![]() For although within his own small circle he inspired sincere devotion and in the public mind epitomized the popular patriot, he was irrevocably tainted in the eyes of politicians at home and abroad. Yet, if his extraordinary powers had raised him from the most unlikely of circumstances to the most exalted of positions of political pre-eminence (first minister in all but name by 1825) and had several times rescued his straggling career from the effects of undeserved bad luck and unwarranted personal misjudgements, they also lay at the root of the deep mistrust which long inhibited his promotion and finally wrecked the formation of his administration in 1827. One of the most singular and remarkable of the leading statesmen of the first half of the nineteenth century, Canning, who was the only serving prime minister to sit in the Commons in this period, possessed undoubted and enviable talents, not least of which was the rich and varied oratorical eloquence which gave him an absolute ascendancy in the House. ![]() Winchester 1778 Eton 1783 Christ Church, Oxf. of George Canning, barrister, of the Middle Temple and Mary Anne, da. ![]()
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