X
In the meantime the Addington administration went on, its policy necessarily partaking of the timid and half-earnest character of the man directing it. Unequal to the burden and the responsibility of war, he had concocted a peace, but a peace of the character which Mr. Canning had previously described: “a peace without security and without honour:” a peace which, while it required some firmness to decline, demanded more to maintain, since the country was as certain to be at first pleased with it as to be soon ashamed of it. No administration would have had the boldness to surrender Malta; few would have been so weak as to promise the cession.
Indeed, almost immediately after concluding this halcyon peace, we find the Secretary of War speaking of “these times of difficulty and danger,” and demanding “an increased military establishment.” Nor was it long before an additional 10,000 men were also demanded for our naval service. On both these occasions Mr. Canning, supporting the demand of the Minister, attacked the Administration; and after stating his reasons for being in favour of the especial measure proposed, burst out at once into an eloquent exhibition of the reasons for his general opposition:
“I do think that this is a time when the administration of the Government ought to be in the ablest and fittest hands. I do not think the hands in which it is now placed answer to that description. I do not pretend to conceal in what quarter I think that fitness most eminently resides. I do not subscribe to the doctrines which have been advanced, that, in times like the present, the fitness of individuals for their political situations is no part of the consideration to which a Member of Parliament may fairly turn his attention. I know not a more solemn or important duty that a Member of Parliament can have to discharge than by giving, at fit seasons, a free opinion upon the character and qualities of public men. Away with the cant of measures, not men—the idle supposition that it is the harness, and not the horse, that draws the chariot along. No, sir; if the comparison must be made—if the distinction must be taken—measures are comparatively nothing, men everything. I speak, sir, of times of difficulty and danger—of times when systems are shaken, when precedents and general rules of conduct fail. Then it is that not to this or that measure, however prudently devised, however blameless in execution, but to the energy and character of individuals a state must be indebted for its salvation. Then it is that kingdoms rise and fall in proportion as they are upheld, not by well-meant endeavours (however laudable these may be), but by commanding, overawing talent—by able men. And what is the nature of the times in which we live? Look at France, and see what we have to cope with, and consider what has made her what she is—a man! You will tell me that she was great, and powerful, and formidable before the date of Bonaparte’s government—that he found in her great physical and moral resources—that he had but to turn them to account. True; and he did so. Compare the situation in which he found France with that to which he has raised her. I am no panegyrist of Bonaparte; but I cannot shut my eyes to the superiority of his talents—to the amazing ascendency of his genius. Tell me not of his measures and his policy. It is his genius, his character, that keeps the world in awe. Sir, to meet, to check, to curb, to stand up against him, we want arms of the same kind. I am far from objecting to the large military establishments which are proposed to you. I vote for them with all my heart. But, for the purpose of coping with Bonaparte, one great commanding spirit is worth them all!”114
Mr. Canning was right. No cant betrays more ignorance than that which affects to undervalue the qualities of public men in the march of public affairs. However circumstances may contribute to make individuals, individuals have as great a share in making circumstances. Had Queen Elizabeth been a weak and timid woman, we might now be speaking Spanish, and have our fates dependent on the struggle between Prim and Narvaez. Had James II. been a wise and prudent man,—instead of the present cry against Irish Catholics, our saints of the day would have been spreading charges against the violence and perfidy of some Puritan Protestant, some English, or perhaps Scotch, O’Connell. Strip Mirabeau of his eloquence, endow Louis XVI. with the courage and the genius of Henry IV., and the history of the last eighty years might be obliterated.
Mr. Canning, I repeat, was right; the great necessity in arduous times is a man who inspires other men; and the satirist, in measuring the two rivals for office, was hardly wrong in saying:
“As London to Paddington,
So Pitt is to Addington.”