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 plied christian diplomacy with interpreters, and by their means exercised no small influence, not always of the purest kind, over its transactions with the Porte’ (MS. Memoirs). One notable addition to the society of Stamboul was made for a time by the arrival of Lord Byron, whom Canning had last seen when playing against him in an Eton and Harrow cricket match, and who was then busily engaged upon ‘Childe Harold.’

In July 1810, disgusted with the position of onlooker at the Porte, and weary of the palaver and procrastination of Turkish ministers, a discussion with whom he compared to ‘cutting into dead flesh,’ Adair left Constantinople for his new post at Vienna, and Canning, in his twenty-fourth year, by virtue of a dormant commission, took over the full, though temporary, responsibility of the embassy at the Porte, as minister plenipotentiary, pending the appointment of Adair's successor. In the manuscript memoirs which have already been quoted he gives an interesting and valuable summary of the political situation. ‘In 1809,’ he writes, ‘a year of great importance had begun. The Emperor Napoleon had consolidated, by a peace of apparent duration, the military, territorial, and moral advantages which he had obtained, as the case might be, at the expense of continental Europe. Where his troops were not quartered, or his frontier not advanced, he exercised either an accepted authority or a predominant influence. He was king of Italy, master of the Low Countries, protector of the Rhenish confederacy, and mediator of the Swiss cantons. His numerous armies occupied the greater part of the countries west of the Pyrenees. Their positions were as yet but partially threatened by the Spanish insurrection and the British successes in Portugal. Austria was secretly collecting the means for a fresh trial of strength with the victorious legions of France. Russia was occupied with her military operations against Turkey. Denmark had become the creature of Napoleon, and Sweden, though allied with us by the policy of its gallant and unfortunate king, was drifting towards a change of government destined to prove subversive of the English alliance. England, though triumphant everywhere at sea, and wielding a power which was capable of making itself felt wherever the enemy or his forced allies presented a weak point upon the coast or a distant colonial possession worth attacking, had to bear up against a heavy financial pressure, and to encounter much occasional discontent at home. She was nominally at war with every European government controlled by France, and as far as ever from any approach towards peace with that country; while serious discussions with the United States of America held out to her the prospect of another war dangerous to her trade and difficult to be met without much additional expense and many a hazardous exertion.’ In 1810 the situation had grown perceptibly gloomier. ‘With the battle of Wagram, followed by the peace of Schönbrunn, fell every immediate hope of seeing the progress of Napoleon checked by the arms of Austria. Our Spanish allies had been compelled to take refuge in Cadiz. Our grand expedition to Antwerp had proved a failure. The fevers of Walcheren had given the finishing stroke to the indecisions of our commanders. The ministry at home were breaking into pieces; our national debt was larger than ever; and symptoms of popular discontent prevailed.’

Such was the state of Europe when Canning began his responsible work at Constantinople. To the complexity of the political situation was added the further difficulty that from the beginning to the close of his mission he was left without instructions from home. The government entirely forgot him; the most important despatch he received from the Marquis Wellesley, who had succeeded Canning at the foreign office, related to some classical manuscripts supposed to be concealed in the Seraglio; and the many and important negotiations which he carried to a successful issue were conducted without a solitary word of advice or support from the British government. As he writes, he had to ‘steer by the stars’ in the absence of compass; and although he naturally resented this official neglect, it is probable that he was not ill-pleased to find himself unshackled by instructions: to shirk responsibility on the plea of no orders from home was a course that could never have occurred to him. One circumstance was in his favour: England alone stood face to face with the conqueror, and had come to be regarded as ‘an ark of refuge for the honour of princes and the independence of nations.’ England, too, was the supreme trading power in the Levant, and in the absence of powerful pressure from France, the interests of the Porte were naturally bound up with those of the greatest maritime nation of the world.

Canning's work during this first mission at Constantinople consisted in three separate tasks: first, to make the influence of England felt at the Porte as a check upon the French; secondly, to defend the interests of our shipping trade in the Levant; and thirdly, to effect a reconciliation between the czar and the sultan with a view to setting Russia free to repel Napoleon's meditated