l privileges were concerned,
and that only in our own time has admission to the House of Commons
been left open to the professors of every religious faith, and even to
those who profess no religious faith at all. So far as Parliamentary
reform in the ordinary sense of the words is concerned, we may feel
quite sure that if Canning had lived a few years longer his mind would
have accepted the growth of public opinion and the evidences which
justified that growth, and he would not have been found among the
unteachable opponents of popular suffrage and a well-adjusted
Parliamentary representation.

As a financial reformer he was distinctly in advance of {64} his time,
and even such men as Sir Robert Peel only followed slowly in the path
which Canning and Huskisson had opened. Canning's fame as a
Parliamentary orator is now well assured. He has been unduly praised,
and he has been unduly disparaged. He has been described as the
greatest Parliamentary orator since the days of Bolingbroke, and he has
been described as a brilliant and theatric declaimer who never rose to
the height of genuine political oratory. The common judgment of
educated men now regards him as only inferior, if inferior at all, to
the two Pitts and Fox among great Parliamentary orators, and the rival
of any others belonging to his own, or an earlier, or a later day in
the history of the English Parliament. Of him it may fairly be said
that his career made an era in England's political life, and that the
great principles which he asserted are still guiding the country even
at this hour.

{65}

CHAPTER LXVII.

"THE CHAINS OF THE CATHOLIC."

[Sidenote: 1827--Lord Goderich]

During the closing days of Canning's life he was speaking to Sir
William Knighton of the approaching end, and he said, quietly: "This
may be hard upon me, but it is still harder upon the King." There was
something characteristic in the saying. Canning had been greatly
touched by the manner in which the King had, at last, come round to him
and stood by him against all who endeavored to interpose between him
and his sovereign; and to a man of Canning's half-poetic temperament
the sovereign typified the State and the people, to whom the Prime
Minister was but a devoted servant. It was certainly hard upon the
King, at least for the time. George must have had moments of better
feelings and better inspirations than those which governed the ordinary
course of his life, an