ess some other State equally free from any direct share in
the controversy were making preparation to intervene on the wrong side.
Then, according to his doctrine, England was bound to say to the
interposing State: "If you, an outsider to this controversy, are making
up your mind to intervene on what we believe to be the wrong side, then
it may become our duty to intervene on what we believe to be the right
side." It was in accordance with this principle that Canning prevailed
upon the Governments of France and Russia to enter into that engagement
with England which secured the independence of Greece, as it was in
accordance with this principle that he had made the proclamation of
policy which secured the independence of the Spanish-American colonies,
and thus called in the New World to redress the balance of the Old.

Canning must, on the whole, be ranked among great Liberal statesmen,
although there were some passages in {63} his career which showed that
he had not advanced quite so far in Liberal principles as some of the
statesmen of his own day. It is hard now to understand how such a man
could have stood out against the principle of Parliamentary reform and
popular suffrage, and could have resisted the efforts to give full
rights of citizenship to the members of dissenting denominations. It
is especially hard to understand why a man who was in favor of
abolishing religious disqualifications in the case of Roman Catholics
should have thought it right to maintain them in the case of Protestant
Dissenters. The explanation of this latter inconsistency may be found,
perhaps, in the assumption that when Canning thought of the grievance
to Roman Catholics he had in his mind the grievances to the Roman
Catholics of Ireland, a separate country with a nationality and
traditions of her own, and a country in which the vast majority of the
population belonged to the one religious faith. He may have thought
that the English Protestant Dissenters who did not see their way to
class themselves with the Protestants of the English State Church had
not so distinct a claim to the recognition of their grievance. It may
seem strange that a mind like Canning's could have been beguiled from
the acceptance of a great principle by a curious distinction of this
kind, but it must be remembered that down to a much later day many of
the professed supporters of religious equality contended for some
limitation of the principle where politica