Part 2 (2/2)

Ever, my dear Duke of Wellington, your Grace's sincere and faithful servant,

GEORGE CANNING.

To this the Duke of Wellington replied in a characteristic way:--

_To the Right Hon. George Canning._

London, April 10, 1827.

My dear Mr. Canning,--I have received your letter of this evening, informing me that the king had desired you to lay before his majesty a plan for the re-construction of the administration; and that, in executing these commands, it was your wish to adhere to the principles on which Lord Liverpool's government had so long acted together. I anxiously desire to be able to serve his majesty, as I have done hitherto in his cabinet, with the same colleagues. But before I can give an answer to your obliging proposition, I should wish to know who the person is you intend to propose to his majesty as the head of the government?

Ever, my dear Mr. Canning, yours most sincerely,

WELLINGTON.

On the next day came the following from Mr. Canning:--

_To his Grace the Duke of Wellington._

Foreign Office, April 11, 1897.

My dear Duke of Wellington,--I believed it to be so generally understood, that the king usually intrusts the formation of an administration to the individual whom it is his majesty's gracious intention to place at the head of it; that it did not occur to me, when I communicated to your Grace yesterday the commands which I had just received from his majesty, to add, that, in the present instance, his majesty does not intend to depart from the usual course of proceeding on such occasions. I am sorry to have delayed some hours this answer to your Grace's letter; but from the nature of the subject, I did not like to forward it without having previously submitted it (together with your Grace's letter) to his Majesty.

Ever, my dear Duke of Wellington, your Grace's sincere and faithful servant,

GEORGE CANNING.

And finally, on the evening of the same day, the Duke wrote thus to Mr.

Canning.--

London, April 11, 1837.

My dear Mr. Canning,--I have received your letter of this day, and I did not understand the one of yesterday evening as you explained it to me. I understood from yourself that you had in contemplation another arrangement, and I do not believe that the practice to which you refer has been so invariable as to enable me to affix a meaning to your letter which its words did not, in my opinion, convey. I trust that you will have experienced no inconvenience from the delay of this answer, which I a.s.sure you has been occasioned by my desire to discover a mode by which I could continue united with my recent colleagues.--I sincerely wish that I could bring my mind to the conclusion that, with the best intentions on your part, your government could be conducted practically on the principles of that of Lord Liverpool; that it would be generally so considered; or that it would be adequate to meet our difficulties, in a manner satisfactory to the king, or conducive to the interests of the country. As, however, I am convinced that these principles must be abandoned eventually, that all our measures would be viewed with suspicion by the usual supporters of the government; that I could do no good in the cabinet; and that at last I should be obliged to separate myself from it, at the moment at which such separation would be more inconvenient to the king's service than it can be at present, I must beg you to request his majesty to excuse me from belonging to his councils. Ever, my dear Mr. Canning, yours most sincerely,

WELLINGTON.

This closed the correspondence; and it is needless to add that the Duke continued to hold aloof from the new administration.

The Duke's explanation in the House of Lords related to two branches of charge. The first was a charge of want of personal courtesy to Mr.

Canning, as exhibited in the foregoing correspondence; the second was a general charge of hostility to the new premier, founded on personal jealousy, and on every other ground, probable or improbable, which the malice of party could suggest. The Duke began by observing, that the House of Lords was scarcely the proper place to enter on such subjects, but that his only excuse was the necessity of vindicating his character against what had been said in another place, to say nothing of the manner in which he had been treated by a corrupt press, which if not in the pay, was under the control of the government. He then proceeded to meet the first charge, that of personal discourtesy. It was said, that his asking in reply to Mr. Canning's first letter, ”who was to be at the head of the new government?” was intended as an insult to Mr. Canning.

This he denied. The letter of Mr. Canning, he said gave no information who were to form the new cabinet, or what members of the old one had resigned, or were expected to resign. Nor was he invited, as he found the other ministers had been, to receive personal explanations on the subject. Under those circ.u.mstances the inquiry was made. But that was not the first communication that had pa.s.sed between them on the subject.

Early in the month of April, continued the Duke, he had had a conversation with Mr. Canning, in which, antic.i.p.ating the possibility of his being called upon to reconstruct the government, one of his plans was to recommend that Mr. Robinson (now the Earl of Ripon) should be raised to the peerage and be made premier. Of this plan the Duke at the time approved, and it was with this in his mind that he wrote the first answer, which gave Mr. Canning so much offence. Precedent, also, he contended, was against Mr. Canning; for it appeared that in 1812, when Lord Liverpool, by command of the Prince Regent, waited on Mr. Canning, to know whether he would form part of the proposed administration, the first question Mr. Canning asked of the n.o.ble earl (then in the same position Mr. Canning was in now) was, ”who was to be at the head of the new administration?” The Duke's letter was written on the 10th, and Mr.

Canning only kissed hands as minister on the 12th; so that, even in that point of view, the Duke's question was, he contended, necessary.

It may be said that there is enough on the face of this communication to show that the Duke of Wellington took a narrow, and, so to speak, technical, view of the relative positions of himself and Mr. Canning; that the latter expected a more conventional and generous construction of his position and proposal from one with whom he was on terms of intimate friends.h.i.+p.

In answer to this, it may be as well to remind the reader that, where the slightest movements of public men may be construed into a compromise of public principles, a rigid attention to etiquette becomes a matter of duty. Many acts of the Duke of Wellington, not merely as a civilian, but even as a military commander, have been misjudged, because this obvious principle has been overlooked.

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