Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/426

 death in 1806. He was offered high office by Lord Grenville in the cabinet of All the Talents, but declined it on what Lord Malmesbury allows to have been honourable and honest grounds—that is to say, on grounds which showed how complete a tory Canning had now become. His reason was that in the formation of the government the king's wishes had not been sufficiently consulted. In the spring of 1807, however, the new government was dismissed, and the tories again returned to power under Canning's near relative, the Duke of Portland, even then, however, in declining health and unequal to the duties of his position. In this cabinet Canning, at the age of thirty-seven, took his seat as foreign minister.

The ministry lasted two years and a half, and during its existence occurred the seizure of the Danish fleet by Lord Cathcart, the campaign of Sir John Moore, the Walcheren expedition, and the orders in council of November 1807, which, however, were not the beginning of that series of retaliatory measures. The capture of the Danish fleet was planned by Canning, and it was certainly one of the boldest and most successful operations of the whole war. It entirely disabled the northern confederacy against England, which Napoleon had formed with so much care, and put the finishing stroke to the work of Nelson at Trafalgar. The expeditions to Spain and to the Scheldt were less fortunate. Castlereagh was secretary for war and the colonies, and though the cabinet decided on the policy to be pursued, on him devolved the duty of superintending and carrying out the details. Canning thought that Moore's expedition had been greatly mismanaged, and that reinforcements which arrived ‘too late’ to alter the course of the campaign might easily have been despatched in time to convert defeat into victory. The following year, when, principally owing to Canning's energetic remonstrances, it was decided once more to renew the war in the Peninsula, Lord Wellesley accepted the Spanish embassy on the distinct understanding that his brother, Lord Wellington, should be vigorously supported from home. Canning was much mortified and disappointed on finding that the troops which were originally destined for Portugal had been diverted by Lord Castlereagh to an expedition against Flushing. That it was expedient to protect this country against the possible consequences of a French occupation of Antwerp will hardly be denied. The question was whether, if we had not troops enough for both purposes, Portugal or Holland was to have the preference. To Canning it seemed that the despatch of these forces against Antwerp was a distinct breach of faith with Lord Wellesley, and this was his second ground of complaint against Lord Castlereagh. A third was that when the convention of Cintra was under the consideration of the cabinet, a resolution approving it was adopted in Canning's absence, who, as foreign secretary, had a pre-eminent right to be consulted. The result was that in April 1809 he told the Duke of Portland that either Lord Castlereagh must be removed to some other office, or that he (Canning) must resign. Canning's resignation, as the duke well knew, would break up the ministry. To propose to Castlereagh that he should retire from the management of the war required an amount of moral courage of which the duke was not possessed. But he undertook, nevertheless, that it should be done, and at once placed himself in communication with the principal friends of Lord Castlereagh in the cabinet, Eldon, Bathurst, and Camden.

Of what followed—of the long train of consultations, negotiations, stipulations, entreaties, and remonstrances with which the next five months were taken up, during the whole of which time Lord Castlereagh was left in ignorance of what was hanging over his head—such conflicting and complicated accounts have been given to the world that to extract the precise truth from them seems almost impossible. The charge brought against Canning was this, that after having declared to the prime minister his want of confidence in Lord Castlereagh, and having consented to retain office only on condition that his lordship should be removed from the war department, he continued all through the summer to meet him as if nothing had occurred, to transact public business with him as usual, to allow him to go on with the Scheldt expedition, though all the time he disapproved of it, and daily and hourly therefore to practise towards him a species of deception which no consideration for the ministry or anxiety for the public welfare could justify. Canning's answer was that he was more sinned against than sinning; that the deception of which Castlereagh complained had been first practised on himself, who had been distinctly assured that Lord Camden had undertaken to make the necessary communications; that, on finding himself deceived, he repeatedly urged on the Duke of Portland the immediate fulfilment of his promise, and that on each of these occasions he was begged by Lord Castlereagh's own friends to acquiesce in a further suspension of it; first till the end of the session, then till the Flushing expedition had set sail, then till the result of