ant step of recognizing the independence of the Spanish provinces in South America, a measure which made him deservedly popular in every part of the kingdom. In December, 1826, actuated by the same liberal sentiments, he made his celebrated speech on giving aid to Portugal, when threatened with invasion from Spain. It will be found below, and has been generally regarded as the master-piece of his eloquence, not only for the felicity of its arrangement and the admirable grace and spirit with which his points are pressed, but for the large and statesmanlike views he takes of European politics, and his prophetic foresight of the great contest of principles which was even then coming on.* As to all questions of foreign policy-the most important by far of any at that pe riod-Mr. Canning was virtually minister from February, 1823, when he was ap pointed Secretary of Foreign Affairs. He had so entirely the confidence of Lord Liv. erpool, that his intellect was the presiding one in the cabinet; and as Lord Liver pool's health began to decline, the burden of the government rested upon him more and more. In 1827, his Lordship died of a paralytic shock; and on April 12th of that year, Mr. Canning was made Prime Minister in form. The Duke of Welling. ton, Mr. Peel, and nearly all his Tory colleagues, threw up their places at once, out of hostility to Catholic emancipation, which they saw must prevail if he remained in power-the very men who, two years after, under the strong compulsion of public sentiment, carried that same emancipation through both houses of Parliament! But they sacrificed Mr. Canning before they could be made to do it. A keen and unre lenting opposition now sprung up; and some who, only a few months before, had made him "the god of their idolatry," were foremost in denouncing him as "the most profligate minister that was ever in power." Unfortunately, at this crisis, his health failed him. He had been brought to the brink of the grave, at the commencement of the year, by an illness contracted at the funeral of the Duke of York; and with his peculiar sensitiveness, heightened by disease, he could not endure the bitter per sonal altercations to which he was continually exposed. He was singularly situated. Standing between the two great parties of the country, he agreed with the Whigs on the subjects of Catholic emancipation, foreign policy, and commercial regulation, while he differed from them as to parliamentary reform, and the repeal of the Test Act. Still, they gave him a generous support; and he could rely on the wit of Tierney and the scathing eloquence of Brougham to defend him against the attacks of those who were so lately his servile dependents or his admiring friends. He had reached the summit of his ambition-but it was only to die! His ardent mind bore him up for a brief season, but was continually exhausting the springs of life within. His last act was one of his worthiest that of signing the treaty of London for the deliv erance of Greece. He transacted public business until a few days before his death, and died on the 8th of August, 1827, in the fifty-eighth year of his age. As a fitting close of this memoir, the reader will be interested in the following beautiful sketch of Mr. Canning's character by Sir James Mackintosh, slightly abridged and modified in the arrangement of its parts. "Mr. Canning seems to have been the best model among our orators of the adorned style. The splendid and sublime descriptions of Mr. Burke-his comprehensive and profound views of general principles-though they must ever delight and instruct the reader, must be owned to have been digressions which diverted the mind of the hearer from the object on which the speaker ought to have kept it steadily fixed. 4 See the remarkable passage on this subject, page 882. Canning," says a late writer, "would have attained to old age, but for his sleepless nights. Down to the year 1826, he had no organic disease whatever. His constitution was untouched; but his brain, at night, was active for hours after he retired to bed. He has himself, in a letter to Sir W. Knighton, given a graphic picture of a night of torture." Sheridan, a man of admirable sense and matchless wit, labored to follow Burke into the foreign regions of feeling and grandeur. The specimens preserved of his most celebrated speeches show too much of the exaggeration and excess to which those are peculiarly liable who seek by art and effort what nature has denied. By the constant part which Mr. Canning took in debate, he was called upon to show a knowledge which Sheridan did not possess, and a readiness which that accomplished man had no such means of strengthening and displaying. In some qualities of style Mr. Canning surpassed Mr. Pitt. His diction was more various-sometimes more simple-more idiomatical, even in its more elevated parts. It sparkled with imagery, and was brightened by illustration; in both of which Mr. Pitt, for so great an orator, was defective. Had he been a dry and meager speaker, Mr. Canning would have been universally allowed to have been one of the greatest masters of argument; but his hearers were so dazzled by the splendor of his diction that they did not perceive the acuteness and the occasional excessive refinement of his reasoning; a consequence which, as it shows the injurious influence of a seductive fault, can with the less justness be overlooked in the estimate of his understanding. Ornament, it must be owned, when it only pleases or amuses, without disposing the audience to adopt the sentiments of the speaker, is an offense against the first law of public speaking; it obstructs instead of promoting its only reasonable purpose. But eloquence is a widely-extended art, comprehending many sorts of excellence, in some of which ornamented diction is more liberally employed than in others, and in none of which the highest rank can be attained without an extraordinary combination .of mental powers. “No English speaker used the keen and brilliant weapon of wit so long, so often, or so effectively, as Mr. Canning. He gained more triumphs, and incurred more enmity by it than by any other. Those whose importance depends much on birth and fortune are impatient of seeing their own artificial dignity, or that of their order, broken down by derision; and perhaps few men heartily forgive a successful jest against themselves, but those who are conscious of being unhurt by it. Mr. Canning often used this talent imprudently. In sudden flashes of wit, and in the playful description of men or things, he was often distinguished by that natural felicity which is the charm of pleasantry, to which the air of art and labor is more fatal than to any other talent. The exuberance of fancy and wit lessened the gravity of his general manner, and perhaps also indisposed the audience to feel his earnestness where it clearly showed itself. In that important quality he was inferior to Mr. Pitt, "Deep on whose front engraven, Deliberation sat, and public care;'6 and no less inferior to Mr. Fox, whose fervid eloquence flowed from the love of his country, the scorn of baseness, and the hatred of cruelty, which were the ruling passions of his nature. "On the whole, it may be observed that the range of Mr. Canning's powers as an orator was wider than that in which he usually exerted them. When mere statement only was allowable, no man of his age was more simple. When infirm health compelled him to be brief, no speaker could compress his matter with so little sacrifice of clearness, ease, and elegance. As his oratorical faults were those of youthful genius, the progress of age seemed to purify his eloquence, and every year appeared to remove some speck which hid, or at least dimmed, a beauty. He daily rose to larger views, and made, perhaps, as near approaches to philosophical principles as the great difference between the objects of the philosopher and those of the orator will commonly allow. Mr. Canning possessed, in a high degree, the outward advantages of an orator. 6 Paradise Lost, book ii. His expressive countenance varied with the changes of his eloquence; his voice, flexible and articulate, had as much compass as his mode of speaking required. In the calm part of his speeches, his attitude and gesture might have been selected by a painter to represent grace rising toward dignity. "In social intercourse Mr. Canning was delightful. Happily for the true charm of his conversation, he was too busy not to treat society as more fitted for relaxation than for display. It is but little to say that he was neither disputatious, declamatory, nor sententious-neither a dictator nor a jester. His manner was simple and unobtrusive; his language always quite familiar. If a higher thought stole from his mind, it came in its conversational undress. From this plain ground his pleasantry sprang with the happiest effect; and it was nearly exempt from that alloy of taunt and banter which he sometimes mixed with more precious materials in public contest. He may be added to the list of those eminent persons who pleased most in their friendly circle. He had the agreeable quality of being more easily pleased in society than might have been expected from the keenness of his discernment and the sensibility of his temper: still, he was liable to be discomposed, or even silenced, by the presence of any one whom he did not like. His manner in company betrayed the political vexations or anxieties which preyed on his mind: nor could he conceal that sensitiveness to public attacks which their frequent recurrence wears out in most English politicians. These last foibles may be thought interesting as the remains of natural character, not destroyed by refined society and political affairs. "In some of the amusements or tasks of his boyhood there are passages which, without much help from fancy, might appear to contain allusions to his greatest measures of policy, as well as to the tenor of his life, and to the melancholy splendor which surrounded his death. In the concluding line of the first English verses written by him at Eton, he expressed a wish, which has been singularly realized, that he might "Live in a blaze, and in a blaze expire.' It is a striking coincidence, that the statesman, whose dying measure was to mature an alliance for the deliverance of Greece, should, when a boy, have written English verses on the slavery of that country; and that in his prize poem at Oxford, on the Pilgrimage to Mecca-a composition as much applauded as a modern Latin poem can aspire to be he should have so bitterly deplored the lot of other renowned countries now groaning under the same barbarous yoke, "To conclude: He was a man of fine and brilliant genius, of warm affections of a high and generous spirit—a statesman who, at home, converted most of his opponents into warm supporters; who, abroad, was the sole hope and trust of all who sought an orderly and legal liberty, and who was cut off in the midst of vigorous and splendid measures, which, if executed by himself or with his own spirit, promised to place his name in the first class of rulers, among the founders of lasting peace and the guardians of human improvement." Now to the satrap and proud Turk subjected. SPEECH OF MR. CANNING ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE, DELIVERED AT LIVERPOOL, JANUARY 10, 1814. INTRODUCTION. MR. CANNING was elected member for Liverpool, in opposition to Mr. Brougham, in the autumn of 1812, and at the end of fourteen months he visited his constituents to congratulate them on the success of the Allies on the Continent, which had filled all England with exultation and triumph. After the retreat of Bonaparte from Moscow, in the winter of 1812-13, nearly all Europe combined for his overthrow; and though he still maintained the contest, his fall was rendered certain by the advance of an overpowering force from every quarter to invade the French territory. The speech of Mr. Canning on this occasion, for selectness of thought, for beauty of language, for ardor and enthusiasm, was perhaps superior to any of his productions. Acknowl kindness. SPEECH, &c. GENTLEMEN, as your guest, I thank you from my heart for the honorable and affecedgment of tionate reception which you have given me. As the representative of Liverpool, I am most happy in meeting my constituents again, after a year's experience of each other, and a year's separation; a year, the most eventful in the annals of the world, and comprising within itself such a series of stupendous changes as might have filled the history of an age. interests of the speaker's con Gentlemen, you have been so good as to couple Regard for the with my name the expression of your acknowledgments for the attention stituents. which I have paid to the interests of your town. You, gentlemen, I have no doubt, recollect the terms upon which I entered into your service; and you are aware, therefore, that I claim no particular acknowledgment at your hands for attention to the interests of Liverpool, implicated as they are with the general interests of the country. I trust, at the same time, that I have not been wanting to all or to any of you in matters of local or individual concern. But I should not do fairly by you, if I were not to take this opportunity of saying that a service (which certainly I will not pretend to describe as without some burden in itself) has been made light to me, beyond all example, by that institution which your munificence and provident care have established: I mean the office in London, through which your correspondence with your members is now carried on. I had no pretension, gentlemen, to this singular mark of your consideration; but neither will it, I hope, be thought presumptuous in me to confess, that I might not have been able to discharge the service which I owe you, in a way which would have satisfied my own feelings as well as yours -that I might, in spite of all my endeavors, have been guilty of occasional omissions, if I had not been provided with some such medium of communication with my constituents. Of an absent and meritorious individual, it is as pleasing as it is just to speak well; and I do no more than justice to the gentleman [Mr. John Backhouse] whom you have appointed to conduct the office in question (with whom I had no previous acquaintance), in bearing public testimony to his merit, and in assuring you that it would be difficult to find any one who would surpass him in zeal, intelligence, and industry. Having dispatched what it was necessary for me to say on these points, I know, gen- View of pubtlemen, that it is your wish, and I feel lic affairs. it to be my duty, that I should now proceed to communicate to you my sentiments on the state of public affairs, with the same frankness which has hitherto distinguished all our intercourse with each other. That duty is one which it does not now require any effort of courage to perform. To exhort to sacrifices, to stimulate to exertion, to shame despondency, to divert from untimely concession, is a duty of a sterner sort, which you found me not backward to discharge, at a period when, from the shortness of our acquaintance, I was uncertain whether my freedom might not offend you. My task of to-day is one at which no man can take offense. It is to mingle my congratulations with your rejoicings on the events which have passed and are passing in the world. for Englishmen. If, in contemplating events so widely (I had almost said so tremendously) important, sources of joy it be pardonable to turn one's view for and exultation a moment to local and partial considerations, I may be permitted to observe, that, while to Great Britain, while to all Europe, while to the world and to posterity, the events which have recently taken place are matter of unbounded and universal joy, there is no collection of individuals who are better entitled than the company now assembled in this room (in great part, I presume, identically the same, and altogether representing the same interests and feelings as that of which I took leave, in this room, about fourteen months ago) to exult in the present state of things, and to derive from it, in addition to their share of the general joy, a distinct and special satisfaction. Alarming pre have failed. day in a state of public affairs as doubtful as that We can not forget, gentlemen, the sinister omens and awful predictions under dictions which which we met and parted in October, 1812. The penalty denounced upon you for your election of me was embarrassment to the rich and famine to the poor. I was warned that, when I should return to renew my acquaintance with my constituents, I should find the grass growing in your streets. In spite of that denunciation, you did me the honor to elect me; in spite of that warning, I venture to meet you here again. It must be fairly confessed that this is not the season of the year to estimate correctly the amount of superfluous and unprofitable vegetation with which your streets may be teeming; but, without presuming to limit the power of productive nature, it is at least satisfactory to know that the fields have not been starved to clothe your quays with verdure; that it is not by economizing in the scantiness of the harvest that nature has re-culties. It is because my acquaintance with you served her vigor for the pastures of your Exchange. This failure owing not to the choice of men, But, gentlemen, I am sure you feel, with me, that these are topics which I treat with levity only because they are not, nor were, at the time when they were seriously urged, susceptible of a serious argument; they did not furnish grounds on which any man would rest his appeal to your favor, or on which your choice of any man could be justified. If I have condescended to revert to them at all, it is because I would leave none of those recollections untouched which the comparison of our last meeting with the present, I know, suggests to your minds as well as to my own; and because I would, so far as in me lies, endeavor to banish from all future use, by exposing their absurdity, topics which are calculated only to mislead and to inflame. That the seasons would have run their appointed course, that the sun would have shone with as genial a warmth, and the showers would have fallen with as fertilizing a moisture, if you had not chosen me for your representative, is an admission which I make without much apprehension of the consequence. Nor do I wish you to believe that your choice of any other than me would have delayed the return of your prosperity, or prevented the revival of your commerce. but adherence ples. I make these admissions without fear, so far as concerns the choice between indito great princi viduals. But I do not admit that it was equally indifferent upon what principles that choice should be determined. I do not admit, that if the principles which it was then recommended to you to countenance had unfortunately prevailed in Parliament, and, through the authority of Parliament, had been introduced into the counsels of the country, they would not have interfered with fatal operation, not indeed to arrest the bounty of Providence, to turn back the course of the seasons, and to blast the fertility of the earth, but to stop that current of political events which, "taken at the flood," has placed England at the head of the world. Gentlemen, if I had met you here again on this commenced in times of peril and embarrassment, and because I then neither flattered nor deceived you, that I now not only offer to you my congrat ulations, but put in my claim to yours, on the extinction of that peril, on the termination of that embarrassment, and on the glorious issue to which exertion and endurance have brought that great struggle in which our honor and our happiness were involved. Gentlemen, during the course of a political life, nearly coeval with the commencement of the war, I have never given one vote, I have never uttered one sentiment, which had not for its object the consummation now happily within our view. I am not ashamed, and it is not unpleasing or unprofitable, to look back upon the Elevated pagidangers which we have passed, and tion of England to compare them with the scene which now lies before us. We behold a country inferior in population to most of her continental neighbors, but multiplying her faculties and resources by her own activity and enterprise, by the vigor of her Constitution, and by the good sense of her people; we behold her, after standing up against a formidable foe throughout a contest, in the course of which every one of her allies, and at times all of them together, have fainted and failed-nay, have been driven to combine with the enemy against her-we behold her, at this moment, rallying the nations of Europe to one point, and leading them to decisive victory. But, If such a picture were merely the bright vision of speculative philosophy, if it were presented to us in the page of the history of ancient times, it would stir and warm the heart. gentlemen, this country is our own; and what must be the feelings which arise, on such a review, in the bosom of every son of that country? What must be the feelings of a community such as I am now addressing, which constitutes no insignificant part of the strength of the nation so described; which has suffered largely in her privations, and may hope to participate proportionably in her reward? What (I may be permitted to add) must be the feelings of one who |