STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE, LORD. 



STRATICO. 



762 



* STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE, STRATFORD CANNING, 

 FIRST VISCOUNT, is the fourth eon of Stratford Canning, Esq., 

 merchant of London, and first cousin to the late Right Hon. George 

 Canning, and of the first Lord Garvagh, and is descended from a 

 younger branch of the ancient family of Canning of Foxcote, in the 

 county of Warwick. He was born in London January 6tb, 1788, 

 and received his early education on the foundation at Eton, where 

 he rose to the captaincy of the school. He was admitted a scholar 

 of King's College, Cambridge, in 1806, but quitted the university in 

 the following year, without having taken a degree, on being appointed 

 a precis writer in the Foreign Office under his cousin ; and in the same 

 year he accompanied Mr. Merry as secretary on his embassy to Den- 

 mark and Sweden. In 1808 he was despatched as secretary to Mr. 

 (afterwards Sir Robert) Adair's special mission to the Dardanelles, for 

 the purpose of negociating terms of peace between this country and 

 the Porte, which had been forcibly interrupted in 1807; an object 

 which was eventually accomplished by the treaty signed January 5, 

 1809. These negociations were secretly opposed by both France and 

 Russia ; but the Sultan Mahommed remained firm to tte interests of 

 Britain. In the following April Mr. Canning was made secretary of 

 legation at the Porte, and on the recall of Mr. Adair in 1810 was 

 accredited minister plenipotentiary at that court. This important 

 post he retained till 1812, when he returned to England and took the 

 degree of M.A. by royal letters at King's College, Cambridge. In 

 1814 he was appointed envoy to Switzerland, and assisted in the 

 formation of the Treaty of Alliance between the nineteen cantons, 

 which eventually became the basis of their federal compact. In 1820 

 having been sworn a member of his majesty's Privy Council, he was 

 accredited as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the 

 United States, and remained at Washington for three years ; during 

 which time he had an opportunity of obtaining correct knowledge of the 

 details of the various questions which had been left for future adjust- 

 ment between the two governments by the treaty of Ghent. At the 

 end of 1824, Mr. Stratford Canning was sent to St. Petersburg on a 

 special mission, having reference to the Greek troubles, and another 

 also to the Emperor of Austria. After accomplishing the duties of 

 these missions he proceeded to Constantinople, having been appointed 

 ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to that court on the 

 10th of October 1825. Here he lost no occasion of negociating with 

 the sultan in favour of the Greek nation, whose heroic exertions and 

 horrible sufferings had engaged alike the admiration and sympathv of 

 men of all nations and of all parties ; but his appeals were unfortunately 

 without avail. The obdurate sultan could pardon, but would not 

 treat with men whom he looked upon as his slaves. Under these cir- 

 cumstances, the three powers England, France, and Russia deter- 

 mined upon concerting more effectually for terminating a condition 

 of things which had become a scandal to all Europe. In 1827 Mr. 

 Canning returned to England for a time, and in the July of that year 

 was signed the treaty of London, by which the three powers agreed to 

 tender to the Sublime Porte their mediating offices towards putting 

 an end to the internal war and establishing the relations which ought 

 to exist between Turkey and the people of Greece, and in event of 

 such mediation being rejected, to interfere by force in the matter. 

 The reply of the Porte was a refusal, and was immediately followed 

 by active measures of coercion. The battle of Navarino, on the policy 

 of which so much discussion and debate has taken place, was fought 

 in September 1827, and the allied powers resolved to take the Greek 

 nation under their protection, and consulted on the propriety and 

 means of establishing it as an independent state. Mr. Canning, on the 

 part of the British government, took an active share in the inquiries 

 and deliberations necessary towards this result. In 1829 he had con- 

 ferred upon him the distinction of a Civil Knight Grand Cross of the 

 Bath for these and former diplomatic services. He had been already 

 elected for the borough of Old Sarum, and shortly afterwards was 

 chosen to represent the since disfranchised constituency of Stockbridge, 

 Hants. la October 1831 he was again despatched on a special mission 

 to the Ottoman Porte, for the purpose of treating upon and defining 

 the future boundaries of the kingdom of Greece, which were eventually 

 settled according to hia recommendations in 1829. The result was 

 another treaty signed at London, on May 7th 1832, between the same 

 three powers, and ratified by Bavaria on the 27th of the same month, 

 upon the basis of which Prince Otho of Bavaria accepted and ascended 

 the throne of Greece. In the same year Sir Stratford Canning was 

 deputed upon a special mission to the courts of Madrid and Lisbon, 

 the latter of which however he did not visit. In December 1834 he 

 was again elected to parliament, this time for King's Lynn, Norfolk, 

 which he continued to represent down to the month of January 1842. 

 In 1836 and again in 1841 the ministry of Lord Melbourne offered to him, 

 though politically opposed to them, the governorship-general of Canada, 

 the acceptance of which however he declined. Towards the close of 

 the year 1841 he was appointed a third time as ambassador at Con- 

 stantinople, in succession to the late Lord Ponsonby : this post he has 

 held under each successive ministry down to the present time (June 

 1857). In April 1852 he was elevated to the peerage as Viscount 

 Stratford de Redcliffe, a title which he chose to mark his paternal 

 descent from William Cannynge, the " pious founder of the Church of 

 St. Marye Redclyffe," at Bristol. 

 The policy of Lord Stratford in Turkey has been manly and con- 



sistent. Considering the integrity of the Ottoman power to be 

 essential to the permanent relations of Europe ; having learned also 

 to respect that power, in regard of the strenuous efforts towards 

 reform and regeneration which it has been recently making, with 

 more or less success, he has given a firm support to the independent 

 policy of the Porte, against the attacks and machinations of its 

 avowed enemy, Russia. Shrewd to detect the crooked schemes of 

 that government, he has met them when discovered with a bold and 

 resolute front. In the dispute between the Porte and the Court of 

 Russia, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe gave to the Porte the full extent 

 of the moral support at his command, without in any way compro- 

 mising his government beyond the point to which his instructions 

 warranted him. When, in May 1854, the Foreign Secretary of the 

 Ports consulted him, in common with the representatives of France 

 and Austria, in reference to the ultimatum of Prince Menzikoff, the 

 reply was one leaving the Ottoman government free to adopt and 

 declare its own line of policy; but that line of policy being once 

 adopted, and announced to the British ambassador, the latter did not 

 hesitate to express his approval of it. and to promise the friendly 

 offices of his government. Independently of the more important 

 political questions bearing upon European relations, to which Lord 

 Stratford has never been blind, and of the part which he has taken in 

 transactions connected therewith, too numerous for us to mention, 

 there have been very many occasions on which he has been the means 

 of promoting the ends of humanity, religious freedom, and intellectual 

 progress. Owing to his successful representations, the infliction of 

 torture was prohibited in the Turkish dominions; to him is due the 

 abolition of the penalty of death, formerly inflicted upon renegades 

 that is, Christiana who, having embraced the Mohammedan belief, 

 reverted to Christianity; also the appointment of the mixed courts 

 for the trial of civilj and criminal causes in which Europeans are 

 concerned, and the reception therein of the testimony of Christians 

 upon an equal footing with that of Mohammedans; he likewise pro- 

 cured, in 1845, a firman for the establishment of the first Protestant 

 chapel in the British Consulate at Jerusalem ; and in 1855 another 

 firman, establishing the religious and political freedom of all descrip- 

 tions of Protestants throughout the Turkish empire for which he 

 has received memorials of thanks from the representatives of various 

 bodies of Protestants. On the other hand, complaints have been 

 made of Lord Stratford's haughtiness, which has, it is affirmed, 

 occasionally been productive of most important results, and has 

 given occasion to grave censure in Parliament, and angry comments 

 by the press. To scientific discovery Lord Stratford has always lent 

 his valuable aid. La 1845, when Mr. Layard could not find a govern- 

 ment, or scientific body, or public, to second his aspirations for the 

 discovery of ancient Nineveh, Lord Stratford authorised and enabled 

 him, at his own risk and expense, to proceed upon his researches. In 

 1847, those interesting relics, the Budrum marbles being, as sup- 

 posed, the remains of the mausoleum erected at Halicarnassus, by 

 Artemisia, queen of Caria, to her husband, Mausolus were obtained 

 by Lord Stratford, by firman from the Porte, and presented by him 

 to the British Museum. 



Lord Stratford de Redcliffe married 1st, in 1816, Harriet, the 

 daughter of Thomas Raikes, Esq., Governor of the Bank of England, 

 who died in 1817; and, 2ndly, in 1825, Elizabeth Charlotte, daughter 

 of James Alexander, Esq., of Somerhill, near Tunbridge, and niece 

 of the Earl of Caledon. 



STRA'TICO, SIMONE, COUNT, was born at Zara, in Dalmatia, 

 in 1730, of a family originally from Candia, studied at Padua, where 

 he took his doctor's degree, and was made professor of medicine in 

 that university when only twenty-five years of age. In 1761 he accom- 

 panied to England the ambassador sent by the Venetian senate to 

 congratulate George III. on his accession ; and on his return to Padua 

 he succeeded the Marquis Poleni in the chair of mathematics and 

 navigation. He wrote several works on hydraulics and hydrostatics, 

 and upon naval architecture and navigation. In 1801 he was appointed 

 by the government of the Italian republic to the chair of navigation in 

 the university of Pavia, and under Napoleon's kingdom of Italy he was 

 made inspector-general of roads, rivers, and canals, and senator of the 

 kingdom and knight of the iron crown. After the Restoration the 

 Emperor of Austria gave him the cross of the order of St. Leopold. 

 Count Stratico died at Milan in 1824, at the age of ninety-four. His 

 principal works are 1, 'Raccolta di Proposizioni d'Idrostatica ed 

 Idraulica,' Padova, 1773 ; 2, ' Vocabolario di Marina,' 3 vols. 4to, Milan, 

 1813-14, a work which was wanted in the Italian language: Stratico 

 collected the nautical expressions used by thts Venetians, Pisans, and 

 Genoese in the time of their maritime greatness, and added the modern 

 expressions adopted from the French and English ; 3, ' Bibliografia di 

 Marina,' 1823; 4, 'M. Vitruvii Pollionis Architectura cum Exercita- 

 tionibus J. Poleni et Commentariis Variorum,' Udine, 1825. This is 

 an excellent edition of Vitruvius, with important illustrations and 

 comments by Poleni and Stratico, and was published after the latter's 

 death. Stratico was one of the most distinguished men of science in 

 Italy. His cabinet of models for shipbuilding, and his collection of 

 books relative to the art of navigation, were bequeathed by him to the 

 Lombardo- Venetian kingdom, and they have been placed in the library 

 of the Institute of Milan. (Maffei, Letteratura Italiana ; Biographical 

 Notice of Stratico, in the ' Antologia ' of Florence, vol. xvi.) 



