The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-03-10 00:00:00

EXTRACTS FROM THE LIFE OF GEORGE
CANNING.*

BIRTH OF GEORGE CANNING, AND CONDITION OF HIS

PARENTS AT THE TIME.

Mr. Canning soon got into debt again as deeply as ever;
and, as if there were a fatality in his embarrassments by
which he was predestined to Wear the heaviest responsi-
bilities at the times wheh be was least qualified to dis-
charge them, this was the moment he thought fit to become
a husband. The excess of the imprudence seems to have
fascinated his imagination. In this year, 1768, without
any resources on either side, but his own poor allowance,
or any prospect of increase, except the increase of expense,
he married Miss Costello, an Irish lady of considerable
personal attractions, and good family. Miss Costello, at
that time residing with her maternal grandfather, Colonel
Guydickens, was only eighteen years of age, extremely
beautiful and captivating, but portionless. We hear no-
thing more of Mr. Canning's early attachment. It had
either passed away, or been broken off, or it had faded in
the light of the new and brighter enchantment. An alli-
ance formed under such inauspicious circumstances, so
far as fortune was concerned, could not fail to exasperate
the resentment of his family to the utmost ; it effectually
crushed all hope of reconciliation. Mr. Canning never
returned to Ireland, and never saw his father again. The
only members of his family with whom he held any inter-
course after his marriage were his two brothers and his
eldest sister.

His union with Miss Costello awoke him to the neces-
sity of more energetic exertions than he had hitherto made
in his flirtation with literature and politics, but they re-
sulted only in a succession of failures. The situation of
this young couple, in the great conflict upon which they
were cast, was painfully embittered by constitutional in-
aptitude for the worldly strife. Highly gifted, sensitive,
and ambitious, they were dragged down into sordid cares
which wounded their pride, and forced them to attempt
means of extrication for which few people could have been
so ill fitted. The close retirement.in which they found it
necessary to live was cheered by the birth of a daughter ;
but the child died early, and their pecuniary distresses now
growing more urgent than ever, Mr. Canning, eager to
embrace every hopeful opportunity that presented itself,
tried several experiments in business. He set up as a
wine-merchant. and failed, as might have been expected.
Other speculations were entered upon with no better suc-
cess ; and in the midst of these overwhelming troubles, on
the 11th of April, 1770, George Canning was born. He
must have been a brave prophet who should have predicted
that the child of such afflictions would one day be prime
minister of England, yet this prophecy wtis actually made
a few years later.
According to some authorities, this event took place in
Paddington ; others, with greater likelihood, assign the
honour to the parish of Marylebone, where George Can-
ning was baptised on the 9th of the following May. The
register of St. Clement, East Cheap, contains entries of
the baptisms of several members of the Canning family ;
but these were the children of Mr. Stratford Canning,
the merchant, including Sir Stratford Canning, Mr. Charles
James Fox Canning (for the merchant was a thorough
Foxite), and others.