pendent empire under King John's eldest son Pedro. In Portugal, the reactionary and absolutist party, encouraged by events in Spain and headed by King John's second son Miguel, appealed to French and Spanish support; the constitutionalists, recognising Canning's obvious sympathies, appealed to Britain. Canning refused to intervene, but by sending a squadron to the Tagus he made it thoroughly clear that British non-intervention was conditional upon French non-intervention. Through Canning's mediation, King John recognised his son Pedro as emperor of an independent Brazil. On John's death in March 1826, Pedro proceeded to grant a constitution to Portugal, and at the same time resigned his own claim to its crown in favour of his seven-year-old daughter Maria, proposing that she should marry her uncle Miguel-for which there was ample precedent. Miguel wanted the crown for himself, rejected the proposals, and appealed to Spain to support him. Canning, with the utmost promptitude, dispatched a force to Portugal; whereupon Spain retired. As the British were there to support what was both de facto and de jure the government of Portugal, no exception could be taken to Canning's action by the Holy Alliance. During the next twelve months comparative peace reigned in Portugal. The Eastern question was still more complicated than the Spanish and Portuguese questions. Russia was restrained from intervening between Greeks and Turks; Britain 1822-5. and France abstained also. But in all three The Eastern common intervention in order to carry out a compromise of her own, which would have placed her in a very strong position, while it was objected to intensely both by Turks and by Greeks. By the spring of 1825 the proposal was modified into a joint note offering mediation, which was rejected by the Porte. Then the Greeks offered to place themselves under British protection, and asked for a British king. This Canning of course declined, insisting that the British position was, and must be, one of neutrality, however sympathetic. At the end of the year the Tsar Alexander died, and was succeeded by Nicholas 1., a hard-headed person with none of his 1825. Tsar Nicholas succeeds Alexander. predecessor's peculiarities of temperament. In the spring of 1826 Wellington, accredited to St. Petersburg on a special mission, procurea treaty known as the Protocol of St. Petersburg under which the two powers again offered to mediate on the basis of the concession of complete self-government to the Greeks, subject to the payment of a tribute to the Porte. The Porte still remained Ideaf to mediation, with the result that Britain and Russia, acting together, threatened to recognise the actual independence as a sovereign state of any portion of Greece which should in fact free itself from Turkish control. Austria, whose lead was regularly followed by Prussia, was, on the other hand, entirely hostile to the Greeks. 1827. Canning prime minister. At the beginning of 1827 a paralytic seizure removed Lord Liverpool from all further participation in active politics, though he did not actually die till some time later. The result was that Canning was himself called upon to take the lead of the administration. Wellington, Peel, and others who distrusted Canning, resigned, thereby forcing Canning and his supporters to throw themselves largely on the support of the Whigs, with whom on all questions save that of parliamentary reform they were now in much closer sympathy than with the true Tories It was the easier for Canning to carry out his own policy, and in July France joined with Russia and Britain in the Treaty of London, wherein they agreed jointly to enforce an armistice, and in effect to compel the belligerents to accept their mediation on the lines of the St. Petersburg Protocol. Canning's death in August placed Robinson, who had recently become Viscount Goderich, at the head of the administration, but it had lost all real strength with Canning's death. Canning's Its brief continuance was characterised by a single death, August. event of importance, the battle of Navarino. In accordance with the Treaty of London the allied fleets of France, Russia, and Britain went to the bay of Navarino, where an Egyptian fleet had recently joined the Turks With Navarino, the object of enforcing an armistice the British October. admiral Codrington informed Ibrahim that his ships would not be allowed to leave the bay. The Egyptians opened fire, whereupon the whole fleet was annihilated (October 26) But Goderich was quite incapable of carrying on the government. The ministry was dissolved, and in January 1828 Wellington reluctantly accepted the duty of forming an administration, with Peel as his right-hand man, and with practically no one but Huskisson and Palmerston to represent the Canningites. From 1812 to 1827 there had been no formal change of ministry. Throughout the fifteen years, Liverpool remained its head with only occasional variations in the personnel of his colleagues. They all called themselves Tories, and they all regarded themselves as Pitt's disciples. But Pitt had been pre-eminently a practical politician who, while he believed in progressive theories, declined to apply them when the conditions appeared to him unfavourable. Consequently there were among his self-styled followers men who were eagerly awaiting the opportunity to put in practice the theories which he would himself have put in practice but for the war; while there were others who entirely repudiated those theories, as he had in effect repudiated them while the war was going on. Consequently, in Liverpool's cabinet there were vast divergencies of opinion, and when Canning succeeded to the Foreign Office on Castlereagh's death, he, along with Huskisson, Lord Wellesley, Robinson, and Palmerston were what we may call Progressive Pittites; while the Lord Chancellor Eldon, the duke of Wellington, Liverpool himself, and Peel were of the B reactionary school-in which Peel at least was very much out of place; for he was the victim of his own education, and spent his whole life in gradual realisation that he had ceased to believe in one after another of the doctrines which he had heretofore strenuously maintained. 1828. Withdrawal affairs. IV. THE LAST TORY ADMINISTRATION What Wellington thought of Canning's policy was shown when he took the first opportunity to refer to Navarino as 'an untoward event.' Both in the East and in Portugal the consequences of the change of ministry were from foreign soon manifested. The British troops were withdrawn from Portugal, Miguel seized the control, and Portugal was again plunged into wild reaction and civil war until 1834, when Miguel was compelled to retire. In the East Britain under Wellington's guidance stood aside, and in effect left Russia to act by herself-which she did. Turkey declared war upon her, and surprised Europe by her initial successes in the conflict; but in August 1829 the Russians were at Adrianople and were able to impose their terms upon the Porte. Russia had accomplished single-handed the objects of the Treaty of London, which it had been precisely Canning's intention to prevent her from doing by herself. She secured the independence of Greece, though the final settlement with regard to that country was not completed till some time later when Palmerston was at the Foreign Office. But Russia had also gained what Canning had not intended: a virtual protectorate of the Turkish provinces on the north of the Danube, Wallachia, and Moldavia. From this time to the end of the nineteenth century British foreign policy was habitually dominated by the idea of Russian aggression, which had first taken hold of the younger Pitt, and had been active ever since the days of the Tsar Paul, who was more than suspected of designs upon India. Advance of Canning and the Canningites were not, so long as Canning still lived, advocates of electoral reform. But Tories as such were not antagonistic to Huskisson's commercial policy until the Corn Law came within its scope; their interest in protection was almost exclusively in the protection of agriculture. Canning's foreign policy was in theory at least the same as Castle- Tories and reagh's. Thus while Liverpool managed, the two Canningites. groups could be held together. They differed positively on the question of Catholic emancipation, but so far it had been possible to keep that question in the background. But when Liverpool was incapacitated the differences came to the front. Canning's ' non-intervention' was growing alarmingly like intervention on behalf of the Nationalists and Constitutionalists, with whom he sympathised. Of all living men there was none more intensely averse from war than its greatest living master, the duke of Wellington; and in the duke's view Canning's excessive activity was fraught with danger. When Huskisson as a member of Canning's ministry proposed the corn sliding scale, it was the duke who destroyed the measure in the Upper House. The question of Catholic emancipation was becoming so acute that its settlement could not for very long be postponed. When Wellington, not without reluctance, consented to form a ministry in January 1828, it was certain that a reconstruction of parties was imminent, and all but certain that it would in effect take the form of a coalescence between the Canningites and the Whigs. 1828. The The rupture between Tories and Canningites was not immediately complete. Huskisson was a member of the ministry, though it was not long before he tendered his resignation, which was promptly accepted. The duke had his sliding scale adopted. way, as we have seen, as concerned foreign policy; but at the very outset he had to retreat from the position he had formally taken up with regard to the Corn Law, and to adopt the sliding scale in its place. For Wellington had only taken up the command at the moment when the whole series of the Tory positions had become untenable. Wellington treated politics as he would have treated a military problem. He had taken office to defend the Crown, the constitution, and the Wellington. country at large from what he conceived to be the dangers which threatened them. Nothing was to be gained by exposing the protecting force to annihilation; if he saw that one defensive |
