Canning had only just completed his fifty-seventh year when his career came to a close. He died before his old friend and colleague whose sudden illness had left open to him the place of Prime Minister, for Lord Liverpool did not die until December 4 of the following year. The place of Canning in English history is more clear to us now than it was to the world even when the anxious crowd was watching round the villa at Chiswick and when the throng followed his remains to Westminster Abbey. He was, as we have already said, the founder of that system of foreign policy which English statesmanship has professed ever since his time. His was that doctrine of conditional non-intervention for which, in later days, men like John Stuart Mill contended as the doctrine which ought to be the governing principle of a great council of European States, if such could be established. Canning's idea was not that England should proclaim such a principle of non-intervention as that which Cobden and Bright, and other men equally sincere and patriotic, endeavored to impress on public opinion at a later day. Canning's principle was that England should not intervene even on the right side of any Continental struggle in which she had no direct concern, unless some other State equally free from any direct share in the controversy were making preparation to intervene on the wrong side. Then, according to his doctrine, England was bound to say to the interposing State: "If you, an outsider to this controversy, are making up your mind to intervene on what we believe to be the wrong side, then it may become our duty to intervene on what we believe to be the right side." It was in accordance with this principle that Canning prevailed upon the Governments of France and Russia to enter into that engagement with England which secured the independence of Greece, as it was in accordance with this principle that he had made the proclamation of policy which secured the independence of the Spanish-American colonies, and thus called in the New World to redress the balance of the Old.