The Spectatress
George Canning urged Britain not to bring Continental Europe’s topsy-turvy politics home by getting too closely involved.
1820
King George IV 1820-1830
George Canning urged Britain not to bring Continental Europe’s topsy-turvy politics home by getting too closely involved.
1820
King George IV 1820-1830
George Canning MP was grateful for the British Constitution’s balance between monarchy and democracy. He saw no such balance on the European Continent, still reeling from Napoleon’s grab for power, and during a speech in Liverpool in 1820 warned against letting our neighbours’ confusion spread here.
GENTLEMEN, there is (disguise it how we may) a struggle going on, — in some countries an open, and in some a tacit struggle, between the principles of monarchy and democracy. God be praised, that in that struggle we have not any part to take. God be praised, that we have long ago arrived at all the blessings that are to be derived from that which alone can end such a struggle beneficially, — a compromise and intermixture of those conflicting principles.
England has only to maintain herself on the basis of her own solid and settled constitution, firm, unshaken, — a spectatress interested in the contest only by her sympathies — not a partisan on either side; for the sake of both, a model, and ultimately, perhaps, an umpire. Should we be led, by any false impulse of chivalrous benevolence, to participate in the struggle itself, we commit, and thereby impair, our authority; we abandon the position in which we might hereafter do most good, and may bring the danger of a foreign struggle home to our own hearths and to our own institutions.*
George Canning served as Prime Minister for a few months prior to his death in 1827. He had been Chancellor of the Exchequer (1827) and Foreign Secretary twice (1807-1809, 1822-1827); at the time of this speech, he was President of the Board of Control (1816-1821), a trade and industry role, and MP for Liverpool. He strongly opposed the Jacobins, British enthusiasts of the French Revolution, and supported William Wilberforce in his campaign for the Abolition of Slavery.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Which of the two principles of monarchy and democracy did Canning favour?
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Several small countries demanded independence. Britain did not support them. George Canning did.