, divested of the flesh, blood, and marrow of eloquence—and that the profundity of a speech is to be measured by the depth of the slumbers into which it precipitates the auditory. It is thus that many a man has gained the reputation of being a great reasoner, when he was only a great bore; or been accounted wiser than his more vivacious associates, because he wore a stolid visage and held his tongue—completely putting to rout the venerable maxim of "nothing venture, nothing have."

Though few public speakers of his time dealt more with the lighter graces of oratory—wit, fancy, epigram, anecdote, historical illustration, and classical allusion—so, few excelled him in the clearness of his statements, the solidity of his arguments, and the skill with which he brought all his resources to bear upon the point to be reached, and the power with which he pressed it home to the conviction of his hearers. A burst of laughter from all sides, excited by his infectious wit, or a round of applause from his friends when some galling sarcasm pierced the mailed harness of the Opposition, relieved the tedium of a currency debate, intolerably dull in most hands, but which he, by mingling figures of speech with the figures of the budget, always made interesting, and thus kept his party in good humor while he drove these wearisome topics through the thick skulls of knights of the shire and country squires, of which material the Tories were largely made up. Throwing around the path where he led his auditors a profusion of flowers, gathered in all climes and refreshing to all tastes, he was ever carrying forward the heavy chain of argument, delighting while he convinced, and amusing that he might convert.

But these rare qualities produced their drawbacks. So skillful a master of so bewitching an art could not be sparing in the exhibition of his peculiar powers. His pleasantry and by-play, when handling momentous questions, offended graver men, who could not believe that so much levity was consistent with sincerity. He excited the jealousy of plainer understandings, who saw things as clearly as he, but could not set them in so transparent a light. His coruscations were not only glittering, but they often dazzled and confounded less ornate minds. His sarcasms stung his enemies to madness; and, not content merely to drive his opponents to the wall, he hurled them there with such force, that they rebounded into the arena, to become in turn the assailants; and his friends found that a brilliant attack led on by him often resulted in a counter assault, which summoned to the rescue all the forces of his party. And more than this, his port and bearing left the impression upon most minds that a consummate artist was acting a part, and not a sincere man speaking from the heart. His obscure origin, (obscure for one who aspired to be a Tory Premier,) and his early coquetry with the Whigs, affixed to him the epithet of "an adventurer;" and he never shook off the epithet, nor effaced the impression that it was fitly bestowed. The people of England, whether he was Treasurer of the Navy, Foreign Secretary, Prime Minister, or Parliamentary orator, never wholly escaped from the suspicion that the son was following the profession of the mother, but had chosen the chapel of St. Stephen's rather than the theater of Drury Lane, for the display of his genius.

Turning from the orator to the man, we find much to delight the eye. George Canning never forgot the humble mother that bore him. So soon as his resources would permit, he made ample provision for her support; and for years after he entered Parliament, and even when a foreign ambassador, he wrote her a weekly epistle, breathing the kindliest affection. Though he could never elevate her tastes and associations above the connections of her youth, he used to throw aside the cares of office, that he might visit her, and the humble cousins with whom she dwelt, at Bath; and there, when in the zenith of his fame, would walk out with his plebeian relatives, and receive the homage of the lordly visitants at that fashionable resort, in their company. This marks him a noble man. He delighted in literary pursuits—would drop the pen when preparing a diplomatic dispatch, to talk over the classics with his university acquaintances—was a brilliant essayist, and wrote Latin and English verses with grace and beauty.