Born: Dominic Baudius,
jurist and philologist, 1561, Lisle; Jacques Basnage
de Beauval, Protestant theologian and historian, 1653,
Rouen; Francis Hutcheson, moral philosopher, 1694,
North of Ireland.
Died: Cardinal Peter
d'Ailly, ecclesiastic and author, 1419, Copi�gne; Pope
Alexander VI (Roderic Borgia), infamous pontiff;
1503; Dr. Edwin Sandys, archbishop of York, eminent
Protestant prelate, 1588; Dr. Antoine Arnauld,
celebrated opponent of the Jesuits, and friend of
Pascal, 1694, Brussels; Louis Francois Armand du
Plessis, Duke of Richelieu, captor of Minorca, 1788;
Sir Richard Worsley (History of the Isle of Wight),
1805, Appledurcombe, in Wight; George Canning,
statesman, 1827, Chiswick; Thomas Crofton Croker,
author of Irish Fairy Tales, 1854. London.
Feast Day: Saints
Cyriacus, Largus, Smaragdus, and their companions,
martyrs, 303. St. Hormisdas, martyr.
GEORGE CANNING
There is a certain moral
grandeur popularly ascribed to the doctrinaire which
is denied to the statesman. There are few politicians
who receive the unreserved admiration accorded to
those who have done nothing but write books, or
yielded their lives to the advocacy of a single cause.
The doctrinaire�the propounder of a fixed set of
opinions�advises mankind, but does not under-take to
manage them. Through a long series of years he may
publish his convictions with pertinacious uniformity,
without hindrance and without responsibility. Such
consistency is sometimes contrasted with the wavering
tactics of the statesman, to the unfair disadvantage
of the latter. A statesman sets himself to lead a
people, and is less careful to entertain them with his
private convictions than to discover what principles
they are inclined to accept and to commit to practice.
The doctrinaire's business is to proclaim what is
true, whether men hear or reject; the statesman's is
to ascertain and recommend what is practicable.
The statesman is often
compelled to defer his private judgment to popular
prejudice, and to rest content with bending what
cannot be broken. Sir Robert Peel was a free-trader
long before free-trade was possible. These reserves
are inseparable from statesmanship, nor need they
involve dissimulation. A statesman, being a practical
man, regards all speech as lost labour which is not
likely to be reproduced in action. There is, as all
know, a base statesman-hip, which does not aspire to
lead from good to better, but which panders to popular
folly for selfish ends. Of this we do not speak. We
merely note the f act, that the consistency of the
doctrinaire is an easy virtue compared with the
statesman's arduous art: the first tells what is
right; the other persuades millions to do it. A
statesman who has led with any credit a free people,
has necessarily encountered difficulties and
temptations of which the solitary student has had no
experience, and possibly no conception.
George Canning, whilst one of
the ablest European statesmen of the present century,
was not doctrinally far in advance of his generation;
yet for England he did much worthy service, and
through his genius English principles acquired new
influence the world over. He was born in Marylebone,
London, on the 11th of April 1770. His father was a
young gentleman, whose family had cast him off for
making a poor marriage; and, while Canning was an
infant, he died, it is said, of a broken heart. His
mother commenced school-keeping for her support, but
it did not pay, and then she tried the stage, but with
little better success. An uncle meanwhile intervened,
and sent Canning to Eton, where he quickly made his
mark by his aptitude for learning, and by starting, at
the age of sixteen, a small periodical work, entitled
The Microcosm. It was written by himself and three
school-fellows, and was published at Windsor, weekly,
from November 1786 to August 1787. Canning's articles,
in their elegance and wit, fore-shadowed the future
man.
The Microcosm provoked the Westminster boys to
commence The Trifler. To their first number they
prefixed a caricature representing Justice in the act
of weighing their merits against the Etonians, the
latter being aloft, while their rivals rested on the
ground. Young Canning took his pen, and thus
interpreted the symbol:
What mean ye by this print
so rare,
Ye wits�of Eton jealous�
But that we soar aloft in air,
And ye are heavy fellows?'
From Eton he passed to Oxford,
and thence to Lincoln's Inn, with the intention of
studying for the bar; but such was his readiness in
debate, that his friends persuaded him that politics
were his true vocation. At this time he was on
familiar terms with Sheridan and
Fox, and other
leading Whigs, but to their disappointment he sought
alliance with Pitt, and under his auspices he entered
parliament in 1793. As soon as by trial Pitt had
tested the quality of his young recruit, he placed him
on active service, and left him to bear the brunt of
some formidable attacks. Canning enjoyed and grew
under this discipline, and found wit and eloquence
equal to all demands. With the Anti-Jacobin
periodical�begun in 1797 and concluded in 1798, to
resist and ridicule democratic opinions�he was largely
concerned, and its best verses and jeux d�sprit were
written by him. His Needy Knife-Grinder, a burlesque
of a poem by Southey, is known to everybody, being a
stock-piece in all collections of humorous poetry.
In 1800, Canning was married
to Joan Scott, a daughter of General Scott, who
brought with her a dowry of �100,000. Canning's life, from 1793 to
1827, is inwrought with the parliamentary history of
England, sometimes in office, and sometimes in
opposition. He was a steady enemy of the French
Revolution and of Napoleon; he
advocated the Irish
union, the abolition of the slave trade, and Catholic
emancipation; but resisted parliamentary reform, and
the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. As
secretary of state for foreign affairs, he was
peculiarly distinguished. His sympathies were heartily
liberal; and the assertion of Lord Holland, that
Canning had 'the finest logical intellect in Europe,'
seemed to find justification in his state-papers and
correspondence, which were models of lucid and
spirited composition. Against the craft of the Holy
Alliance he set his face steadily, and was always
ready to afford counsel and help to those who were
struggling after constitutional freedom. With real joy
he recognised the republics formed from the
dissolution of Spanish dominion in America, and one of
his last public acts was the treaty which led to the
deliverance of Greece from the Turks.
Canning was only prime
minister during a few months preceding his death. On
the resignation of the Earl of Liverpool, through
illness, Canning, in April 1827, succeeded him as
premier; and as a consequence of his known favour for
the Catholics, Lord Eldon, the Duke of Wellington, Sir
Robert Peel, and other Tories threw up their places.
Canning had, therefore, to look for support to the
Whigs, and with much anxiety and in weak health he
fought bravely through the session to its close in
July, when he retired to the Duke of Devonshire's
villa at Chiswick, and there died on the 8th of August
1827.
M. Guizot, in an account of An
Embassy to the Court of St. James's in 1840, relates a
curious anecdote of Canning's death, in connection
with a description of Lady Holland. He writes:
'Lady
Holland was much more purely English than her husband.
Sharing with him the philosophic ideas of the
eighteenth French century, in politics she was a
thoroughly aristocratic Whig, without the slightest
Radical tendency, proudly liberal, and as strongly
attached to social hierarchy, as faithful to her party
and her friends This person, so decidedly incredulous,
was accessible, for her friends and for herself, to
fears childishly superstitious. She had been slightly
ill, was better, and admitted it. "Do not speak of
this," she said to me, "it is unlucky." She told me
that, in 1827, Mr. Canning, then ill, mentioned to her
that he was going for change and repose to Chiswick.
She said to him: "Do not go there; if I were your
wife, I would not allow you to do so." "Why not?"
asked Mr. Canning. "Mr.
Fox died there." Mr. Canning
smiled; and an hour after, on leaving Holland House,
he returned to Lady Holland, and said to her in a low
tone: "Do not speak of this to any one; it might
disturb them." "And he died at Chiswick," concluded
Lady Holland with emotion.'
NEWSPAPER MANAGEMENT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
In the seventeenth century,
there was no such term as editor, implying a literary
man devoted to the general management of a journal,
with a share in such original composition as it
required. We only hear of the printer, or at most of
the publisher. In those days, the printer found
himself surrounded with difficulties, and often, from
the imperfection and simplicity of his arrangements,
he was thrown into positions by no means dignified.
The following curious notices,
&c., are from some of the earliest English newspapers;
circ. 1620�1626.
The Stationer to the
Reader:
'We should also present you with the French
News, but for that some, who neither know what hath
past before, nor how businesses depend one upon
another, have patcht up a Pamphlet with broken
relations, contradicted newes of Sea-fights, and most
non-sense Translations of matters of State, wee cannot
but informe you, how you have been wronged, and wee
prevented, by those who would thrust out any falsitie,
if they were but persuaded that the novelty will sell
it.'
The above is from a paper
published in 1622. It is not very clear, certainly,
but at anyrate that which the 'stationer' (publisher)
means to convey to his readers may be arrived at
without much difficulty. We have copied it literally,
as illustrative at once of the typography,
orthography, and punctuation of that age.
The annexed quaint notice is
from a correspondent of one of these periodicals in
the same year. Having given intelligence of the wars
at that time being waged abroad, with running comments
thereon, the writer concludes by saying to the editor:
'And thus, sir, I end a long letter, wherein I have
dilated the discourse, by attempting to give the
reasons of each motion, and to describe the persons
and places, to give light to the storie, which you
shall doe well to keepe by you, for it will make you
the better to understand whatsoever shall be written
of these wars.'
Here is another (same year)
from a military correspondent to a similar journal,
and who seems to have suffered some loss in his
calling:
'Now, courteous Reader, having heard the
truth of the matter, moderate your griefe, and doe not
discourage a young brave warrior, by lamenting for
some small losse by him sustained, seeing also that
commonly the issues of battailes and warlike actions
are variable and inconstant, and that many times it
happeneth, that those that the one day have the worst,
the next day bane the better hand.'
In publishing an account of
what had occurred to the Spanish fleet in America, in
1623, the translator (and printer) thus apologetically
introduces his intelligence:
'The Printer to the
Reader.�This Spanish originall comming to my hands
most opportunely, tooke the advantage of my liking
it, and sudden apprehension, that it would please
the Reader, whosoever: not so much because thereby
is proposed a kinde of variety of newes, as in that
the glory of God is made apparant in His workes, and
wonderfull Providence, that can preserve men out of
raging seas, and afford His mercy when wee thinke
that it is quite denied vs: and although I may
incurre an imputation by leaning more to the true
sense then to the words as they lye in order: yet I
will be bold to say, that the sentences here
extended, shall neither receive exoticke
interpretation, nor bee carryed with any wanton hand
from the true meaning: be therefore thus favorable,
I pray, to reade it without a strict comparison of
the originall: and accept of an honest intent, that
aymeth as much at the satisfaction of worthy
deseruers, as any profit can arise out of so meane a
worke.'
Another writer of the same
period, at the conclusion of his intelligence as to
'the State of Affairs of Europe,' oddly says:
'In this
manner stand the affaires of Europe, which I cannot
compare better then to a wounded man, newly drest, and
in great danger of life, so that uuntill his second
opening, and taking the aire, the surgion himselfe
cannot tell what will become of him: but if you,
gentle Reader, affect to understand (by way of
indulgencie and desire of his well-doing) the state of
his health & body, I will myself attend the next
dressing, & according to the effect of the surgery
certifie you, what hope there is of recovery, that is
to say, if ever these commanders take the field; these
threatning armies meet one another; these prepared
forces make any encounter; and these martial affairs
come to deciding, I will come toward you with honest
information, and not hide my talent in a napkin, but
acquaint you with as much as falls to my poore portion
to know.'
Here is an apology for some
news-letters omitted for want of space:
'Reader, I
cannot let thee have the letters for want of roome
until next weeke.'
Another journal, of a date
somewhat later, contains the following apologetic
notice on account of an error:
'Whereas there is
notice given in the Gazette published yesterday, that
one Mr. Fox has been
scandalized in this paper: This
is to certify that there was never any such relation
printed in any intelligence published by Benjamin
Harris; but by some others that have counterfeited his
title. But as for the mistakes in the elections at
Rye, and other places, we do once for all acknowledge
that, taking them up on common fame, we have sometimes
been mistaken; but we are resolved for the future to
be so very cautious and careful, as to endeavour not
to give the least offence upon this or any other
account to any person whatsoever.'
'TOUCHING FOR
THE KING'S
EVIL�In 1664 occurs the following announcement on
this subject, of course with the direct cognizance of
his majesty Charles II:
'His sacred
majesty having declared it to be his royal will and
purpose to continue the healing of his people for the
evil, during this month of May; and then to give over
till Michaelmas next. I am
commanded to give notice
thereof, that the people may not come up to the town
in the interim, and loose their labour.'
'NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS' IN
OLDEN TIMES: At the foot of a newspaper of the early
part of the seventeenth century, an invitation to
amateurs is given in the following quaint terms:
'Ale
persons who are pleased to favour us with any comical
or sollid stories, may repair to the "Three Kings,"
Ludgate, and they shall have them very carefully put
in.'
The circulation of newspapers
may be considered as having reached perfection, when a
penny could buy the sheet and another penny insure its
quick and safe transmission to any part of the
country. In such a state of things, it becomes
difficult to imagine or recall the difficulties which
beset the obtaining of a newspaper only a few years
ago. When we cast back our thoughts twenty years, we
find the sheet costing fourpence-halfpenny at the
least; when we go back twenty or thirty years more, we
find it was seven-pence, the greater part of which sum
went into the public exchequer. The number of sheets
printed by any journal up to 1814 was usually a few
hundreds; only two or three came to thousands. It was,
indeed, mechanically impossible that there should be a
newspaper circulation above two or three thousand,
for, before any larger number could be thrown off, the
news would have been cold, and the next number in
requisition.
When we go back a century, or
a century and a half, we find that the journals of the
empire were but a handful. There was not one north of
Edinburgh till 1746; there was not one established on
a permanent basis in Edinburgh till 1718. News were in
those days sent about in private letters, and in the
gossip of conversation. The wandering beggar, who came
to the farmer's house craving a supper and bed, was
the principal intelligencer of the rural population of
Scotland so late as 1780. In Queen Anne's time, to
receive a regular news-sheet from the metropolis was
the privilege of lords, squires, and men of official
importance. At an earlier time, this communication was
not a printed sheet at all, but a written sheet,
called a News-letter, prepared in London, copied by
some process or by the hand, and so circulated from a
recognised centre.
When such a sheet arrived at
the hall, with any intelligence unusually interesting,
the proprietor would cause his immediate dependants to
be summoned, and would from his porch read out the
principal paragraphs (see illustration below). So did the news of William's
landing
at Torbay, of
King Charles's
restoration, of his
father's tragic death, reach the ears of a large part
of the people of England. The reader of our national
history will have a very imperfect comprehension of
it, if he does not bear in mind how slowly and
imperfectly intelligence of public matters was
conveyed in all times which we now call past, and how
much of false news was circulated. In the case of an
insurrection, the whole surrounding circumstances
might be changed before a fourth of the nation was
apprised of what had taken place, or was prepared to
move. Or, supposing that a landing was expected on the
south coast. in connection with party-movements within
the empire, the heads of the conspiracy might all be
in the Tower before any one could be sure that the
fleet was even in sight.
One peculiarity of the
newspaper management of old days is sufficiently
obvious to any one who examines the files. There was
no adequate system of home-reporting. It seems to have
been mainly by private and arbitrary means that a
domestic paragraph came to the office. An amusing
illustration of this primitive system of reporting
occurs in the Caledonian Mercury for March 3, 1724:
'We hear,' says the paper, 'that my Lord Arniston,
one of the ordinary lords of session, is dead.'
In next number appears this
apologetic, but certainly very awkward, paragraph:
'It was by mistake in our last
that Lord Arniston was dead, occasioned by the
rendezvous of coaches hard by his lordship's lodging,
that were to attend the funeral of a son of the Right
Honourable the Earl of Galloway; wherefore his
lordship's pardon and family is humbly craved.' W E.
