THE CANWING STATUE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23370, 9 December 1937, Page 12

THE CANWING STATUE

UNVEILING AT BUENOS AIRES KING’S WARM APPRECIATION LONDON, Dec. 7. On the occasion of the unveiling at Buenos Aires of a memorial statue of George Canning by the President of the Argentine Republic the King sent a message to Senor Justo expressing “my warm appreciation of this happy manifestation of the personal interest which you take, in common with myself, in the maintenance and steady cultivation of the valued and historic friendship between Britain and the Argentine, which Canning may justly be said to have inaugurated.” George Canning, who was born in London in 1770, held a series of posts in Pitt’s Administration, achieving a reputation in the House of Commons as an orator, and among the public by his witty contributions to the “ Anti-Jacobin.” In 1807 he joined the Portland Ministry as Foreign Secretary. It was at this time that Canning forestalled Napoleon by seizing the Danish fleet at Copenhagen in spite of the neutrality of Denmark, his defence of this act being the definite knowledge that unless he struck at once the fleet would be turned against Great Britain. In 1822 he was Foreign Secretary again in the Liverpool Ministry. He followed Castlereagh in recognising the independence of the South American States which had revolted against Spain, and resolved that the intervention of France on behalf of the Spanish monarchy, 1823, should not extend to America. His interest in South Afnerica, it has been said, did not cease with his recognition of its independence. From the beginning he had never sought any territorial gain, though it would have been easy to have carved an empire, hardly second to India, either in wealth or extent, out of the old Spanish dominions. With Bolivar, the South American Liberator, he had a bond of sympathy, and their personal relations were not without influence upon the policy of their respective countries. Almost (lie last act of Canning as Foreign Minister was to advise the creation of an independent Uruguay as a buffer between Brazil and the Argentine.