Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/431

 alarming attitude, and the king applied to England for assistance. Canning was unwilling to go to the length of sending troops to Lisbon, as that would have the appearance of doing exactly what he himself had condemned when it was done by France. But he thought that a squadron might be sent to the Tagus without exposing us to the same criticism, and by these means a coup d'état attempted by Don Miguel was frustrated, and he himself obliged to take refuge at Vienna. In March 1826 John VI died, having appointed his daughter Isabella regent, and Don Pedro sent over a decree establishing a constitutional form of government. The absolutist party, however, were still strong in Portugal. They had the queen dowager on their side, and the presence of a French army in Spain to encourage them. In the course of the following year a regular rebellion broke out, fomented by the Spanish authorities, and their participation in the war brought the circumstances within the scope of our original treaties with Portugal, which bound us in such case to assist her. British troops were despatched to Lisbon in January 1827, the insurrection was soon crushed, and the government of the regency experienced no further disturbance down to the death of the great English minister in the following August.

The Austrian intervention in Naples, the French intervention in Spain, and the virtual intervention of Spain in Portugal were the three great exemplifications of the policy of the Holy alliance during Canning's administration of the foreign office. The only occasion on which he interfered, it will be observed, was one on which we were bound by previous treaties long antecedent to the treaty of Vienna to afford the assistance which we rendered.

In the summer of 1824 Canning paid a visit to Lord Wellesley, then lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and had promised to take Abbotsford on his way home, but was called back to town in a hurry by the death of Louis XVIII. In September of the following year, however, Scott and he met for the last time on the banks of Windermere, at the house of Mr. Bolton, where Scott found Southey and Wordsworth, as well as the foreign minister. Canning, whom Scott thought even then looking very ill, was the life of the circle. Many pretty women were of the party, and as they rode through the woods by day, or paddled in the lake by moonlight, there was ‘high discourse,’ says Lockhart, ‘mingled with as gay flashings of courtly wit as ever Canning displayed.’ From this brilliant scene Canning returned to London and to all the gloomy mysteries of a great commercial crisis. This had been produced by a variety of causes which the reader will find carefully explained in m'Culloch's ‘Commercial Dictionary’ and Tooke's ‘History of Prices,’ as well as by Mr. Walpole and Mr. Stapleton. The business did not belong to Canning's department, but he took a great interest in it notwithstanding, and warmly supported Lord Liverpool in resisting the importunities of the bank directors who begged the government to issue exchequer bills and suspend cash payments. One of their bitterest assailants was Mr. Manning, the father of the present cardinal; but the government stood firm, and by so doing saved the country from great financial calamities. In the session of 1826 government introduced a bill for putting an end to the circulation of notes under five pounds in value. The measure was adopted for England, but not for Scotland, principally owing to Scott's ‘Letters of Sir Malachi Malagrowther,’ at which it is said Canning was considerably annoyed.

In 1826 Canning went to Paris to see the king and his ministers in person, and seems to have had reason to congratulate himself on the success of his visit. He had been able, he said, ‘to assure himself to absolute conviction that had the English government been rightly understood at the Tuileries in 1822–3, no invasion of Spain would ever have taken place.’ Sir Walter Scott was in France at the same time, and was detained on the road between Calais and Paris by Canning having engaged all the post-horses. It is mentioned that on this occasion he was invited to dine with Charles X in the great saloon of the Tuileries, to which all the public were admitted, an honour which that sovereign had never conferred on any one not of royal blood except the Duke of Wellington and Prince Metternich.

When Canning became foreign minister the Greek rebellion had broken out for some time, and the chronic misunderstanding between Turkey and Russia was in its usual festering condition. Canning, like every other English statesman, addressed himself to the maintenance of peace between these two powers, which he succeeded in preserving during his own lifetime, but he failed in his efforts to mediate between the Porte and its insurgent subjects. Neither, in fact, would listen to a compromise till the successes of Ibrahim Pasha, in 1825, brought the Greeks into a more tractable mood, and induced them to solicit the good offices of England. These were the more readily granted that