Castlereagh, the War Secretary, quarreled and the former resigned
from the cabinet. Yet from his place in the House the ex-minister
continued manfully to uphold the general who was doing England's
work in Spain. There was need of all the support his genius could
contribute to this task, for parliament was slow to grasp the
deep purpose of the campaign, was impatient for results, and
prone to grumble at the bill of expense. Yet in the end Canning
enjoyed the satisfaction of pointing to the complete verification
of his hopes. He might have been Foreign Minister in the
Liverpool ministry at its outset (1812) had he been willing to
acquiesce in the leadership of Castlereagh in the House of
Commons. This would have given him the direction of English
policy in those critical years in which the Napoleonic empire was
broken up and European affairs rearranged by the powers at
Vienna. He lived to regret this as the greatest error of his
career. He was sufficiently humbled after four years to join the
government forces as president of the India board, resigning in
1820. In 1821, when on the point of going out to India, of which
he had been appointed governor-general, his prospects suddenly
changed. On the death of his rival, Castlereagh, Canning became
Foreign Secretary and leader of the Commons. The prize which he
had long schemed to secure, and had finally given up, suddenly
fell into his hand. Canning's mind could not but revert to the
lost opportunity of 1812. Not in a century would the Foreign
Minister again have a world to set in order. He wrote to a
friend, "Ten years have made a world of difference, and have made
a very different sort of world to bustle in than that which I
should have found in 1812. For fame it is a squeezed orange, but
for public good there is something to do, and I shall try--but it
must be cautiously-- to do it. You know my politics well enough