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George Canning Quotes

George Canning was a British statesman and Tory politician who served in various senior cabinet positions under numerous Prime Ministers, before himself serving as Prime Minister for the final four months of his life.

The son of an actress and a failed businessman and lawyer, Canning was supported financially by his uncle, Stratford Canning, which allowed him to attend Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. Canning entered politics in 1793 and rose rapidly. He was Paymaster of the Forces and Treasurer of the Navy under William Pitt the Younger. Canning was Foreign Secretary under the Duke of Portland, who was ill. Canning was the dominant figure in the cabinet and directed the seizure of the Danish fleet in 1807 to assure Britain's naval supremacy over Napoleon. In 1809, he was wounded in a duel with his foe Lord Castlereagh and was shortly thereafter passed over as a successor to the Duke of Portland in favour of Spencer Perceval. He remained out of high office until after Perceval was assassinated in 1812.

Canning subsequently served under new Prime Minister the Earl of Liverpool as British Ambassador to Portugal , President of the Board of Control , and Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons . The King disliked Canning and there were efforts to frustrate his foreign policies. Canning, however, successfully built wide public support for his policies. Historian Paul Hayes argues that he scored major achievements in diplomatic relations regarding Spain and Portugal, by helping to guarantee the independence of the American colonies of Portugal and Spain. His policies ensured a major trading advantage to British merchants and supported the Americans' Monroe Doctrine.

When Lord Liverpool resigned in April 1827, Canning was chosen to succeed him as Prime Minister ahead of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. They both declined to serve under Canning and the Tories split between Peel and Wellington's Ultra-Tories and the Canningites. Canning then invited several Whigs to join his cabinet. However, his health collapsed and he died in office in August 1827, after just 119 days in office, the shortest tenure of any British Prime Minister.

✵ 11. April 1770 – 8. August 1827
George Canning photo
George Canning: 11 quotes0 likes

Famous George Canning Quotes

“I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.”

George Canning

The King’s Message, Dec. 12, 1826.

“I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first.”

George Canning

The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir.”

George Canning

The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“No, here ’s to the pilot that weathered the storm!”

George Canning

The Pilot that weathered the Storm.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Who e'er ye are, all hail! – whether the skill
Of youthful CANNING guides the ranc'rous quill;
With powers mechanic far above his age,
Adapts the paragraph and fills the page;
Measures the column, mends what e'er's amiss,
Rejects THAT letter, and accepts of THIS;”

George Canning

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, ‘Epistle to the Editors of the Anti-Jacobin’, quoted in Wendy Hinde, George Canning (London: Purnell Books Services, 1973), p. 59.
About

“So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourn, glides
The Derby dilly, carrying three INSIDES.”

George Canning

The Loves of the Triangles, line 178.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

George Canning Quotes

“Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe,
Bold I can meet,—perhaps may turn his blow!
But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save, save, oh save me from the candid friend!”

George Canning

New Morality. Compare: "Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies", attributed to Maréchal Villars, when taking leave of Louis XIV.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I for my part still conceive it to be the paramount duty of a British member of parliament to consider what is good for Great Britain…I do not envy that man's feelings, who can behold the sufferings of Switzerland, and who derives from that sight no idea of what is meant by the deliverance of Europe. I do not envy the feelings of that man, who can look without emotion at Italy – plundered, insulted, trampled upon, exhausted, covered with ridicule, and horror, and devastation – who can look at all this, and be at a loss to guess what is meant by the deliverance of Europe? As little do I envy the feelings of that man, who can view the peoples of the Netherlands driven into insurrection, and struggling for their freedom against the heavy hand of a merciless tyranny, without entertaining any suspicion of what may be the sense of the word deliverance. Does such a man contemplate Holland groaning under arbitrary oppressions and exactions? Does he turn his eyes to Spain trembling at the nod of a foreign master? And does the word deliverance still sound unintelligibly in his ear? Has he heard of the rescue and salvation of Naples, by the appearance and the triumphs of the British fleet? Does he know that the monarchy of Naples maintains its existence at the sword's point? And is his understanding, and his heart, still impenetrable to the sense and meaning of the deliverance of Europe?”

George Canning

Speech in 1798, quoted in Wendy Hinde, George Canning (London: Purnell Books Services, 1973), p. 66.

“We are hated throughout Europe and that hate must be cured by fear.”

George Canning

Letter to George Leveson-Gower (2 October 1807), quoted in Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England. 1783-1846 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), p. 211.

“I can prove anything by statistics except the truth.”

George Canning

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) edited by Tryon Edwards, p. 587.

“And finds, with keen, discriminating sight,
Black ’s not so black,—nor white so very white.”

George Canning

New Morality.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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