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we recognise as independent. In this doctrine danger pe lurked, as we ourselves discovered in 1895.

Canning's policy in reference to Near Eastern affairs was based on the same general principles as those which he had applied to Spanish America, but the European situation was more delicate, and the handling of it called for something more of diplomatic adroitness, if not of finesse. For a hundred years past Russia had aimed at two objects: the first was to get in to the Black Sea; the second to get out of it-to command the exit from the Black Sea through the narrow Straits. As Serge Goviainow has written: 'Pour la Russie toute la fameuse question d'Orient se résume dans ces mots: de quelle autorité dépendent les détroits de Bosphor et des Dardanelles. Qui en est le détenteur?' For a full century, therefore, the Eastern Question had turned on the relations between Russia and the Porte.

A new factor entered into the problem in 1821. For four hundred years the Balkan nationalities had been almost entirely submerged by the Ottoman flood. After the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, however, islets began to reappear. In March 1821, the Holy Allies, in conference at Laibach, learnt to their amazement and consternation that the Greeks had risen in revolt and unfurled the flag of national independence. Metternich regarded the Greek insurrection with unfeigned alarm. To him it was merely one more manifestation of the revolutionary spirit. The Tsar's feelings were divided: on the one hand he was head of the Holy Alliance and Metternich's sworn friend; but, on the other, he was protector of the Orthodox Church and the hereditary enemy of the Sultan.

Great Britain had not yet conceived any jealousy of the southward march of Russia or any susceptibility as to the future of Constantinople. Still less did she entertain any fondness for the Turk. Moreover, the Greek insurrection aroused extraordinary enthusiasm in more than one section of English society. Philhellenist sentiments were nourished alike by reverence for the past, and by the hopes of liberals and nationalists for the future. To neither sentiment was Canning insensible. Like Castlereagh, however, he was primarily concerned

to avoid a European conflagration. The death of the Tsar Alexander, in December 1825, and the accession of his brother Nicholas, rendered England's task less easy, for Nicholas had none of Alexander's western veneer: he was Russian to the core. For the Greeks he cared little, but he was not disposed to let the Porte play fast and loose with Russia. Canning, not unwilling to help the Greeks but strict in adherence to the principle of nonintervention, earnestly endeavoured to reach an understanding with Russia, and so at once to avert a conflict between Russia and Turkey, and to save the Greeks from annihilation at the hands of the Porte.

Canning's efforts were so far successful that, in April 1826, he concluded with Russia a Protocol under which the Tsar agreed to co-operate with England in offering mediation to the Porte. Greece, though continuing to pay tribute to Constantinople, was to become a virtually independent State. The Protocol must be regarded as a conspicuous personal triumph for Canning. It is true that it failed, owing to the obstinacy of the Porte, to avert war between Russia and Turkey, but it went a long way to settle the Greek question. Metternich, indeed, left no stone unturned to frustrate Canning's policy, even to the extent of using backstairs influence to create mistrust between the Court and the Cabinet, for to Metternich the Greeks were no better than piratical incendiaries. Prussia followed Metternich's lead; but in July 1827 France was induced to join England and Russia in the Treaty of London. The three Powers agreed to recommend an Armistice to the belligerents, and if necessary to force it upon them.

The Treaty of London was the crown of Canning's career as a diplomatist. It embodied the principles he had consistently maintained in regard to that 'shifting, intractable and interwoven tangle of conflicting interests, rival peoples and antagonistic faiths' that in John Morley's admirable phrase-was henceforth to be 'veiled under the easy name of the Eastern Question.' The principles of Canning's policy are clear: the Powers could not ignore the struggle of the Greeks for independence; a contest so ferocious [as Canning wrote to Lieven] leading to excesses of piracy and plunder, so intolerable to civilised Europe, justifies extraordinary

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intervention, and renders lawful any expedients short of positive hostility.' On the other hand, they could not consistently interfere by force. But the main object of Canning's solicitude was that the Russian Tsar should not be permitted to utilise the Greek struggle, for which he cared little, to attain objects for which he cared much. The practical application of Canning's policy was by no means free from difficulty: the sullen obstinacy of the Porte was proverbial; and how were the 'high contracting parties' 'to prevent all collisions between the contending parties without taking part in the hostilities.' The dilemma was solved not by the diplomatists (though Stratford Canning from Constantinople unequivocally supported Admiral Codrington) but by the sailors. The allied fleets sailed into Navarino Bay; the Turks fired on a boat lowered from 'Dartmouth' 'Dartmouth' and the French flagship replied, and before sunset on Oct. 20 the Turco-Egyptian fleet 'had disappeared, the Bay of Navarino was covered with their wrecks.' Momentarily Canning's policy had suffered wreck as well. But Canning himself had already passed beyond the reach of disappointments or regrets.

Early in the year 1827 Lord Liverpool had been struck down by apoplexy, and though he lingered for nearly two years he never recovered sufficiently to take any further part in politics. During fifteen eventful years he had presided over the Government to the satisfaction of his friends and with the goodwill of his opponents. If not the ablest man in the Cabinet he was, as the United States Minister observed, 'essentially its head.' His death immediately liberated the jarring forces he had held in leash. The High Tories, like Wellington, Eldon, and Peel, were at daggers drawn with the proCatholic Liberals who looked to Canning as their leader. Canning's defects of character, temper, and taste told at this supreme moment of his political career, very heavily against him. His bitter tongue, the pen he had so often and so gratuitously dipped in gall, his reputation for faithlessness to colleagues, his apparent preference for devious paths, his fondness for intriguesthese were the defects alleged with or without justice against him. 'It is Canning's misfortune,' said John Wilson Croker, 'that nobody will believe he can take

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his tea without a stratagem.' 'By an unhappy perversion of mind,' wrote a Quarterly Reviewer, he would always rather have obtained his end by a crooked path than by a straight one.' 'Canning,' said a third-and this charge epitomised the whole case against him-can never be a gentleman for more than three hours at a time.' Students of the Bagot Papers will find it diffcult to accept these harsh judgments as accurate. In those familiar Letters we see the real Canning, the affectionate husband, father, and friend, most tender-hearted, generous, sensitive, and lovable of men. But for this manifestation of character the world had to wait. To the public he presented a surface, hard, polished, reserved, inscrutable. The Party would have preferred Wellington as Prime Minister, but Canning would not serve under him nor he under Canning. No fewer than eight Dukes-and before 1832 Dukes were Dukes-presented a formal remonstrance against Canning's appointment to the King. For six weeks George IV delayed his decision, not perhaps unwilling to demonstrate that, in the interregnum between Premierships, even a Constitutional King can not merely reign but govern. Canning for nearly two months was kept on the rack, and the strain almost certainly hastened his end. Conscious of his isolation in the Party and his unpopularity with the anti-Catholic voters, Canning advised His Majesty to form an anti-Catholic Ministry without him. But George IV, with all his faults, could appreciate genius-witness his patronage of Jane Austen and Scott-and would not part with Canning.

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At last, on April 10, Canning accepted the task of forming a Ministry. The Wellington-Peel Tories refused to come in, and the chief posts went to Lyndhurst, F. Robinson (created Lord Goderich) and Lord Dudley. Palmerston was admitted to the Cabinet as Secretaryat-War, and Lord Lansdowne came in without portfolio.' The hue of the new Ministry was, therefore, Whiggish. With difficulty Canning struggled through the session, at the close of which he sought rest at Chiswick, but there on Aug. 8 he died-in the same room in which Fox had breathed his last.

That Canning was ever 'popular' in the ordinary

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sense is not true; but the public were deeply moved by the news of his tragic and premature death, and his funeral in the Abbey, where he lies close to the grave of his master Pitt, was witnessed by a vast and deeply sympathetic concourse. Europe lost in him,' wrote a contemporary, the ablest statesman, and the Commons of England the finest orator of his day.' Was this tribute just? As to the latter part of it there can be no question. In the Councils of Europe he had no real competitor-save Metternich. And where shall we look for Metternich's monument to-day? In an Austrian Empire? In the Union of Germany which he did his utmost to postpone? In an Italy which he kept disunited under the heel of the Habsburgs? In the Holy Alliance of Autocracy which he inspired?

Canning, on the other hand, stood for all that was genuinely liberal in England, in Europe, in the New World. He was no more of a Jacobin than the Iron Duke; no more of a friend to revolution than Castlereagh; a tariff reformer with Huskisson; the friend of the slaves with Wilberforce; the emancipator of the Catholics with Pitt. He formed too high an estimate of the importance of good government to be willing to commit the control of the delicate mechanism of the State to untrained hands. He was opposed, therefore, to Parliamentary 'reform' in the democratic sense. In domestic politics he belonged, indeed, to the school of the illuminés, those enlightened administrators of the 18th century who were leading Europe along the path of sane and gradual reform until their good work was suddenly arrested by the criminal follies of the French Revolution. Yet, as a European statesman, Canning may himself be regarded as the heir, if not of the French Revolution, at least of the Napoleonic Empire. Napoleon had descended upon Europe as a cleansing scourge. His conquests had done much to plant the seeds of national self-consciousness, and where Napoleon sowed Canning

watered.

Nationalism may now be at a discount; the advanced thinkers of to-day may look back with regret to the Ecumenical unity of the Middle Ages, or look forward to an inter-nationalism, or supra-nationalism, which o'erleaps State boundaries and ignores racial differences. But

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