I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first.

The line is a brusque refusal of even a trivial request (“sixpence”), intensified by the hyperbolic curse “I will see thee damned first.” Read literally, it conveys contempt and a willingness to let the petitioner suffer rather than offer the smallest aid. In a Canning context, it is most plausibly encountered as a reported witticism or a line in satirical verse/drama attributed to him, where exaggerated hardness functions as comic cruelty and as a jab at hypocrisy or stinginess. Without a verified setting, however, the safest interpretation is general: a memorable formulation of absolute denial, using religious language to heighten the emotional force.