XI
On the 2nd of July Parliament had been prorogued; on the 6th the triple alliance was signed. This celebrated treaty was the last act of Mr. Canning’s official life. The fatigues of the session, short as it had been, had brought him near the goal to which the enterprising mind and assiduous labours of our most eminent men have too often prematurely conducted them. Of a susceptibility which the slightest word of good or evil keenly affected, and of that sanguine and untiring temperament which would never suffer him to repose during circumstances in which he thought his personal honour, his public opinions, and the welfare of his political friends required his exertions: tortured by every sneer, irritated by every affront, ready for every toil; in the last few months in which he had risen to the heights of power and ambition—such are human objects—was concentrated an age of anxiety, suffering, and endurance. His countenance became more haggard, his step more feeble, and his eye more languid. Yet at this moment, jaded, restless, and worn, he held in the opinion of the world as high and enviable a position as any public man ever enjoyed. All his plans had succeeded; all his enemies had been overthrown. By the people of England he was cherished as a favourite child; on the Continent he was beloved as the tutelary guardian of Liberal principles, and respected as the peaceful and fortunate arbiter between conflicting interests. Abroad, one of the most formidable alliances ever united against England had been silently defeated by his efforts. At home, the most powerful coalition that a haughty aristocracy could form against himself had been successfully defied by his eloquence and good fortune. The foes of Don Miguel, in Portugal; the enemies of the Inquisition in Spain; the fervent watchers after that dawn of civilization, which now opened on the vast empires of the New World, and which promised again to shine upon the region it most favoured in ancient times; the American patriot, the Greek freedman, and last of all, though not the least interested (whether we consider the wrongs he had endured, the rights to which he was justly born, the links which should have joined him to, and the injustice which had severed him from, the national prosperity of Great Britain), last of all, the Irish Catholic, dwelt fondly and anxiously on the breath of the aspiring statesman at the head of affairs. His health was too precious, indeed, for any one to believe it to be in danger.
The wound, notwithstanding, was given, which no medicine had the power to cure. On the 1st of August the Prime Minister gave a diplomatic dinner; on the 3rd he was seized with those symptoms which betokened a fatal crisis to be at hand. At this time he was at the Duke of Devonshire’s villa at Chiswick, where he had resided since the 20th of July, for the sake of greater quiet and purer air. The room in which he lay, and in which another as proud and generous a spirit, that of Mr. Fox, had passed away, and towards which the eyes of the whole Liberal world were now turned with agonizing suspense for five days, has since become a place of pilgrimage. It is a small low chamber, once a kind of nursery, dark, and opening into a wing of the building, which gives it the appearance of looking into a courtyard. Nothing can be more simple than its furniture or decorations, for it was chosen by Mr. Canning, who had always the greatest horror of cold, on account of its warmth. On one side of the fireplace are a few bookshelves; opposite the foot of the bed is the low chimneypiece, and on it a small bronze clock, to which we may fancy the weary and impatient sufferer often turning his eyes during those bitter moments in which he was passing from the world which he had filled with his name, and was governing with his projects. What a place for repeating those simple and touching lines of Dyer:
“A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam on a winter’s day,
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave.”
After passing some time in a state of insensibility, during which the words “Spain and Portugal” were frequently on his lips, on the 8th of August Mr. Canning succumbed. His remains sleep in Westminster Abbey; a peerage and a pension were granted to his family; and a statue is erected to his memory on the site of his parliamentary triumphs.
The generation amidst which Mr. Canning died, attended his hearse, and crowned his funeral with honours. What is the place he ought to hold in the minds of future generations of his countrymen?