"You cannot be far from the close of your career; for, either we shall be so lost that all your farther efforts will be superfluous, or you will be so resisted as to disable you for ever from all noxious exertion. This, then, may be the time for summing up the evidence, furnished by the unbiassed, uncontradictory witnesses of your life; and for enabling your countrymen to pass the verdict.
"Let him speak who ever knew you in possession of any respectable reputation. The rag you stole from Mr. Sheridan's mantle was always too scanty to cover your nakedness: like all mimics, you caught only the meaner characteristics of your archetype; oratorical, not orator; poetaster, not poet; witling, not wit. You were never the first or best in any one line of action. You might not have been altogether inept or slow in playing second parts, but on no one occasion have you ever evinced that sincerity, either of principle or capacity, which the lowest amongst us are accustomed to require from the pretenders to excellence. Your spirit was rebuked in presence of those accomplished persons whom the followers of all parties recognized as beings of a higher order, and were willing to yield even more deference than their unambitious merit required. The chances of survivorship have left you a great man in these days of little men; but you keep true to the epic rule; you end as you began; power has conferred upon you no dignity,--elevation has not made your posture more erect. The decency of your character consists in its entire conformity to the original conception formed of you in early life. It has borrowed nothing from station, nothing from experience. IT BECOMES YOU, BUT WOULD DISGRACE ANY OTHER MAN."
[187:A] How well has part of this prediction been fulfilled by the people of 1832! May the rest be speedily accomplished!
[188:A] See motion for a new writ for the Borough of St. Mawes, in the room of Francis Horner, esq., deceased.
To a person of Mr. Canning's warmth of temper, such a production was felt most acutely; for he could not, with all his ready eloquence and talent, deny the truth of the writer's charges, or the justness of his severe censure. When men find themselves exposed, without the possibility of making out a good defence by argument, however speciously employed, it is no uncommon thing for them to abuse their accusers, by stigmatizing them with the epithets of "SLANDERER," "LIAR," "COWARD," "DOLT," "IDIOT," and similar opprobrious names, which, however, generally fall harmless on the person to whom they are applied, while they recoil, with ten-fold vigour, on the head of him who disgraces himself and his cause by their adoption. Such was precisely the case with Mr. Canning, as the following letters will testify: