IV
From the University Canning went to Lincoln’s Inn. It does not appear, however, that in taking to the study of the law he had any idea of becoming a Lord Chancellor. There was nothing of severity in his plan of life—he dined out with those who invited him, and his own little room was at times modestly lit up for gatherings together of old friends, who enjoyed new jokes, and amongst whom and for whom were composed squibs, pamphlets, newspaper articles, in steady glorification of school and college opinions, which the Oxonian, on quitting the University, had no doubt the intention to sustain in the great battles of party warfare.
But events were then beginning to make men’s convictions tremble under them; and, with the increasing differences amongst veteran statesmen, it was difficult to count on youthful recruits.
At all events, it is about this time that Mr. Canning’s political career begins. It must be viewed in relation to the particular state of society and government which then existed.
From the days of Queen Anne there had been a contest going on between the two aristocratic factions, “Whig” and “Tory.” The principles professed by either were frequently changed. The Tories, such as Sir William Windham, under the guidance of Bolingbroke, often acting as Reformers; and the Whigs, under Walpole, often acting as Conservatives. The being in or out of place was in fact the chief difference between the opposing candidates for office, though the Whigs generally passed for being favourable to popular pretensions, and the Tories for being favourable to Royal authority.
In the meantime public opinion, except on an occasional crisis when the nation made itself heard, was the opinion of certain coteries, and public men were the men of those coteries. It not unfrequently happened that the most distinguished for ability were the most distinguished for birth and fortune. But it was by no means necessary that it should be so. The chiefs of the two conflicting armies sought to obtain everywhere the best soldiers. Each had a certain number of commissions to give away, or, in other words, of seats in Parliament to dispose of. They who had the government in their hands could count from that fact alone on thirty or forty. It matters little how these close boroughs were created. Peers or gentlemen possessed them as simple property, or as the effect of dominant local influence. The Treasury controlled them as an effect of the patronage or employments which office placed in its hands. A certain number were sold or let by their proprietors, and even by the Administration; and in this manner men who had made fortunes in our colonies or in trade, and were averse to a public canvass, and without local landed influence, found their way into the great National Council. They paid their 5000l. down, or their 1000l. a year, and could generally, though not always, find a seat on such terms. But a large portion of these convenient entries into the House of Commons was kept open for distinguished young men, who gave themselves up to public affairs as to a profession. A school or college reputation, an able pamphlet, a club, or county meeting oration, pointed them out. The minister, or great man who wished to be a minister, brought them into Parliament. If they failed, they sank into insignificance; if they succeeded, they worked during a certain time for the great men of the day, and then became great men themselves.
This system had advantages, counterbalanced by defects, and gave to England a set of trained and highly educated statesmen, generally well informed on all national questions, strongly attached to party combinations, connected by the ties of gratitude and patronage with the higher classes, having a certain contempt for the middle: keenly alive to the glory, the power, the greatness of the country, and sympathising little with the habits and wants of the great masses of the people.
They had not a correct knowledge of the feelings and wants of the poor man,—they understood and shared the feelings of the gentleman. Bread might be dear or cheap, they cared little about it; a battle gained or lost affected them more deeply. A mob might be massacred without greatly exciting their compassion; but the loss of a great general or of a great statesman they felt as a national calamity.
Such were the men who might fairly be called “political adventurers:” a class to which we owe much of our political renown, much of our reputation for political capacity, but which, in only rare instances, won the public esteem or merited the popular affections. Such were our political adventurers when Mr. Pitt sent for Mr. Canning, a scholar of eminence and a young man of superior and shining abilities, and offered him a seat in the House of Commons.
The following is the simple manner in which this interview is spoken of by a biographer of Mr. Canning:112
“Mr. Pitt, through a private channel, communicated his desire to see Mr. Canning; Mr. Canning of course complied. Mr. Pitt immediately proceeded, on their meeting, to declare to Mr. Canning the object of his requesting an interview with him, which was to state that he had heard of Mr. Canning’s reputation as a scholar and a speaker, and that if he concurred in the policy which the Government was then pursuing, arrangements would be made to bring him into Parliament.”
The person to whom this offer was made accepted it; nor was this surprising.
I have already said that events were about this period taking place, that made men’s convictions tremble under them; and in fact the mob rulers of Paris had in a few months so desecrated the name of Freedom, that half of its ancient worshippers covered their faces with their hands, and shuddered when it was pronounced.
But there were also other circumstances of a more personal nature, which, now that young Canning had seriously to think of his entry into public life, had, I have been assured, an influence on his resolutions.
The first incident, I was once told by Mr. John Allen, that disinclined Mr. Canning (who had probably already some misgivings) to attach himself irrevocably to the Whig camp, was the following one: Lord Liverpool, then Mr. Jenkinson, had just made his appearance in the House of Commons. His first speech was highly successful. “There is a young friend of mine,” said Mr. Sheridan, “whom I soon hope to hear answering the honourable gentleman who has just distinguished himself: a contemporary whom he knows to possess talents not inferior to his own, but whose principles, I trust, are very different from his.”
This allusion, however kindly meant, was disagreeable, said Mr. Allen, to the youthful aspirant to public honours. It pledged him, as he thought, prematurely; it brought him forward under the auspices of a man, who, however distinguished as an individual, was not in a position to be a patron. Other reflections, it is added, followed. The party then in opposition possessed almost every man distinguished in public life: a host of formidable competitors in the road to honour and preferment, supposing preferment and honour to be attainable by talent. But this was not all. The Whig party, then, as always, was essentially an exclusive party; its preferments were concentrated on a clique, which regarded all without it as its subordinates and instruments.
On the other side, the Prime Minister stood almost alone. He had every office to bestow, and few candidates of any merit for official employments. Haughty from temperament, and flushed with power, which he had attained early and long exercised without control, he had not the pride of rank, nor the aristocratic attachments for which high families linked together are distinguished. His partisans and friends were his own. He had elevated them for no other reason than that they were his. By those to whom he had once shown favour he had always stood firm; all who had followed had shared his fortunes; there can be no better promise to adherents.
These were not explanations that Mr. Canning could make precisely to the Whig leaders, but he had an affection for Mr. Sheridan, who had always been kind to him, and by whom he did not wish to be thought ungrateful. He sought, then, an interview with that good-natured and gifted person. Lord Holland, Mr. Canning’s contemporary, was present at it, and told me that nothing could be more respectful and unreserved than the manner in which the ambitious young man gave his reasons for the change he was prepared to make, or had made; nothing more warm-hearted, unprejudiced, and frank, than the veteran orator’s reception of his retiring protégé’s confession: nor, indeed, could Mr. Sheridan help feeling the application, when he was himself cited as an example of the haughtiness with which “the great Whig Houses” looked down on the lofty aspirations of mere genius. The conversation thus alluded to took place a little before Mr. Pitt’s proposals were made, but probably when they were expected. Mr. Canning, his views fairly stated to the only person to whom he felt bound to give them, and his seat in Parliament secured, placed himself in front of his old friends, whom Colonel Fitz-Patrick avenged by the following couplet:
“The turning of coats so common is grown,
That no one would think to attack it;
But no case until now was so flagrantly known
Of a schoolboy turning his jacket.”