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MODEM STATESMEN, 
 
 SKETCHES FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 BY 
 
 i 
 
 J.- EWING RITCHIE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE "NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON," "THE LONDON PULPIT,' 
 "HERE AND THERE IN LONDON," ETC. ETC. 
 
 " For these are the men that when they hare played their parts, and had their exits, must- 
 step out and give the moral of their scenes, and deliver unto posterity an inventory of their 
 virtues and vices."— Sir Thomas Browne. 
 
 LONDON: 
 WILLIAM TWEEDIE, 337, STRAND. 
 
 MDCCCLXI. 
 
HA S3 
 
 .2- 
 .7?fe 
 
 JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PEINTEKS. 
 
TO 
 
 JOHN CASSELL, ESQ., 
 
 "THE POPtTLAB, EDTJCATOK," 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, AS A MEMOKIAL OF MANY 
 
 YEAES OF FEIENDSHIP AND LITEEAEY 
 
 CO-OPEEATION. 
 
 Ivy Cottage, Ballard' s-lane, FincJdey. 
 
MODEKN STATESMEN. 
 
 LORD PALMERSTON. 
 
 This is a great, free, self- governed country. I must be- 
 lieve it, for I read it in the newspapers every day. The 
 aristocracy tell us this when they condescend to adorn 
 our public dinners, and popular lecturers at Mechanics' 
 Institutions and Athenaeums repeat it. Our Consti- 
 tution is the growth of ages, and has attained a perfec- 
 tion of which Hobbes despaired and of which Locke 
 never dreamt. The franchise, we are told, is a trust ; 
 that trust is placed in the most trustworthy hands. 
 (Cato was the original ten-pound householder.) Our 
 elections are the envy of surrounding nations. There 
 is at them a studious abstinence from beer ; no one is 
 solicited for a vote. The great manufacturer, or rail- 
 way contractor, or the neighbouring peer, always re- 
 tire to the Continent when an election takes place, in 
 order that the honest voter may act in accordance 
 
 1 
 
Z MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 with the dictates of his conscience. The religious feel 
 that it is a solemn event, and sermons appropriate to 
 the occasion are preached in chapel and church alike. 
 The ablest men of the community, irrespective of their 
 wealth or want of it, are selected as candidates. On 
 the day of nomination, in the plain garb of citizens — 
 without music or flags, or demonstrations of party feel- 
 ing — they appear upon the hustings. Their speeches, 
 in unadorned but plain language, comment upon the 
 men and movements of the day. They declare the 
 principles upon which they act, and upon which they 
 deem the government of Great Britain and its imperial 
 dependencies should be carried on. These speeches, 
 with the exception of a few immaculate boroughs, such 
 as Gloucester and Wakefield or Berwick upon Tweed, 
 are listened to by an audience fresh from the perusal 
 of Bacon, Bentham, and Mill. A show of hands then 
 takes place. The best man has invariably the majority, 
 the others immediately retire, and the constituents, 
 satisfied that they have done their duty, return home ; 
 the representative, in his turn, becomes a constituent in 
 another assembly, where he meets some six hundred 
 similarly-minded gentlemen. They select from them- 
 selves, in order to form a cabinet, the ablest and wisest. 
 These invariably are peers, or sons of peers. They, 
 again, select the ablest and wisest as their head. He 
 was, till the Crimean war destroyed our European re- 
 putation, the first man in the universe, and remotest 
 regions learned to bless his name. Happily, in our 
 
LORD PALMERSTON. 6 
 
 day the system has arrived at a blessed fruition, and 
 we have as Premier the Right Honourable Yiscount 
 Palmerston, K.G.C.B., a veteran official long before the 
 present generation bewailed or rejoiced in long clothes. 
 So much for theory, now for actual fact. Is it not 
 singular that statesmanship as a rule is the only thing 
 monopolised in this country by a class, and that class 
 one which has invariably broken down when it has 
 come into contact with men without Grandfathers ? 
 From the days of the Huntingdon brewer — not for- 
 getting him who was emphatically " the Great Com- 
 moner " — to those of Gladstone and Disraeli, our chief 
 orators and statesmen have sprung from the middle 
 ranks. If Fox belonged to the aristocracy, he confessed 
 that he owed his noblest aspirations to Burke. If Eng- 
 land's rulers accepted the services of Canning, they 
 could prey upon his genius and prematurely exhaust 
 his life. In our day we see the Earl of Derby honoured 
 with the Garter on his retirement from the Premier- 
 ship, while the man without whom his party could not 
 have remained a day in office leaves it, and retires to 
 Haughenden Manor undecorated and without reward. 
 There may be great advantages attending this state of 
 things, but an evident disadvantage is, that this system 
 compels us to accept a kind of Hobson's choice. Hence, 
 when Lord John Russell is sent for, and confesses that 
 he cannot carry on the Queen's Government, and Lord 
 Derby has confessed the same — if Lord Palmerston 
 does not condescend to be our saviour, we are plunged 
 
2 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 into the horrors of a parliamentary dead-lock. This is 
 the reason of Palmerston's premiership. He is Premier 
 just as men are villains by necessity and fools by a 
 divine thrusting on. We read in Luther's Table Tal7c, 
 " Maximilian one day burst into a great laugh. On 
 being asked the cause, * Truly/ he said, ' I laughed to 
 think that God should have trusted the spiritual go- 
 vernment of the world to a drunken priest like Pope 
 Julius, and the government of the empire to a chamois- 
 hunter like me.' " We have it in evidence that an idea 
 of this kind used to flash through Lord Althorp's hon- 
 est brain. In his retirement at Broadlands, Lord Pal- 
 merston may indulge in a similar laugh. If we may 
 judge from a public life of unusual extent, the last thing 
 he aspired to was the Premiership. It was offered him, 
 and he could not well refuse it. "No man has less gone 
 out of his way to attract or retain the admiration of 
 the people than Lord Palmerston. When he upset 
 Lord John Russell — and, in the language of the turf, 
 began to make a good running— the novelty of the 
 idea was quite refreshing. Palmerston Premier ! the 
 thought was absurd. Who were his followers ? who 
 would march through Coventry with such a ragged 
 regiment? What ability, save that of consistently 
 sticking to office, had he ever shown ? The clever men 
 of a past age — Wilberforce, Plumer Ward, Dean Mil- 
 ner, Canning, and others — it is true, always spoke and 
 wrote of Palmerston as a man of great promise. In 
 the House of Commons, the general opinion was that 
 
LORD PALMERSTON. 
 
 Palmerston was a mail possibly to be laughed at for 
 his juvenile airs, but certainly not to be despised ; but 
 the outside multitude — " the people, the only source 
 of political power " — had no other idea of Palmerston 
 than that he was always in office, that he was one of 
 the best horsemen in Europe, and that he bore a sou- 
 briquet supposed to indicate an amorous temperament 
 and personal charms. Even writing so recently as 
 1837, Mr James Grant, in his Random Recollections, 
 could say, " Of Lord Palmerston, Foreign Secretary 
 and Member for Tiverton, I have but little to say.- 
 The situation he fills in the cabinet gives him a certain 
 degree of prominence in the eyes of the country, which 
 he certainly does not possess in Parliament. His' 
 talents are by no means of a high order. Assuredly 
 they would never, by their own natural energy, have 
 raised him to a distinguished position in the councils 
 of his Sovereign, in which a variety of accidental cir- 
 cumstances have placed him. He is an indifferent 
 speaker." This monstrous criticism was accepted at 
 the time as honest and fair. How little do the public 
 know of the men of whom they entertain such decided 
 opinions ! Since 1837, Palmerston's career has been a 
 continued triumph : he put on the armour just as other 
 men are putting it off. As a sexagenarian he descended 1 
 into the political arena, and exhibited all the ardour 
 and vivacity of a youth. Men were first astonished, 
 then enraptured. All England swore by Lord Pal- 
 merston. Even the professors of the refined science of 
 
6 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 cookery — the disciples of Ude, Careme, Soyer — caught 
 the enthusiasm, and a Palmerston sauce became en vogue. 
 In the four quarters of the globe the name of Palmer- 
 ston was a tower of strength. There was rejoicing at 
 Vienna when Palmerston fell in 1851. In the troubled 
 years of 1848-9 a German popular couplet intimated 
 that if the devil had a son, that favoured mortal was 
 our facetious Premier. (t Suda Palmerston seechas " 
 (Hither Palmerston, forthwith!), we are told, was during 
 the Crimean war the cry with which the Cossack of 
 the Ukraine stilled his steed when restive, or urged it 
 on when weary. Nay, more, at dinners at Damascus 
 Mr Disraeli makes an Eastern emir pettishly exclaim, 
 "I cannot endure this eternal chatter about Palmerston: 
 are there no other statesmen in the world besides Pal- 
 merston ? " Even on the other side the Atlantic his 
 influence is felt. I read in an American paper that 
 the recent mad act of Brown and his deluded followers 
 at Harper's Ferry was all owing to Lord Palmerston. 
 "Well, all this abuse is a confession of Palmerston's 
 power, and that is a compliment to the English nation, 
 for the Palmerston policy in the eyes of the world re- 
 presents English policy, and we love the man who 
 makes all the world talk of what England will do and 
 dare. But in the man himself there is something else 
 which creates and maintains his popularity. In the 
 first place, nature has been bountiful to his lordship, 
 and has given him length of days ; this is a greater 
 advantage in statesmanship than at first sight it ap- 
 
LORD PALMERSTON. 7 
 
 pears. A man many years engaged in political affairs 
 learns much — gets an insight into men and parties — 
 quotes precedents and becomes an authority. As he sees 
 his contemporaries and rivals one by one snatched away 
 by death, there is a clearer stage for himself. Promo- 
 tion often in politics goes by seniority. We all speak 
 of the Marquis of Lansdowne, for instance, as a politi- 
 cal Nestor, yet, if we look back to his ( younger days, 
 when he first started in public life, we do not find that 
 he made a very great impression then ; then, again, in 
 many of the fierce party fights of the last generation, 
 Lord Palmerston has been called in to take but a 
 secondary part, his department having been more with 
 foreign than home politics. He has thus rarely come 
 into collision with the passions and prejudices of any 
 powerful class ; thus it is that he has had, more than 
 once, we believe, in ministerial crises, advances made 
 to him by the leaders of the Conservative party ; and 
 thus it is that he often receives a large share of Con- 
 servative support. Then, again, there is a thorough- 
 ness in his way of doing business, which we all like. 
 Let him be Home Secretary, let him be Foreign* 
 Minister, let him be Premier, he does everything 
 thoroughly and to the best of his power. " When 
 Lord Granville was in the height of his power," writes 
 Horace Walpole, " I one day said to him, ' My lord, 
 as you are going to the king, do ask him to make poor 
 Clive one of the council. ' He replied, * What is it 
 to me who is a judge or who a bishop ? It is my busi- 
 
8 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 ness to make kings and emperors, and to maintain the 
 balance of power in Europe/ " Now, Lord Palmerston 
 Would never have made such a silly answer. When 
 he is at work we soon find out. Whether for work or 
 - play, no man can beat his lordship. Is the House of 
 Commons determined to waste its time in idle debates, 
 to abandon its privileges, to promise everything out-of- 
 doors and do nothing in-doors — Lord Palmerston fools 
 them to their heart's content. And then there is a 
 bonhommie about his lordship which is popular ; a good- 
 tempered, jolly man can never be unpopular. This 
 was the secret of Lord North's success, and of that of 
 a still greater man before him, Sir Robert Walpole. 
 It must be confessed my lord has something to laugh at. 
 What must he think of popular M.P/s who charge 
 him with treason, and yet dare not vote against him 
 for fear of damaging the shop ? 
 
 It cannot be that such a one is the nonentity so 
 flippantly portrayed by Mr Grant ; the captain of 
 shams, described by Mr Bright ; or the arch-traitor 
 sold to Russia, as Mr Urquhart will be happy to tell 
 you any day. Five years ago the writer, meeting with 
 One of the numerous agitators with which the metro- 
 polis abounds, requested the enthusiast referred to to 
 explain his movements. " Oh," said he, " we are go- 
 ing to impeach Palmerston!" We suggested the 
 desirability of losing no time if such a course were 
 resolved on. "Oh ! " said our informant, " Palmer- 
 ston will live ten years longer : Russia calculates that 
 
LORD PALMERSTON. 9 
 
 he will do so too." Palmerston lives on, but who is 
 guilty of the folly of talking of impeaching him now ? 
 Voltaire says men succeed less by their talents than 
 their character. As an instance, he compares Mazarin 
 and De Hetz. In quoting a passage in a letter to 
 the Bishop of Llandaff, the late Lord Dudley said, 
 " Walpole and Bolingbroke make a similar pair in the 
 next century. Castlereagh and Canning are remark- 
 able examples of the truth of the maxim which our 
 days have furnished." The list might have been ex- 
 tended so as to embrace the career of Lord Palmerston. 
 Undoubtedly the noble lord's talents are of a high 
 order. " We are all proud of him ! " said Sir Robert 
 Peel, and the words were caught up and re-echoed all 
 over the land ; but it is the character he has acquired 
 that has placed him where he is. It would be the 
 height of absurdity to deny Lord Palmerston the posses- 
 sion of great talent. He has made brilliant speeches ; 
 his pro-Catholic orations were republished ; and the 
 way in which he put down Julian Harney at Tiver- 
 ton tickled every midriff in Great Britain. His five- 
 hours' speech in vindication of himself in the House 
 of Commons was a masterpiece. A Conservative 
 member, walking home that night, said to a literary 
 member of Parliament : " I have heard Canning, and 
 Plunkett, and Brougham in their best days, and I 
 never heard anything to beat that speech." Yet our 
 Premier has never scaled the heights of oratory; he 
 has never attained . to the utterance of new and preg- 
 
10 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 nant truths ; genius has never thrown around him her 
 robe of dazzling light; he has been a dexterous debater, 
 skilful at fence, nothing more. Palmerston is but a 
 man of the time, while Pitt and Fox, Burke and Can- 
 ning, were men for all times. He even ranks below Sir 
 Robert Peel, whose speeches are still quoted and occa- 
 sionally read. He leaves on you the impression that 
 he is adroit ; that he is liberal in profession where 
 Austria and Italy are concerned; that he is grand 
 at bullying little states; and that it is true of him 
 what the first Napoleon said of Providence, that it was 
 always on the side that had the strongest legions. 
 Glance at his lordship's administrative career, and this 
 is manifest. Toryism was popular, and Palmerston 
 began life as a Tory ; Reform was popular, and he 
 turned Reformer ; war with Russia was popular in 
 1855, and he became a furious war-minister. In some 
 quarters, lately, people were talking of a further par- 
 liamentary reform, and an 'extension of the suffrage, 
 and Lord Palmerston, who resigned office rather than 
 accede to anything of the kind, condescended to intro- 
 duce a comprehensive and satisfactory measure of re- 
 form, which comprehensive and satisfactory measure 
 was withdrawn quite as readily as it was introduced. 
 This readiness to swim with the stream is a great 
 thing in a statesman. Indeed, in spite of what men 
 may say to the contrary, it is a virtue, if the stream 
 flows in a right direction. But this is not the sole 
 secret of the Premier's popularity. There is another 
 
LORD PALMERSTON. 11 
 
 and more potent cause. An anecdote will best illus- 
 trate our meaning : — 
 
 Once upon a time two gentlemen went to dine at a 
 noble mansion ; on their departure, according to the 
 fashion of the age, the servants were ranged in the 
 hall waiting with extended palm the expected honora- 
 rium. The guest who first departed was seen to pro- 
 duce a smile on every countenance as he passed. His 
 friend interrogated him as to the cause, " I gave them 
 nothing," was the reply. "I merely tickled their 
 hands." In a precisely similar manner has Palmer- 
 ston tickled Englishmen. Undeniably, John Bull is 
 very vain — not of himself, like a Frenchman, but of 
 his nation. The Chinese slave, writing to the Lord of 
 the Sun and the Brother of the Moon of the encounter 
 at Peiho, says, " the barbarians attacked us with 
 their usual insolence and audacity." We have a simi- 
 lar way of speaking of foreigners. " It is a grand 
 country this," exclaims the enthusiastic but grum- 
 bling Briton, while he abuses its laws, its customs, its 
 institutions, and its climate. Our aged Premier has 
 spent nearly half a century in repeating this cry for 
 the edification of foreign courts. England has been 
 the model which he has asked France, Spain, Portu- 
 gal, Austria, Russia, to say nothing of countless smaller 
 principalities and powers — no matter the difference of 
 religion, of custom, and of race — to imitate and admire. 
 If, occasionally, the parties thus addressed have shown 
 a little irritation ; if, occasionally, an indiscreet Italian, 
 
12 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 or Polish, or Hungarian patriot, has in consequence 
 appealed to the sword, believing that England's arni 
 will uphold him in his application of English princi- 
 ples ; the fault, of course, is not the noble Yiscount's, 
 and the English nation hugs itself into the belief, that 
 the dislike and suspicion of foreign courts and peoples 
 (for the singularity of the Palmerston, or rather the 
 English foreign policy, is, that whilst it is too demo- 
 cratic for foreign courts it is too aristocratic for foreign 
 peoples) is the measure of their respect and fear. 
 Hence the national enthusiasm for Palmerston has 
 placed him on the very topmost pinnacle. Abroad the 
 cry has been, " Palmerston and Constitutionalism ! " 
 at home, " Palmerston and the Vindication of the Na- 
 tional Honour ! " John Bull, even now, when an 
 adventurer and the son of an adventurer, with an 
 audacity almost sublime, has climbed up the steep 
 ascent of empire, and with his armed legions bids all 
 Europe tremble, flatters himself that England sustains 
 to the modern the relation Pome sustained to the an- 
 cient world. Under the broad sun of heaven he sees 
 no more exalted personage than himself; he insists 
 upon his rights in the remotest corner of the globe : in 
 the presence of the Pope, whom he deems little better 
 than one of the wicked, under the shadow of the gigan- 
 tic despot who holds France in his mailed hand, before 
 Austrian Kaiser, Russian Czar, Yankee backwoodsman, 
 or astonished citizen of Timbuctoo, he exclaims, " Civis 
 Romanics sum ! " In his own opinion, it is his proud 
 
LORD PALMERSTON. 13 
 
 prerogative wherever lie wanders to break all laws, to 
 violate all customs, to pour contempt on all prejudices, 
 and to run all risks. Now, in such circumstances Pal- 
 merston always backs his countrymen, even when, 
 like Sir John Bowring, they rush wildly into war ; 
 and this mischievous John Bullism we all appreciate 
 and admire. Again : under Palmerston's direction 
 we settled the succession in Spain and Portugal, drove 
 away from Syria Mehemet Ali, and blockaded the 
 African coast to put down slavery. People who do 
 not examine matters very closely think it a fine thing 
 to read what an English fleet has been doing at the 
 Tagus, or on the Douro, or on the coast of Africa ; or 
 how an English minister has lectured the Bourbons 
 and Hapsburgs, or insulted the representatives of the 
 great republic of the West, or succeeded in lowering 
 the flag of France. That Palmerston has not preci- 
 pitated the nation into war, argues not so much his 
 discretion as his luck ; but the nation that does not 
 see the danger, admires the spirit, and forgets how 
 Palmerston suffered Poland to be blotted out, disdain- 
 ed to assist Hungary, betrayed Sicily, hastened to con- 
 gratulate Napoleon for erecting an iron despotism on 
 the ruins of a republic, and twice since he was Premier 
 was brow-beaten and bullied by the late idiot King of 
 Naples. But, perhaps, the great secret of the popu- 
 larity of the Palmerston foreign policy is its utter un- 
 intelligibility. Non-interference in what does not 
 Goncern us is clearly our duty ; Lord Palmerston ac- 
 
14 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 cepts this, yet lie interferes. "We are not in a position 
 to go lecturing, yet Palmerston is never happy unless 
 so employed. The Palmerston foreign policy — in 
 reality very much like that of Lord Aberdeen, for 
 since the time of Canning the policy of the Foreign 
 Office has differed but little — has this good about it, 
 that it must weary people of sense of secret diplomacy. 
 The world will move on, its dark places will be made 
 light, its crooked places will be made straight ; but if 
 we may judge from the past, not by the manoeuvres of 
 diplomacy or the protocols of Lord Palmerston. In 
 his home policy the noble Viscount has been more 
 successful in producing practical results. Here again 
 he has gone at once to the national heart. An English- 
 man must be comfortable, or he cannot live. The two 
 great ills of life are a smoky chimney and a scolding 
 wife. By Act of Parliament, Lord Palmerston has 
 forbidden the one and has enabled the wretched victim 
 to free himself of the other. This latter Act must al- 
 ways remain a proof of the noble Premier's earnest 
 activity and perseverance. Night after night he and 
 his Attorney-general, Sir Bichard Bethell, had to fight 
 the battle alone ; a man of feebler will than Lord 
 Palmerston would have given way. When Palmer- 
 ston became Home Secretary there was another sore 
 evil under the sun : in all our crowded towns popula- 
 tion had planted itself most densely in the neighbour- 
 hood of the churchyard ; the result was, the living 
 were poisoned by the dead. Some of the clergy, fear- 
 
LORD PALMERSTOX. 15 
 
 ful of losing their vested interests, opposed the removal 
 of this fearful nuisance, but Lord Palmerston shut up 
 the churchyards as burial-places, and humanity gained 
 the day. His few months at the Home Office were very 
 beneficial to himself, and paved the way for his Pre- 
 miership. The English public had a nearer view of 
 their pet Foreign Minister ; no public duty appeared 
 to come amiss to him ; he was weighed in the balance, 
 nor was he found wanting. In 1855, when the Aber- 
 deen cabinet fell, when Lord John Russell had covered 
 himself with odium by his desertion of the sinking 
 ship, all eyes were directed to Lord Palmerston. He 
 was the only possible Premier, and would have re- 
 mained so had not the Conservatives caught him trip- 
 ping on the Foreign Conspiracy Bill, and, with the 
 aid of Milner Gibson, defeated a measure which other- 
 wise most probably would have had their support. It 
 must be also confessed, Palmerston required a rebuff. 
 Like Jeshurun of old, he waxed fat and kicked ; there 
 was something approaching to insolence in his treat- 
 ment of the House of Commons. 
 
 Lord Palmerston's chief merit is his cheerful honesty. 
 He has made no pretensions to virtue. The Record 
 intimated that he was the man of God because he 
 made low Churchmen bishops, but Lord Palmerston 
 himself never laid claim to so sacred a character. He 
 has paid remarkably little deference to an enlightened 
 British public. The lover must blame not his mistress, 
 but himself, when he finds the idol of his fancy plain 
 
16 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 and commonplace. Beery readers of newspapers must 
 not complain that their model statesman once resigned 
 office rather than give them votes. The British public 
 dearly love a lord that will take the chair at Exeter 
 Hall. Lord Palmerston began life as Cupid — does not 
 think children tainted with original sin — dared to tell 
 the Scottish clergy that they had better wash than fast 
 to keep off the cholera — was never on the platform at 
 Exeter Hall : yet is he popular. "With the exception 
 of once presiding at the distribution of prizes at the 
 University College, London, and a visit to Manchester, 
 he has studiously avoided the arts by which small men 
 become great. The last American traveller who has 
 published a book on us, Mr Field, writes : " An 
 American can hardly believe his senses when he sees 
 the abasement of soul which seizes the middle classes 
 in the presence of a lord. They look up to him as a 
 superior being, with a reverence approaching to awe." 
 There is some truth in this : it is to the credit of Lord 
 Palmerston that he has traded as little on this feeling 
 as it was possible for any man to do. 
 
 Come and see Palmerston the Statesman. That is 
 he — that old gentleman in the middle of the Treasury 
 bench of the House of Commons, with hat pulled down 
 tightly over his eyes, arms across his breast, and one ' 
 leg thrown over the other. Is not he in a capital state 
 of preservation, with nothing to hurt him but now and 
 then a twinge of his old enemy, the gout — a souvenir of 
 jollier years ? A wonderful old man, truly ; still erect 
 
LORD PALMERSTON. 17 
 
 on horseback as ever youthful knight wending his way 
 to lady's bower. Dr Johnson said of dancing dogs, 
 "the wonder is, not that they dance so well, but that 
 they dance at all ;" so with Lord Palmerston, the won- 
 der is, not that he rules the country so well, but that 
 he does it at all, when most men would be in a state of 
 idiotic decay. It says something for the goodness of 
 his lordship's constitution — something for the light 
 character of his labours as a statesman of half a century, 
 and something for the Eomsey air and his lordship's 
 medical attendants. But mark ! he is on his legs, 
 with all the briskness of a four-year-old. His pertness 
 is quite juvenile. How neat and effective is his retort, 
 and yet how little there is in it ! Disraeli said Sir 
 Robert Peel played on the House as an old fiddle, 
 Palmerston does the same. His birth, his office, his 
 experience — all make him feel at home in it ; and when 
 he sits down there is a Jaugh, and the questioner, 
 somehow or other, feels he has done something very 
 foolish, though he scarce knows what. Your expecta- 
 tions are heightened. Yery naturally you imagine that 
 as the evening passes on, and the excitement deepens, 
 his lordship, in a corresponding manner, will become 
 earnest, and passionate, and overpowering. Wait a 
 little while, and you will find out your mistake. 
 There is the same pertness and levity ; the same eager- 
 ness to evade the question by a joke ; the same skilful 
 dodging ; and the same artful adaptation of his speech, 
 not to the conscience or convictions of the public, but 
 
 2 
 
18 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 to the prejudices, and knowledge, and interests of the 
 House. l$o one so disappoints the eager stranger as 
 Lord Palmerston. His hollow feeble voice — his in- 
 tolerable haw-hawing — his air of hauteur and flippancy, 
 all combine to dispel the illusion which, in a manner 
 most wonderful, his lordship has contrived to gather 
 around his name. 
 
 " Life is a jest, and all tilings show it ; 
 I thought so once, and now I know it," 
 
 will be an appropriate epitaph wherewith to deck the 
 marble monument that the grateful nation shall erect 
 when death shall have torn the wily Premier from the 
 doctor's care. Lord Palmerston, with one memorable 
 exception, never speaks long : he is down almost as 
 soon as he is up, he seldom rises above the level of 
 after-dinner oratory ; and as you watch his lordship 
 out of the House at one p.m., at the close of a debate 
 which has tried his lordship's mettle and damaged the 
 handiwork of his lordship's valet, the shambling old 
 gentleman, leaning on a friendly arm, does not seem 
 quite the prodigy in your eyes which the admirably 
 made-up nobleman did, who stepped out of his carriage 
 just as you reached Westminster Hall. 
 
II. 
 
 LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 
 
 On the first of July, 1819, Sir Francis Burdett, for 
 the eighteenth, time, made his annual motion on the 
 question of parliamentary reform. All that he pro- 
 posed was that the House should pledge itself to take 
 the state of the representation into its most serious 
 consideration early in the next session of parliament. 
 On the discussion there appeared 58 members with Sir 
 Francis against 153. Amongst the majority was found 
 the name of Lord John Russell, who, though admit- 
 ting the propriety of disfranchising such boroughs as 
 were notoriously corrupt, could not support a motion 
 that went the length of proposing an inquiry into the 
 general state of the representation, because such an 
 inquiry was calculated to throw a slur upon the repre- 
 sentation of the country, and to fill the minds of the 
 people with vague and indefinite alarms. In a few 
 years after this noted speech, Lord John Russell was 
 at the head of the reforming party in this country, and 
 
20 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 there was a general impression gone forth that a grate- 
 ful nation would elect him dictator for life. Since 
 then he has been said more than once to have politi- 
 cally extinguished himself — a phrase used by thought- 
 less writers, who forget that you cannot extinguish a 
 certain amount of territory in a territorial system of 
 government. At the present time his lordship is not 
 decidedly unpopular, and as Secretary for Foreign 
 Affairs, coming after the Earl of Malmesbury, and re- 
 presenting English sympathy with the cause of Italian 
 nationality, has a fair chance of becoming, in some 
 quarters, a popular man again. 
 
 How has Lord John Russell sunk so low ? The in- 
 quiry is not uninteresting. In the first place, we 
 think the essential aristocratic nature of the man has 
 something to do with it. To be genial is to be popular. 
 Lord John Russell cannot be genial. There is an icy 
 tone in his voice and glitter in his eye ; you may work 
 for him — you may write for him — you may convass 
 for him — you may shout his praises till you are hoarse 
 — and from his lordship you get civil acknowledg- 
 ment, scarcely that. It is true his lordship is a liberal 
 statesman, but in much the same manner as the Spar- 
 tan Ephor, who, when charged by his wife with having 
 abandoned half the privileges of his children, replied 
 that he had done so in order that he might preserve 
 for them the other half. Lord John Russell was born 
 a political reformer — just as he is a Protestant. It 
 would never do for the inmates of Woburn Abbey to be 
 
LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 21 
 
 catholicised, and no name is so sacred to the Whigs as 
 that of Russell. Then, again, his lordship has made 
 grievous blunders — has alienated his friends, and given 
 encouragement to his foes. Then, again, the days of 
 strong government, and of the sway of individuals, is 
 gone by. We have leaders, but where are the led ? We 
 have officers, but where are the rank and file ? It is 
 true Pitt had a majority to his mind. It is true the 
 way in which the country gentlemen, and rotten borough 
 proprietors and representatives, followed that jolly old 
 model Whig, Sir Robert Walpole, into the lobby of the 
 House of Commons, was enough to remind a certain 
 gentleman, who shall be nameless, 
 
 " How Noah and his creeping things 
 Went up into the Ark." 
 
 It is true that Sir Robert Peel, like a Colossus, bestrode 
 the Protectionist Squires, whom he changed into Free- 
 traders ; but these men belong to the past. Men have 
 lost confidence in the judgment and tactics and wisdom 
 of those whom they were wont to call their leaders. 
 The individual allegiance to party of which our fathers 
 boasted, exists no longer. Every man does that which 
 is right in his own eyes. It was not so when his 
 lordship served his political apprenticeship. Then, as 
 the scion of the great Whig Duke, Lord John Russell 
 had a right to expect public patronage and support, 
 and he got it. The stage was clear ; all that was requi- 
 site was a certain amount of industry. Everywhere the 
 
22 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 fable of the tortoise and the hare is realized, but no- 
 where more so than in the House of Commons. To a 
 friend entering Parliament, Wilberforce said, " Attend 
 to business, and do not seek occasions of display. If 
 you have a turn for speaking, the proper time will come. 
 Let speaking take care of itself. I never go out of the 
 way to speak, but make myself acquainted with the 
 business, and then if the debate passes my door, I step 
 out and join it." We have a similar advice from a still 
 greater man. When Sir George Murray attempted to 
 excuse himself from taking office under the Duke of 
 Wellington, on account of his inexperience in public 
 speaking, " Pho, pho ! " said the Duke, " do as I do — 
 say what you think, and don't quote Latin." In ac- 
 cordance with the advice of these men, did Lord John 
 Russell commence his political career. Had he acted 
 more closely in accordance with it his career would 
 have been more successful. But when a second-rate 
 man attempts the part of a first-rate man, we all know 
 what must be the result. It is not then difficult to ac- 
 count for the occasional decline in popularity of Lord 
 John Russell. It is a slander on the public to impute 
 it to the fickleness of the people. The people are prone 
 to idolatry, and a lord on the liberal side is irresistible. 
 Any electioneering agent will tell you it is almost im- 
 possible to beat such a man. Lord John Russell espe- 
 cially has little reason to complain ; the public have 
 borne with him in the most patient manner; they have 
 picked him out of the mud ; they have washed him, 
 
LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 23 
 
 and put clean things on him ; they have patted him on 
 the head, and bidden him be a good boy and try again. 
 They have repeated these interesting processes over 
 and over again ; they have forgiven him seven times, 
 and seem about to do so seventy times seven ; yet Lord 
 John is rarely popular. Indeed, it may be almost 
 hinted that the whole career of England's constitutional 
 and heroic statesman has been a mistake. Lord John 
 is by birth the son of one duke and the brother of 
 another. In his youth he associated with the Edinburgh 
 Reviewers, and learnt the quantum sufficit of Liberal 
 slang. He has been an unfortunate man through life 
 — always hard up — always out of luck. He wrote a 
 novel that did not sell — a history that no one would 
 read. His philosophy was equally worthless, and his 
 poetry — he wrote a drama — was (the word is harsh, 
 but we really can find no other so fitting) — his poetry 
 was positively damned. Thus abhorred by gods and 
 men, he became a politician, and had a finger in that 
 dainty dish, the Reform Bill, by which the people of 
 England were deluded and deceived. The only thing 
 that can be said of him positively is, that, as it may be 
 said of the great Bedford Flat, he has the questionable 
 merit of being connected with the Bedford family. He 
 belongs to the people as Johnson's friend, Campbell, 
 belonged to the Church. " Campbell," said Johnson, 
 " is a good man, a very good man. I fear he has not 
 been inside of a church for many years, but he never 
 passes one without taking his hat off. That shows, at 
 
24 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 least, that tie has good principles." Lord John omits 
 no opportunity of professing proper attachment to the 
 people, whilst the whole course of his political life makes 
 that profession doubtful. He serves them in the same 
 way as that in which Scrub serves the ladies in the farce 
 when commissioned by them to obtain information as 
 to the stranger they had seen at church. He tells them 
 he has a whole packet of news. " In the first place," 
 says he, <f I inquired who the gentleman was ? They 
 told me he was a stranger. Secondly, I asked what the 
 gentleman was ? They answered and said, that they 
 never saw him before. Thirdly, I inquired what coun- 
 tryman he was ? They replied, 'twas more than they 
 knew. Fourthly, I demanded whence he came ? Their 
 answer was, they could not tell. And fifthly, I asked 
 whither he went ? and they replied, they knew nothing 
 of the matter." To the people, thus clamorous to re- 
 form, Lord John gives as much welcome intelligence 
 as Scrub did to the ladies. He has a whole packet of 
 reform and retrenchment, if they will but wait ; but it 
 is not meant for use. It is never ready when it is 
 wanted. He is a Whig, a Eeformer, a friend of the 
 people, an advocate of progress. He does not deny but 
 that further reforms might be made — he is very indig- 
 nant at being suspected of finality ; yet somehow or 
 other, it does happen that every attempt made in 
 that direction meets with the most unscrupulous op- 
 position of Lord John and the party whom he repre- 
 sents. He does not think much of Mr Cobden's 
 
LORD JOHX RUSSELL. 25 
 
 plea for retrenchment, and arbitration instead of 
 war. He has but a poor opinion of the ballot, he 
 scornfully eschews household suffrage, and the five 
 points he cannot abide. Now Lord John's presence in 
 the Cabinet is said to be a guarantee for the carrying 
 of a Reform Bill. As usual, Lord John is much too 
 late. He would be a party to no reform when Hume 
 and the rest were urging him to move with the times, 
 and now the people have been so often duped and dis- 
 appointed by promises of a Eeform Bill, that it really 
 seems as if they were becoming apathetic in the 
 matter. 
 
 Again, through a long parliamentary life, Lord John 
 has been little and spiteful, and troublesome in oppo- 
 sition. In his diary, Tom Moore wrote of his lordship, 
 that " he was mild and sensible" on a particular occa- 
 sion, but sometimes his lordship has been neither the 
 one nor the other. Moore regretted that Lord John 
 Russell " showed so little to advantage in society from 
 his extreme taciturnity, and still more from his appar- 
 ent coldness and indifference to what was said to him." 
 This coolness and indifference, combined with no small 
 opinion of himself, has often led his lordship into con- 
 duct which has made him very unpopular. When in 
 this state, and expelled from office, he has not had 
 strength of mind sufficient to lead him calmly to wait 
 till the nation has called him back to the helm of state, 
 but he has tried all sorts of contemptible manoeuvres. 
 Never can we forget the appropriation clause which he 
 
26 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 carried to unseat Sir Robert Peel, and then abandoned 
 when in power. Lord John called " the repeal of the 
 corn laws mischievous, absurd, impracticable, and un- 
 necessary ;" yet his Edinburgh letter in favour of their 
 abolition was hastily written and published when he 
 found that his great rival, Sir Robert Peel, was about 
 to take steps in the direction of Free Trade. In his 
 opposition to the budget of Sir Robert Peel, it is ques- 
 tionable whether the force of meanness could further go. 
 Then what a mischievous attempt, on his lordship's 
 part, to acquire popularity was the Durham Letter, and 
 how fatal the rebound. Lord John's " spirited letter " 
 certainly led the nation to open its eyes. That a Min- 
 ister who had long been suspected of designing to en- 
 dow the Roman Catholic Church should have written 
 such a letter* was very surprising ; but that after 
 writing that letter he should have cooled down ; that 
 after roaring like a lion he should have aggravated his 
 voice and roared like a nightingale, was more surpris- 
 ing still. The old adage of " much cry and little wool '* 
 was never more ludicrously realized. In the name of 
 the prophet, exclaimed his lordship, with pompous strut 
 and voice, — In the name of the prophet — figs! The 
 contrast between his letter and his legislation — between 
 his speech and his bill — was as wide as that between 
 Philip drunk and Philip sober ; or as that between 
 
 " Sappho at her toilet's greasy task, 
 "With Sappho fragrant at an evening mask." 
 
 If Popery be what Lord John said in his speech it 
 
LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 27 
 
 was — if it be a curse in every country in which it ex- 
 ists ; and if legislation can grapple with it, — then the 
 bill was delusive, and a mockery. Lord John, in his 
 speech, complained of synodical action. The bill left 
 that untouched. The greatest condemnation of Lord 
 John's bill was Lord John's speech. Disraeli could say 
 nothing stronger against it than what his lordship him- 
 self implied. The truth was, to gain a little transient 
 popularity, or to draw off public attention from the 
 growing cry for further Financial and Parliamentary 
 Reform, the First Minister of the Crown stooped to a 
 line of conduct of which the veriest demagogue might 
 have been ashamed. An intense anti- Catholic feeling 
 was aroused. From almost every county and town — 
 from almost every sect and class — petitions went forth 
 expressing burning indignation at the foolish aggres- 
 sion of the Pope. To whatever an Englishman is in- 
 different, he is not to the growth of the power which in 
 time past lit up the fires of Smithfield, or the auto da 
 fe^s of Goa and Madrid, or which, even at the present 
 day, condemns to the degradation of the jail the lover 
 of his country and his kind. Under the influence of 
 that feeling, men steeped in everlasting infamy — such 
 as Titus Oates, or Sacheverell, or Lord George Grordon 
 — have strutted on the stage the heroes of an hour. A 
 wise Minister would have paused ere that feeling was 
 rashly excited. A wise Minister would have consider- 
 ed his power of controlling the storm ere he had bid- 
 den it ride forth. A wise Minister, before he put him- 
 
28 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 self in collision with a system, the influence of which 
 exists in every land, would have kept for himself a 
 way of coming out of the strife victorious. Lord John 
 Russell signally failed in doing this. All that he did 
 by his bill was to proclaim a weakness it had been easy 
 to conceal, and to put in bolder relief the magnitude 
 of Papal pretences and the littleness of Ministerial le- 
 gislation. His letter was a sham. He but touched upon 
 the surface of the evil, and that in a manner not diffi- 
 cult to evade. In all its intensity, the evil remains the 
 same. " With our pleasant vices we make the whips 
 with which we scourge ourselves." That Ecclesiasti- 
 cal Title Bill sealed Lord John's career as Premier. 
 To retain office he had to descend from that lofty po- 
 sition. Under the Aberdeen Administration he com- 
 mitted a similar mistake. A public system had broken 
 down ; a magnificent army had wasted away. By 
 many an English fireside was it told how in that win- 
 ter there had been, far away, a tragedy done unequal- 
 led in the worst days of official mismanagement, as 
 criminal as any of the Walcheren and other forlorn ef- 
 forts of the past. From one end of England to the 
 other, wherever man met man, whether in the haunts 
 of fashion or of business, whether at home or abroad, 
 there were curses uttered, deep and loud, against the 
 men responsible for these disasters. Parliament met ; 
 it was known that the first thing required would be 
 the appointment of the Sebastopol Committee. Of 
 course that was a vote of censure on the existing ad- 
 
LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 29 
 
 ministration ; but instead of calmly awaiting the vote, 
 and endeavouring to defend himself and his colleagues, 
 Lord J ohn had the littleness to abandon his post, and 
 to cast stones at the men with whom he had sat at the 
 council-board. Again, in his haste to appear before the 
 world, he rushed to Vienna, there still further to be duped 
 and rendered ridiculous. That his lordship, as he grows 
 older, does not grow wiser, is clear from his having had 
 recourse to his old tactics only the session of parliament 
 before the last. Reform was a matter of such vital 
 importance that it could not be trusted in the hands of 
 the Derby Cabinet ; only Lord John Russell could deal 
 with such a delicate subject. Lord John moved his me- 
 morable resolutions. Lords Palmerston and Russell 
 forgot their ancient feuds and swore eternal friendship ; 
 the liberal rank and file followed suit ; the Derby ad- 
 ministration was rejected ; and as a practical result, 
 reform was delayed — may I write insecula seculorum? 
 It may be asked, is his lordship's oratory of so fas- 
 cinating a character as for a time to render the House 
 of Commons blind to his many faults ? By no means. 
 Look at him marching into the lobby — frigid, dwarfed, 
 and self-complacent. For such a man there can be 
 no real enthusiasm on the part of those who know him. 
 See him in the House — always equally cold and chill- 
 ing, and civil to all around. Follow him to the plat- 
 form and the hustings, he is the same repellant, unat- 
 tractive Whig. But he has lived for the House of 
 Commons, and the House is not ungrateful. To Lord 
 
30 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 John also is due the merit of having led the House 
 efficiently in time past. In this respect his tact was 
 only equalled by that of his great rival, Sir Robert 
 Peel ; and in knowledge of forms and precedents by 
 many he was considered the superior of that distin- 
 guished man. There was really something grand in 
 the aspect of the House under his leadership. It was 
 a remarkable instance of the triumph of mind over 
 matter. In a crowded House, at the close of a heated 
 debate, you would see the smallest man in the House 
 advance to the table, and the noise of the House, and 
 the murmur of many voices, was hushed and still ; the 
 opposition became attentive ; strangers would lean 
 forward their heads ; peers and diplomatists would 
 hearken. Seemingly careless and slovenly, the speech 
 would be found to contain the right amount of liberal- 
 ism to go down with the back benches ; parts would 
 be elaborately polished, and sparkle with a quiet 
 irony which the audience would not be slow to appre- 
 ciate, nor reluctant to apply. 
 
 Lord John has much to contend with. His outward 
 form is frail and weakly ; his countenance sicklied over 
 with the effects of solitary communing ; his figure 
 shrunk below the ordinary dimensions of humanity ; 
 his general air that of a meditative invalid. But with- 
 in that feeble body is a spirit that knows not how to 
 cower, an undaunted heart, an aspiring soul. His 
 voice is weak, his accent drawling and provincial, his 
 elocution broken, stammering, and uncertain, save in a 
 
LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 31 
 
 few lucky moments, when his tongue seems unloosed, 
 when he becomes logical, eloquent, and terse. Then is 
 his right hand convulsively clenched, his head proudly 
 thrown back, the outline of his face becomes rigid, and 
 his dwarfed figure expands as if he were a giant. Lord 
 John is sometimes very happy, as when, in his letter 
 to the electors of Stroud, he declared that "the whisper 
 of a faction shall not prevail against the voice of a 
 nation ;" or when, in answer to Sir Francis Burdett, 
 who charged him with the cant of patriotism, he told 
 the baronet there was also such a thing as the recant of 
 patriotism. One of Lord John's most celebrated speeches 
 is that known as the Aladdin Lamp Speech, delivered 
 by his lordship in 1819, and which Sir Robert Peel 
 read to the House during the debate on the Reform 
 Bill, in 1831. "Old Sarum," said Lord John, " exist- 
 ed when Somers and the great men of the revolution 
 established our government. Rutland sent as many 
 members as Yorkshire, when Hampden lost his life in 
 defence of the constitution. If we should change the 
 principles of our constitution, we should commit the 
 folly of the servant in the story of Aladdin, who was de- 
 ceived by the cry of ' New lamps for old ! ' Our lamp 
 is covered with dust and rubbish, but it has a magical 
 power ; it has raised up a smiling land, not bestrode with 
 overgrown palaces, but covered with modest dwellings, 
 every one of which contains a freeman enjoying equal 
 protection with the proudest subject in the land. It 
 has called into life all the busy creations of commercial 
 
32 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 prosperity. Nor, when men were to defend and illustrate 
 their country, have such men been deficient. When 
 the fate of the nation depended on the line of policy 
 which she should adopt, there were orators of the high- 
 est degree placing in the strongest light the arguments 
 for peace or war. When we decided upon war, we had 
 nerves to gain us laurels in the field and wield our thun- 
 ders in the sea. When again we returned to peace — 
 the questions of internal policy, of education of the poor, 
 of criminal law, found men ready to devote the most 
 splendid of abilities to the well-being of the community. 
 And shall we change an instrument, that has produced 
 effects so wonderful, for a burnished and tinsel toy of 
 modern manufacture ? No; small as the remaining trea- 
 sure of the constitution is, I cannot consent to throw it 
 into the wheel for the chance of obtaining a prize in the 
 lottery of revolution." Let me add, that in debate 
 Lord John is always a gentleman ; not merely are his 
 sentences and phrases indicative of polish and refine- 
 ment, but he is always courteous, never flippant, like 
 Lord Palmerston, nor savage, like Mr Disraeli. 
 
 We are standing in the lobby of the House of Com- 
 mons, watching the members enter. We have watched 
 the flowing stream, it may be half an hour, when a 
 small, neat figure passes by. Every one looks at 
 him, and you do the same, when you hear it whis- 
 pered, " That is Lord John Russell. " His lordship 
 is elderly, he has had a seat in the House of Com- 
 mons since 1813 ; but he shows few signs of age, 
 
LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 33 
 
 He is one of England's chiefs ; and by his lofty bear- 
 ing, and the sparkle in his eye, you would fancy he 
 is quite aware of the fact. Reaumur, in his book on 
 "England," describes his lordship: "A little man, 
 with a refined and intelligent though not imposing air." 
 A malicious Quarterly Reviewer, in a voluntary trans- 
 lation of the same passage, rendered it, " A little, sharp, 
 cunning-looking man, with nothing of an imposing 
 presence." I think both are wrong. Lord John 
 Russell looks the aristocrat as much as any man I have 
 seen. Up in the strangers' gallery, however, you lose 
 this appearance, on account of the distance at which 
 you are placed from his lordship. It is true he is seated 
 on the Treasury Bench ; but he sits with his chin 
 buried in his bosom, his head buried in his hat, and all 
 that you can really see, as he sits cross-legged, and with 
 his arms across his breast, are his diminutive extremi- 
 ties. See, he rises to address the House. Slowly he 
 lifts off his hat, advances to the table, crosses his arms, 
 and, in a brogue somewhat provincial, and not very 
 musical, says " Mr Speaker." All at once the Babel 
 of conversation, the shuffling, coughing, laughing, and 
 talking, is a little hushed. He commences ; it is an 
 important question he has to answer, or an important 
 declaration he has to make, and you may hear a pin drop. 
 You hear a weak voice hammering and stammering at 
 every four or five sentences, those sentences often most 
 slovenly and inelegant in construction, and, at first, 
 you wonder how a man, without figure, voice, delivery, 
 
 3 
 
34 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 or fluency, could become the leading orator of the 
 House of Commons ; but, as he goes on — as he court- 
 eously replies to one, and administers a sly sarcasm 
 to another — as his little frame dilates, and his eye 
 sparkles — as he warms, and the House with him, you 
 will feel that the little man has more in him than at 
 first appeared. Read the speech next morning, and 
 you will find how closely to the point it was — how 
 exactly calculated to the occasion — how it suited the 
 atmosphere of the House, and then you must remem- 
 ber how cool and unruffled was the speaker, and what 
 tact he displayed. In these latter respects Lord John 
 has greatly shone, and has evinced a smartness of 
 which you would not suspect him as you listen to his 
 drawling tones, and witness his slovenly delivery. 
 
 In one of his numerous works, Lord John Russell 
 says that the House of Commons, while it admires a 
 man of genius, always gives its confidence to a man of 
 character. It is on his character that Lord John takes 
 his stand. Character, as we all know, is one of the 
 most delusive phrases in the English language ; one 
 man may steal a sheep, while another may not look 
 over a wall. Half the scoundrels that are tried at the 
 Old Bailey were, like Redpath, and Sir John Paul, and 
 others, men of good character. A good character is the 
 dernier resort of a man who has little or nothing else 
 to recommend him. And Lord John Russell certainly 
 has made no little capital out of his character, and 
 that of the great family to whose history he adds an- 
 
LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 35 
 
 other very interesting page. Herein is Lord John 
 Russell's speciality. He takes his stand upon his cha- 
 racter. He had a good character twenty or thirty years 
 ago, and he reaps the benefit of it at this moment. "So 
 long as your father sticks to that ugly wife of his, and 
 goes regularly to church," said Erskine to the Prince 
 of Wales, " he will always be popular;" and Lord John 
 has gained much, of his popularity in a similar way. 
 What a man he is for public meetings ! How familiar 
 are Exeter Hall, and the Freemasons' Tavern, and the 
 City of London Tavern, with his name. How amusing 
 is that account Mrs Stowe gives of her visit to his 
 lordship at Pembroke Lodge. " We were received," 
 she writes, " in the drawing-room by the young ladies. 
 Two charming little boys came in, and a few moments 
 after their father, Lord John. I had been much pleased 
 with finding on the centre table a beautiful edition of 
 the revered friend of my childhood, Dr Watts's Songs, 
 finely illustrated. I remarked to Lord John that it 
 was the face of an old friend. He said it was presented 
 to his little boys by their godfather, Sir George Grey. 
 And when, taking one of these little boys on his knee, 
 he asked him if he could repeat me one of his hymns, 
 the whole thing seemed so New England-like that I 
 began to feel myself quite at home." 
 
 " Private vices," says Mandeville, " are frequently 
 public benefits." Is not the converse true, and are not 
 private virtues public mischiefs ? " George the Third s 
 constancy to his wife and his shoulder of mutton," 
 
 3 * 
 
36 MODERN STATESMEN". 
 
 wrote Albany Fonblanque, in the palmy days of the 
 Examiner, " his taste for regularity and simplicity, 
 enabled him to plunge us into wasting, unjust, and un- 
 necessary wars. Had he kept various concubines, and 
 dined off French dishes at nine o'clock, the people 
 would have had a lively perception of the depravity 
 of his politics, and an intimate persuasion of their 
 wrongs." 
 
 I confess that, to myself, Lord John Russell seems 
 more an historical than a real flesh and blood at this 
 day existing man. His was a name dear to the nation, 
 and always received with delight, when the men and 
 women of to-day played with dolls and marbles, and 
 feasted on indigestible pastry. I remember well the 
 almost idolatrous veneration with which he was wor- 
 shipped by reformers, and that large and influential 
 class, the Protestant Dissenters, whose unrighteous 
 shackles, by means of the abolition of the Test and 
 Corporation Acts, he had been the means of removing. 
 In that era, Lord John was deemed the champion of 
 what was much talked of then, civil and religious 
 liberty all the world over. 
 
 " "We have changed (for worse or better ?) 
 Since the time of Charlemagne." 
 
 And I have lived to see the House of Commons grow 
 restive under his leadership, his followers diminished, 
 and the country, if not weary of, at any rate very in- 
 different to, the man. I fear gratitude can never be a 
 permanent state of the mind, unless, as in O'Connell's 
 
LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 37 
 
 acceptation of the terra, a sense of thankfulness for 
 favours to come ; or rather, that the law of humanity 
 is, that when a man has done his work and taken his 
 wages, he should trouble ns no more. It is not the 
 individual that makes revolutions. The age makes 
 them, and merely honours an individual as an agent. 
 We should have had Parliamentary Reform had Lord 
 John Russell never lived ; and the Test and Corpora- 
 tion Acts, and the Slave Trade, would have been swept 
 away in a similar manner. These changes are made 
 when the time for them has arrived. The statesman 
 who carries them is in reality carried by them. He is 
 merely the servant of the public, and translates, with 
 legislative enactment, the wants, and wishes, and con- 
 victions of the age. Had Lord John Eussell realized 
 this truth, he would never have lost himself by talking 
 of finality, as if in this world of eternal change finality 
 could be predicated of any one thing. Mors jamia vitas, 
 death is the gate to life, is true in politics ; reform is 
 a never-ending process. The old Whig view is differ- 
 ent. It is the man who covers the land with plenty — 
 who removes evil — who admits the pro/anum valgus to 
 a limited suffrage, and who reaps his reward in the 
 blessings of ages yet to come. But to any man who 
 looks at the core of things, who seeks to know the 
 causes of what may seem revolutionary changes, and 
 who remembers the influence of an oligarchy, it is clear 
 that if Lord John had never lived, some other scion of 
 the noble house of Bedford would have done that which 
 
38 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 he has done, and, if of equal industry and devotion to 
 public life, would have formed as material a part of a 
 liberal cabinet. The conclusion, if not flattering to 
 his lordship, is very much so to his lordship's order, 
 and especially to his family, indicating, as it does, the 
 rigidity and fixedness of what is called a popular 
 system of government. 
 
 Tennyson makes Ulysses say, 
 
 " Old age hath yet his honour and his toil." 
 Similar language might be put into the mouth of Lord 
 John Russell. He is full of what may be termed 
 House of Commons knowledge. If his lordship has 
 been ambitious, his has been no mean or contemptible 
 ambition. His aspirations have all been of an ancient 
 and heroic mould. He carries us back to the great 
 days of Parliamentary eloquence. His principles were 
 formed, and his habits acquired, and his style fashion- 
 ed, on principles and persons now no longer known. 
 He has still around him some of the lustre acquired by 
 contact with the immortals. Mournfully he may ex- 
 claim, as he reviews his diminished prestige and fading 
 power, 
 
 w Much have I seen and known ; cities of men, 
 And manners, climates, councils, governments, 
 Myself not least, but honoured of them all, 
 And drunk delight of battle with my peers, 
 Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.' ' 
 
 In the decline of his lordship's reputation there is 
 reason for national regret. "When he trips and falls, 
 the feeling created is one of sorrow and vexation. 
 
LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 39 
 
 Lord Sydenham declared that his lordship was " the 
 noblest man he had ever the good fortune to know ; " 
 and through the old hosts he led to victory the states- 
 men who were proud to call themselves his followers — 
 the public speakers and active politicians in our chief 
 towns and cities, who stood by his side on many a plat- 
 form, are gone never to return. We wistfully gaze still 
 on the pluck and ambition and varied fortunes of his 
 lordship. The nation cannot but sympathize in his 
 lordship's decline and fall. There was a time when 
 manners and fashions were more courtly and dignified 
 than at present ; when gentlemen wore wigs and 
 knee-breeches ; when ladies did not dance the polka ; 
 when fathers and sons addressed each other in the most 
 distressingly respectful language. Lord John, in poli- 
 tical life, retains something of this grand air, which 
 always tells, just as what the actors say about a man 
 who lays hands on a woman is a brute, is approved by 
 the gods, who return home and whop their wives with 
 a double gusto after cheering so virtuous a sentiment. 
 In his character of a Roman Senator Lord John is al- 
 ways successful. The strangers in the gallery are al- 
 ways delighted, and no wonder, for then the little 
 figure draws itself up to its full height; the eye 
 glistens ; the husky voice becomes animated and tre- 
 mulous with emotion ; his lordship looks boldly round 
 on admiring back benches, defiantly to the well-filled 
 ranks of opposition in front, and you would swear that 
 he was at least six feet high. 
 
III. 
 
 RICHARD COBDEN, M.P. 
 
 Fob, a few years previous to the Crimean war, when 
 the public in general believed that white-robed peace 
 had taken up an eternal residence among the sons of 
 men, the name of Richard Cobden was one everywhere 
 received with respect. Sir Robert Peel had testified to 
 the power of his " unadorned eloquence." The ex- 
 asperation of rosy-cheeked country squires, not gifted 
 with great oratorical powers, had subsided almost into 
 a calm as they found that the alteration of the Corn- 
 Laws had impaired neither their influence nor their 
 wealth. The manufacturing interests had, in a sub- 
 stantial manner, by a subscription of £80,000, testified 
 their value of Mr Cobden's services. The hero of the 
 Anti- Corn-Law League, the opponent of the Taxes on 
 Knowledge, the champion of the ballot, the Coryphaeus 
 of the Peace party, the decus et tutamen of the Free- 
 hold Land Societies, had only to show himself to his 
 countrymen to be regaled with the most vehement ap- 
 
RICHARD COBDEN, M.P. 41 
 
 plause. In Exeter Hall, in St Martin's Hall, at the 
 Freemason's Tavern, at the City of London Tavern, at 
 the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, — in short, in all 
 the haunts and homes of popular agitation, honours 
 were plentifully showered on the man who had com- 
 menced his political career as an obscure Manchester 
 cotton dealer ; who, by his wonderful tact, had won 
 from a hostile senate the triumph of Free Trade, and 
 whose very name was received on the continent as 
 the embodiment — politically speaking — of English 
 thought and feeling. A plain citizen never achieved 
 a higher pinnacle of greatness. A revolution in its 
 consequences, even at this distance of time not to be 
 over-estimated, and as yet but partially developed, had 
 been effected mainly by his agency. In old Rome, 
 when Tiberius Gracchus headed a movement against 
 the landed aristocracy, the result was a sudden and 
 bloody death. In modern England the popular tri- 
 bune meets with a happier fate. But this popularity 
 was too great to last. When the Russian war broke 
 out, Mr Cobden's protest against it lowered him in 
 public estimation. His conduct in the Chinese affair 
 — when an old ally, Sir John Bowring, was condemn- 
 ed unheard — rendered him still more unpopular ; and 
 the clever appeal of Lord Palmerston to the country 
 for awhile sent Mr Cobden, politically speaking, to 
 Coventry. It is a long lane that knows no turning. 
 If Englishmen are ungrateful it is only for a season. 
 When the passions and prejudices of the hour had 
 
42 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 passed, men of all opinions felt that, Cobden not in 
 Parliament, that assembly was deprived of some por- 
 tion of its lustre. To the honour of Rochdale be it said, 
 that was the borough that, at the earliest opportunity, 
 returned Mr Cobden to his proper place ; and when 
 the latter returned from America, where he had been 
 sojourning a while, it was to find that not only was 
 he once more an M. P., but that a seat in the Cabi- 
 net waited his acceptance. Still more, he has lived 
 to see it a matter of national regret that he did not 
 join the Cabinet, and add right honourable to his 
 name. In the case of Mr Cobden we have a clear 
 illustration of the axiom that it is the age that 
 makes the man. When Cobden entered on public 
 life, commerce was in need of a mouthpiece to assert 
 her importance and to demand her rights. English 
 country gentlemen had governed the country in ac- 
 cordance with the fancied interests of English country 
 gentlemen. How to keep up the rent was the pro- 
 blem to be solved. That the time would ever ar- 
 rive when the farmers would be scientific, and have a 
 fair command of capital, and be enabled to pay higher 
 rents and make more money under a system that did 
 not prohibit the introduction of foreign corn, never 
 entered into the heads of the landed class. England 
 was growing to be the workshop of the world. From 
 the backwoods of Canada, from distant Chicago, from 
 the banks of the Danube, from the vast corn districts 
 of Southern Russia, there came a voice saying, " Give 
 
RICHARD C0BDEN, M.P. 43 
 
 us your manufactures and take our corn. So will your 
 poor have work, so will your hungry be fed, so shall 
 commerce more effectually bind us in the golden cords 
 of peace." In Manchester, in Birmingham, in Sheffield 
 and Leeds, where men live by the production of me- 
 chanism and manufacture, this truth was clearly and 
 painfully felt. But it was only till within the last few 
 years that the political existence of Manchester, and 
 Birmingham, and Sheffield, and Leeds, had been ad- 
 mitted by our governing classes. Huskisson was be- 
 ginning to see the truth in these matters, but the 
 sudden termination of his lamented life left the com- 
 mercial classes almost friendless and alone in the 
 Senate. The landlords ruled the roast, and adminis- 
 tered the game laws, and believed with Malthus that 
 society had a tendency to advance beyond the means 
 of subsistence, and stood aghast at the ever-increasing 
 mass of pauperism, a terror by night and by day in their 
 midst. The pious recommended resignation, the in- 
 telligent began to inquire how it was that life was such 
 a curse, that here there was abundance, there, starva- 
 tion. They found that our Corn-Laws produced much 
 of this mischief ; that the time had come for England 
 to burst her chains, and take tremendous strides, or to 
 be for ever fallen. At this crisis Richard Cobden 
 arose. He had been a Manchester manufacturer ; he 
 was now to be the utterance of the wants and wishes 
 of the age. The best years of his life he devoted to 
 that work, and the splendid testimonial subscribed to 
 
4-i MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 him by the people of England at the termination of 
 the Anti- Corn- Law agitation was but a poor equivalent 
 for the pecuniary losses he had sustained by renouncing 
 a successful mercantile career. Even a subsequent 
 pecuniary subscription, on the occasion of his losses by 
 his American investments, was but a small per cent- 
 age on the progress made by the subscribers under 
 Free Trade. 
 
 Is it not time that we begin to understand history ? 
 The one great fact taught by wars, and rebellions, and 
 revolutions of all kinds ; by the decline and fall of 
 Rome, by the collapse of French monarchies, by the 
 growth of English freedom, by the spread of Anglo- 
 Saxon institutions in America and Australia ; is that, 
 by fair means or foul, every twenty- four hours a man 
 must dine. Understand this, and the past ceases to be 
 a mighty maze without a plan. Understand this, and 
 history is no longer a riddle. Understand this, and 
 the curtain is drawn up and you see living men. 
 Our statesmen and historians use fine phrases, but 
 they have no meaning, and merely darken and per- 
 plex. For instance, who, besides a professed states- 
 man, or newspaper writer, or Edinburgh He viewer, 
 ever cared a straw about the balance of power in Eu- 
 rope ? Men are not moved by such phantoms. Yet, 
 if you read history, you would think that millions of 
 men have died, and millions of money have been 
 squandered about an unmeaning phrase. The simple 
 fact was, that in France people got hungry, and did 
 
RICHARD COBDEN, M.P. 45 
 
 not know how to satisfy their hunger without upset- 
 ting a monarchy. In 1816 we had a bad harvest, and 
 the result was a Reform Bill ; a few years later the 
 potato crop failed in Ireland, and we had Free Trade. 
 Life is too short and people are too busy to go to war, 
 for the grand reasons given by the historian, or em- 
 bodied in state papers. In ordinary life the hottest 
 politician is a plain, plodding tradesman, taking 
 care of the pence, and civil to his customers. In the 
 same manner the ordinary life of a nation is devoted 
 to its material interests. If it be otherwise, there is 
 something wrong. Perhaps Mr Cobden understands 
 this truth better than any man living. His percep- 
 tion of it has been the secret of his success and the 
 pole-star of his life. In developing this idea, he makes 
 sad havoc of old notions and party cries. An M.P. 
 present in the House when Canning made that famous 
 speech about calling the new world into existence, to 
 redress the balance of the old, said : " While he was 
 speaking, Mr Canning seemed actually to have in- 
 creased in stature, his attitude was so majestic, his 
 chest heaved and expanded, his nostril dilated ; a 
 noble pride slightly curled his lip, age and sickness 
 were forgotten, and dissolved in the ardour of youthful 
 genius." Cobden would never — could never — have pro- 
 duced such an effect. Had he been in Canning's situa- 
 tion, had he held the reins of power, his eye would have 
 sparkled, and his breast would have expanded, and 
 his whole frame would have quivered with emotion ; 
 
46 MODERN STATESMEN, 
 
 not that he had called into existence some half-dozen 
 of the most accursed governments under the sun (for 
 such Canning's emancipated colonies turned out), but 
 that he had won for the toiling masses of his country- 
 men a right to earn their daily bread. Undoubtedly 
 that is the primary need. Without that right achieved, 
 no nation can be prosperous, or renowned, or great. 
 It is not in utter poverty that the Graces love to dwell. 
 Where the struggle for existence is bitter and all-ab- 
 sorbing, there is no morality, no intelligence, no civil- 
 ization worthy of the name, and man is but little better 
 than a brute. A nation may fight to revenge the 
 wrongs of oppressed nationalities, but ere it does this, 
 it must have done its duty to itself. 
 
 Yet, in the middle classes nine men out of ten tell 
 you what a pity it is that Mr Cobden has so lost himself 
 by his peace crotchets. It is true he has said many 
 things, and some of them not wise ones. A man who 
 has made as many speeches as Mr Cobden has done, is 
 pretty sure, occasionally, to fall into blunders. In the 
 heat and excitement of great struggles, things are 
 said which turn out to be utter folly, yet the speakers 
 of them are not set down as fools. The Duke of Wel- 
 lington said it would be madness in him to think of 
 being prime minister, yet directly after he attained 
 that exalted rank. You could almost always tell 
 when Sir Robert Peel was about to turn by the 
 solemnity and vehemence with which he asserted he 
 was not. Did not Sir Robert Inglis prophesy that ten 
 
RICHARD COBDEN, M.P. 47 
 
 years after the Reform Bill was carried, the House of 
 Peers and the State Church would be destroyed, and 
 England would be turned into a republic ? Did not he 
 say he would be afraid to trust the Bible to the people 
 unless it was in the hands of the clergy of the Church 
 of England ? and yet the man who could thus doubt 
 the truth and power of the Bible as it stands by itself, 
 and could thus insanely prophesy, was, to the very last, 
 representative of an English University. Lord Eldon 
 upheld the most disgraceful and sanguinary criminal 
 code in Europe, and for years he was worshipped as the 
 wisest of mankind. Many of our leading statesmen 
 took an active part in opposing the Corn-Laws, and 
 predicted the most disastrous results. We do not 
 sneer at them, but Mr Cobden and the champions of 
 industrial rights are taunted everlastingly when 
 they blunder, as if no other men did the same. For 
 them and them alone there are no waters of Lethe. 
 Surely this is hard measure. Public opinion in this 
 country is led by the aristocracy, and they, of course, 
 very naturally look upon the Cobden class with more 
 or less disfavour, but the disfavour of the Manchester 
 school is to be attributed to a deeper source. Old Hobbes 
 tells us man naturally is in a state of war. The Man- 
 chester school ignore this primary fact, and thus runs 
 counter to the universal instincts of our race. War is 
 a folly, a crime, a curse, but men have always fought 
 nevertheless ; and now, when all Europe resounds with 
 the measured tread of armed men, more distant than 
 
48 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 ever seems the day when the war-drum shall throb no 
 longer, 
 
 "And the battle flag be furl'd 
 In the parliament of man, in the federation of the world." 
 
 Now Mr Cobden 's Peace speeches have not merely- 
 been falsified, but have been distasteful as well. Thus, 
 when in a speech at Wrexham, in 1850, Mr Cobden 
 said he would rather cut down the expenditure for 
 military establishments to ten millions, and run every 
 danger from France or any other quarter, than risk the 
 danger of attempting to keep up the present standard 
 of taxation and expenditure, common sense tells us that 
 the real question is one of national safety, and not of 
 expense. If our war expenditure in time past had been 
 greater we should have saved money now, as it is clear 
 that our neglect in this respect has stimulated in other 
 quarters increased activity. Mr Cobden, in the same 
 speech, said he believed there never was an instance 
 known in the history of the world of as many as 50,000 
 men being transported across the salt waters within 
 12 months. It is true he cannot say that now, but the 
 inference remains. In the same way he argues against 
 a French invasion, because he and his family happen 
 to have a comfortable domicile in Paris. No man bet- 
 ter than Mr Cobden can be blind to what he does not 
 wish to see. Knowing the immense material advan- 
 tage to England and France of peace, he can see no- 
 thing in the immense naval preparations of that coun- 
 try — nothing in such fortifications as Cherbourg— - 
 
RTCHARD COBDEN, M.P. 49 
 
 nothing in the invective, which under the license of 
 the government was launched forth in French Jour- 
 nals against perfidious Albion. " The pacific genius of 
 the house of Pelham was not unknown to France, and 
 fell in very conveniently with their plan of extensive 
 empire," writes Horace Walpole, in his " Memoirs of 
 the Reign of George II." Is not the passage appli- 
 cable to Mr Cobden ? The Peace party and Mr Cob- 
 den, in the same way, undoubtedly had much to do 
 with that miserable Crimean war. The late Czar, I 
 have no doubt, imagined that Mr Cobden and the 
 Peace party represented England, and that under no 
 circumstances whatever would she go to war. The 
 late Czar saw an old ally at the head of affairs. He 
 saw Mr Cobden, the mouth -piece of thousands, repre- 
 senting all war as absurd. He saw Peace Congresses 
 perambulating the land, and he knew that the prime 
 movers of them, the Quakers, were men who if smitten 
 on one cheek would meekly turn the other, and await 
 the blow, He saw that we had allowed him to tram- 
 ple Hungary under-foot — that we had been silent when 
 Poland was blotted from the map of nations — that 
 wildly and viciously Protestant as we were, we had 
 allowed the Pope to be re- seated on his tottering throne 
 by the aid of French bayonets ; and might he not well 
 think that so reckless had we become of our ancient 
 prestige — so absorbed had we grown in the pursuit of 
 wealth — so permeated had we been by Manchester ora- 
 tory and Peace tracts, that scarcely the dictates of 
 
 4 
 
50 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 self-preservation— certainly not the claims of humanity 
 or the obligations of treaties, or the considerations of 
 an enlightened public policy, or the cause of an effete 
 race, whose very existence in Europe was an anomaly — 
 would induce us again ever to draw the sword ? The 
 Peace party themselves helped to create this confusion. 
 Everybody wished them well, and soldiers and sailors 
 were at a discount. Most of them, simple-minded, 
 good-meaning folk, fell very naturally into the error of 
 mistaking their select assemblies of neat Quakeresses 
 and verdant youths for the people of England. When 
 Mr Bradshaw, of the " Guides," died, — a decent man I 
 doubt not, but not known to the nation in any capacity 
 whatever beyond that of his trade, — I myself heard 
 Joseph Sturge at a public meeting at Edinburgh ex- 
 claim that there were more tears shed when the nation 
 heard of the death of Mr Bradshaw than when the 
 hero of Waterloo died. Now in England we simply 
 laugh at such an assertion. But in Russia they could 
 not see its absurdity. And the Czar having seen that 
 in one agitation Mr Cobden had represented the will 
 of the nation, fell into the very easy error of supposing 
 that on the question of Peace as well as that of Free 
 Trade, Mr Cobden was similarly backed. Still more 
 may be urged against Mr Cobden. The war having 
 once begun — Quaker Sturge having travelled to St 
 Petersburg, bearing the olive branch in vain — he 
 should have remembered that he was an Englishman, 
 and having lifted up his warning voice and find- 
 
RICHARD COBDEN, M.P. 51 
 
 in g it disregarded, should not have condescended to seek 
 to bring about the national disasters he had predicted. 
 It is clear that a nation once committed to a war — any 
 arraignment of the policy of that war — any attempt to 
 embarrass the parties engaged in carrying it on — any 
 endeavour to make it unpopular with the nation at large 
 — is, to a certain extent, aiding the power with which 
 you are at war. Had Mr Cobden thus acted in the House 
 of Commons, he could have been met and refuted on the 
 spot, but the real truth is, while he was silent there he 
 was mischievously active out of doors. He helped to 
 prolong the war in the same manner as the Jacobites in 
 1696 helped to prolong the war with Louis the Great. 
 Macaulay tells us Louis was inclined for peace. After 
 the failure of the Assassination Plot he had made up 
 his mind to the necessity of recognising William Prince 
 of Orange as king of England, and had authorized 
 Callieres to make a declaration to that effect, but the 
 Jacobites in London wrote to the Jacobites in St Ger- 
 main's such tales of the distresses of the country — of its 
 exhaustion and the unpopularity of the Prince, that, to 
 the great joy of the non-jurors, Callieres became high 
 and arogant, and denied that William was anything 
 more than a pretender to the throne. Mr Cobden acted 
 precisely in the same manner. Of course I give him cre- 
 dit for the best of motives, and believe that he is as 
 honest and sincere a patriot as any man living, but 
 if he wishes to be popular he must give up his peace 
 crotchets. He is strong enough to be able to say, " I, 
 
 4 * 
 
52 • MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 in common with the wise and good of the British nation, 
 have blundered, and find the Millennium of peace fur- 
 ther off than I dreamed." All men deprecate war. Mr 
 Cobden must not believe that he and the men in drab 
 are the only friends to peace. As sincerely and passion- 
 ately as Mr Cobden himself, we believe, do our leading 
 statesmen long for peace : but we cannot shut our eyes 
 to the fact that the course of events has placed us in the 
 foremost files of time — that we may not stand in despi- 
 cable isolation, printing calicoes and jingling guineas, 
 while the strong are trampling on the weak, and robbery 
 is being attempted at our very doors. Sure are we that 
 when the nation shall have stooped to take so mean a 
 view of its vocation, its glory will have departed, and the 
 period will have arrived when the famous picture of 
 Macaulay shall be realized, and the stranger from New 
 Zealand, standing on Westminster-bridge, and con- 
 templating the ivied ruins of St Paul's, shall mark the 
 traces of a greatness that has passed away. The spirit 
 that animates the nation in a righteous war is a noble 
 one. Humanity has shone brightest at such periods. It 
 would require the most profound ignorance of history 
 for a man to assert that the contests which gave the 
 victories of Marathon and Salamis to the Greeks — that 
 roused up in the Middle Ages the followers of the 
 Crescent and the Cross — that triumphed at Waterloo — 
 that crushed the Indian revolt — were among the least 
 illustrious events that occupy and adorn the annals of 
 the world. Mr Cobden is unfortunate when he ap- 
 
RICHARD COBDEN, M.P. 53 
 
 peals to history. About eighty years since, our states- 
 men were after his own heart. Our national income 
 was unequal to our peace establishment ; our navy 
 was a " visionary fabric ; " our troops were not suf- 
 ficient to be of any service ; Frederic the Great had 
 civilly declined the overtures of Mr Fox ; we had at- 
 tempted to patch up an ignominious peace ; yet a 
 War Minister came into office, and never did the na- 
 tion achieve a wider reputation, or wield a more irre- 
 sistible power. 
 
 Mr Cobden, like Mr Bright, underrates "the influ- 
 ence of the landed aristocracy, and he is too willing 
 to believe that the public is an enlightened body, act- 
 ing solely from a sense of its own interests. The truth 
 is, that the public, whether of France or England, is 
 very often the dupe of its passions and fancies, and 
 that in England, whatever may be done occasionally 
 by dwellers in cities, the real power is in the hands 
 of the land- owners. He and Mr Bright also take it 
 for granted that we have a party in this country who 
 wish to go to war ; a bigger blunder it is impossible 
 to make. 
 
 11 What do you think of Cobden ? " said the writer 
 to a large Norfolk farmer, after the former had been 
 delivering an address in the fine old hall of the county 
 town. " Why," said he, " I believe if Cobden had 
 held up a sheet of white paper and told us it was black 
 we should all have sworn the same thing." This 
 answer may be accepted as a fair description of Cob- 
 
54 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 den as a speaker. By his appearance he disarms all 
 prejudices. You see a man of middle size, very plain- 
 ly dressed, rather fresh coloured, with brown hair, 
 slightly streaked with grey, and with arched eyebrows, 
 which gives him a very shrewd appearance. There is 
 a harshness in his voice, but that goes off after he has 
 spoken a sentence or two, and there is such an ease 
 about the man, such a clever adaptation of himself to 
 his audience — you feel so much at home with him, he 
 has so thoroughly the air of one arguing alone and 
 familiarly with yourself — that it is almost impossible, at 
 any rate while he is speaking, not to range yourself on 
 his side. His unaffected good-nature, his natural plea- 
 santry, are irresistible. In the House of Commons he 
 is much the same as on the platform, equally clear, 
 equally unaffected, equally at home. There he stands 
 on the right of the Speaker below the gangway, 
 slightly stooping, as if from physical languor, alter- 
 nately pointing with the fore-finger of his right hand 
 to some honourable gentleman on the Opposition 
 benches, with whom, if you could only see and not 
 hear, you would suppose he was carrying on a very 
 animated conversation. Occasionally the left hand is 
 brought into play, and by means of sundry taps ad- 
 ministered to it by his right, Mr Cobden denotes that 
 he has made some very effectual observations. Mr 
 Cobden does not attempt eloquence — does not quote 
 the classics — is very seldom witty — but gives you the 
 idea of a plain man talking upon business in a business- 
 
RICHARD COBDEN, M.P. 55 
 
 like way. You listen to him in vain for the magic play 
 of fancy — for rhetoric " rich with barbaric pearls and 
 gold " — for a philosophy that shall live when speaker 
 and hearer, shall have passed away. Charles Fox's 
 test of a speech is eminently applicable to Mr Cobden 
 — " Does it read well ? if so it was a bad speech." 
 Mr Cobden satisfies himself with arguing the questions 
 of the present moment with the facts of the present ; 
 all his references, all his hits and his speeches, abound 
 with them ; all his arguments are gathered from the 
 experience of the day. Occasionally this leads him 
 into error, as when he said he believed a modern 
 newspaper a better mental exercise than a page of 
 Thucydides ; but to the men of to-morrow he leaves 
 the task of doing to-morrow's work. Indeed, there 
 are symptoms occasionally discernible indicating that 
 Mr Cobden is more ready to seek repose — to which 
 no one has a fairer right — than to buckle on the 
 armour for fresh fights. 
 
 In one thing he is still, however, as earnest as ever. 
 In the cause of Free Trade, and the vast interest in- 
 volved in the idea, he neither tires nor faints. For 
 the recent changes in the commercial policy of France 
 — for the pledge it gives us of peace — for the plenty 
 it will give to manufacturing millions on each side the 1 
 Channel — for all the blessings, social, intellectual 
 moral, it will scatter the wide world over — let the 
 English nation tender grateful thanks to Richard 
 Cobden. 
 
IY. 
 
 THE RT. HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 
 
 Towards the close of the year 1837, a young man of 
 somewhat singular appearance and gesticulation, 
 broke down in his maiden speech in the House of 
 Commons. Great things had been expected from him.. 
 In most circles he had contrived to get talked about 
 — in some to be admired. Years before, with all the 
 confidence of genius and youth, he had told the Irish 
 O'Connell that he would meet him at Philippi, and 
 the hour of that meeting had at length arrived. Al- 
 ready the young debutant had become remarkable for 
 the facility with which he had learned to repeat the 
 most contrary doctrines, and to champion interests 
 and prejudices seemingly the most opposed. Maryle- 
 bone had heard his declaration, that unless the ballot 
 and triennial parliaments were conceded, he could not 
 conceive how the Legislature could ever be in har- 
 mony with the people. At High Wycombe he had 
 told the electors that in all financial changes the agri- 
 
THE RT. HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELT. 57 
 
 cultural interest ought especially to be considered ; 
 and at Taunton, he who had appeared at Marylebone 
 as the friend of Joseph Hume became the representa- 
 tive of the Duke of Buckingham and the Carlton 
 Club. At Maidstone, by the defeat of a liberal almost 
 as incomprehensible as himself, he at length succeeded 
 in gaining a seat in St. Stephen's. With pride he 
 took his stand in the presence of the Whig dignitaries 
 of whom he had spoken evil, and of the puzzled country 
 gentlemen, who could not understand how their Tory- 
 ism was more democratic than the politics of the 
 Whigs, who were wont to drink to civil and religious 
 liberty all over the world, and to toast the people as 
 the only source of legitimate power. Not merely also 
 in the troubled walk of politics, or as the paradoxical 
 commentator on the English constitution, or, as in 
 " Runnymede," the most keen dissector of the materiel 
 of the Whig cabinet, was the aspirant for parliament- 
 ary laurels known to fame. In the world of fashion 
 and of literature he had already become notorious for 
 the piquancy and satire of his novels. The speaker 
 also was a dandy — there were dandies in 1837 — and, 
 therefore, was to be regarded with curiosity. The 
 Conservatives mustered in considerable numbers to 
 back their new man. On the Whig benches there 
 was awe and expectation. Sir Robert Peel cheered 
 the young debutant with most stentorian tones. Alas ! 
 in vain was the cheer ; the debut was a failure. The 
 exaggerated attitude and diction of the speaker ex- 
 
58 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 cited universal ridicule. At length, losing his temper 
 and pausing in the midst of his harangue, Disraeli — 
 for it is he of whom we write — at the top of his voice 
 exclaimed, as he resumed his seat, baffled, beaten, 
 derided, but not despairing, " Though I sit down now, 
 the time will come when you will hear me." It is not 
 always such predictions are realized. In this case, 
 however, it was no empty boast. The man thus ridi- 
 culed and coughed at, thus rejected and despised, was 
 he who lived to hurl at Sir Robert Peel the fiercest 
 philippics known in modern parliamentary annals, and 
 who, by his mere strength of brain, lifted himself up 
 to be the leader of the renowned historic party which 
 had been illustrated by the splendid eloquence of a 
 Bolingbroke and the administrative skill of a Pitt. 
 
 Seated on the Opposition benches, half-way down, 
 with some small-brained son of a duke by his side, 
 night after night may be seen the leader of Her 
 Majesty's Opposition. Generally, his eyes are cast 
 down, his hands are crossed in front, and he has all 
 the appearance of a statue. Cold, passionless, he 
 seems of an alien race — a stranger to the hopes, and 
 fears, and interests of a British House of Commons. 
 You wonder how he got there, and how the Tyrrels, 
 and Spooners, and Newdegates, and the rosy-cheeked 
 country gentlemen could have borne banners under 
 such as he. However fierce the debate, or heated 
 the House, or pressing the crisis, there sits Disraeli, 
 occasionally looking at his hands or the clock — other- 
 
THE RT. HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 59 
 
 wise silent, unmoved, and still. Yet an Indian scout 
 could not keep a more vigilant watch — and immedi- 
 ately an opportunity occurs, he is on his legs, boiling 
 with real or affected indignation. I say real or 
 affected, because Disraeli has so much of the artist 
 about him that you never know whether he is in 
 earnest or not. 
 
 As an illustration, let me refer to the debate which 
 ensued on Lord John Russell's diplomatic proceedings 
 at Vienna. It was amusing to see how, at such times, 
 with an elaborate deference all the bitterer for its trans- 
 parent hollowness, Disraeli would turn to Lord John, 
 and leaning confidentially against the table, pour out 
 against the miserable little man, now looking very 
 angry, all the invective which his folly justified and 
 required. Such a situation can only be shadowed 
 forth by simile. Lord John seemed, as you can 
 imagine, the traveller in the desert overtaken and 
 whirled along by the fierce simoom ; or as the hap- 
 less voyager caught in his frail bark in the Mediter- 
 ranean in a white squall,] and entombed for ever be- 
 neath its unpitying waves ; or, if you are not a 
 traveller, and have ever seen him in such a plight, as 
 some poor Cockney, with his Easter Monday gar- 
 ments on, in a heavy storm of rain and hail on Prim- 
 rose Hill, or Hampstead Heath. Disraeli used no 
 sugared phrases, no mincing terms, no artifice, to 
 veil his contempt ; and the noble scion of the House 
 of Bedford was compelled for a couple of hours to sit 
 
60 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 through a hell such as only a Dante could describe, 
 or a Fuseli or a Martin paint. You thought of the 
 Indian dancing on the dead body of his prostrate foe ; 
 of yourself at a respectable dinner-party, in tight boots 
 and with aching corns, seated between two strong- 
 minded females, with a purple-faced London alder- 
 man opposite ; of the boa-constrictor drinking the last 
 drop of his victim's blood, and crushing his last bone ; 
 of the sufferers of Greek tragedy, with its stern, un- 
 relenting fate ; — and you were not sorry when the 
 task was over, and his mauled and mangled foe re- 
 leased. 
 
 For savage sarcasm Disraeli stands unrivalled. His 
 self-possession — his intellectual versatility — his clear 
 and cold voice — his plucky appearance, all aid him in a 
 wonderful manner. In his own peculiar line it is 
 dangerous to attempt to cope with him. Roebuck on 
 one occasion did so, and signally failed. Somehow 
 or other, one does not speak of Disraeli as an orator, 
 or as a philosopher — like Burke or Mackintosh — utter- 
 ing sentences that will form the wisdom of after-ages ; 
 or even as a rhetorician, as Macaulay and Sheil. We 
 do not read that he was eloquent, argumentative, 
 pathetic, or patriotic. You speak of him as you 
 would of Tom Sayers. His admirers tell you that he 
 was " in good condition" — that he " showed fight" — 
 that he was "plucky as usual" — that he "hit right 
 and left" — that he was " up to the mark" — and there 
 is a similar isolation and singularity in his parlia- 
 
THE RT. HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 61 
 
 mentary conduct. Though the leader of a party, he 
 is not its slave ; and on occasions he fails even to do 
 the proper thing. Thus at the close of the Crimean 
 war, on the vote of the address on peace — an oppor- 
 tunity which only comes once in a generation — when, 
 according to conventional rules, Disraeli should have 
 made a grand oration, he was actually dumb, and 
 jumped up immediately and left the House after 
 Palmerston's two hours' speech — as if it were one of 
 the silent members who ingloriously sleep on back 
 benches during the very hottest of a parliamentary 
 debate. Historians tell us how Prince Rupert was 
 more than a match for the old-fashioned commanders 
 of the Commonwealth. From his lair at Kinsale — 
 from his lair in the Scilly Isles — from his lair in 
 Jersey, he would pounce upon his enemy, and was 
 irresistible — till a new system was inaugurated, and 
 Blake, a man of greater genius and daring, raised the 
 red cross of the Commonwealth. Lord Derby has 
 been called the Prince Rupert of debate, but the term 
 is more applicable to Disraeli. When you expect 
 him to speak, he has nothing to say ; when you do 
 not expect him, he is on his legs ; when you think he 
 will go on for another hour, he sits down as rapidly 
 and unexpectedly as he gets up. He delights in sur- 
 prises, and you cannot tell which is the studied effort 
 and which the impromptu retort. Herein especially 
 is manifest his superiority over the conventional 
 speakers — the Greys and Lord John Russells, who 
 
62 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 have got for their Blake a Bernal Osborne. Disraeli 
 is savagely personal. It is his forte, and no one in 
 the House can compete with him. Disraeli has the 
 field entirely — too entirely — to himself, and no wonder 
 is it that personality is his favourite weapon, and the 
 one the best appreciated by the young lordlings be- 
 hind him, who cheer infinitely better than speak. At 
 the same time, it must be confessed that Toryism is 
 always more ungentlemanly and personal than that 
 sublime intellectual abortion, the pure old Whig. The 
 only personal paper attempted in our day was the 
 Press, and that soon gave up personalities ; the 
 Satirist was a Conservative paper ; so was the John 
 Bull; so was Blackwood, when it charged Hazlitt 
 with having pimples on his face ; so was the Anti- 
 Jacobin, when it called Charles James Fox 
 
 " The Catiline of modern times." 
 
 If we go back to the days of Swift, L'Estrange, and 
 Mrs Manley, we shall find the same personality cha- 
 racteristic of the High Church and Tory party. Dr 
 Arnold, somewhere in his letters, makes a similar re- 
 mark. 
 
 It is wonderful — the power ' of oratory. The 
 speaker, whether from the platform or the pulpit, is 
 the only worker who gets his reward at once. You 
 may invent what shall enrich a nation, and die a 
 beggar ; you may write, but your hair will be grey 
 before the world is familiar with your name ; you may 
 
THE RT. HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 63 
 
 be a poet, and fame may not own your genius till the 
 turf on your grave is green ; but, possess the magic 
 power with the living voice to reach the living heart 
 of multitudes, and immediately you are a king 
 amongst men. Not merely amongst a rude, un- 
 tutored peasantry, or inflammable youth, or a middle- 
 class public particularly prone to clap-trap, or an 
 Exeter-Hall audience, rather feminine than select; 
 but amongst educated gentlemen and polished 
 scholars, amongst men who have long mastered 
 emotion, and to whom most oratory is as " sounding 
 brass, or as a tinkling cymbal." On a grand field 
 night you find this as you see Disraeli, perfectly 
 aware that victory is beyond his grasp, standing on 
 the floor of the House, his eyes flashing defiance, his 
 lip curled with sarcasm, his arm pointed to the object 
 of attack, and his voice alternately expressing indigna- 
 tion and contempt. As I have already hinted, as an 
 orator Disraeli stands by himself. It is not English 
 — that elaborately- dressed form ; that pale Hebrew 
 face, shaded with curling hair, still luxuriant and 
 dark ; that style, so melo-dramatic, yet so effective ; 
 that power of individuality which makes you hate the 
 object of his hate; that passion which you scarce 
 know whether to call malignant or sublime. When 
 he rises, it is needless for the speaker to announce his 
 name. A glance at the orator, with his glistening 
 vest, tells you that the great advocate of the pure 
 Semitic race is on his legs. You have seen that face 
 
64 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 in Punch. You have imagined Coningsby just as 
 attentively listened to, or Vivian Grey looking 
 just as cool. It is not every man that can play a 
 losing game. To speak from the Treasury benches 
 with a whipper-in to make a house and secure 
 you a cordial welcome, to feel that a triumphant 
 speech will be succeeded by a triumphant vote, are 
 privileges granted but to few — to Disraeli seldom 
 indeed. So far as the Opposition are concerned, the 
 debate generally languishes till the speaker announces 
 the name of the member for Buckinghamshire. Im- 
 mediately you lean forward. In his face there is a 
 dazzling, saucy look which at once excites your inter- 
 est. You see that if not a great man, he is an 
 intensely clever one, and though on reflection you 
 see more display than reality in his performance, and 
 are not sure that he is in earnest, or that he means 
 what he says, or that he is sustained and prompted by 
 any great principle, you feel that as an orator he has 
 few rivals. When he soars, as he occasionally does, 
 you tremble lest he should break down ; but Disraeli 
 never attempts more than he can achieve, and when 
 nearest to pathos he saves himself by a happy flight ; 
 but even in his highest efforts he preserves the same 
 doggedly-cool and unconcerned appearance, and will 
 stop to suck an orange, or actually, as he did in his 
 great budget speech, to cut his nails. It is true there 
 are times when he looks more emotional. On that 
 memorable November morning, when he was ousted 
 
THE RT. HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 65 
 
 from his chancellorship, when his party were inglo- 
 
 riously driven from the Eden in which they had 
 
 hoped long 
 
 " To live and lie reclined 
 On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind," — ■ 
 
 back into the bleak and desert world, the ex-Chancel- 
 lor of the Exchequer came out of the House at half- 
 past five a.m., gay and fresh as if the majority had been 
 with him, not against him. There was an unwonted 
 buoyancy in his walk and sparkle in his eye ; but the 
 excitement of the contest was hardly over — the swell 
 of the storm was there still — still rang in his eyes the 
 thunders of applause, audible in the lobby, which 
 greeted his daring retorts and audacious personalities. 
 Even when as occasionally he leads his party into a 
 cut de sac, and listens to their murmurs and hears 
 their threats, you cannot perceive any feeling of dis- 
 appointment or regret on his impassive face. No stone 
 could display more indifference. 
 
 But Disraeli, I am told, has no principles. "Well, 
 what eminent M.P. has ? In the House of Commons 
 men deal not with principles, but with facts. The 
 best statesman in modern times is he who is least 
 hampered by principles, and is free to follow the 
 leading of public opinion. All legislation is temporary, 
 and if we try at anything more enduring we gener- 
 ally err. It may be a grave fault in Disraeli — 
 granting, for the sake of argument, that the charge be 
 true — but, if other statesmen are equally remiss in 
 
66 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 this matter of principle, why is Disraeli alone to be 
 singled out for censure ? Has Lord Palmerston been 
 so consistent that the British public are to fire with 
 indignation at the licentiousness of Disraeli's political 
 career ? Lord John Russell's earlier speeches were 
 against reform. The great Whig idol entered the. 
 House of Commons under Tory auspices. We have 
 built up statues in every corner of the land to Sir 
 Robert Peel, yet what principle did that eminent 
 statesman start with which he did not abdicate in the 
 course of his eventful parliamentary existence l Ge- 
 nius has a creed of its own — forms of expression of its 
 own, and if it condescends to party Shibboleths, it 
 gives them a wider bearing. If this be true every- 
 where, especially is this true in practical politics, 
 where, at all times, 
 
 " Black 's not so very black, nor white so very white ; *' 
 and where, in these times, the differences between the 
 occupants of the Treasury benches and those of the 
 Opposition are so few. There is a wide interval 
 between a Hobbes and a Milton — between a Filmer 
 and a Locke — between a Blackstone and a Bentham 
 — between the stump orator of the Temple Forum, or 
 the Codger's Hall, declaiming on the rights of man, 
 and the leader of the House of Commons dealing with 
 a thousand discordant rights, the growth of the con- 
 flicting passions, and principles, and interests, and 
 prejudices of a thousand years; but between the 
 Whig and Tory aristocracy at this time — between 
 
THE RT. HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 67 
 
 Lord Derby and Lord Palmerston — the line of separ- 
 ation is so obscure that the wonder is that a re- 
 spectable line can be held up to the public at all. Mr 
 Stafford jobbed at the Admiralty, but were Mr 
 Gladstone's nominees immaculate? Disraeli believes 
 he and his party are as honest as their opponents. 
 The Whig and Peelite writers are astonished, and one 
 of the dullest of them, in a feeble octavo containing 
 700 pages (" Disraeli ; a biography "), enters his 
 protest, and begs to " recall our attention to the prin- 
 ciples of English morality, which have done even 
 more than the industrious energy and practical genius 
 of the people in making England what she is. Eng- 
 land has been a standing witness against political 
 atheism." Well, if with Disraeli we laugh at the 
 Whig aristocracy, who have always been narrow in 
 their principles, and narrow in their application, who 
 snubbed Burke, ignored Sheridan, only accepted 
 Mackintosh when he gave up the doctrines of the 
 Vindicice Gallicce, and would have made Canning 
 whipper-in — who deluded the nation with a Reform 
 Bill which was to have prolonged their political 
 existence in secula seculorum, and did not even carry 
 Free Trade — if this be political atheism, it has 
 become a necessity and a fact. The truth is, position 
 has a great deal to do with politics. The Whigs 
 found out this when they carried the celebrated 
 Appropriation Clause. If Lord Palmerston had been 
 in office he would never have defeated Lord John 
 
 5 * 
 
68 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 Bussell and caused the latter to resign on the question 
 
 of general or local militia. Out of office no man has 
 
 declaimed so energetically against the Income Tax as 
 
 Mr Gladstone. In office Mr Horsman was a Whig. 
 
 With the sweets of office dangling before them, as we 
 
 get jackasses to move on by nourishing a bit of hay, 
 
 what lofty patriots (risum teneatis) do middle-aged 
 
 barristers become. On one side of the Speaker's 
 
 chair there are men especially bound to find fault 
 
 with what is professed on the other. Of course they 
 
 do this unsparingly and con amore, because they 
 
 know that if the tables were turned their own acts 
 
 would be subjected to a similar unsparing criticism. 
 
 The country reaps the benefit, for the progress thus 
 
 consummated is slow — slow as public opinion. 
 
 Amongst us 
 
 " Freedom broadens slowly down 
 From precedent to precedent ; " 
 
 but to argue that on one side of the Speaker's chair 
 are the sheep and on the other the goats — on one side 
 the knaves and on the other the honest men — that, 
 for instance, a barrister speaking on the Whig side is 
 a patriot of the first water, and a barrister speaking 
 on the Opposition benches a dishonest partisan — to 
 believe, for instance, that a manufacturer with his 
 hands red with the blood of factory children (see the 
 evidence submitted to the House when Mr Crook 
 gained his recent victory) is an enlightened philan- 
 thropist, and that a country gentleman, with his 
 
THE RT. HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 69 
 
 horror of democracy and change, is a selfish ignora- 
 mus, betrays a verdancy rare in well-informed circles. 
 It is not that Mr Disraeli sits on the side of the House 
 that is unpopular, and must be unpopular, that he is 
 to be censured. In office he was civil, and that is 
 more than can be said of every leader of the House of 
 Commons. Partisan hacks may cast no stone at him. 
 A more august tribunal there may be even than of 
 the House of Commons. For a man not born to rank 
 to be on an equality with men of rank, nay more, to 
 be their leader, is a triumph, but there are grander 
 triumphs still ; if Mr Disraeli has missed them, there 
 are few that have found them, and those few rarely 
 have a chance of catching Mr Speaker's eye. 
 
THE RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. 
 
 Many, many years ago, England's foremost statesman 
 — distrusted by the multitude — feared by his col- 
 leagues for his superiority — wearied of the strife and 
 turmoil of party — on the eve of his departure as Go- 
 vernor-General of India, spent a short while at Sea- 
 forth House, bidding farewell to his Liverpool consti- 
 tuents. His custom was, we are told, to sit in his 
 room, for hours, gazing on the wide expanse of ocean 
 before him; while below, a little lad played at his 
 feet in the sand. The old Puritan tells us " Man 
 proposes, God disposes." Canning did not go to 
 India — stopped at home to let all Europe understand 
 that England had done with the holy alliance ; stop- 
 ped at home, in a few short years to be buried in 
 Westminster Abbey, while a nation wept — and the 
 little lad grew, till his name became familiar in our 
 mouths as a household word. Does it not seem as if 
 the young Gladstone, while playing on the sand with 
 
THE RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. 71 
 
 England's great statesman, looking far on the wide 
 sea before him, had caught some of the genius — some 
 of the individuality — some of the eloquence — some of 
 the statesmanship, which has given to the name of 
 Canning an immortality which shall be fresh and fra- 
 grant when the grave in Westminster Abbey and the 
 statue in Palace-yard shall have crumbled into dust 1 
 Let me not be understood to place Gladstone on an 
 equal pedestal with Canning; to do so were ridiculous. 
 The genius of Canning was of the highest order ; like 
 that of all great men, it was universal in its range — it 
 embraced the opposite poles of human thought and 
 action. With the keen arrow of his wit he could deal 
 as deadly blow as could others with the most vehement 
 invective or laboured harangue. Gladstone is here 
 wofully deficient. He neither jests, nor laughs, nor 
 smiles, and evidently avoids, as unfair, little tricks and 
 artifices which less scrupulous or more skilful orators 
 would be but too happy to employ. It must also be re- 
 membered that oratorical display is less sought in the 
 House of Commons than formerly. Year by year it 
 is becoming more a business assembly — more and more 
 a monster vestry meeting, and less and less a gathering 
 of " patres conscripti." The oratorical era of the House 
 of Commons reached its climax with Canning; the 
 House now meets for the " despatch of business," and 
 the men who succeed now-a-days are men whose 
 faculty of business is something wonderful, and Mr 
 Gladstone is no exception to this rule. 
 
72 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 In the first reformed Parliament, as if to show the 
 fallacy of the melancholy forebodings of the anti-re- 
 formers, to the effect that for the future all talent 
 would avoid St Stephen's, Mr Gladstone, then a very 
 young man, of ample promise, from whom much was 
 expected by his friends and collegiate contemporaries, 
 became member for the Duke of Newcastle's close 
 borough of Newark. His initiation into office, under 
 Sir Robert Peel, took place soon after. When Sir 
 Robert was prematurely borne off the political arena 
 by a lamentable accident, Mr Gladstone became known 
 to the world as a faithful Peelite, intent upon the vin- 
 dication of his master's fame, and consistent in the 
 application of his principles. It also became clear 
 that he is somewhat more than the blind follower of a 
 great leader. He had given proofs of unusual tender- 
 ness of conscience, of marvellous subtilty of intellect, 
 of rare independence of spirit — for he had resigned 
 office, though on what ground was never exactly clear, 
 and had written upon High Church claims, on prin- 
 ciples exclusively his own. No mention is made of 
 Mr Gladstone in the ei Orators of the Age," a book 
 published in 1847. In 1838 Mr James Grant could 
 write, and reviewers could praise, the book in which 
 such want of political sagacity occurs as follows : — " I 
 have no idea that he will ever acquire the reputation 
 of a great statesman." It is not very long since the 
 above was written ; and now, on all sides, it is ad- 
 mitted Mr Gladstone is the ablest man in the House 
 
THE RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. id 
 
 of Commons. It was he alone who overthrew Disraeli 
 as he had just acquired the Chancellorship of the Ex- 
 chequer and the leadership of the House of Commons, 
 and was the mainstay of the Coalition Cabinet. In 
 the natural course of events Mr Gladstone must soon 
 be premier. If he does not acquire the reputation of 
 a great statesman, it is clear no man in our age will. 
 I fancy Mr Disraeli has no love for the orator who 
 triumphed over him with ease, and with a proud con- 
 sciousness of rectitude more potent even than eloquence 
 itself. Out-of-doors Mr Gladstone has yet to win that 
 hearty popularity which is the lot for a short while of 
 the man whom the people delighteth to honour, but it 
 is not in the House of Commons and amongst his 
 peers that his accession to power would be viewed 
 with regret. 
 
 Sidney Smith's description of Horner I have always 
 considered peculiarly appropriate to Gladstone — 
 " There was something very remarkable in his counte- 
 nance. The commandments were written in his face, 
 and I have often told him there was not a crime he 
 might not commit with impunity, as no judge nor jury 
 who saw him would give the smallest degree of credit 
 to any evidence against him. There was in his look a 
 calm, settled love of all that was honourable and good 
 — an air of wisdom and sweetness. You saw at once 
 that he was a great man, whom Nature had intended 
 for a leader of human beings. You ranged yourself 
 willingly under his banner, and submitted to his 
 
74 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 sway." I copy the passage, as very applicable to the 
 subject of this article. Judge for yourself. Come 
 with me into the Strangers' gallery of the House of 
 Commons. It is early yet ; the hour appointed for 
 the transaction of private business is not over ; but 
 already down at the Treasury Bench there is the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, with papers all around, 
 to the study of which he devotes apparently consider- 
 able attention. All of a sudden you see him drop his 
 papers and look earnestly at some speaker who has risen 
 to ask him some unimportant question. Mr Gladstone 
 rises, takes off his hat, and advances to the table. With 
 his plain dress and his fluent delivery you might almost 
 take him for a clergyman. He repeats the question, 
 answers it in language of remarkable elegance, and sits 
 down without making the slightest effort at display. 
 Look at him now, with full dark eyes, clear intellectual 
 head, and a body well proportioned, and of an average 
 size. Nowhere can you see a face more indicative of 
 goodness, and honesty, and power. Of the latter, if you 
 ■wait, you will soon cease to doubt. A motion is before 
 the House. Mr Gladstone rises to defend the govern- 
 ment ; and however forcible may have been the attack, 
 equally forcible is the defence. He is a master of de- 
 bate, and you are not sorry when he rises to reply. His 
 acuteness never fails him. His voice is always good, 
 his delivery always animated, and his language never 
 at fault. If you were to print his speech from the re- 
 porters' short-hand notes, without any revision what- 
 
THE RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. i O 
 
 ever, it "would be a perfect piece of composition. On 
 one occasion, the celebrated Dick Martin complained 
 that the reporters had not done him justice. It was 
 urged that they had but given the hon. gentleman's 
 exact words. " True," he said, " but did I spake them 
 in italics ? " Mr Gladstone never need fear the report- 
 ers giving his exact words, even with the accompanying 
 italics. Better than any man in the House he can stand 
 the test of ridicule. Indeed, with his serious demeanour 
 he abashes levity, and puts aside all trifling. He would 
 act the part of one of the Roman senators to perfection. 
 If he cannot win a victory by fair means, he will not 
 by foul. When the House, as it is too apt to do, forgets 
 itself — when it abounds with sarcasm and personalities, 
 Mr Gladstone sits silent and sorrowful. But I have 
 not yet given you an idea of his power. The party de- 
 bate over, the House goes into committee. It is late ; 
 the House is hot ; members are weary and away ; but 
 one man is at his post, and that man is Mr Gladstone. 
 Not a criticism is uttered but he makes a note of it. 
 With his knees crossed so as to serve him for a table, 
 with a pencil in his hand, with his head bent forward 
 in the direction of the speaker, there he sits hour after 
 hour, save when he rises to defend, or enforce, or ex- 
 plain the measure of which he has the charge. I believe 
 he may make a dozen speeches in the course of a single 
 night on different subjects, and so silvery is his voice, 
 so ready his language, so acute, and searching, and 
 comprehensive his criticism, that, the more you hear of 
 
76 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 him, the more you are impressed with admiration. In 
 his intellect, strength and flexibility are combined, and 
 thus it is he is so full and elastic, and effective when on 
 his legs. The more difficult the theme, the more ani- 
 mated the debate, the more solemn the crisis, the more 
 does he shine. Some of his more serious efforts are 
 worthy of the best days of parliamentary history. When 
 some national unrighteousness has been done, when 
 some folly of the hour has to be pointed out and de- 
 plored, you know then that Gladstone, with "dauntless 
 words and high," will speak as did he 
 
 " "Who shook the sere leaves from the wood 
 As if a storm pass'd by." 
 
 Perhaps his greatest triumphs have been his last. 
 No one but Mr Gladstone could have reconciled the 
 House of Commons not merely to the continuance, but 
 to the increasing the Income Tax, at the very time the 
 public had been led to expect its abolition altogether. 
 Mr Gladstone's sore-throat, which necessitated delay, 
 was a European difficulty. Happily nature and Dr 
 Ferguson proved victorious, and the Palmerston cabi- 
 net was saved. The Chancellor's speech of four hours 
 was a master-piece of tact and ingenuity ; was persuasive 
 and eloquent, and overpowering ; the reply to Mr Dis- 
 raeli was complete, and for once in his life Mr Gladstone 
 was almost savage. " I could not stand that speech of 
 Gladstone's," said a Conservative M.P. to a friend ; "I 
 was compelled to vote for him." In the debate on Mr 
 
THE RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. 77 
 
 Du Cane's amendment as if conscious of his coming 
 majority of 116, Mr Gladstone assumed a haughty and 
 dashing bearing, and displayed a disposition to punish 
 his adversaries, which he seldom evinces. His budget 
 took the world by surprise; it was, as an M.P. described 
 it, an ambitious budget. The Opposition made but a 
 feeble fight ; Mr Disraeli was but faintly supported by 
 his own party. For a wonder, after he had spoken 
 about a quarter of an hour, members flocked into the 
 lobby, and chatted away with their hands in their 
 pockets, as if Mr Spooner were delivering an oration 
 against Maynooth, or as if a Marylebone M.P. were 
 ingloriously riding some dull hobby to death. Sir 
 John Pakington made a blunder still worse. His ad- 
 vice to the aggrieved hop -growers to rally with the 
 publicans and sinners — with all the interests damaged, 
 or expecting to be damaged, by the budget, rendered 
 their cause hopeless. When the question lay, as the 
 hon. baronet seemed to imply, between the public good 
 on one side and particular interests on the other, there 
 could be no doubt as to the result. Theoretically the 
 House of Commons may be an imperfect body, but 
 more or less it represents public opinion, and no one 
 appeals to its public spirit in vain. 
 
 Mr Gladstone's position is by no means a pleasant 
 one. Mr Fox said he would rather get his bread any 
 way than by being Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 Depend upon it Mr Gladstone would say the same. As 
 a man of peace, he has been compelled to find the 
 
78 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 money for the Chinese war — a war against which he 
 has more than once raised an indignant protest ; he 
 has had to swallow his objections to an income tax, 
 and increase it ; he has had to put up with a " gi- 
 gantic innovation," and pocket the one-and-a-half 
 millions of money the Lords persisted in pressing on 
 him by refusing to repeal the paper duty. He has 
 had, besides, to come to parliament for money for 
 fortifications. No wonder he is indignant, — no won- 
 der he charges the House of Commons and the people 
 of his country with extravagance, — no wonder he ex- 
 claimed as he did in one of his speeches towards the 
 end of the late session: — "Vacillation, uncertainty, 
 costliness, extravagance, meanness, and all the conflict- 
 ing vices that could be enumerated, are united in our 
 present system. There is a total want of authority to 
 direct and guide. When anything is to be done we 
 have to go from department to department, from the 
 Executive to the House of Commons, from the House 
 of Commons to a Committee, from a Committee to a 
 Commission, and from a Commission back to a Com- 
 mittee, so that years pass away, the public is disap- 
 pointed, and the money of the country is wasted. I 
 believe such are the evils of the system that nothing 
 short of revolutionary reform will ever be sufficient to 
 rectify it." 
 
 Mr Gladstone, it must be admitted, has his faults. In 
 the first place, he has the logical faculty in excess, 
 and will keep on splitting hairs till you are exhausted ; 
 
THE RT. HON. W r . E. GLADSTONE, M.P. 79 
 
 and, secondly, when out of office, and freed from its 
 responsibilities, he will persist in putting before the 
 House the unpopular side of the question. Again, he 
 is of an enthusiastic character, and will paint a picture 
 coulcur de rose when the facts have a decided tendency 
 the other way. He is very often the slave of an idea ; 
 he contemplates it till he loses all perception of any- 
 thing else. Hence is it he has not a stronger position 
 out of doors. Out of office this habit increases, till it 
 is sometimes actually offensive. Whatever may be 
 the subject of debate, he is sure to lengthen it and en- 
 cumber it. He ignores the popular view. It must 
 be refined, and sublimated, and in perilous mazes 
 lost, and then Mr Gladstone is in his glory. In office 
 he is a very different and much safer man ; and the 
 Premier may sleep secure as long as Mr Gladstone is 
 at his post. Yet in office he will do strange things. 
 He resigned rather than vote for an inquiry into the 
 causes of the fearful calamities and horrors of the 
 Crimean campaign. As the representative of the body 
 that is least permeated with the popular feeling in 
 England — the Oxford University — Mr Gladstone 
 seems compelled to act in this way. On the Russian 
 war — on the Divorce Bill- — on the Church Rate Bill — 
 he thus voted on the unpopular side. Yet you feel 
 that St Stephen's does not contain an honester man, 
 that 
 
 "Neither gold, 
 Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss," 
 
80 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 could lead him to deviate a hair's breadth from what 
 he conceived to be the right. Nay, more — occasion- 
 ally he will boil over with enthusiasm, as when, in his 
 Letters to Lord Aberdeen, on the sufferings of the 
 Neapolitan state prisoner, he made 
 
 " All Europe ring from side to side." 
 His mission to the Ionian Islands — unfortunate as it 
 turned out to be in every respect — was undertaken in 
 a similar fit of enthusiasm. Indeed, he has so much 
 of this precious quality that it cannot all find a 
 vent in public life. Hence a work on Homer, too 
 bulky even for men of ample leisure and scholarship 
 to find time to read. 
 
 Remember that Mr Gladstone entered the House of 
 Commons as the nominee of the late Duke of New- 
 castle — the Duke who asked if he might not do as he 
 liked with his own ? — admit that he is no party man 
 — that he is very conscientious — that he is very anx- 
 ious to learn, and the conclusion is that he admits now 
 much that he opposed in earlier life. When he 
 entered public life he was deeply attached to the 
 great retrogressive party in Church and State ; but 
 he found much that had been clear in an Oxford 
 atmosphere was quite the reverse in St Stephen's. 
 How strenuous, for instance, was his opposition to the 
 Emancipation Act. Let it also be said that he was 
 originally a protectionist — that he is now a free-trader 
 — that he has given up as impracticable the doctrines 
 he enunciated in his "State in its Relation to the 
 
THE RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. 81 
 
 Church." Strange is it now that England — low-church 
 and dissenting — should have for her chief man a be- 
 liever in Apostolical Succession. Yet Mr Gladstone 
 defends this doctrine, and, on account of it, is a firm 
 believer in the Church of England. Chillingworth 
 said, " I am fully persuaded there hath been no such 
 succession." Bishop Stillingfleet declares, " This suc- 
 cession is as muddy as the Tiber itself." Bishop 
 Hoadly asserts, " It hath not pleased God, in his pro- 
 vidence, to keep up any proof of the least probability or 
 moral possibility of a regal and uninterrupted succes- 
 sion, but there is a great appearance, and, humanly 
 speaking, a certainty to the contrary, that the succes- 
 sion had often been interrupted." Archbishop Whately 
 says, " There is not a minister in all Christendom who 
 is able to trace up, with approach to certainty, his spi- 
 ritual pedigree." Mr Gladstone's faith in this respect, 
 it may be, redeems his errors of progress in Oxford 
 eyes. Oxford may well be proud of the child of her 
 training. Mr Gladstone, in 1831, closed a brilliant 
 career at Christ Church by taking a double first. 
 
 It was a bright idea of Lord Palmerston, getting 
 Mr Gladstone to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 Out of office his mind would have burst all bonds of 
 habit and wandered far away. He would have op- 
 posed the budget, and the ministry would have been 
 defeated. 
 
 It is his charity, which hopeth all things, which has 
 led Mr Gladstone into more than foolish acts. On 
 
 6 
 
82 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 several occasions he damaged himself by his official 
 appointments. In this world it is not always the good 
 men who get on the best. Sometimes the rogues are more 
 than a match for them. Now, Mr Gladstone is one of 
 the good men ; and when he was a little boy no doubt 
 he wrote in his copy-book that " Honesty is the best 
 policy," and in his charity, he is too apt to think that 
 other men, when they were little boys, did the same. 
 Hence, as he gives them credit for learning this motto 
 when young, and not forgetting it when they were old, 
 he is occasionally imposed on by more worldly men. 
 I believe Mr Gladstone would join with the man who, 
 after praying for all things under the earth, or in it, 
 or above it, finished by praying for the poor devil 
 himself. 
 
 Mr Gladstone is one of the few men in the House 
 who rise to eloquence of the stateliest order. He is 
 seldom, if ever, historical and lost in precedent. He 
 seems simply to rely upon his knowledge of the sub- 
 ject, and his ability to place it before the House in a 
 commanding and attractive manner. How great is his 
 merit we can best learn by contrast. When Gladstone 
 brought forward his first budget, the House expected 
 a treat; the pressure was enormous; strangers had 
 taken their places, waiting for the opening of the gal- 
 lery, as early as noon, and though the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer spoke nearly five hours, though his 
 speech had to do exclusively with those generally dry 
 things, facts and figures, the House was crowded to 
 
THE RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. 83 
 
 the last, and not a stranger left the gallery. When 
 Sir Cornewall Lewis, a good man but a poor speaker 
 — a speaker, however, who has amazingly improved 
 of late — opened his budget, the very reverse was the 
 case. f I believe there were ten strangers in the Speak- 
 er's gallery ; I believe there were not more than a 
 hundred members in the House. Yet the occasion 
 was an eventful one. Peace had just been proclaimed, 
 but the extra expenditure of the war had not ceased, 
 and had Mr Gladstone been the Chancellor, the atten- 
 tion of the country and the House would have been 
 excited. As it was, a humdrum speaker performed 
 his duties in a humdrum manner, and not even money 
 matters aroused a dumb House into eloquence and 
 life. On the introduction of his last and memorable 
 budget, the desire to hear Mr Gladstone was amazing. 
 Strangers, with members' orders, took their places as 
 early as nine a.m., and, for the first time since he had 
 left it, Lord Brougham occupied a seat in the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 6 * 
 
VI. 
 
 JOHN BRIGHT, M.P. 
 
 Some few years back, while the An ti- Corn-Law agi- 
 tation was yet in its infancy, and being fought with a 
 fierceness almost incredible in these dilettanti days, 
 when in agricultural circles no language was consider- 
 ed too contemptuous for its supporters, in a small vil- 
 lage in one of the midland counties an unknown in- 
 dividual was delivering an address on the all-absorbing 
 theme. He was dressed in black, and his coat was of 
 that peculiar cut considered by the worthy disciples of 
 George Fox — alas ! how falsely — as a standing protest 
 against the fashions of the world. The lecturer was 
 young, square built, and muscular, with a broad face 
 and forehead, with a fresh complexion, with " mild 
 blue eyes," like those of the late Russian Nicholas, 
 but, nevertheless, with a general expression quite suf- 
 ficiently decided and severe. As an orator the man 
 did not shine. His voice was good, though somewhat 
 harsh ; his manner was awkward, as is the custom of 
 
JOHN BRIGHT, M.P. 85 
 
 the country, and the sentences came out of his mouth 
 loose, naked, and ill-formed. He was not master of 
 the situation, yet he wanted not confidence, nor matter, 
 nor words. Practice it was clear was all that he re- 
 quired. The orator felt this himself. He told his 
 audience that he was learning to speak upon the ques- 
 tion, and that he would succeed in time. That he did 
 learn, that he did succeed, is obvious when I mention 
 the fact that the speaker was no other than John 
 Bright, M.P. for Birmingham. 
 
 It is one of the effects of a popular agitation that it 
 elevates for a time into equal importance the true man 
 and the false. Both alike are strong in the exposure of 
 practical anomalies or injustice — strong in the power of 
 uttering for the dumb multitude what it travails in agony 
 to declare — strong in the sweet voices of the sovran 
 mob. The hour makes the man. In its tumult, and 
 excitement, and uproar, like the spectres on the Broc- 
 ken, he seems twice his ordinary size. Poor, pitiful, 
 small, weak-minded creature though he be, for a time 
 he wields a giant's power, and speaks with a giant's 
 voice. For a time of each tribune of the people it is 
 emphatically declared — ■ 
 
 " In him Demosthenes is heard again, 
 Liherty taught him her Athenian strain. " 
 
 The Sacheverells, the Lord George Gordons, the 
 Wilkses, the orator Hunts, the Feargus O'Connors and 
 Daniel O'Connells, have each seemed to the people, 
 
86 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 delirious with the intoxication of the time, what Ste- 
 phano seemed to Caliban, a very god. The hour past, 
 the tumult calmed, the angry voices stilled, men's eyes 
 opened, the dilated demagogue dwindles into its or- 
 dinary insignificance. Alas ! poor Yorick, where be 
 his jibes and gibberings ? It is a painful process this 
 state of collapse. To have been floated into public life 
 on a public agitation, and to continue to float when 
 that agitation has ceased, when the political world is 
 dull as the weeds that rot on Lethe's shore ; to play 
 Othello when Othello's occupation is gone, requires an 
 unusually strong brain and brave heart. Mr Bright 
 has gone through all this and succeeded ; nay, more, 
 has triumphed, and by this triumph has placed him- 
 self foremost among the statesmen of the age. 
 
 I scarce believe, with Robert Owen and the moderns, 
 that all men are equal, and that the only difference 
 between a great man and a little man is that one is born 
 on a pedestal and that the other is not. Still it is a 
 great advantage to be born on a pedestal. With an 
 infatuation unparalleled amongst savages and incredible 
 in a people who profess to believe the Bible, we have 
 so crippled the democracy, that when it enters into the 
 arena with aristocracy it does so at tremendous odds. 
 To attain his position John Bright has injured his 
 health and shortened his days. Men like Lord John 
 Russell and Viscount Palmerston attain a superior posi- 
 tion by just sufficient healthy labour to lengthen theirs. 
 They are born on the pedestal, and not placed there by 
 
JOHN BRIGHT, M.P. 87 
 
 merits of their own. Few of our noble statesmen would 
 have been there unless born there. Either the energy, 
 or the time, or the patience, or the talent to secure a 
 position would have been wanting. To emerge from 
 the mob, to rise from the respectable dead level of the 
 Smiths, Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons, to get the 
 advantage over them by the head and shoulders, is a 
 Herculean task. In the first place, the men who are 
 on the pedestal look on contemptuously if you try to 
 put yourself on an equality with them. In the second 
 place, the Smiths, Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons will 
 do all that they can to prevent your achieving a higher 
 position than themselves. The very class for whom 
 you labour will deem you impertinent, and damn you 
 with faint praise. Only a remarkable man could thus 
 shake off all obstacles and climb the steep 
 
 "TSThere Fame's proud temple shines afar." 
 
 "Whatever may be the feeling out of doors, it will not 
 be denied that John Bright has succeeded in doing this 
 in the House of Commons and amongst his peers. No 
 one ever heard him in Parliament without feeling that 
 he is a power in that House ; yet such a position was 
 one no one would have prophesied for him a few years 
 since. Everything was against him when he was first 
 returned as member for Durham. All his antecedents 
 were precisely those most calculated to excite opposi- 
 tion and contempt. He was not merely not a landlord, 
 but he was a cotton lord. He was not merely not of the 
 
88 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 Church, of England, but of the church whose harmless 
 peculiarities have been more laughed at than its virtues 
 admired. He was not merely one of the Anti-Corn- 
 Law League, but one of its greatest men. He was not 
 merely at the head of an agitation thoroughly revolu- 
 tionary, as it seemed to its opponents, but he was one 
 of those who let it be clearly understood that that agi- 
 tation, so far from being final, was but the means to an 
 end. He not only had no respect for Parliamentary 
 shams and conventionalities, but he expressed that 
 contempt in a manner the most unpalatable and undis- 
 guised. Nevertheless it was not long ere he compelled 
 the House to do homage to his honesty and strength. 
 At first it rebelled — it groaned when he got up — it 
 emptied itself when he spoke ; but the House, if it 
 looks kindly on aristocratic imbecility, will not long 
 refuse to sanction democratic capacity and pluck. The 
 House is generous, and has a thorough appreciation of 
 a man ; and the result is, that now, as far as it is con- 
 cerned, Mr Bright has nothing to fear. He may 
 damage himself out of doors ; he may offend a people 
 warlike in its instinct in spite of cotton-growing Man- 
 chester ; he may alienate the cultivated mind of the 
 country by his grovelling theory of a nation's life ; he 
 may arouse, and justly, the hostility of the press, by 
 the degrading mission which he would chalk out for 
 it. He may make people very angry by his praise of 
 the Emperor Napoleon and his readiness to sacrifice 
 
JOHN BRIGHT, M.P. 89 
 
 Savoy. But he has taken honours in the senate, and 
 there his position is secure. 
 
 How is this ? In London, generally, Mr Bright is 
 not a popular man. In what is considered good so- 
 ciety it is hinted that he is a demagogue, and that his 
 dangerous mission is to set the lower classes against 
 the upper ones. People tell you that on the platform 
 Mr Bright is a very different and much bolder man 
 than on the floor of St Stephen's — a criticism which, 
 however, maybe passed on every public man, inasmuch 
 as platform speaking aims at creating popular en- 
 thusiasm, while oratory in the House of Commons is 
 of a more business-like and practical character. It is 
 undeniable, however, that just at this juncture the 
 opinions of Mr Bright are those of a minority. His 
 peace views are decidedly at a discount. His devo- 
 tion to the material interests of the nation is carried to 
 an extreme, and is somewhat repulsive to those who 
 believe that man does not live by bread alone. His 
 pugnacity, reminding one of the celebrated remark of 
 the late Lord George Bentinck, that if he were not a 
 Quaker he would be a prize-fighter, has been an of- 
 fence to the many who are prone to sing : — 
 
 " Let lis alone ; what pleasure can we have 
 To war with evil ? Is there any peace 
 In ever climbing up the climbing wave ? " 
 
 To all such, — to all who believe in the traditions of 
 
90 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 the past, — to all who would rather endure a wrong 
 than fight with it, — to all who would take the world 
 as they find it, and only smile when told that their idols 
 are wind-bags which would collapse only with the 
 prick of a pin, — Mr Bright is a constant source of un- 
 easiness and irritation. Now, in London especially, 
 these classes are numerous. London people are well- 
 to-do ; they soon make money ; they soon rise to the 
 dignity of a brougham and a country-house ; they soon 
 learn to give good dinners and to eat them. And men 
 in this position, when they have done their day's busi- 
 ness in the city, only desire ease and rest out of busi- 
 ness hours. In the provinces it is different; there, 
 Paterfamilias, as soon as he puts up his shutters, or 
 locks up his warehouse, is sure to have some philan- 
 thropic, or religious, or political employment ; a Lon- 
 don political lecturer is coming, and he must take the 
 chair ; or a Ragged School is to be formed, and he is 
 to be the Treasurer ; or a Mechanics' Institution is in 
 difficulties, and he has to show how the requisite funds 
 are to be obtained. These are the men who rally round 
 John Bright ; but they are scarce in London, and yet 
 John Bright, their representative, is honoured in the 
 House of Commons. Why ? The answer is soon given. 
 Come with me into the Strangers' Gallery, and look 
 hard on your left. About the middle of the third 
 bench of the gangway you see a vigorous-looking man 
 in black. What a contrast he presents to the mass 
 around ! Lord Bacon deemed himself ancient when he 
 
M.P. 91 
 
 was thirty-one. Mr Bright is, then, more than ancient, 
 but he is in the prime of life nevertheless. The debate 
 has been drawing its slow length along, and weariness 
 is on every face. Small men have been on their legs. 
 The Boeotians — the Newdegates and Spooners, and 
 others — have been uttering sentiments childish and 
 common-place ; or an official underling, with languid 
 oratory, and much allusion to blue-books, has essayed 
 to show that everything governmental is as it ought to 
 be, that the right man is in the right place, and that 
 everything is for the best ; or my Lord Palmerston, 
 with his usual nonchalant air, has contended that no 
 great harm has been done, and that if there had it did 
 not matter much. Up rises Mr Bright, with a voice 
 something of a scream, and rashes into the very heart 
 of the subject — scornfully tossing on one side, as irre- 
 levant, the platitudes of preceding speakers. The 
 question, whatever it may be, is taken up manfully and 
 boldly. There is no display of fine learning — no 
 Latin quotation — no subtle disquisition — no elaborated 
 climax — no polished peroration. There is no attempt 
 to evade the difficulties of the question ; on the con- 
 trary, the speaker seems to delight in them, as an 
 Irishman will fight for fun. He states them in all 
 their naked literalness, and wrestles with them as an 
 intellectual athlete. I do not say Mr Bright is always 
 in the right ; I believe he is often in the wrong, and 
 none can scorn more than I the Manchester policy as 
 regards peace and war — a policy which, as Mr Dis- 
 
92 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 raeli truly remarked, would degrade our ancient mon- 
 archy into a third-rate republic — a policy repugnant 
 to the national pride and sense of honour — a policy 
 oblivious of glorious traditions and ancient fame. But 
 Mr Bright is in earnest — he means what he says ; you 
 see that the speaker has heart as well as brain, and on 
 he goes right to the mark, uttering honestly and plainly 
 his thoughts, calling a spade a spade, however contrary 
 that may be to parliamentary etiquette and usage. 
 There are times when he attempts a loftier strain, when 
 he becomes even eloquent, and appeals to the con- 
 sciences of men of all parties, and carries with him 
 the hearts of all. At such times Mr Bright's earnest- 
 ness is overpowering. You cannot resist its impetuous 
 course, and the House, that feels rightly, if it votes 
 wrongly, is completely subdued. On more than one 
 occasion, when Mr Bright has risen to speak, has there 
 been 
 
 " Silence, deep as death, 
 And the boldest held his breath 
 For a time." 
 
 This was especially apparent a session or two back, 
 during the Indian debates. I never heard more 
 effective speeches delivered by any man, and I think 
 the general opinion coincided with my own. Mr 
 Bright was well up in his subject. India can produce 
 cotton. Manchester needs cotton. Hence it was Mr 
 Bright spoke with such vehemence, and passion, and 
 power. How great the contrast between a modern 
 
JOHN BRIGHT, M.P. 93 
 
 House of Commons and an ancient one — between 
 Bright and Burke ! It was an ancient dynasty over- 
 thrown ; an ancient people oppressed ; a multitude 
 numerous as the sands upon the sea-shore, wasting 
 away beneath British injustice ; another Verres harass- 
 ing an imperial Sicily, that excited the imagination 
 and fired the heart of Mr Burke. It was because a 
 splendid opportunity of growing cotton for Manchester 
 was lost, that Mr Bright bore down upon the govern- 
 ment with resistless force. The stand-point of the one 
 was chivalrous and classic, of the other modern and 
 commercial. Sneer at it as selfish if you will, but is 
 it not the truer one of the two 1 All men act from self- 
 ish motives, — the Christian who flies from the wrath to 
 come, as much as the spendthrift who squanders, or 
 the miser who saves. As I write, I read in the Times 
 the report of a sermon preached at the consecration of 
 Tiptree Heath Church, by no less a distinguished 
 divine than Dr Croly. The Doctor's aim was to show 
 that if a nation feared the Lord it would prosper, and 
 hence the propriety of the nation supporting a religious 
 establishment. Give your money to the Almighty 
 because He will pay it you back with interest. Such is 
 the modern gospel. If it be true that we can only attain 
 to an enlightened selfishness at the best ; and if it be 
 true, as Mr Bright believes, that the Manchester policy 
 as regards India would bring with it an immense 
 amount of good ; it, at any rate, must not be despised 
 for its selfishness, and surely, at any rate, may chal- 
 
94 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 lenge a comparison with the Derby policy, or the 
 Palmerston policy, or that of the Whigs. As regards 
 India, it is clear that, had the Bright policy prevailed, 
 we should have had no Indian mutiny. 
 
 <e Mr Bright," says Mr G. R. Francis, in his careful 
 estimate of the orators of the age, " may be said to 
 have been dragged upwards by Mr Cobden in his 
 rapid and remarkable ascent to fame and notoriety. 
 Had he been left to pursue his path alone it is more than 
 probable that he would never have emerged from the 
 dead level of society, or that if he had attained any emin- 
 ence at all, it would have been to achieve a distinction 
 not more illustrious than that of the most noisy and arro- 
 gant orator of a parish vestry, in whom strength of lungs 
 and an indomitable determination not to be outbullied, 
 are the most prominent qualifications." How foolish all 
 this seems, read by the light of the present; but when 
 Mr Francis wrote, such was the general feeling. And 
 now, like another Warwick, Mr Bright stands, — a set- 
 ter up or puller down of kings. When Lord Derby is 
 in office the Whigs are indignant, and declare that he 
 has formed an unnatural alliance with Mr Bright. 
 When he supports Lord John Russell, the Conserva- 
 tives hint at another Lichfield compact. Independent 
 Radicals, men whose self-love suggests leadership, inti- 
 mate that they differ strongly from the member for Bir- 
 mingham. Yet I am much mistaken if that honourable 
 gentleman do not act a conspicuous part in the House 
 for many years to come. As old statesmen pass away — 
 
JOHN BRIGHT, M.P. 95 
 
 as old prejudices are forgotten — as Mr Bright himself 
 mellows with years — as his views form with growing 
 experience, leadership and office must fall to his lot. 
 Even by this time is his great heresy, during the Cri- 
 mean War, forgotten if not forgiven. Wise men now 
 fail to perceive that for the anxiety then en dured — for 
 the treasure then wasted — for the blood then spilt as 
 water — for the heroism then displayed — for the national 
 enthusiasm then created, we have received an adequate 
 result. 
 
 The return of Mr Bright for Birmingham after 
 Manchester had rejected him, indicates a certain 
 amount of virtue. It indicates Reform and Peace. It 
 says to a man like Lord John Russell, standing trem- 
 bling at the work of his own hands, " O thou of little 
 faith, wherefore dost thou doubt ? " and it bids our 
 most warlike remember that England by interest, by 
 policy, by ten thousand considerations more or less 
 pressing, is bound to keep the peace with all the 
 world. 
 
 The Times is occasionally very angry with Mr 
 Bright, yet he has never said harder things of the 
 aristocracy and the British Constitution than the Times, 
 If you turn to the Saturday Review, you learn there is 
 not a man in office who is not a fool. Hear our officers 
 in the army and navy. According to them our rulers 
 are blind, and the country is going headlong to the 
 devil. It was only the other day that a military man 
 assured us that the most conservative of officers were 
 
yb MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 fast becoming radicals in consequence of their disgust 
 at the waste and mismanagement in high quarters. If 
 Mr B right's object be a good one, let him have the 
 same licence allowed to others. Public agitation re- 
 quires enthusiasm, and exaggeration is the necessary 
 result. All members of parliament on the platform 
 speak in a different manner to what they do in the 
 House, and this is still more the case with the Radical 
 Reformer, since on the platform he publishes his ex- 
 treme views, but in the House of Commons, where 
 there is a majority against him, he is compelled to take 
 what he can get. If Reform is required, — if a further 
 extension of the suffrage be a duty, — if it be true that 
 in the counties the tenant farmers are under the influ- 
 ence of their landlords ; or as Lord Derby, when Lord 
 Stanley, said, you can always tell the politics of the 
 representative of a county if you know the politics of 
 the leading landlords, — if our borough constituencies 
 be what they are, at Wakefield, and Gloucester, and 
 elsewhere, he who would endeavour to wipe away 
 from us this reproach and shame, and suggests reform, 
 is acting a patriot's part ; and the men who stand by 
 the present system, who shut their eyes to its defects, 
 who cry " esto perpetua," are the real fomenters of 
 class disunion and revolution. Can any one doubt 
 that the majority of men, whether in the House of 
 Commons or elsewhere, act from interested motives ? 
 If so, why should Mr Bright be sent to Coventry for 
 saying so ? Mr Bright is as interested as others, but 
 
JOHN BRIGHT, M.P. 97 
 
 he represents a class who have been denied their 
 rightful position in politics, to whom it is of actual 
 consequence that taxation be lightened and commerce 
 freed — a class to whom Great Britain must look more 
 and more to find employment and sustenance for her 
 swarming sons. The charge of self-interest comes 
 with an ill grace from lawyers, who move heaven and 
 earth to prevent law-reform, or from landlords, who 
 sing with might and main, 
 
 " Let learning, laws, and commerce die, 
 But give us back our old nobility." 
 
 The perpetual abuse of Mr Bright in some quarters 
 is ungenerous. Men who are dumb in his presence 
 are ready enough to bark behind his back. However, 
 from a hostile press and hostile orators, Mr Bright, if 
 he be wise, will learn somewhat. " Caius Gracchus," 
 writes old Plutarch, " was rough and impetuous, and 
 it often happened that in his harangues he was carried 
 away by passion, contrary to his judgment, and his 
 voice became shrill, and he fell to abuse, and grew 
 confused in his discourse. To remedy this fault he 
 employed Licinius, a well-educated slave, who used to 
 stand behind him when he was speaking, with a musi- 
 cal instrument, such as is used as an accompaniment 
 to singing, and whenever he observed that the voice 
 of Caius was becoming harsh and broken through pas- 
 sion, he would produce a soft note, upon which Caius 
 would immediately moderate his voice and become 
 calm." Our Caius may learn a lesson from him of Rome. 
 
 7 
 
VII. 
 
 THE TREASURY WHIPPER-IN. 
 
 Once, and once only, Mr Gladstone was known to 
 speak against time. The occasion was in the debate 
 on the third reading of the bill for the Repeal of the 
 Paper Duty. All at once it became apparent to the 
 Government that they were in danger; by outward 
 signs and symptoms it was made manifest to the most 
 obtuse of them that their foes were more numerous 
 than their friends, and that a division under such cir- 
 cumstances would be fatal. Lord Palmerston, who 
 has a happy faculty of sleeping all the evening like 
 Lord North, was wide awake ; Lord John Russell 
 displayed anxiety; Mr Gibson, it was very evident, 
 was ill at ease, as were the rest of the gentlemen who 
 generally sit in very ungraceful postures on the Trea- 
 sury Bench. To be beaten was the destruction of the 
 Palmerston Administration ; destruction of that admin- 
 istration was to every individual member of it, for a 
 longer or shorter interval of time — perhaps for ever — ■ 
 
THE TREASURY WHIPPER-IN. 99 
 
 loss of place ; and loss of place means loss of influence 
 — loss of rank — loss of salary — loss of everything the 
 politician strives to gain. In such circumstances 
 there is nothing like a Fabian policy, and there is 
 nothing more desirable than a long speech. The 
 man who speaks longest speaks best. Happily, Mr 
 Gladstone was on his legs, and there is no man 
 who has such a wonderful faculty of speaking as him- 
 self, and on the occasion to which I refer the hon. 
 gentleman very wisely exerted that faculty to the ut- 
 most. He (says an eye-witness) started vigorously 
 enough, dashed with impetuous brevity through a 
 great part of the subject, on which he might have ad- 
 vantageously insisted ; but all of a sudden he began 
 to wind round and round, over and over again came 
 the same arguments in almost the same words, and 
 for once the Chancellor of the Exchequer was — not 
 almost, but I should say quite — prosy. To an habitue 
 of the House, however, the cause was obvious. The 
 Treasury Whipper-in was seen flitting about in and 
 out, backwards and forwards, to the Treasury Bench, 
 with an anxious and perturbed aspect of countenance. 
 Sir Wm. Hayter, too, was moving about very much 
 as he used to do when he was in office — in fact, he 
 was evidently imitating the retired tallow-chandler, 
 who used to go down to the shop on melting days ; 
 while ever and anon white-waistcoated gentlemen, 
 evidently dragged from the opera Or evening parties, 
 were silently filling the ministerial benches. The 
 
 7 * 
 
100 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 whip was severe and unrelenting. However, at last 
 the Treasury Whipper-in entered the House, and sat 
 down upon the Treasury Bench with an air of com- 
 placent satisfaction — the thing was done — narrowly, 
 but effectually ; and then the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer sat down also. In spite of Mr. Disraeli's 
 reply, all ground of anxiety had been removed, and 
 the ministry had a majority — not a large one, but a 
 majority, when they were on the verge of defeat. 
 How was it that this defeat was averted, that the 
 ministry were saved, that the bill for the Kepeal of 
 the Paper Duty was carried ? The answer is — by the 
 exertions of the Treasury Whipper-in. 
 
 It was once my good fortune to behold Lord John 
 Russell smile and carry on a friendly conversation on 
 the Government benches of the British House of Com- 
 mons. Generally his lordship is cold and dignified in 
 his demeanour, as becomes a man who is part and 
 parcel of that wonderful machine — the British Consti- 
 tution. The individual with whom he was conversing 
 was rather under the average size, of slim build, very 
 plainly dressed, and with one of those fresh, ruddy, 
 whiskerless faces which make even an old man look 
 young. It was clear that he was a good Whig, and of 
 an old family, otherwise Lord John would have been 
 a little less friendly. It was also clear that he was in 
 office, or he would not have been sitting by the side of 
 premiers and Chancellors of the Exchequer ; and yet 
 his was not a face familiar to me as a man who had 
 
THE TREASURY WHIPPER-IN. 101 
 
 won his position by any talent, oratorical or adminis- 
 trative, of his own ; the name of the gentleman was 
 Brand — a reference to " Dod " informed me that he 
 was the second son of the twentieth Baron Dacre ; 
 that he was private secretary to Sir George Grey ; 
 that he was " averse to large organic changes f 9 that 
 he was returned for Lewes for the first time in 1852 ; 
 and that on the formation of the Palmerston Cabinet 
 he was promoted to the office held so long and ably by 
 Sir William Goodenough Hayter. After all, the gen- 
 eral reader is still in the dark with regard to Mr 
 Brand. He says to me, " Here is a man, born in 
 1814, in the prime of life, not memorable for any great 
 work or act, yet you give him a niche in your gallery of 
 modern statesmen. How is this ? What you quote 
 from ' Dod ' in no way enlightens me." Wait awhile, 
 my anxious inquirer. I frankly confess that, after all, 
 you are very little the wiser when I give you Mr Dod's 
 facts. There is a society called the Tract Society — of 
 the merits or demerits of which it is not for me to speak 
 here — the travelling agent of that society was an 
 immensely stout man. On one occasion that agent 
 called at a clergyman's house in a provincial town. 
 The clergyman's daughter ran laughing into her 
 father's study, " Papa, here's the Tract Society come." 
 In the same way Mr Brand is that awful personage — • 
 the British Parliamentary System. He smiles 
 and you are returned for Rottenborough, and the 
 newspapers trumpet the glorious triumph of liberal 
 
102 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 principles. He frowns and you are unseated for 
 bribery and corruption. Be on good terms with Mr 
 Brand, and you are elected into the Reform Club ; 
 you get that little place in the Circumlocution- office 
 for your son ; your wife has a ticket for one of Lady 
 Palmerston's brilliant assemblies. When the Duke of 
 "Wellington said in the excitement occasioned by the 
 passing of the Reform Bill, he did not see how the 
 king's government could be carried on, he forgot Mr 
 Brand. By the aid of Mr Brand nothing is easier. 
 Sir W. Hayter, Mr Brand's predecessor, was a model 
 in this respect, and still, I think, does a good deal of 
 amateur whipping-in. If I could catch him a moment 
 I would point him out. Here he is. " What, by the 
 door ? " No, he is in the lobby ; no, he is gone into the 
 House ; no, he is out. Ah ! here he comes ; but you 
 can't see him, for he in the midst of a group. Bu^ 
 see ! he has stepped on one side to read a note. That 
 is he — that sharp-featured, active-looking man ! a cross, 
 as it were, between a rollicking Irishman and an Eng- 
 lish merchant, all the shrewdness of the one and the fun 
 of the other ; in person square-built and not very tall, 
 but ever agile, and seemingly a model of the art of 
 perpetual motion. In the same way Mr Brand is al- 
 ways on duty. You will see him in the lobby before 
 the Speaker is at prayers ; after the Speaker has done 
 his prayers ; long after the gas has been turned on, 
 far into the night, ofttimes far into the early morn. 
 Mr Brand dwells in the lobby. It is not known that 
 
THE TREASURY WHIPPER-IN. 103 
 
 he sleeps anywhere, with the exception of forty winks 
 on the Treasury benches, nor that he partakes of meals 
 except during the parliamentary recess. He says to 
 one, "Come," and he cometh — to another, "Go," and 
 he goeth. He is friendly with every one, and manages 
 to talk to a dozen people at once. He holds one by 
 the button, he administers to another a dig in the ribs, 
 at another he winks, another he accosts in a free and 
 easy manner. He slaps the peers on the back, and 
 shakes hands even with Irish M.P.'s. His duty is, as 
 Canning — no fourth-rate man, as a contemporary ludi- 
 crously calls him — said, " to make a House, and keep a 
 House, and cheer the minister." On one occasion 
 Canning wrote : — 
 
 " Cheer him as his audience flag, 
 Brother Hiley, Brother Bragge, 
 Cheer him as he hobbles vilely, 
 Brother Bragge, and Brother Hiley." 
 
 Brothers Bragge and Hiley were the Treasury Whip- 
 pers-in of their day. Mr Brand is, perhaps, the most 
 powerful man in the House of Commons. Let him 
 over-sleep himself — let him have a fit of indigestion — 
 let him be laid up with the gout — and immediately 
 the Liberal Cabinet is in extremis, and the nation is 
 plunged into all the horrors of a crisis. How comes 
 this about ? you very naturally ask. You tell me you 
 do not hear of Mr Brand's eloquence ; you do not see 
 his name in Hansard ; it does not seem to you that he 
 shines in debate. Well, the answer to this question 
 
104 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 will let you into one of the secrets of the British con- 
 stitution — a secret that you will not discover, however 
 attentively you may study Blackstone or De Lolme. 
 Gentle reader, you cannot be so green as to suppose 
 that, in any country under the sun, men are guided 
 to their conclusions simply by means of the debates of 
 public assemblies ; you cannot be so green even as to 
 believe that these discussions have anything to do with 
 the subsequent decision. Pre-eminently in the British 
 House of Commons this is not the case, and the con- 
 sequence is that the debate does not influence the de- 
 cision, but is merely the apology for it. The premier 
 makes his speech, and he leaves his whipper-in to 
 make up the majority. Mr Brand is the Ministerial 
 Whipper-in ; hence it is that he is always in the lobby 
 finding pairs — laying hold of this — preventing that 
 from escaping ; and that his means of communication 
 reach to the clubs, to the opera, as well as to the 
 smoking-room and library of the House of Commons. 
 The fact is, we are governed by the whip ; nor could 
 we wish otherwise. Mr Disraeli, in his Life of Lord 
 George Bentinck, speaks of the creation of a third po- 
 litical party as " a result at all times and under any 
 circumstances difficult to achieve, and which had failed 
 even under the auspices of accomplished and experi- 
 enced statesmen." Sir Robert Peel understood this. 
 In a letter written to Mr Gregory he says, " What 
 must have been the inevitable fate of a government 
 composed of Goulburn, Sir John Beckett, Wetherel, 
 
THE TREASURY WHIPPER-IN. 105 
 
 and myself — supported by very warm friends, no doubt, 
 but those warm friends being prosperous country gen- 
 tlemen — foxhunters, &c. &c. ; most excellent men, who 
 will attend one night, but who will not leave their 
 favourite pursuits to sit up till two or three o'clock 
 fighting questions of detail, on which, however, a 
 government must have a majority, we could not have 
 stood creditably a fortnight," — that is, in other words, 
 the hon. baronet felt that his party would not respond 
 to the whip. The French republicans failed because 
 they could not understand this, and for a similar 
 reason the Metropolitan Board of Works, and 
 the respectable parish vestries of St Pancras or 
 Marylebone, seem in a disorganised and chaotic state, 
 and succeed in doing such little business. During the 
 recent Reform Debates more than one effort was made 
 to count out the House of Commons, and yet let 
 there be anything supremely unimportant of a personal 
 nature, such as that squabble between Messrs Hors- 
 man and Walters, and the House is crammed in every 
 part. When a discussion respecting our. three hun- 
 dred millions of Indian subj ects is raised, I have often 
 seen less than forty members present. One advantage 
 of this is that even the dullest dog in the House gets 
 his say, for if the House be thin — and why should any 
 sane man be compelled to listen to a lawyer talking for 
 promotion, or to a borough representative airing the 
 dictionary for the exclusive benefit of his own consti- 
 tuents ? — the Whipper-in knows where all his men are, 
 
106 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 and will bring them up when the division bell rings 
 and the serious business of the evening has commenced. 
 Without the so-called whip, Parliamentary govern- 
 ment is almost an impossibility — the assembly, with its 
 eternal talk, would fall into contempt, and all power 
 would pass into the hands of the Crown. Make the 
 experiment on a small scale — get a hundred honest, in- 
 telligent men together — each man with a theory of his 
 own and a grievance, and what would be the result 1 
 Why, that nothing whatever could be done. There are 
 votes taken every night in which the majority of mem- 
 bers take no earthly interest ; yet these votes are essen- 
 tial to the carrying on of the Queen's Parliament. Now, 
 in the House of Commons, by means of the party and 
 the whip, actually some progress is made. Here, in 
 England, so much business is taken off by the munici- 
 palities, that our Parliament is far less laden than the 
 French Assembly ; yet, if all our legislators were hon- 
 est, independent freemen, disdainful of party and dis- 
 obedient to this influence, we should split up into help- 
 lessness and fatuity similar to that of the French. It 
 is the application of the whip that makes the House of 
 Commons a working assembly, and preserves us from 
 the horrors of despotism. 
 
 Dreamers and theorists — political babes and suck- 
 lings — may tell me that a Whipper-in is the result of 
 parliamentary corruption — that we should be better 
 without him — that such as he are a fearful sign of the 
 times ; but if jobs must be done — if little arrange- 
 
THE TREASURY WHIPPER-IN. 107 
 
 ments must be made — if, in other words, people re- 
 quire to be looked after, the Whipper-in is the man to 
 do it. Parliament is a self-seeking assembly, and to 
 buy every man at his own valuation would be evi- 
 dently a bad bargain for the people. Indeed, the 
 Whipper-in is most useful to his party. He will sup- 
 ply Liberal candidates to any amount; he will judici- 
 ously distribute the Government advertisements and 
 patronage ; he will make the needful arrangements 
 with the Opposition as to the public business ; he 
 will reconcile uneasy consciences to the unpleasant 
 task of renouncing in Parliament the pledges they 
 made when out. I confess — unflinching patriot though 
 I be — my mouth waters as I think of the good things 
 the Whipper-in has at his disposal ; and I rush away 
 from the lobby exclaiming, " Lead me not into tempt- 
 ation : but deliver me from evil." 
 
VIII. 
 
 JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK. 
 
 Are there honest men in the world of politics ? and if 
 so, are they the better or the worse for their honesty ? 
 These are questions to be asked, and if yon will, an- 
 swered ; or, to come to particulars, would John Arthur 
 Roebuck have been more successful, as men reckon 
 success, had he been less honest ? The honourable 
 gentleman would reply in the affirmative. The public 
 must form its own opinion. When the great Chatham 
 entered the House of Commons, Walpole exclaimed, 
 " We must muzzle that terrible cornet of horse." The 
 muzzling process is believed to exist at this day. We 
 have seen wonders effected, and we naturally suspect 
 a cause. When Mr Bernal Osborne, after years of 
 silence and peace, utters his wild shriek of liberty, we 
 naturally come to a conclusion that his seat on the 
 Treasury Bench is insecure. On Irish members the 
 muzzling process is very apparent. Under its sooth- 
 ing influence the roaring patriot aggravates his voice 
 
JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK. 109 
 
 and sings very small indeed. But the man gets his 
 place, and we clap our hands. In success there is 
 manifestly a saving grace. If a man has that we 
 honour him. We stop not to inquire how he has 
 succeeded. If he has betrayed his party, if he has 
 sworn oaths and broken them, if he has said one thing 
 one day and another the next, if he has worn one face 
 on the hustings and another in St Stephen's, he is 
 honoured nevertheless ; just as people flatter the lucky 
 speculator, the successful tradesman, the great mill- 
 owner, and never stop to inquire by what sharp prac- 
 tice, by what ingenious dishonesty, or gross fraud, the 
 wealth thus venerated has been acquired. In these 
 days it is not the rogues that walk in mud. Ah me ! 
 but yesterday, in the slush and rain and cold, I met 
 one born in humble life, but dowered with a beauty 
 for which many a Belgravian lady would sell her soul. 
 Vainly I looked for the loveliness of an earlier day. 
 Care and want had furrowed her brow, and had thin- 
 ned the luxuriant locks, and had dimmed the lustre of 
 eyes once bright as pearls, and paled the red lips and 
 rosy cheek. In this great city, where sin exists with- 
 out the sense of shame, she had retained her honesty, 
 but at what a price ! Quid rides ? as Mr Thackeray, 
 with his immense erudition, comprising at least a part 
 of the Latin Grammar, would say. I felt in that poor 
 creature's presence as if at the shrine of a saint. Thus 
 I do not indicate that Cato is an idiot because he is 
 alone, poor, neglected, because his struggles have been 
 
110 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 great and his successes small. A man who will find 
 fault with all parties, will expose officials, will oppose 
 himself to the prejudices and passions of the hour, will 
 blame the narrowness of the Church, and yet at the 
 same time express his abhorrence of the intolerance 
 of dissent, cannot look for popularity. Nay more, if 
 we suspect Cato of occasional injustice, if he himself 
 evinces temper and passion, if he shows a sternness in 
 some quarters where we should expect forbearance, 
 and a forbearance where we should look for sternness, 
 if he is occasionally conveniently dumb or inconveni- 
 ently fussy, especially if he gets mixed up with a dirty 
 job, like a Galway contract for instance, — if our Cato 
 considers himself master of every subject, if he be al- 
 ways obtruding himself before better men, like Talka- 
 tive in the Pilgrim's Progress, exclaiming, " I will 
 talk of things heavenly or things earthly — things 
 moral or things evangelical — things sacred or things 
 profane — things past or things to come — things foreign 
 or things at home — things more essential or things 
 circumstantial," — perhaps we shall understand how it 
 is Cato is not held in more honour, and shall see that 
 the public are not so much to blame as at first sight 
 may appear. 
 
 It is half-past four, and we are standing in the lobby 
 of the House of Commons. A very little man, leaning 
 on a stick, comes tottering towards us. He is shabbily 
 dressed, and seems very, very feeble. Poor man, you 
 piteously exclaim, why are you here in this unhealthy 
 
JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK. Ill 
 
 atmosphere — in this fierce arena ? Why seek you to 
 wrestle with these athletes when you were better at 
 Malvern or Scarborough, or some other locality sacred 
 to Hygeia ? Such are your natural reflections. They 
 are not, however, those of the subject of them. His 
 feeling evidently is quite otherwise. You can imagine 
 him saying, " I am plain John Arthur Roebuck, friend 
 of the people, advocate of progress, and champion of 
 the rights of man. Out of the way, ye blind leaders 
 of the blind ; are ye not, every mother's son of you, 
 nincompoops, pudding-headed and asinine windbags — 
 shams ? Have ye not blundered and placed England 
 on the brink of perdition ? I say, go home, and I, John 
 Arthur Roebuck, must save her, or she is lost for ever." 
 It is true that when Mr Roebuck has had the field to 
 himself he has not been eminently successful. He was 
 Chairman of the Administrative Reform Association ; 
 where is it now ? He was Chairman of the Western 
 Bank — a bubble that has long been burst. He was 
 Chairman of the Sebastopol Committee ; yet how im- 
 potent were its conclusions ! He was one of the great 
 men of the Gal way Steam Packet Company, and in 
 some quarters a belief was entertained that this was a 
 bubble. Surely a gentler style of criticism, a little less 
 arrogancy of manner, a little less virulence of invect- 
 ive, is becoming to a man whose failures have been 
 so numerous ! 
 
 Let me describe Mr Roebuck as I saw him on the 
 night when he made his motion for the appointment of 
 
112 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 the Sebastopol Committee. Imagine yourself, intel- 
 ligent reader, in the Speaker's Gallery. Glancing 
 down the gangway, on the Ministerial side, there stands 
 a little man with a hooked nose and a face indicative 
 of weakness and premature decay. The tones of his 
 voice are faint and sickly; his action is feeble. He 
 forgets what he is going to say in a manner painful to 
 witness. He rubs his hand across his forehead, and 
 tries to catch the missing train of thought — but in vain ; 
 it is gone from him for ever. The House listens 
 kindly, and cheers, but all in vain. There he stands — 
 he whose winged words were sharper than arrows, 
 whose sting was that of an adder, whose imperious 
 tone, his hand pointing all the while, as if to say, 
 " Thou art the man," drove conscience home to the 
 most careless, and made the most phlegmatic writhe, 
 who seemed to scalp his victim, as it were, and the fear 
 of whom was a principle in many a heart — there he 
 stands with opportunity, the grand thing he had been 
 panting for all his ambitious life, at length his own. 
 The time at length came for which he had prayed since 
 earliest youth — a grand drama, and a grand part to act 
 in it for himself. And oh ! the mockery of life, the 
 power gone, and the golden moments lost for ever. 
 The sight was a sad and an affecting one, and when 
 poor Roebuck sat down, for a wonder for once the 
 House was subdued, and hushed and still. Pity for the 
 speaker allayed all hostility. It seemed as if no one 
 cared to create a debate — as if the spectacle of a popu- 
 
JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK. 113 
 
 lar statesman struck down in the moment of what was 
 to have been his triumph was of its kind as sad as that 
 of a gallant army mouldering away beneath adminis- 
 trative imbecility and neglect. 
 
 At a public meeting held not very long since at 
 Sheffield, Mr Roebuck endeavoured to answer the 
 question how it was that he, unconnected with the 
 great parties in,the State, not of the great families, un- 
 distinguished by wealth, unknown to fame, should 
 have won the approbation and confidence of his coun- 
 trymen. Warming with his theme he exclaimed, " It 
 is not talent, it is not name, it is not rank, it is not 
 wealth, it is stedfastness in that path which I had 
 marked out for myself in the beginning. I am proud 
 to say that in the year 1832 I published a programme 
 of the opinions I then held. I had prepared myself 
 for a public life, I had then formed my opinions, and 
 I consigned them to paper. I printed them, and to 
 them I now adhere. That which I said in 1832 I say 
 now, and it is my firm and my stedfast adherence to 
 the opinions I then expressed which has now won for 
 me the confidence of my countrymen. Going into 
 Parliament unknown, unsupported, and only recom- 
 mended by that true friend of the people, Joseph 
 Hume, I determined not to ally myself to either of the 
 great parties then dividing the House of Commons 
 and the kingdom. To that rule I have adhered through 
 life, and no man can now say I am either Whig or 
 Tory." Roebuck, then, may be described as a 
 
114 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 Radical politician, but of a Radicalism of so singular a 
 character as to induce him to side and seat himself with 
 the Opposition rather than with the supporters of 
 Government. He sits now on the gangway on the 
 Opposition side. Gentlemen whose opinions are sup- 
 posed most to resemble his own he cannot abide. It 
 seems strange now that he has even acquired the re- 
 putation he has ; yet there was a time when many 
 competent judges of all the orators of the House de- 
 lighted chiefly in John Arthur Roebuck, and deemed 
 the skill with which he unmasked a job — the delight 
 with which he brought it before the House — the in- 
 vective which he directed against all parties connected 
 with it, inimitable. On the whole, now, Mr Roebuck 
 may be pronounced a failure — that is, other men, less 
 gifted, less honest, less popular, have been more suc- 
 cessful. The cause is chiefly in an unhappy tempera- 
 ment ; a temperament which makes him always go in 
 an opposite direction to what is required. To get Mr 
 Roebuck on your side you must beg him to speak 
 against you. Sydney Smith used to say of certain in- 
 dividuals, Mr S. is a clubable man. Now the House of 
 Commons after all is a club, and Mr Roebuck is not a 
 clubable man. This is the primary cause. Another 
 is the vanity which makes him insist on playing first 
 fiddle, Aut Ccesar aut melius is his motto. 
 
 Again, Mr Roebuck has exhibited another great 
 fault, he has not trusted in himself. He has shown 
 the vanity, and, I may add, the weakness of a woman. 
 
JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK. 115 
 
 His duel with Mr Black of the Morning Chronicle, his 
 endeavour to get the Times censured in the House for 
 a description of the honourable gentleman which every- 
 one who heard it confessed to be singularly truthful 
 and exact, his impotent attempt to put Mr Disraeli 
 down when the latter had but just made his parlia- 
 mentary debut, his vindictive attack, only very re- 
 cently, on Dr Mitchell, the ex-Bodmin M.P., who 
 plainly confessed to the House, and in a way which 
 gained for him lasting honour, that it was true that he 
 had agreed to retire from the representation of his 
 borough rather than stay to fight the petition which 
 had been presented with regard to his seat, for the sim- 
 ple reason that he was a poor man comparatively 
 speaking, and had not the money requisite for a par- 
 liamentary defence ; such things as these deservedly 
 lower Mr Roebuck's position in the House, and with 
 all right-thinking men all over the country. Were Mr 
 Roebuck less impulsive, less irritable, less jealous of 
 himself, he would spare his friends and supporters the 
 repetition of such painful scenes. After enjoying the 
 courtesies of the French at Cherbourg, could anything 
 be more execrable than his insulting references to the 
 women renowned all the world over for fascinations, 
 which might even, for a moment have soothed Mr 
 Roebuck into civility and good temper ? It is not thus 
 that public men should act, and sure are we that the 
 public man who thus acts must have great talents, 
 great industry, great honesty, to hold up his head in the 
 
116 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 face of such things. Granting Mr Roebuck to have 
 done the state some service as a politician and a man 
 of letters, though in this latter capacity he has not 
 greatly shone in his day, it is obvious that his worst foe 
 has been himself, and that if he had, like all truly great 
 men, been above the suggestions of a childish vanity, 
 he would by this time have taken a higher stand. His 
 success must be in himself, in the verdict of his own 
 heart, in the consciousness that he has been true to his 
 mission, that he has not swerved aside for man's smile 
 or frown. Political independence is rare, and is chiefly 
 affected by eccentricities such as the late Colonel Sib- 
 thorp, or Mr Drummond. In the case of Mr Roebuck 
 it is often an obstacle in the path of political progress. 
 In spite of Mr Roebuck's pertinacious egotism, that 
 makes him represent himself as the utterance of the 
 public, he must feel that he is not that. 
 
 Mr Roebuck's references to himself at all times are 
 amusing. We infer, as we glance at his speeches, 
 public education has prospered because it has had Mr 
 Roebuck's support. On a very recent occasion the se- 
 verest censure he could pass upon Lord John Russell 
 was, that he had failed to consult Mr Roebuck. I am 
 the good dog Tearem, says Mr Roebuck, who guard 
 the lambs who would otherwise be torn to pieces by 
 the ravenous wolf. I am the man, he told the Sheffield 
 people the other day, who says hard things, as if hard- 
 hitting was the sine qua non of statesmanship. A man 
 in public life should have no mock modesty ; in Mr 
 
JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK. ] 17 
 
 Roebuck's case bashfulness has not certainly been 
 carried to excess. An oracle, it was said, warned the 
 Athenians against a man who alone was opposed to 
 the whole city. Phocion claimed the honour of such 
 singularity for himself. When one of his proposals 
 was received with unusual approbation, he turned 
 round to his friends and asked whether he had let any- 
 thing escape him that was wrong. Bishop Thirlwall 
 tells us, " In his speeches he carefully avoided all 
 rhetorical embellishments, which he had learnt from 
 Plato to consider as a kind of flattery unworthy an 
 honest man, and studied a sententious brevity," which, 
 however, was so enlivened with wit and humour, as 
 often to make a deeper impression than the most 
 elaborate periods. It was even observed by one of his 
 adversaries that Demosthenes was the best orator, but 
 Phocion the most powerful speaker. And Demosthenes 
 himself, it is said, trembled for the effect of his elo- 
 quence when Phocion rose after him, and would 
 whisper to his friends, " Here comes the hatchet to my 
 speech." Mr Roebuck is, and he seems to pride him- 
 self on it, the Phocion of the House of Commons. He 
 must stand alone. He can bear no rival near his throne. 
 He can be as severe on John Bright as Mr Disraeli, 
 on friends as foes. The right of private judgment, 
 carried to excess, is the vice of modern society, ac- 
 cording to Mr Gladstone's teaching in his " Church 
 and its Relation to the State," and by no one living 
 statesman is this right more rigidly guarded, or occa- 
 
118 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 sionally more inconveniently displayed, than by Mr 
 Roebuck. 
 
 His non-success, considered in a worldly point of 
 view, may be in some degree the result of the fact that 
 he has stedfastly set his face against complying with 
 the conditions which insure success. No one ever 
 asked him to play the part of the tribune of the people. 
 The parties in the House are Whig and Tory, and 
 the electors out-of-doors are either the one or the 
 other. It is true the names are rarely heard, but the 
 essential division remains the same. There were 
 Radicals when Mr Roebuck took his seat for Bath. 
 As he tells us, he has not changed in his opinions 
 since 1832. Well, when he first entered Parliament, 
 there had been the greatest political convulsion known 
 in England since 1688. Democracy, flushed with 
 triumph, like a giant refreshed with wine, trod the 
 land. The privileged classes were in despair, and 
 peers and bishops trembled for their very heads. The 
 reaction had not set in which in so short a time nearly 
 undid all the good that the Bill had effected. The 
 mistake of John Arthur Roebuck was in supposing 
 that it never would — that the Reform Bill had usher- 
 ed in a new era — that the days of corruption and ig- 
 norance and darkness were past — that Parliament was 
 to be a grand reality, and that henceforth the people, 
 enlightened, passionless, high-toned, indignant at all 
 petty meannesses, impatient of all party frauds, were 
 to rule the land. In this estimate, in sorrow and shame 
 
JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK. 119 
 
 be it known, Mr Roebuck made an egregious mistake. 
 To struggle up from the people, not by pandering to 
 the ruling classes, nor to the prejudice of the mob, 
 nor to the caprices of the peers, is a Herculean task. 
 The great Sir Robert Peel is an admirable illustration 
 of a successful tactician. He sought power, we grant, 
 for public not personal ends : yet how did he acquire 
 that power ? By the most unscrupulous pandering to 
 the passions and prejudices of party. What Protest- 
 ant prejudices — what Tory prejudices — what Protec- 
 tionist prejudices — received, the sanction of his support, 
 and yet what ruin he wrought to the very prejudices 
 he had not feebly advocated, but solemnly and at times 
 sanctimoniously upheld. Still he succeeded, and be- 
 came England's model statesman. Roebuck has been 
 the reverse of all this. Not only has he not supported 
 national prejudices, but he has declaimed against them 
 as illogical and absurd. This is a bad plan. If you 
 wish to become a popular statesman, as a democrat, 
 attack the aristocracy ; as a dissenter, expose the 
 failures of the State Church ; as a churchman, exhibit 
 the weakness and bitterness of dissent ; or, as philan- 
 thropy is in vogue, become the furious partisan of some 
 of the movements by which a remedy is vainly sought 
 for evils that have resulted from the complications of 
 ages, and you are sure of a party to blow your trumpet 
 and to follow in your wake — to swear that you are a 
 heaven-born statesman, and that you will be immortal. 
 Roebuck has been a standing protest against all this. 
 
120 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 He lias carried this protest to an absurd extent ; he 
 
 has become the victim of this feeling. A life spent in 
 
 unsuccessful invective has soured him. He reminds 
 
 us of the hero of Tennyson's " Vision of Sin/' as he 
 
 exclaims 
 
 " Unto me my maudlin gall, 
 And my mockeries of the world." 
 
IX. 
 
 LORD STANLEY. 
 
 Gibbon tells us, " of the various forms of government 
 which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary mon- 
 archy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule. 
 Is it possible to relate, without an indignant smile, 
 that on the father's decease the property of a nation, 
 like that of a drove of oxen, descends to his infant son, 
 as yet unknown to mankind and himself? " The lan- 
 guage of Gibbon is not altogether inapplicable to 
 hereditary statesmanship. Why should the tenth 
 transmitter of a foolish face be a ruler over men whose 
 natures he cannot understand and with whose wants it 
 is impossible for him to sympathize 1 Surely the son 
 of a lord is born no wiser, abler, stronger-minded than 
 his fellows. Is he not very often born considerably 
 less so, and, at any rate, does he not labour under one 
 great damning disadvantage, that he has no whole- 
 some struggle from his youth upwards ; that his im- 
 petuous will has never been disciplined by wise con- 
 
122 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 trol; that the very conditions — I mean the struggle 
 with hard necessity and adverse circumstances without 
 which most men would pass their days in epicurean 
 ease — by means of which it is given to a man to be- 
 come great, are denied him from his birth. An Eng- 
 lishman crawls in the dust before a lord. When can 
 he hear the stern and unwelcome voice of truth? 
 How can he understand the condition-of-England 
 question ? Poverty is almost romantic in the eyes of 
 the rich. A great duke lives in Brighton because he 
 cannot afford to live in one of his own palatial resi- 
 dences. The poor man is not thus encumbered, — he 
 has no need to trouble himself with settlements and 
 lawyers ; nor is he required to subscribe to the county 
 charities — to preside at anniversary dinners — to dance 
 attendance at court, — nor has he his every movement 
 recorded in the morning papers. See Strephon on a 
 bank reclining, in a costume very Arcadian, and very 
 much like what we see at the Adelphi, on the occa- 
 sion of a rustic fete. Hear him sing, 
 
 " At ease reclined, in rustic state, 
 How vain the ardour of the crowd, 
 How low, how little are the proud, 
 How indigent the great ! " 
 
 Who would not be Strephon rather than your much- 
 to-be-pitied lord ! Indeed so over-weighted is the 
 latter that he generally performs even his political 
 duties by proxy. But we are entering on a question 
 
LORD STANLEY. 123 
 
 respecting which there may be different opinions. We 
 imagine all will admit that Lord Edward Henry Stan- 
 ley, eldest son of the Earl of Derby, born at Knows- 
 ley, Lancashire, 1826, is the ablest argument we have 
 in favour of hereditary statesmanship. Prima facie, 
 a man who has an impediment in his speech, so that 
 his utterance is unpleasant and imperfect, stands a 
 poor chance of being elected into an assembly one 
 great qualification for which is more or less of oratori- 
 cal power. To read a speech is yet more an outrage 
 on our English ideas ; yet Lord Stanley did this not 
 very long since. To be a refined thinker — to go down 
 to the core and kernel of things — unfits a man for the 
 use of the usual party expressions, which unless you 
 use you may vainly long for a parliamentary position. 
 James Stuart Mill, our greatest writer on political and 
 social science, has not a seat in the House of Com- 
 mons ; our profoundest Greek historian, Mr Grote, 
 we know declined to stand for Westminster, on ac- 
 count of the impossibility of coming to a good under- 
 standing with its noisy and vehement democrats. 
 Lord Stanley's statesmanship is of a similar high 
 order. Yet, when Lord George Bentinck died, he 
 was elected his successor as M.P. for Walpole's favour- 
 ite borough of King's Lynn. How is it that Lord 
 Stanley has thus made a good start in public life ? 
 The answer is soon given — he is the son of his father, 
 and that father, one of England's leading landlords ; 
 
124 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 that father, if not one of the most eminent politicians 
 of the age, at any rate is one of the most eloquent 
 speakers in any legislative assembly in the world. 
 
 In his " Memoirs of the E-eign of King George the 
 Second/' old Horace Walpole, then Earl of Orford, 
 apologizing for the unfavourable light in which he 
 places many of his former characters, says : — " If, after 
 all, many of the characters are bad, let it be remem- 
 bered that the scenes I describe passed in the highest 
 life, the soil, the vices I like." This is a little severe, 
 and, let us hope, not quite so true in the days of Queen 
 Victoria as King George. Bat when a young noble- 
 man scorns delight, and lives laborious days, it must 
 be admitted on all sides he deserves well of his country. 
 From his youth upward, Lord Stanley has done this. 
 He was a pupil of Dr Arnold, of Rugby ; and we all 
 know how, when Dr Arnold's pupils came up to Ox- 
 ford, there was found to be in them a thoughtfulness, a 
 conscientiousness, a sense of duty, rare in men so young, 
 and by means of which they were favourably contrasted 
 with the alumni of other public schools. This was a 
 confession, as we all know, fairly and honourably made 
 by Arnold's opponents. In Lord Stanley's case, this 
 result is very manifest ; and no doubt it was this that 
 led him — while the unfledged lordlings of his own rank 
 and standing were wearing white waistcoats, and writ- 
 ing very indifferent poetry, and astonishing heaven and 
 earth by Young England affectation — to leave home, 
 and, by means of foreign travel, to enlarge his views 
 
LORD STANLEY. 125 
 
 and liberalise his ideas. As soon as he was of age, 
 Lord Stanley spent some time in Canada and America. 
 His next step was to the West Indies, to study the re- 
 sults of negro emancipation, and the condition of the 
 sugar plantations. He next paid a visit to the East, 
 and was still in India when nominated, in March, 1852, 
 Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the 
 Derby Ministry. These visits have borne fruit. Lord 
 Stanley learnt much ; got rid of many exploded ideas, 
 became wiser, as all men should do who stand face to 
 face with the truth of things and the facts of life. As a 
 social reformer, Lord Stanley is widely known. Few 
 men have done more with regard to the encouragement 
 of mechanics' institutes, the establishment of public 
 libraries, and the promotion of popular education. 
 When, in 1858, he was made President of the Indian 
 Board, by his introduction of the competitive system 
 into the service he gave an impulse to education among 
 the middle classes which it is almost impossible to 
 over-estimate. His philanthropy is thus of the highest 
 and most practical character — of that character which 
 acknowledges that human affairs are conducted on ge- 
 neral principles, that suffering and human degradation 
 are, as a rule, the result of a violation of law, and that 
 the remedy is to be found, not so much in Acts of Parlia- 
 ment, or temporary expedients, as in the enlightenment, 
 moral and intellectual, of the sufferers themselves. 
 Many are the nostrums of our day. In vain are baths 
 and wash-houses, in vain are flannel- waistcoats and 
 
126 
 
 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 thick boots, in vain are good meals and a good atmo- 
 sphere, in vain are Saturday half-holidays and an 
 abridgment of the hours of labour, in vain are the 
 wonderful mechanical improvements of our day, if the 
 people suffer from lack of knowledge, and the night of 
 ignorance lies heavily on the land. As a politician, 
 Lord Stanley is hard to define. Dod describes him as 
 a Conservative, but in favour of the admission of Jews 
 to Parliament, of the Maynooth grant, and of the ex- 
 emption of Dissenters from church-rates. When his 
 father has been in .office, Lord Stanley has been 
 one of most valuable supporters in the Lower House. 
 Yet whert, in 1855, the death of Sir W. Molesworth 
 created a vacancy in the Colonial-office, Lord Palmer- 
 ston, sensible of Lord Stanley's talents and popularity, 
 offered him the seals of that department. More than 
 once Lord Stanley has been named as a probable 
 holder of office under the present premier ; and if, at 
 the last election, he had come forward as a candidate 
 for the city of London — and a numerously-signed re- 
 quisition was got up to that effect — it is not clear but 
 that he would have been selected by the City in pre- 
 ference to one of the present M.P.'s. The fact that 
 such a belief existed indicates Lord Stanley's liberality. 
 With another well-known Liberal of a still more ultra 
 character, Lord Stanley is supposed to have held ami- 
 cable relations. In the House of Commons' smoking- 
 room the interviews between Lord Stanley and John 
 Bright are said to have been of a very frequent and 
 
LORD STANLEY. 127 
 
 confidential nature. They both of them have this in 
 common — that they belong to the higher order of 
 statesmen, though their respective standpoints are 
 wide as the poles asunder. They may yet sit side by 
 side on the Treasury Benches. Lord Stanley must, 
 sooner or later, cut the old country Quarter Sessions 
 party that feasted so greatly at St James's Hall the 
 other day, under the presidency of Lord John Man- 
 ners. As it is, his temporary alliance with them has 
 damaged him, for people find it difficult to make allow- 
 ances for a man of trained judgment, and with an 
 understanding well cultivated, doing anything so un- 
 natural as leading the forlorn hope of a retrograde party 
 in church and state, — and surely the Indians, native or 
 otherwise, have reason to complain that because some 
 poor Whigs wanted to get back into office, Lord Stan- 
 ley was driven out, and his place supplied by a third- 
 rate official like Sir Charles Wood, a man who is always 
 — what Lord Stanley never is — common-place. This 
 leads me to the great characteristic of Lord Stanley. 
 He has less of mere partisanship and more of elevated 
 principle, perhaps, than any other man in Parliament. 
 He has thought out his own conclusions ; he has 
 strength of mind sufficient to rely on them. He is 
 superior to the prejudices of the hour. Never does 
 he stoop to pander to the delusions of the mob ; he is 
 the last man in the world to talk what the Americans 
 call " Bunkum." He has a system to fall back on, and 
 
128 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 this is a great advantage in these days of incoherent 
 action and chaotic legislation. 
 
 Come into the House of Commons. Some grand dis- 
 play of force is expected — some question touching the 
 hearts and arousing the passions of men is being dis- 
 cussed — some crisis is at hand. On the front bench of 
 the Opposition, seated between Disraeli and Sir John 
 Pakington, is a young-looking, slender figure, much 
 more plainly dressed than the great exponent of the 
 Asiatic mystery, and by no means so elaborately neat 
 as the worthy late First Lord of the Admiralty. His 
 features are small, his complexion is light, his counte- 
 nance pale, his figure slim, and the expression of his 
 face slightly haughty ; but this is not discernible in the 
 Strangers' Gallery. You see, however, that he is an in- 
 tensely earnest listener, that not a word of the debate 
 escapes him, that he occasionally takes notes, and oc- 
 casionally speaks to his friends around him, as if in 
 consultation. It may be that he rises to speak, and 
 your curiosity is aroused. When you hear the Speaker 
 announce Lord Stanley's name, you lean forward, for 
 the House cheers, and the speaker is evidently a 
 favourite. What ! you cannot hear a word, though 
 every one is silent as a cat ? Ah ! now you will hear, 
 the voice is filling the place, and, by-and-by, will float 
 up to you. Alas ! alas ! there is a sound, it is true, as 
 of a man speaking ; but it may be Greek, or Hebrew, 
 or Chaldee, that he is speaking, for aught you know to 
 the contrarv. Nature has not been so bountiful to the 
 
LORD STANLEY. 129 
 
 son as to the sire, yet you will see that the House 
 listens with interest, that the argument tells, and when 
 you read the speech in the Times next day, you will 
 think that the speech was one of the best of the night. 
 It is a fine illustration of the triumph of mind over 
 matter, and shows, as we have said, that statesmanship 
 may exist, of the highest qualities, without the pos- 
 sessor of them being an orator at all. Out of doors, 
 this would be a defect ; it would unfit a man to suc- 
 ceed in making new truths popular. In the House of 
 Commons, where declamation avails but little, it is a 
 slight drawback, which is soon overlooked, when a man 
 works so hard and so successfully, as patriot and 
 statesman, as Lord Stanley does. 
 
 Poor Bruff, who died prematurely the other day, 
 tells us : — 
 
 " My Lord Tomnoddy's the son of an Earl, 
 His hair is straight hut his whiskers curl ; 
 His lordship's forehead is far from wide, 
 But there 's plenty of room for the Drains inside. 
 He writes his name with indifferent ease, 
 He 's rather uncertain ahout the d's, 
 But what does it matter,'"if three or one, 
 To the Earl of Fitzdotterel's eldest son ? " 
 
 Lord Stanley does not belong to this class. He ac- 
 cepts his rank and station, and at the same time its 
 responsibilities. He is as much aware of the duties 
 as the rights of property, and he is willing to lend the 
 prestige of his name to institutions not exactly orthodox 
 in conservative eyes. As regards sire and son, the 
 
 9 
 
130 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 ordjer of nature seems to have been completely reversed. 
 The son has an old head on young shoulders — he has 
 been ever wise, and prudent, and thoughtful beyond 
 his years. The father, when a commoner in the Lower 
 House, always managed to keep Ireland in hot water 
 — to goad on the colonies almost to the verge of revolt ; 
 and in the Upper House has been great in winning 
 barren victories, and in leading his party into office 
 merely to lead them ingloriously out again — after the 
 commission of a few jobs such as those at Dover or 
 Galway. Describing the present Earl when in the 
 House of Commons, a writer in 1839 says, " Stanley 
 hits very hard : but he does not inflict so much as 
 he" feels. See him when he has sat down and some 
 opponent is lashing him in his turn. At the com- 
 mencement he probably sits in a lounging posture, 
 with his feet cocked up upon the table, an attitudinous 
 elegance which he probably learned in America, and 
 with an expression of mockery and supreme contempt 
 upon his features. As his castigator proceeds, how- 
 ever, the feet are taken down and forced under his 
 seat — he tosses up his head, whispers to his neighbour, 
 laughs, then seizes some parliamentary paper, and 
 bending his elbows on his knees pretends to be deeply 
 absorbed in it — but the smarting soon becomes intoler- 
 able, and he either springs forward and, without the 
 slightest reason, calls the speaker to order, or, after 
 starting to his feet, suddenly restrains himself, throws 
 himself back again, opens and shuts his knees, and 
 
LORD STANLEY. 131 
 
 affords proof, that cannot be mistaken, of the severity 
 of his sufferings, and the agony of his impatience." 
 The present Lord Stanley is the reverse of all this — 
 of course something is due to training. The Earl of 
 Derby tells us he was born in the pre-scientiflc era. 
 Lord Stanley has had an advantage in this respect — the 
 politics of the present times are also calmer and less 
 fraught with personal collision ; but I imagine nature 
 has cast the son in a more philosophical mould than 
 the eloquent and impulsive sire. 
 
THE RT. HON. T. MILNER GIBSON, M.P. 
 
 Did my readers ever travel in the east of England ? — 
 a part of the world not suggestive of the fact that the 
 wise men came from the East, but nevertheless a land 
 of honest women and brave men — a land flowing with 
 milk and honey in the shape of strong ale, turkeys, 
 geese, and sausages. In the old coaching days, one 
 of the finest sights in London in the winter time of 
 year was to walk along Whitechapel and to meet the 
 Essex, and Suffolk, and Norfolk coaches, all laden, 
 not with live passengers, but dead stock. There were 
 four horses ; there was a coachman — perchance, a 
 guard; but no coach was visible — not the ghost of a 
 passenger — one mass of feathers and skins, of all 
 colours, was the coach, all jumbled and jammed to- 
 gether like an omelet, or one of Turner's pictures. 
 There were turkeys on their way to grace the table of 
 a London alderman; there were pheasants, whose 
 sweet fate was to be picked by the dainty fingers of 
 
THE RT. HON. T. MILNER GIBSON, M.P. 133 
 
 London's fairest daughters; anon out of this mass of 
 fine feathers emerged a goose so corpulent as to remind 
 the gazer of the poet's touching lines : — 
 
 " Of all the poultry in the yard, 
 The goose I have preferred — 
 There is so much of nutriment 
 In that weak-minded hird." 
 
 Or again, you saw a hare, but yesterday leaping along 
 in lusty life — which had been shot and despatched to 
 a friend in town, who, as he ate it — whether jugged, 
 or hashed, or stewed — whether done into soup, or 
 cooked a la Derrynane, or roasted, as is the manner 
 of some, with Devonshire cream — would think, not 
 ungratefully, of the donor and of the pleasant week 
 or two spent, in the bright days of summer, under his 
 hospitable roof. Ah, well ! the old coaches are gone, 
 but the east still abounds in good things, and is a land 
 rich in agricultural produce ; but the people are not a 
 " fast " people, like those of London and Manchester. 
 It was seldom you heard of Chartism there ; and as to 
 Socialism, the people yet shudder at the sound. The 
 landlords are Conservative, the county representatives 
 are Conservative, and a Conservative M.P. seems to 
 be as natural a production of the soil as a Suffolk 
 paunch or a prize bullock. In the thickest of this 
 Conservative Paradise is a village called Theberton, in 
 which was the residence of a Major Thomas Milner 
 Gibson, who in the year 1807 had a son born to him. 
 
134 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 The father was but little known. I presume he was 
 a country gentleman, and lived after the manner of 
 country gentlemen, when George III. was king ; and, 
 undoubtedly, his son was brought up in his own 
 image, and after his own fashion. 
 
 The old divines feell us, " Man proposes and God 
 disposes." You bring up your son to be a miser — he 
 becomes a spendthrift ; to be steady, he becomes gay ; 
 to be a Dissenter, and he becomes a Puseyite ; to re- 
 vere the memory of Calvin, and he vexes you and 
 confuses himself with Thomas Carlyle. Young Milner 
 Gibson had talent, ambition, and a good estate. Had 
 he been a poor man he would have gone to the bar — 
 been, possibly, Attorney- General to Sir Robert Peel — 
 for Sir Robert was partial to rising talent- — and been 
 lost in the confusion which came upon the Conserva- 
 tive party when Lord Derby retired from office. As 
 a country gentleman, Mr Gibson felt bound to serve 
 his country ; and as a country gentleman, to stand 
 by his order. Hence, he began life as a true blue. 
 I remember Sir Thomas Gooch, the Gaffer Gooch of 
 one of Macaulay's political ballads, warranting him to 
 be a regular Conservative colt ; but it is dangerous 
 to hazard anything where women, wine, and horses 
 are concerned. The promising Conservative colt soon 
 changed its colours, and was found running on the 
 other side. This was in 1839, when Mr Gibson re- 
 tired from the representation of immaculate Ipswich, 
 and was defeated on again offering himself to his late 
 
THE RT. HON. T. MILNER GIBSON, M.P. 135 
 
 constituents. Mr Gibson's principles were changed — 
 his career was not altered. At Cambridge, where he 
 had been educated, and taken a wrangler's degree, he 
 appeared as a candidate, but with little success. It 
 seemed as if the reward of conviction was political an- 
 nihilation. However, this was not for long. A public- 
 spirited man with money is sure to get into parliament, 
 if not for one place, why then for another. 
 
 In 1841, Manchester needed a representative, and 
 Milner Gibson was returned for the seat, which he 
 held with such honour till Manchester in its frenzy 
 was guilty of the absurdity of stoning its prophets. 
 When the Anti-Corn Law agitation came, Milner 
 Gibson was one of its most successful orators, and suc- 
 ceeded in maintaining a position second, and only se- 
 cond, to Cobden and Bright. In 1846 the Whigs, 
 anxious to please the people, and having personal ob- 
 jections to Cobden and Bright, made Milner Gibson 
 Vice-President of the Board of Trade, but the Demo- 
 cracy of Manchester grew jealous of the divided affec- 
 tions of their member, and Mr Gibson resigned the 
 office in 1849. The Corn-Law agitation over, Mr 
 Gibson, far from used up, sighed for fresh worlds 
 to conquer. At this time the Society for the Repeal 
 of the Taxes on Knowledge was in need of an efficient 
 parliamentary advocate. Mr Gibson took that respon- 
 sibility on himself. Season after season he caUed the at- 
 tention of the House to the subject. He prevailed at 
 length upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer to repeal 
 
136 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 the duty on advertisements. In 1855 lie succeeded in 
 abolishing the penny stamp on newspapers; and even 
 when we had still war budgets, Mr Gibson tried hard 
 for a repeal of the tax on paper. Mr Gibson certainly 
 has not been rewarded for this as he ought. He was 
 indefatigable in the prosecution of the repeal of the 
 taxes on knowledge, and the society was nothing with- 
 out him. It was Milner Gibson, the member for 
 Manchester, who conferred on it respectability and 
 power, who presided at its annual meetings in the me- 
 tropolis, who got the public to attend them, who put 
 the facts of the case in a telling way before the House 
 of Commons, and by his tact and bonhommie secured 
 parliamentary votes, which compelled the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer to interfere. The advocates of the 
 repeal of the taxes on knowledge painted a glowing 
 picture of the advantages that should ensue when those 
 taxes were repealed. Cheap newspapers were the 
 want of our times. It was because there were no 
 cheap newspapers that the gaols were filled, and that 
 the public-houses did a great business ; it was because 
 there were no cheap newspapers that, to the dim and 
 downcast eyes of the people, Knowledge 
 
 Her ample page, 
 Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll ; 
 
 and it was because Mr Gibson took up the agitation 
 that it triumphed, in spite of the opposition of the 
 Times and the larger section of the press. And yet 
 when the victory was won, I know not whether Mr 
 
THE RT. HON. T. MTLNER GIBSON, M.P. 137 
 
 Milner Gibson scarce got thanks ; certainly no public 
 meeting assembled to do him honour, and no testimo- 
 nial was collected in his praise. He had fought and 
 won the battle of the people, and the people said never 
 a word. It is well -that the honest statesman labours 
 for something more enduring than their hollow breath. 
 In the increased supply of cheap literature — in the 
 healthy character on the whole of that literature — in the 
 consequent elevation, mental and moral, of the masses 
 — in the stimulus thus given to the car of progress — 
 Mr Gibson must alone seek his reward. It was the 
 boast of the late Sir Robert Peel that by removing the 
 shackles of trade — that by bidding commerce be free 
 — that by giving to the men and women of this country 
 cheap bread ; he should have established his claim to 
 be remembered gratefully long after he himself should 
 have passed away. Lord John Russell has more than 
 once greeted with approbation those well-worn lines in 
 which the statesman is represented as filling the land 
 with plenty, and as reading thanks in the nation's eyes. 
 In a similar manner Mr Gibson may consider that he 
 has deserved well of his country, for a land lying in 
 ignorance, perishing for lack of knowledge, its mental 
 eye dark and blind, can never become great, or noble, 
 or free. Such as Mr Gibson may even claim the re- 
 spect of the most timid Conservatives. No one fears 
 a reading public — a public that does not read may 
 be soon worked up into delirium and madness. At 
 such times the demagogue may be mistaken for a sage, 
 
138 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 but the reading public sees him to be what he is. The 
 cheap press, like IthuriePs spear, makes him reveal 
 himself in his true and hideous light. 
 
 Let us follow the Ashton M.P. into the House. 
 When he sat with the Manchester party, by the side 
 of Cobden and Bright, he looked little like a Manches- 
 ter man himself. There was about him far more of the 
 air of the country gentleman and scholar; and you 
 would imagine that he had got there merely for a chat, 
 as his light, gay air by no means harmonized with the 
 serious appearance of his colleagues. Mr Gibson 
 always looks good-tempered and pleasant, and has been 
 and is now rather a handsome-looking man ; and not 
 being blessed with large whiskers, has still rather a 
 young and fresh appearance ; but since he has become 
 President of The Board of Trade and one of the Cabi- 
 net, he certainly has not improved in appearance. On 
 the night when Lord Palmerston moved his celebrated 
 resolutions I thought Mr Gibson looked peculiarly 
 uncomfortable and disappointed, and I candidly con- 
 fess no one likes to be balked of victory in the very 
 hour of anticipated triumph. No doubt Mr Gibson 
 went into the ministry to repeal the Paper duties. A 
 reactionary House of Commons, and an innovating 
 House of Lords, however, decided otherwise at the 
 eleventh hour. With brown curly hair, light com- 
 plexion, well-shaped features, and blue eyes, Mr Gib- 
 son was as fine a specimen of the Conservative colt 
 as you would wish to see, with the frank and winning 
 
THE RT. HON. T. M1LNER GIBSON, M.P. 139 
 
 manner of the English gentry of the better class. 
 Nothing seemed to put him out ; and even the coun- 
 try gentlemen, who regarded him with aversion, — 
 who considered him as a traitor to their cause, — who 
 remembered how he had been born and bred in their 
 camp, and had now gone over to the enemy, — could 
 not find it in their hearts to be very angry with a man 
 who, after all, had been one of themselves. Mr Gib- 
 son's manner is conciliatory. He belongs to the ex- 
 treme party, without seeming to be extreme. His 
 voice is pleasant ; it is not harsh, like Cobden's, or 
 passionate, like Bright's. If you differ with him, you 
 don't feel inclined to quarrel with him. Some men in 
 the House are very apt to excite antagonism by the very 
 sound of their voice. Mr Bright is an instance, Mr 
 Newdegate is another ; Boebuck makes you feel wasp- 
 ish immediately he is on his legs. It is a pity Mr Gib- 
 son does not speak oftener. Certainly office has a 
 great tendency to make men dumb. 
 
 The Cobdenic policy, as illustrated in the person of 
 Mr Gibson, loses much of its unpopular air. During 
 the Russian war, Mr Gibson was, comparatively speak- 
 ing, quiet. He did not prophesy, as Bright did, that, 
 in a couple of years' time, it would land us in civil 
 war ; nor did he, like Cob den, misinterpret history, or 
 write letters republished with glee at St Petersburg. 
 Even while heading the crusade for the repeal of 
 the taxes on knowledge, he did not, with Cobden, hold 
 up trumpery American papers as superior to such 
 
140" MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 papers as the Times ; nor did he, with Mr Bright, 
 charge the Daily News with ingratitude, because it 
 dared to be independent. Even the Saturday Review 
 has dealt gently with Mr Gibson ; and yet quiet, plea- 
 sant-looking as he is, Mr Gibson can do a great deal 
 of damage. He upset Lord Palmerston's first cabinet. 
 To be sure the latter had his revenge, for he appealed 
 to the country and got Manchester to reject her 
 worthiest representatives. As member for Ashton- 
 under-Lyne, Mr Gibson reappeared, and when the 
 aged Premier got Manchester to endorse him as a first- 
 rate liberal, Mr Gibson accepted a seat in the Cabinet. 
 Mr Gibson has the credit, deservedly, of being one of 
 the best tacticians in the House, but it is the opinion 
 of some who know a little about these things, that in 
 the ever-agile Premier he has found his match. 
 
 At the same time that Mr Gibson may not share 
 the. odium of the leaders of the Manchester party, he 
 may not share their praise. He is a courageous advo- 
 cate of progress, a flattering representative of Man- 
 chester, and a man of great platform power ; but he is 
 not, like Bright, a peace advocate on principle ; nor 
 could he have sacrificed everything, as Cobden did, 
 to fight the battle of Free Trade. Mr Gibson's debut 
 in the House was fortunate : it was on a subject on 
 which he knew much. Some business connected with 
 the Baltic had been occupying the attention of the 
 House. Mr Gibson had just been up there in his 
 yacht; consequently, he knew more about the subject 
 
THE RT. HON. T. MILNER GIBSON, M.P. 141 
 
 than any one else, and he told what he knew in a 
 manner at once to win the ear of the House. On 
 other matters, when he has spoken, he has heen 
 equally at home. He hits the feeling of the House 
 in his speeches. He does not seem particularly in 
 earnest, or particularly extreme. He is not savagely 
 severe, or sublimely eloquent. You do not feel that 
 he is trying to make a great speech, and to be quoted 
 as a second Fox or Burke. Even when he acts the 
 part of the tribune of the people, he has the air of a 
 gentleman, and there is good-nature in his voice, and 
 a merry twinkle in his eye. As long as democracy 
 rejoices in such a representative, patricians need not 
 shrink from it, or old ladies dream of Mirabeau and 
 Robespierre. No noble lord need fear the working 
 classes under the leadership of Mr Gibson. He, by 
 birth, is a gentleman— was brought up at Cambridge 
 — is the owner of a large landed estate ; and if he 
 listens to the manufacturers, and is on good terms with 
 the bugbear of political dissent, and occasionally ap- 
 pears on the platform at St Martin's Hall, and casts 
 in his lot with Cobden and Bright, it must be re- 
 membered that he at least has, even in the eyes of 
 Spooner and Newdegate, a stake in the country, and 
 is of the class who are supposed to be alone qualified 
 for statesmanship, and office, and political rank. 
 
XI. 
 
 SIR CHARLES NAPIER. 
 
 You are standing in the lobby of the House of Com- 
 mons about 4 p.m.— just as the Speaker has passed by 
 in all the pomp and majesty due to his awful rank, 
 and are watching the varieties of costume and figure 
 in which honourable M.P.'s rejoice. We will suppose 
 it is the middle of the summer, and that the younger 
 M.P.'s are got up in the most expensive and fashion- 
 able style. No one on the face of the earth dresses 
 better than the English gentleman, and if you want 
 to see the finest specimens of that splendid animal, you 
 cannot do better than stand, for an hour or two, where 
 now, mentally, we have placed you. A very old and 
 curious figure approaches : it is that of an old man — 
 short and stout, very bent, leaning heavily on a stick. 
 Look at the man's dress. He does not ruin himself 
 with tailors' bills. That old straw hat on his head is 
 dear at a shilling ; that tweed slop never could have 
 cost more than a pound when new ; that yellow waist- 
 
SIR CHARLES NAPIER. 143 
 
 coat and those white trousers evidently have seen 
 better days. Look at the man's face. It is broad, 
 cheerful — like that of most sailors — almost rollicking, 
 in its expression ; some old captain, you say, come to 
 look about him. But look ! he has passed the door- 
 keeper. Surely that latter gentleman will call him 
 back ! By no means. The rough old sailor is no 
 other than Sir Charles Napier. 
 
 " Ben Block," says Tom Dibdin, "was a veteran of 
 naval renown." The same may be said of Sir Charles 
 Napier ; but- Sir Charles Napier has this advantage 
 over Ben Block — that he got into Parliament, and has 
 a name as familiar in St Stephen's as on the quarter- 
 deck. 
 
 Sir Charles Napier has good blood in his veins. He 
 is a descendant of the inventor of Logarithms ; was 
 born on the 6th of March, 1786 ; entered the navy at 
 the age of thirteen ; was a post-captain at twenty- three, 
 and in 1815, when the Euryalus, which he commanded, 
 was paid off, was made a C.B. In 1829, he went to 
 sea again, in the command of the Galatea — of the 
 seedy, dirty, appearance of which naval men still talk. 
 In 1830, Sir Charles took command of the fleet of 
 Don Pedro, and captured the fleet of Don Miguel, off 
 St Vincent, and thus helped to establish that precious 
 Spanish government which is a scandal to our age. In 
 the Syrian war, in 1840, Napier was commodore under 
 Sir Robert Stopford, who commanded in the Mediterra- 
 nean. Here he did considerable service. The landing 
 
144 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 at D'Journie, the capture of Beyrout and Sidon, and the 
 bombardment of Acre, were all owing to his instru- 
 mentality ; and at Alexandria he astonished the 
 liberating squadron by running in under a flag of 
 truce, and concluding a convention with Mehemet Ali, 
 out of his own head, which, in spite of its irregularity, 
 was confirmed by the authorities at home. He returned 
 to England full of popularity, and was brought into 
 Parliament as member for Marylebone. He had before 
 that time unsuccessfully contested Portsmouth and 
 Greenwich. He took the command of the Mediterra- 
 nean fleet, and retired from Parliament. The Russian 
 war broke out. He went up the Baltic, and did 
 nothing. The men of Southwark thought he was 
 badly used, and sent him into Parliament. 
 
 The author of Singleton Fontenoy gives us a graphic 
 
 sketch of Sir Charles as a sailor. Singleton is off 
 
 Beyrout, and is sent on board a very dirty ship for 
 
 orders. " Singleton, having copied the order, went on 
 
 deck and ordered ^is boat to be called along-side. 
 
 While waiting for it he saw a figure emerge from the 
 
 . cabin under the poop. There was a sensation on deck, 
 
 and my hero perceived at once that the figure was that 
 
 of a Great Man. He was dressed in a rather seedy 
 
 uniform, and had an awkward stoop. His face was 
 
 i eccentric, but expressed power. He crossed his hands 
 
 behind his back, and began to pace the deck with a 
 
 • gait that was as remarkable as everything else about 
 
 him. It was Benbow with a dash of Garibaldi." Sir 
 
SIR CHARLES NAPIER. 145 
 
 Charles also has painted a portrait of himself, but in a 
 more flattering style. In 1851 he collected and re- 
 published all the letters he had sent to the " Times" 
 the " Sun" and other newspapers, under the title of 
 " The Navy, its Past and Present State. " It is hardly 
 possible to conceive anything more vain-glorious than. 
 Sir Charles's assertions relative to himself. A few 
 paragraphs taken at random will suffice. " Had I not 
 displayed energy and boldness, the probability is that 
 this country would have been involved in war and our 
 foreign policy overthrown/' " I dethroned Don 
 Miguel. Had the battle of Cape St Vincent been lost, 
 Don Miguel would have been on the throne of Portu- 
 gal, the dynasty of Louis Philippe shaken to its centre, 
 and most probably Lord Grey's administration." " I 
 upset the Grand Prince of Lebanon, the ally of Me- 
 hemet Ali, defeated Mehemet's son, and drove his 
 troops out of the mountain." " My services are unsur- 
 passed by those of any admiral on the list — I think I 
 may say, without fear of contradiction, that they have 
 had more influence on the state of Europe than those 
 of any other officer in the navy." " The battle of Cape 
 St Vincent changed the dynasty, as well as the whole 
 political face of Europe." But for him, Sir Charles 
 assures us, " the Syrian expedition would have failed, 
 Acre would not have been attacked, war with Erance 
 would have been inevitable, our policy overthrown, 
 and with it the Melbourne Administration." Such is 
 the gallant admiral's modest assurance ! 
 10 
 
146 
 
 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 Some people call Sir Charles the modern Bombastes. 
 He reminds me of a humbler character, one Thomas 
 Codd. The reader asks who was the last-named 
 gentleman ? I will endeavour to answer that question. 
 There lived, many years ago, in a certain city in the 
 south of Ireland, an odd personage whose real name 
 was a mystery, but who was popularly known by the 
 name of Tom Codd. Now, like Sir Charles, he be- 
 lieved that all the great events that had taken place in 
 Europe during his own time were owing to him. 
 He was consulted by every statesman in Europe. 
 From him the Duke of Wellington derived the plans 
 of his most successful campaigns. It was his advice 
 that prevailed in the councils of Europe. The wags 
 of the city in question encouraged the poor man in 
 his delusions to such a pitch that he verily believed 
 the world could not go on without him. He preserved, 
 says the writer from whom I take my account, his 
 delusions to the last moment of his life, and he died in 
 the full belief that he was the wisest and most influ- 
 ential man of his age. In naval matters, to compare 
 great things with small, Sir Charles is, I fear, another 
 Tom Codd. 
 
 Sir C. Napier is a capital illustration of the truth of 
 the old adage, "Second thoughts are best!" South- 
 wark elected him at the bidding of the publicans' paper, 
 and because Southwark deemed he had a grievance. 
 It is to the credit of Southwark that it should thus 
 sympathize with what it deems the victim of a wrong ; 
 
SIR CHARLES NAPIER. 147 
 
 but it would be to the credit of the Southwark collect- 
 ive brains if they recollected that impulse is by no 
 means a safe rule of action. A wider knowledge of 
 human nature should have taught Southwark that the 
 man who is eternally boasting his own merits has 
 but few merits ; and that the man who wails his 
 wrongs on the house-top generally has few wrongs to 
 be redressed. It is true, on their own merits modest 
 men are dumb. It is true that the woman who comes 
 to you in the street, with an expression of abject misery 
 in her face, with three children in her arms, whom she 
 pinches all the.while, and with a tale of villany on the 
 part of a monster of a husband, who has left her all 
 forlorn — is a female of questionable repute, and has 
 hired the children at a moderate sum per day ; it is 
 true that if, in your morning walks, you give a cripple 
 as you deem him something for charity, in the evening 
 the impostor, over a jollier supper than your limited 
 means will enable you to procure yourself, will be laugh- 
 ing at you as a precious flat. The public is constantly 
 imposed on. It is often giddy and thoughtless as a 
 child. It is the loudest rant the ten-pound house- 
 holder or otherwise will most rapturously endorse. It 
 is only education and intelligence that can teach men to 
 detect the cloven foot under the mask of the popular 
 tribune. 
 
 Look at Sir Charles ; what has he done that he 
 should take the vacant place of Sir W, Molesworth ? 
 Sir W. Molesworth — no one can deny it — was a states- 
 
 10* 
 
148 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 man; Sir Charles is nothing of the kind. He is a 
 sailor in search of promotion. Not engaged in his 
 profession, he had a seat in Parliament. Immediately 
 professional advancement was offered him, his seat in 
 Parliament was resigned. A war breaks out ; amidst 
 a wonderful flourish of trumpets Sir Charles is de- 
 spatched to the Baltic ; the Reform Club gives a dinner 
 to the naval hero, who declares over his cups that he 
 will either be at St Petersburg, or in a place that 
 shall be nameless, in a month. The time passes, and 
 Sir Charles is neither in one place nor the other ; the 
 nation strains itself to listen, but no sound of victory is 
 borne to us over the tideless waters of the Baltic, and 
 at length Sir Charles returns home — Sir James Gra- 
 ham would not let him fight the Russians, and Sir 
 Charles hauls down his flag, and tells us he is an in- 
 jured man. Sir Charles is lifted into Parliament, to 
 have his revenge and impeach Sir James; but the 
 House listens, laughs when the old admiral begins 
 swearing, and finally is counted out. Oh what a falling 
 off is there — what a lame and impotent conclusion ! 
 Sir Charles tells us he had a bad crew: it is a bad 
 workman that quarrels with his tools. I question 
 whether the infamous press-gang gave # Nelson a better 
 lot. That fleet that lay as summer in the Baltic, 
 
 " Idle as a painted ship, 
 Upon a painted ocean," 
 
 was got together with some difficulty, cost the nation 
 some money, and was expected to do something. Lord 
 
SIR CHARLES NAPIER. 149 
 
 John Russell, it seems, on one occasion intimated that 
 Sir Charles evinced a want of discretion. Certainly 
 this was not the case as regards the Baltic campaign. 
 An excessive discretion is a little out of place in war. 
 An excessively discreet man would not go to war at 
 all — would take to farming or shop-keeping rather 
 than become a warrior, and go in for glory and cannon- 
 balls. Sir Charles — if the Sir Charles of old — would 
 have won, by this time, either a peerage or Westminster 
 Abbey. Sir Charles had more valour, we fancy, in his 
 youth. 
 
 We pass on to other days : to Nelson expecting 
 every man to do his duty ; to Blake leaving politics to 
 the Parliament, and telling the seaman, " It is not our 
 business to mind state affairs, but to keep foreign- 
 ers from fooling us ! " In these days of magnificent 
 promises and puny performances — when our most for- 
 midable sea-captains are only formidable with their 
 pens, when their greatest achievement is to keep a 
 fleet out of harm's way, when the finest fleet the world 
 ever saw sails upon the Baltic as if it were so many 
 yachts on a pleasure trip — it is well to look back to 
 the time when English ships were not afraid of stone 
 walls ; when the Dutch were driven from the sea — 
 when Spain, and France, and Italy trembled at the 
 sight of the red cross of the Commonwealth— when 
 Algerine pirates, of bloody lives and natures, freely 
 gave up Christian captives — when, as a writer of the 
 time expresses it, " England was everywhere held in 
 
150 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 terror and honour ! " The review will measure the 
 exact difference between a Blake and a Napier; it 
 will do more — it will indicate, in one department of 
 public life, a falling off piteous and sad indeed ! 
 
 Sir Charles's popularity, we fear, is of an evanescent 
 character. It was the war with Mehemet Ali that 
 made Sir Charles popular. John Bull loves to have 
 a finger in every pie. Sir Charles came victorious 
 out of the affair, and we welcomed home the conquer- 
 ing hero, forgetful all the while that we had thus de- 
 stroyed what promised to have been a rising empire, 
 and which, taking the place of Turkish weakness 
 and venality, would have been in time a natural barrier 
 to Russia in the East, and which would have saved 
 us a world of trouble, already endured or about to 
 come. 
 
 The old school of sailors finds an admirable repre- 
 sentative in Sir Charles. Young fellows who went to 
 sea at an early age, from schools in which they learned 
 nothing or next to nothing, during our fighting days 
 were in great demand, and did the state good service. 
 They are in these days of education and competition 
 in the civil service very rare ; but of the old school it 
 may be remembered that the first gentleman of the age, 
 as his toadies called him — that poor bloated, dissipated 
 prince, at whom we are all so ready to throw stones — 
 while deeply engaged in solving the question as to 
 the cut and colour of the garments of naval officers, 
 gave up the attempt in despair, exclaiming, with an 
 
SIR CHARLES NAPIER. 151 
 
 oath, that dress them how you will, it is impossible to 
 make them look like gentlemen. Well, these men 
 never turned out great statesmen ; even the gallant 
 Nelson did not shine when he exchanged his proper 
 business for diplomacy, and considerations of national 
 policy. Jack ashore is proverbially easily duped, and 
 is much given to play the fool. But, unfortunately, 
 an admiral, like a lawyer, must have a place in Parlia- 
 ment. Unless he has one he has little chance of 
 promotion ; and now-a-days, as the liberal is the win- 
 ning side, the number of adherents to popular princi- 
 ples is encouraging or alarming according to the point 
 of view. 
 
 Sir Charles is a rough, jolly, free-and-easy old gen- 
 tleman. He will shake hands with his sailors ; he will 
 rush into a peace meeting, as I have seen him do at 
 Edinburgh, and make a good fight on behalf of a stand- 
 ing army and navy ; he will stick to his own opinion, 
 however unpopular, and will, in very plain language, 
 
 bid you be if you do n't like it. He is very 
 
 honest, considering that he represents a popular 
 borough. It is true, on one occasion he did preside 
 at a Sunday School meeting (the dissenters are strong 
 in Southwark), but he boldly voted against the bill 
 for the repeal of the Paper Duty, instead of, like the 
 majority of M.P.s on that occasion, sending up the 
 bill with a small majority as a hint to the Lords to 
 throw it out. Sir Charles Napier does not act in that 
 way. You never catch him at anything sneaking or 
 
152 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 underhand. If he is in error he will frankly confess 
 it. He candidly tells us he is ashamed of -that part he 
 took in the Syrian war. Bat, after all, honesty, and 
 bluntness, and dash do not constitute a statesman. 
 Other qualities are requisite. To these Sir Charles 
 lays no claim. I fear Sir Charles is indebted, after all, 
 for his public position, such as it is, chiefly to his own 
 efforts to secure employment and place, by his con- 
 stant attacks on Government, and by his obstinate pro- 
 clamation of his merits. That he will pass away and 
 be forgotten — that he will leave no impress on his age 
 — that he will never rise to the rank of statesman, is 
 very clear. Indeed, he makes no impression as he 
 talks. No one listens to his speeches ; they are all on 
 the same subject, in almost the same words, and are all 
 set to the same tune. There is nothing like leather, is 
 the one unvaried cry ; and, to judge from appearance, 
 it really matters little to the gallant admiral whether 
 men listen or not ; whether they approve or condemn. 
 There he stands drawling away, on the same seat in the 
 gangway as Mr. Horsman, just below the Manchester 
 party. M.P.s study parliamentary reports, get up 
 and go out, find their way into the lobby or the smok- 
 ing-rooms, but Sir Charles is not discouraged, and will 
 have his say — 
 
 " He is an ancient mariner, 
 And he stoppeth one of three," 
 
 says Coleridge. The Ancient Mariner of the House 
 of Commons is not so fortunate, I question if he 
 
SIR CHARLES NAPIER. 153 
 
 gains the attention of one of thirty. Lord Clarence 
 Paget is obliged to listen and reply, but no 
 one else does. On the whole Sir Charles be- 
 longs to the past. He was born in fighting times, 
 and bred to fighting. He has harped on one string- 
 till he has fallen a little behind his age. Now the 
 times are altered ; the old days are gone, the old ideas 
 exploded, the old watchwords lost ; and, like the bold 
 Sir B e diver e, Sir Charles may exclaim — 
 
 " And I, the last, go forth companionless, 
 And the days darken round me, and the years, 
 Amongst new men, strange faces, other minds." 
 
XII. 
 
 SIR BULWER LYTTON. 
 
 What wonders can be wrought by time, and patience, 
 and energy ! Like faith, they can remove mountains. 
 In what walk of life has not Sir Edward Bulwer 
 Lytton succeeded? who writes better novels? who 
 has published more popular poems ? who has penned 
 smarter essays, or delivered more eloquent speeches ? 
 Without being a genius, by steady industry he has 
 outstripped genius itself. It is true his position has 
 been very favourable to success. He has never been 
 a poor author. He has always been able to dine his 
 critics. From the first he has mixed in what is called 
 good society, and such as he never toil for fame in 
 vain. There are some people who maintain that 
 virtue is always rewarded, even in this life. Be that 
 as it may, a gentleman of talent, and learning, and 
 wealth, can never fail as politician or writer. The 
 late Mr Henry Drummond, who abused everybody 
 and everything, whose speeches always pointed in one 
 
SIR BULWER LYTTON\ 155 
 
 direction, while his votes went in another, was a suc- 
 cess, as wit and statesman, because he was a partner 
 in the banking-house in Charing-cross. For the same 
 reason Sam Rogers got the public to buy so many 
 editions of his " Pleasures of Memory." For the 
 same reason, going back still further, were the verses 
 of the Hon. William Robert Spencer — now rescued 
 from oblivion merely by his being pilloried in the re- 
 jected addresses — in demand. We may go back still 
 further. Swift's song, by a person of quality, indicates 
 how, even in the Augustan age, the position of the 
 writer was a very important consideration. But the 
 subject of this sketch has done more than merely 
 achieve the success always achieved by his class. His 
 pluck, and perseverance, and brilliant qualities, would 
 have made him a marked man had he been born in a 
 garret, in a kitchen bred. We like to sympathise 
 with success, especially when that success is won 
 by one of the " upper ten thousand." A good man 
 struggling with adversity may be a sight dear to the 
 gods, but certainly not to the British public. That 
 august body is apt to vote such a one a bore, and in- 
 finitely prefers the contemplation of a good man resid- 
 ing on his own unencumbered estate, and well endow- 
 ed with this world's goods. 
 
 It is the night of a great debate. The men out of 
 office are trying to drive out the men who are in ; and 
 everything betokens that a crisis is at hand. The 
 whippers-in in the lobby are counting up their men ; 
 
156 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 the telegraph boys are hard at work ; the Irish patriots 
 have had things made pleasant, and popular M.P.s 
 are quietly being sold; a few fierce patriots from 
 Finsbury or Marylebone are gazing wildly at the gas 
 and the door-keepers, while treachery is being done 
 before their very eyes. The strangers in the gallery 
 are vastly excited, and wonder how it is the leading 
 characters should look as weary as actors on any other 
 stage. It is early yet, and the House is very full. 
 The first speech of the adjourned debate has scarce 
 commenced when a tall, ghostly figure glides on to 
 the Opposition bench, and places himself by the side 
 of Mr Disraeli — nearest to the strangers' gallery. 
 His eye glistens like that of the ancient mariner, and 
 his hand is almost as skinny. All the flesh on his face 
 seems to have run into hair ; and his aquiline nose is 
 as much a feature as was that of the Duke, or as is 
 that of my Lord Brougham. He stoops forward, 
 places his elbow on his side, makes an ear-trumpet of 
 his hand, and turns his face to the speaker for the 
 time being, as if unwilling to lose a single word. 
 Perhaps he may take a note or two ; rejoice, if he 
 does, for that is a sure sign that he will speak next ; 
 and, if he does, you will have, indeed, a treat. As a 
 dramatist, the man before you has won fitting fame ; 
 as a novelist, the world is familiar with his name. 
 The voice of woman, quivering with emotion, has 
 sung his choicest songs. The hard man of the world, 
 the scholar in his cloister, the idler in Belgravian 
 
SIR BTJLWER LYTTON. 157 
 
 saloons, have alike to be grateful to him for many 
 hours of real joy ; and therefore is it that not in vain 
 does the author of " The Caxtons," and "My Novel," 
 and " The Pilgrim of the Rhine," rise to catch the 
 Speaker's eye. Sir Bulwer Lytton does not often 
 address the House ; when he does, his speeches are 
 carefully prepared, and have the questionable reputa- 
 tion of reading well. He is artificial throughout. 
 His voice, which is weak, is studiously modulated ; 
 his action, which is exuberant, is the same ; his 
 moustache, and dress, and deportment have an equally 
 elaborate air. Though a wealthy baronet and a lead- 
 ing statesman, there is something of the author of 
 " Pelham " hangs about him ; yet, all that art and 
 knowledge can do for him he has received. If reciting 
 an essay were debating, Sir Bulwer Lytton would 
 achieve no mean place in the annals of parliamentary 
 eloquence ; but he lacks the true secret of oratorical 
 success — the genius for speaking, which nothing can 
 buy — which no art can give, no industry secure — for 
 the absence of which nothing can compensate — and 
 the presence of which makes low-born, half-educated 
 men principalities and powers. You see at once that 
 the orator is on stilts ; but he has a name, his composi- 
 tion is perfect, and he is, besides, immensely rich ; so 
 cheer after cheer greets him as he delivers, one after 
 another, his well-prepared thrusts. Vivian Gray tells 
 us — " In this country, to achieve distinction, a man 
 must have a genius, or a million, or blood." Sir 
 
158 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 Bulwer is favoured by the gods, and has all three, and 
 now the tall and still handsome baronet would win 
 yet another triumph — he would be a statesman as 
 well as a novelist — he would act a part in history as 
 well as imagine one — he would live in Downing- 
 street as well as in Paternoster- row. 
 
 Sir Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer Lytton 
 was born at Hey don Hall, Norfolk, in 1805, and was 
 educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he 
 gained the Chancellor's prize medal for the best Eng- 
 lish poem. He sat for St Ives in 1831, and for Lin- 
 coln from 1832 to 1841, and was then supposed to be 
 an advanced Liberal, and eager for the repeal of the 
 taxes on knowledge, on which question he founded an 
 annual motion, and which, on one occasion, it is sup- 
 posed he would have carried, as there was a large 
 majority in his favour, but Mr Spring Rice appealed 
 to him, and the motion was consequently withdrawn. At 
 that time, also, he was in favour of the ballot, but now 
 a large landowner, and seeing its utter inemcacy in 
 France and America, he can no longer defend that 
 theory. Altogether, he has very much altered his 
 opinions, in common, I believe, with the rest of the 
 British public, since he first started in life as a public 
 man, and edited that respectable but long-defunct pub- 
 lication, the Monthly Chronicle. He now concurs with 
 the general policy espoused by Lord Derby — would 
 readjust the income-tax and mitigate on malt and tea. 
 Yet the Whigs made Sir Bulwer a baronet. I am told 
 
SIR BULWER LYTTON. 159 
 
 Sir Bulwer's maiden speech was by no means over- 
 effective ; but Sir Bulwer is a man not easily daunted, 
 and he tried again. He obtained a committee to in- 
 quire into the laws affecting the drama, and introduced 
 and carried a bill to grant stage copyrights to written 
 dramas. One of his best speeches was that for the, 
 immediate emancipation of the West Indian slaves. 
 O'Connell described it as one of the most vigorous 
 efforts of impassioned reasoning he had ever heard in 
 that House, and the speech was printed at the request 
 and expense of the delegates from the societies in 
 favour of immediate emancipation. Some of his poli- 
 tical pamphlets, especially one called the " Crisis," 
 have been very effective. On Lord Melbourne's re- 
 sumption of the reins of power, it led to the offer of a 
 place as one of the Lords of the Admiralty, an offer 
 which Sir Bulwer very wisely declined. Of the 
 " Letters to John Bull " I can only add that they plead 
 for protection, and that the cause was already lost ere 
 the baronet ventured into the field. On this question, 
 however, he was consistent, as, so early as 1839, we 
 find him resisting the repeal of the Corn Laws ; and 
 when he returned to public life, the old bonds of party 
 had been in some degree broken up. He pronounced 
 himself in favour of a fair trial to Lord Derby's Go- 
 vernment, and, shortly after his return to Parliament, 
 delivered his sentiments to this effect in a speech ap- 
 plauded by Disraeli as one of the most masterly ever 
 given to the House. He spoke again once in the ses- 
 
160 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 sion of 1853, upon his own motion against the enact- 
 ment of the income-tax on its former footing ; and 
 when the Aberdeen Administration drifted into war, 
 and broke down beneath the unaccustomed load, more 
 than once was the voice of the baronet heard uttering 
 what all England thought and felt. In 1858 the 
 member for Hertfordshire — for in 1852 Sir Bul- 
 wer achieved that honour — became Secretary for 
 the Colonies, and retained that office till the Derby 
 administration fell, owing to the laudable desire of 
 Lords Palme.rston and Russell to present the people 
 of England with a full and efficient measure of Par- 
 liamentary Reform. Altogether, the literary baronet 
 is a great catch for the county party ; with an intel- 
 lect equal to that of Disraeli, and a name how much 
 more English and racy of the soil ! 
 
 As an orator, he carries us back to old times. The 
 last time I heard Sir Bulwer Lytton reminded me of 
 the last time I heard Macaulay. In more senses than 
 one they resembled each other. They both laboured 
 under physical disadvantages ; they were both pre- 
 pared speakers rather than debaters ; and they both 
 sustained similar relations to their party. It is the 
 fashion of the baronet — as it was of the peer — to speak 
 early in the evening ; and what a rush was there to 
 hear them ! how the House filled ! how the gallery 
 opposite the Speaker filled! how keen was the enjoy- 
 ment of the audience, and how sincere and enthusiastic 
 the applause! The occasion to which I more particu- 
 
SIR BULWER LYTTON. 161 
 
 larly allude was the adjourned debate on the second 
 reading of the Reform Bill. Sir Bulwer Lytton spoke 
 for nearly two hours, and certainly never did the lion, 
 baronet make a more effective speech. Unfortunately 
 he is very deaf, and, as he cannot tell when he is audi- 
 ble or not, at times he elevates his voice — which is 
 very clear and shrill — and at times he drops it so much 
 as to be utterly inaudible ; and then he has such vehe- 
 ment and forcible gesticulation, as frequently to excite 
 the apprehension quite as much as the admiration of the 
 hearer. His spare, wiry, weird appearance ; his thin 
 outstretched arms ; his figure, one moment thrown 
 back to the imminent danger of the spine, and anon 
 reaching as far as possible forward, in an opposite direc- 
 tion, seems scarcely English, and one feels as if witness- 
 ing the feats of some foreign professor of legerdemain, 
 who has made the round of the principal Courts of 
 Europe, and has condescended, for pecuniary reasons, 
 to abide awhile in the more aristocratic regions of the 
 metropolis. But this feeling soon vanishes as the ac- 
 complished rhetorician proceeds to invest even the 
 common-places of party with an original and classic 
 air. One great merit Sir Bulwer Lytton has, and 
 that is, he is never dull. As a rule, M.P.s are 
 dreadfully dull, Dulness — if I may judge by what I 
 hear and see every day, especially in the Church and. 
 in the Senate-house — is much appreciated by the Eng- 
 lish public. We seem quietly to assume that a dull 
 man is never either a rogue or a fool. In vain we 
 11 
 
162 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 take the taxes off knowledge, and teach people to 
 read and write : 
 
 " Still her old empire to restore she tries, 
 For, born a goddess, Dulness never dies." 
 
 One word as to Sir Bulwer Lytton's Parliamentary- 
 position. The House of Commons every day becomes 
 a more plebeian assembly. One cannot be surprised 
 at this, for its saving virtue is, that it is the People's 
 House (in reality, it is not what it is in theory) ; and, 
 of course, every day we are told that it is less and less 
 an assembly of orators. This is a very old complaint ; 
 Wilberforce made it in 1809, when Canning and 
 Brougham were in the House. As soon as the Re- 
 formed Parliament met, all the rejected M.P.s and 
 Anti- Reformers said the same. The truth is,, the 
 House meets for business, and the leaders and most 
 successful men talk about business, and M.P.s, no 
 matter how distinguished they may be for their talents, 
 who forget this and seek to shine by mere eloquence, 
 must assuredly fail. Now, Sir Bulwer Lytton 
 belongs to the old school, and does the oratorical on 
 the grand scale, while Disraeli and Lord Palmer- 
 ston speak for power, and are indifferent as to dis- 
 play. Sir Bulwer seems to consider himself merely 
 " as a living apparition, sent to be a moment's orna- 
 ment ;" and hence it is that he has never taken first 
 rank in an assembly which is jealous as a mistress of a 
 divided . homage. The grand field-nights are merely 
 
SIR Bl'LWER LYTTOX. 163 
 
 oratorical exercises ; tlie real business of the country 
 is carried on in a much less pretentious manner. I 
 almost wonder how M.P.s can sit out such occasions. 
 They know their mockery. Excuses may be made for 
 verdant and enthusiastic strangers in the gallery. 
 Speaking rarely affects voting; party contests never. 
 
 11 
 
XIII. 
 
 THE RT. HON. SIDNEY HERBERT. 
 
 As regards ourselves, perhaps the most responsible 
 post in the ministry is the Secretary of the War De- 
 partment. No one supposes that England is in any 
 danger of invasion — no one supposes for a moment 
 that a successful invasion is possible ; but the moral 
 influence of a nation greatly depends upon its display 
 of physical power. If you travel in France, or converse 
 with Germans, or, indeed, with almost any class of 
 foreigners, they will tell you that England has seen 
 her best days ; that she does not take the high posi- 
 tion among the nations of the earth she once assumed ; 
 that, in short, we are used up, and only fit to play 
 second fiddle to France. If we ask for proof of this 
 monstrous assertion we are referred to the Crimean 
 war, but our unfriendly critics forget that if, at the 
 first, our official system broke down — that if our brave 
 men were badly officered — that if we lost them by 
 thousands — that, if our stores, and plans, and generals 
 
THE RT. HON. SIDNEY HERBERT. 165 
 
 proved old and useless — public opinion had been 
 aroused — efforts, such as only England can make, were 
 made, and that we were in a condition to carry on a 
 successful struggle, just as France, exhausted and 
 weary, was but too glad to have recourse to peace. 
 Let Europe see that our army is in a thoroughly effect- 
 ive state, and Old England will be held in as much 
 honour, and her alliance as earnestly desired, and her 
 displeasure as deeply dreaded, as in the days of Nelson, 
 or Wellington, or the other mighty heroes of the past. 
 But, in order that this may be the case, we need a 
 man at the head of the war department in the House 
 of Commons who is above that fear of giving offence 
 in high quarters which bringeth a snare — a man who 
 thoroughly understands the faults of the present con- 
 dition of the army — who is desirous to remove them, 
 and who is determined that the English army shall be 
 as effective as it is costly. Is Mr Herbert the man for 
 this ? That is a question which the future alone can 
 decide. What we know of him is to his credit. In a 
 small way he has done the State good service. He 
 has been " faithful over a few things." For many a 
 useful reform, for many an extra comfort, the English 
 soldier has to thank him. When out of office he vigor- 
 ously supported those who advocated a better educa- 
 tion of officers, and especially of those for the staff. 
 Besides, he has dared to attack the purchase system — 
 that most monstrous of all abuses. A War Minister 
 of determined will, backed by public opinion, might 
 
166 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 make the English army the most perfect military ma- 
 chine in the world : but to do this he must be prepared 
 to encounter the pains and enmities of the Upper Ten 
 Thousand. He must be prepared to make sacrifices 
 of the severest character : his self-reliance would be 
 put to a very terrible trial, and in Parliament he would 
 be worried almost to death. Even at the Horse Guards 
 — where, from the position of the present Commander- 
 in-Chief, he might naturally look for sympathy and 
 aid, he would receive nothing but discouragement. 
 In the debate which took place very recently in the 
 House of Lords, his Royal Highness the Commander- 
 in-Chief did not conceal his bias in favour of the 
 present system, and indeed he has often confessed his 
 strong reluctance to undertake the responsibility of 
 selecting deserving officers, and promoting them over 
 the heads of the wealthy but less deserving. In 
 Spenser's Fairy Queen we read of a philosopher who 
 argues with a giant ; the giant has an iron mace and 
 knocks him down. Will Mr Sidney Herbert submit 
 thus to be knocked down ? The attempt undoubtedly 
 will be made, if he seeks to do his duty to the army, 
 his country, or his Queen. 
 
 Mr Herbert is one of the governing classes. The 
 right honourable gentleman, born in 1810, is son of 
 the eleventh Earl of Pembroke by his second wife, the 
 only daughter of Count Woronzow, and is half- 
 brother and heir-presumptive to the present earl. I 
 am particular in giving Mr Herbert's genealogy, be- 
 
THE RT. HON. SIDNEY HERBERT. 167 
 
 cause it was a favourite cry of the beery politicians of 
 London that Odessa was spared because Sidney Her- 
 bert's wife was a Russian princess. Small politicians 
 made considerable capital out of the charge, and one 
 daily paper — the intelligent reader can guess which — 
 laid considerable stress upon the fact. The real truth 
 is, that in 1846 Sidney Herbert married a daughter 
 of Major- General A'Court, a lady well known for a 
 life of untiring activity and energy in the walks of 
 philanthropy more especially fitted for female cooper- 
 ation and aid. 
 
 It is said a change of blood improves the breed. 
 The nobles of Spain intermarry and become intellectu- 
 ally and physically weak. The French occupation of 
 Hamburg is said much to have aided in the production* 
 of a better race of citizens in that pleasant and thriving 
 town. Speaking of the celebrated Irish Brigade, Lord 
 Cloncurry tells us in his Memoirs, " There could not 
 be a better example of crossing blood than was afforded 
 by these gentlemen. They were generally the offspring 
 of Irish fathers and French mothers, and were the finest 
 models of men I ever recollect to have seen." The 
 fact that the true-born Englishman has in his veins the 
 blood of almost every country under heaven, may ac- 
 count for the beauty and energy of which we boast, and 
 which even rival nations reluctantly confess. I be- 
 lieve there is nothing like the infusion into an English 
 family of a little genuine northern blood. Sidney Her- 
 bert is emphatically a case in point. There is un- 
 
168 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 doubtedly something very fine and vigorous about his 
 personal appearance. He is the very model of the mo- 
 dern English gentleman ; — not the port- wine drinking, 
 anti-French, Church-and- King man of the last genera- 
 tion, under whom the nation was going headlong to the 
 devil, but of a man born in affluence, whom Chris- 
 tianity has made decent, and whose intellectual and 
 bodily powers have been strengthened and matured by 
 the habits of a life. At the same time, he exhibits all 
 the disadvantages of having been brought up in a class 
 and accustomed to look at everything in a distorted 
 light. Such men are like men coming out of a cave, 
 and it is long before they discern things as they really 
 are. Hence, as in the case of Lord Stanley, half their 
 .time is devoted to unlearning the preposterous notions 
 acquired at home, or at school, or college. The par- 
 liamentary career of Mr Herbert illustrates this. He 
 began life in 1832 as a Conservative. The first occasion 
 of his taking part in a debate in Parliament was on the 
 20th of June, 1834, upon a motion for the second read- 
 ing of a bill for the admission of Dissenters to the 
 Universities. Mr Estcourt, the predecessor of Mr 
 Gladstone in the representation of the University of 
 Oxford, having moved as an amendment that the bill 
 be read a second time that day six months, he was 
 seconded by Mr Sidney Herbert, who opposed the 
 measure on the ground that, in these times of dissension 
 of every species, the admission of Dissenters to the 
 Universities would be nothing less than opening these 
 
THE RT. HON. SIDNEY HERBERT. 169 
 
 institutions to conflicting opinions, and making them 
 the arena of religious animosity ! ! ! Again, up to the 
 year 1841, Mr Herbert's opinions on the principle 
 which should guide us in our commercial intercourse 
 with the nations were decidedly protectionist. He 
 opposed the motion of the then Whig government, 
 to substitute for the sliding scale an eight-shilling 
 fixed duty on the imports of corn, as well as Lord John 
 Russell's proposal for the reduction of the duties on 
 foreign sugar ; but when Peel turned round, Sidney 
 Herbert, who had been successively Secretary to the 
 Admiralty and Secretary at War, with a seat in the 
 Cabinet, turned round with him ; and in a debate in 
 1846, on the motion of Sir Robert Peel for a committee 
 of the whole House upon the customs and corn import- 
 ation acts — having been taunted by the Earl of March 
 with an abandonment of his oft-expressed convictions, 
 the right honourable gentleman confessed that, after 
 the most mature deliberation, he had been compelled to 
 take the course he had. Of course Mr Herbert's 
 constituency was protectionist to the backbone all the 
 same ; and when a general election came in 1847, an 
 attempt was made to displace him in the representation 
 of the county. Mr Herbert's influence in Wiltshire 
 is enormous ; and Wiltshire, in the person of its re- 
 presentative, decided in favour of Free Trade. Then 
 came the Crimean war, when one statesman after 
 another became bankrupt. The Duke of Newcastle 
 became the scapegoat, and was sent forth, like the 
 
170 
 
 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 goat in Mr Robert's picture, into the desert, bearing 
 the sins of the Ministry. In the unpopularity of that 
 period Sidney Herbert had his share ; nor was his un- 
 popularity undeserved. It is clear that he relied upon 
 the misstatements of the officials, and contended that 
 our army was in a prosperous condition, when in fact it 
 was the reverse ; that he, and those who acted with 
 him, never thought we should have had a real war ; and 
 that, when war actually broke out, they were not pre- 
 pared to carry it on with vigour, or to punish Russia 
 as she deserved. This is another disadvantage Sidney 
 Herbert experienced on account of his birth and breed- 
 ing — he had lived in an ideal world — he had never stood 
 face to face with the English nation. Had he lived 
 and toiled as the people live and toil, his sight would 
 have been clearer and his blundering less. I am aware 
 that the people is not a profoundly learned or acutely 
 logical body ; but they had the idea, and in this they 
 were right, that Turkey was wronged — that Russia 
 was an aggressive power, and they believed that as 
 Russia had been the mainstay of despotism on the 
 continent, that a war that would have crippled Russia 
 would have aided the cause of freedom and of man all 
 over Europe. Under such an idea alone was war 
 justifiable. Our statesmen entered on it with no such 
 idea, and by large classes the war cry was reechoed 
 for even still less worthy ends — as a means of plunder 
 after inglorious years of inactivity, half-pay, and 
 peace. The war came, and the people grew mad as 
 
THE RT. HON. SIDNEY HERBERT. 171 
 
 the Times told them what Sidney Herbert and the 
 Government denied. Mr Roebuck's motion was 
 carried, and down went the Aberdeen Cabinet like a 
 ship at sea. We remember well the night of the debate. 
 Generally, when the tellers come up to announce the 
 result, they are cheered by the winning party as only 
 Englishmen can cheer. For a wonder, on that occa- 
 sion not a cheer was heard ! There was silence, amaze- 
 ment, wonder everywhere ; and then a short derisive 
 laugh, as they saw the vaunted coalition melt into 
 thin air. They did well to be silent and amazed. 
 Thoughtful men were already asking — of this victory 
 who was to reap the fruits ? Were the Derbyites again 
 to be placed in power ? or was the Great Britain of 
 the nineteenth century, the mother of colonies, com- 
 pared with which those of imperial Rome were pigmies 
 •'—the asylum of liberty denied elsewhere, to be the 
 appanage of the House of Bedford ; or was there to be 
 but a shuffle of the cards — Palmerston premier, in the 
 place of Lord Aberdeen ; Lord Panmure in the room 
 of the Duke of Newcastle ; Fred. Peel, vice Sidney 
 Herbert ? were the old faces again to come back to us? 
 was the old fearful system of administration again to 
 be continued ? was the old hideous weight of the aris- 
 tocracy again, like a nightmare, to press upon the 
 land ? was there to be no hope of a better state of 
 things? Well, there was then silence, for who was 
 there to cheer ? Lord John Russell ignominiously 
 escaped from the sinking ship. Sidney Herbert and 
 
172 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 his colleagues at any rate bravely stuck to their posts. 
 Sidney Herbert was driven from office, that Mr Frede- 
 rick Peel might fill his vacant place. We doubt whether 
 the nation gained anything by the change. 
 
 A man who is born to enormous wealth, like Sidney 
 Herbert, owes much to society. A landlord who 
 knows nothing of his property but to draw his rents 
 from it — who merely comes into the country to hunt, 
 and then spends an idle and vicious career in the capi- 
 tals of Europe, is the most dangerous possible cha- 
 racter ; and in times of fierce political excitement 
 would precipitate anarchy and revolution. But the 
 landed class have grown philanthropic. Their aim is 
 to build churches, to form schools, to caution their 
 labourers against beer-shops, to send out distressed 
 needlewomen to Australia, to turn ragged boys into 
 decent and industrious shoeblacks, and to learn St 
 Giles the value of a cheap bath and a clean shirt. Of 
 this class of philanthropists Lord Shaftesbury may be 
 placed at the head ; next, perhaps, is Sidney Herbert. 
 He has done as much, perhaps, as could be done, in 
 mitigating the hardships of the British poor, and while 
 in office, it must be remembered that he did much for 
 the improvement of the soldier's condition, and that it 
 was he who broke through routine, despised the cla- 
 mour of the religious press as to infecting the army 
 with Puseyism, and suffered Florence Nightingale 
 and her noble company to proceed on their mission of 
 mercy and love. 
 
THE RT. HON. SIDNEY HERBERT. 173 
 
 But I have not yet pointed him out to you. You 
 will see him seated side by side with Palmerston and 
 Russell and his colleagues, on the right hand of the 
 Speaker. It is the time appointed for private business. 
 Military men are numerous in the House, and as every 
 man of them has his own peculiar views, which he is 
 anxious to see put in practice, Mr Herbert has enough 
 to do to answer the numerous interrogatories address- 
 ed to him on all sides. Look at him on his legs. 
 What a contrast to General Peel, or Mr Frederick 
 Peel, or Sir Joshua Ramsden, and other amiable me- 
 diocrities, his predecessors ! What strength seems to 
 lie in his well-formed and manly figure ! How full 
 is his face of power, and sharpness, and determination ! 
 How clearly and pleasantly he speaks ! In debate, how 
 ready and practical he is ! What a clear ringing voice 
 he has ! He may not be a great orator, but he is cer- 
 tainly a useful and able man. 
 
 Yet one must not be too much prepossessed in favour 
 of Mr Sidney Herbert. His appointment of General 
 Grey was a scandal of the most atrocious order, and 
 worthy of the worst days of military mismanagement. 
 England needs a good army, and to that it is essential 
 that promotion should go, not by favour, but by merit. 
 Yet in the case of General Grey this principle was 
 completely set aside. The press found fault, and Mi- 
 Herbert was determined to stand by his order. He 
 was not going to sacrifice a man because the press 
 insisted on the promotion of some veteran warrior in 
 
174 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 preference to the claims of a carpet knight ; of course 
 the Upper Ten Thousand will consider that Mr Her- 
 bert acted rightly, but plain people must have a very 
 different opinion. Especially when they feel that Mi- 
 Herbert is the responsible head of the army, not mere- 
 ly from his parliamentary position, but as a matter of 
 fact. 
 
XIV. 
 
 SIR JOHN PAKINGTON, M.P. 
 
 A tale is told of an Eastern potentate, who, amongst 
 the other lions of London, visited the House of Com- 
 mons. The distinguished foreigner was delighted with 
 everything he saw ; the occupants of the Treasury 
 benches, the Speaker, the Mace, the Serjeant-at-Arms, 
 the clerks at the table, the reporters in the gallery, 
 small and incommodious, and the ladies very properly 
 in another gallery, smaller and more incommodious 
 still ; all were so fortunate as to obtain his warm ap- 
 proval. His attention was directed to gentlemen sit- 
 ting opposite the Treasury benches. He asked who 
 they were ; the reply was, that they were Her Ma- 
 jesty's Opposition. The answer puzzled him greatly, 
 and when he did understand it, when it was explained 
 that those gentlemen sat there to oppose everything 
 Her Majesty's government said and did — to find fault 
 with it, whether it stood still or moved on, he scarce 
 knew whether most to admire the audacity that could 
 
176 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 suggest, or the lenity that could pardon, such a course. 
 " Her Majesty's Opposition, indeed ! " exclaimed the 
 astonished spectator. " By Allah ! in my country we 
 should have off their heads in a week." Even in 
 civilised Europe an opposition exists only by perilling 
 its liberty. It is only in England it is safe. In times 
 of excitement, the opposition is a safety valve — in 
 times of weakness, a source of confusion — in times like 
 the present, principally a means of doubling the par- 
 liamentary session and reports. A clear, definite 
 policy may receive a decided opposition, as it will 
 insure a decided support. Free Trade, for instance, 
 was a thing to which men might say Yes or No, as 
 they could to Catholic Emancipation, the Reform 
 Bill, or the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, 
 or as they will say to measures which will be discussed 
 when the people of this country awake from their 
 sleep of political indifference and unbelief. But it is 
 difficult to oppose a government without convictions ; 
 especially if the opposition comes from men in a similar 
 category. In the main, both parties are agreed. Both 
 have accepted Free Trade. Either would regale a 
 hustings' mob with the cant phrases of " a glorious 
 war," or ' ' a safe and honourable peace." The fiery 
 old thick-headed squires are gone, and the jolly 
 old thick-headed opposition is gone with them. Sib- 
 thorpe was the ultimus Romanorum. One does not see 
 why Sir John Pakington sits on one side of the House 
 and Sir Charles Wood on the other. One can under- 
 
SIR JOHN PAKINGTON, M.P. 177 
 
 stand Sir Harry Inglis, or Sir Charles Wetherell, or 
 a late Duke of Newcastle. They would not move the 
 ancient landmarks. They honestly believed that it 
 was essential to the welfare of this country that Old 
 Sarum and Gatton should be represented in Parlia- 
 ment, and that Manchester and Birmingham should 
 not; they thought, that the way to get the Irish 
 Roman Catholics to love them, was by insulting and 
 persecuting the professors of that ancient faith — that, 
 to keep men honest, they were to swear to what they 
 did not believe, and that the country would go to the 
 bad if the starving labourer was permitted to eat his 
 untaxed bread. At the time of the Reform Bill agi- 
 tation Sir Harry Inglis said, that if that bill were 
 carried, then in ten years' time there would be no 
 State Church, no House of Lords — nay, more — that 
 even Royalty would be swept away. Now, all this 
 seems very absurd to us, but it was honestly believed 
 then by some of the Opposition, who went so far as to 
 take their money out of the English funds and invest 
 them in American stock. The Opposition, then, if not 
 very enlightened, was at any rate clear. Now that it 
 has become wiser, it is less of an opposition. As an 
 instance, let us glance at Sir John Pakington's politi- 
 cal career. Sir John Somerset Pakington, born in 
 1799, at Powick Court, Worcestershire, very much 
 astonished the world by accepting, in 1852, the office 
 of Secretary of State for the Colonies. Men had only 
 conceived of him as a respectable member of the 
 
 12 
 
178 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 country party and chairman of quarter sessions. No- 
 minally a Conservative, necessity was laid upon him, 
 and he was compelled to advance with the times. 
 The party with which 'he acted has always opposed 
 Free Trade, the Maynooth Grant, and the admission 
 of Jews to Parliament ; but in office — first as Colonial 
 Secretary, and then as First Lord of the Admiralty 
 — Sir John has accepted Free Trade, walked out of 
 the House without voting on a Maynooth debate, and 
 was an active party in admitting Baron Rothschild 
 and Alderman Salomons to a seat in the House of 
 Commons. We thus learn that Sir John, if a Conser- 
 vative, is not an obstinate one; not of that type of 
 Conservatism which the ever-to-be-lamented Arnold 
 deprecated as the most revolutionary element in exist- 
 ence. From his attention to the subject of education 
 — from his presence at the Social Science meetings — 
 from his readiness to aid the philanthropic movements 
 of the day — it is clear Sir John is a liberal, what- 
 ever be the name of the party of whom he is one of 
 the chiefs. Still more as a practical administrator are 
 we under national obligations to Sir John Pakington. 
 At the beginning of 1859, or at the latter end of 1858, 
 the country became alarmed at the state of the national 
 defences. Sir John,' who was then in office, turned 
 his attention to the subject. Our navy was admitted 
 to be woefully deficient; we were badly off both as 
 regards ships and men. Sir John made an attempt to 
 build the one and procure the other. If Sir John 
 
SIR JOHN PAKING.TON, M.P. 179 
 
 Pakington fell into the usual error of exerting his in- 
 fluence as First Lord of the Admiralty in political 
 matters ; if he quarrelled with Captain Carnegie, be- 
 cause the latter would not fight for the Conservatives 
 at Dover, he did but as other First Lords of the Ad- 
 miralty have done before. No doubt there is monstrous 
 abuse in the Admiralty. By means of its influence 
 and expenditure the dockyards are little better than 
 government boroughs. No doubt that in these places 
 millions and millions of the people's money are wasted ; 
 Lord Clarence Paget has established this fact. A 
 great statesman — a man of the first order — would have 
 swept out this Augean stable. Sir John Pakington 
 has failed to do so, and hence takes his place amongst 
 statesmen of the second rank. 
 
 We hear much of the country party ; Tennyson has 
 painted the class. He describes a country squire as — 
 
 " A great broad-shouldered genial Englishman ; 
 A lord of fat prize oxen and of sheep ; 
 A raiser of huge melons and of pine ; 
 A patron of some thirty charities ; 
 A pamphleteer on guano and on grain ; 
 A quarter sessions' chairman — abler none ; 
 Fair-haired, and redder than a windy morn." 
 
 " Jolly companions are they every one," but they 
 are not orators ; and while they will vote, and spend 
 money, and fight at elections for their party, they have 
 no idea of being penned up all night in the House of 
 Commons, breathing bad air and listening to bad 
 speeches. Writing in 1828, of a government formed 
 
 12 * 
 
180 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 on the basis of resistance to Roman Catholic claims, 
 the late Sir Robert Peel wrote — "What must have 
 been the inevitable fate of a government composed of 
 Goulburn, Sir John Pechell, Wetherell, and myself ? 
 Supported by very warm friends no doubt ; but those 
 warm friends being prosperous country gentlemen, 
 fox-hunters, &c. — most excellent men — who will 
 attend one night, but who will not leave their favourite 
 pursuits to sit up till two or three o'clock, fighting 
 questions of detail — on which, however, a government 
 must have a majority — we could not have stood credit- 
 ably a fortnight." The description is still true, and 
 hence it is that Sir John Pakington is made so much 
 of. A real country gentleman so patriotic is a rarity; 
 a country gentleman able to speak English as fluently 
 and correctly as any lawyer in the House is a still 
 greater rarity. 
 
 In the middle of the front Opposition bench you will 
 see a gentleman seated, of the middle size, with a pale 
 face, and rather a hooked nose. In his dress and 
 general bearing, you gather indications of correctness 
 and finish, rather than of greatness or genius. On one 
 side of him is Mr Disraeli ; on the other, it may be, is 
 Sir Bulwer Lytton. What a contrast to each does Sir 
 John Pakington present! Still, compared with the 
 men with whom he is often matched, he rises vastly in 
 your estimation. He is not so ludicrous as Sir Charles 
 Wood, nor so distressingly fluent as Sir George Grey, 
 nor is he so dreadfully dreary as Sir Cornewall Lewis 3 
 
SIR JOHN PAKINGTON, M.P. 181 
 
 nor so hard and austere as Mr Charles Gilpin, nor 
 does he drawl so excruciatingly as Lord John Russell, 
 nor exhibit so flippant an air as the ever-youthful 
 Palmerston. Sir John is a respectable speaker, and all 
 respectable speakers are alike. He does not use the 
 thunderbolts of Jove. He does not "shake the arsenal 
 and fulmine over Greece." He does not even attempt 
 — like Burke — to clothe Conservatism in a philosophic 
 form — much less has he the wit and classic grace of 
 Canning ; but then he has ever a good word for the 
 clergy — wears always unexceptionable linen, always 
 sports a good hat, has his thin gray hair well brushed, 
 and delights in faultless boots. I should think he 
 always pays his trades' people, attends punctually at the 
 parish church, and, I should imagine, is a decorous 
 husband, a pattern father of a family, and is regular in 
 having the servants in to family prayers. 
 
 There will be no collection of his speeches after hi s 
 decease. The student will not resort to them as models, 
 either on account of their powerful logic or brilliant 
 declamation. They will go the way of most speeches, 
 and sleep in Hansard for ever ; but Sir John is a use- 
 ful man nevertheless. There are many lawyers who 
 would make better speeches ; but then they are not 
 country gentlemen ; and even if, as they do occasion- 
 ally — like Mr Napier — shed tears, the common sense 
 of the House rejects the idea of sincerity where lawyers 
 are concerned ; but Sir John Pakington is a country 
 gentleman with a large estate. The family is an old 
 
182 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 one, and a decent one, and his party thankfully use 
 his services. He does not convince them ; they do 
 not want to be convinced — they are convinced already. 
 He does not convince the Liberals ; their minds are 
 made up to vote against Sir John before he opens his 
 mouth : but he gives his party a ^decent excuse for 
 voting. It would scarce do to march into the lobby 
 without a discussion ; to give silent votes would be a 
 confession of intellectual weakness for which the 
 country party are not yet prepared; but Sir John 
 can speak on any question for any length of time, and 
 when, towards the end of a debate, he rises and repeats 
 the objections which have entered his head, his friends 
 feel that they have appeared to have discussed the 
 measure long enough, and that it is time the division 
 takes place ; and the strangers in the gallery feel that 
 there are two sides to every question, and that they 
 are not the worse for hearing them. 
 
XV. 
 
 THE LATE HENRY DRUMMOND.* 
 
 " To waive all considerations of personal friendship 
 and esteem," wrote Edward Irving, in a preface to a 
 volume of occasional discourses, " no one whom the 
 religious stir and business of the last thirty years hath 
 brought conspicuously before the Church, hath so 
 strenuously served her best interests, through good and 
 bad report, or doth so well deserve her thanks, as 
 doth the man who brought forward, from their ob- 
 scurity and persecutions, both Burckhardt and Wolff, 
 and upheld their way against the sharp tongues of 
 prudential and worldly-wise Christians ; who laid the 
 foundations of the Continental Society, and hath built 
 it up in the frown and opposition of the religious 
 world ; who detected and dragged to light the false 
 reports concerning the state of religion on the Conti- 
 nent, with which the Bible Society in its palmy times 
 had closed the charitable ear of the Church ; who has 
 
 * The late Henry Drammo-nd was in every way a representative man, 
 hence I have deemed it right to retain a sketch of him here. 
 
184 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 stood forth as the friend and patron of every society 
 which hath any show of favour for the Jews ; and, 
 finally, who hath taken us, poor, despised interpreters 
 of prophecy, under your wing, and made the walls 
 of your house like unto the ancient schools of the 
 prophets." 
 
 The reader will scarce guess for whom this dedica- 
 tion was composed. Perhaps he will think the subject 
 of it was some wealthy clergyman or zealous bishop 
 for a wonder trespassing beyond conventional limits, 
 and showing himself a man earnest in matters of re- 
 ligion. It will save some trouble if I declare at once 
 the eulogy was addressed to no other than the gentle- 
 man whose name heads this sketch — Henry Drum- 
 mond, M.P., — a man whose plain mission seemed to be 
 to teach that all is humbug under the sun. The 
 Egyptians at their feasts placed a skeleton to remind 
 them of their mortality. We are told the Sultan 
 Saladin had the same message proclaimed to him day 
 by day, lest, in the flattery of courtiers, and in a 
 career of military successes, he should forget so terri- 
 ble a truth. Drummond performed a similar duty in 
 Parliament. In his eye we were all morally dead ; all 
 virtue was gone clean out of us. Under the mask of 
 patriotism he saw the grovelling soul of the placeman ; 
 in the love of liberty, the desire of license ; in the 
 people, an untaught mass, the prey of charlatans and 
 quacks. Drummond reminded you of the 
 
 " Gray and tooth-gapped man as lean as death," 
 
THE LATE HENRY DRUMMOND. 185 
 
 whom Tennyson describes in his " Vision of Sin," and 
 like him, he poured out a strain so sad and atheistic 
 you would fain hope it false. Yet Drummond was an 
 angel of the Irvingite Church, not as the result of a 
 sudden whim, but as the proper climax to a long pro- 
 fessional religious career. 
 
 But I beg the reader's pardon for keeping him so 
 long out of the House of Commons. Let us suppose 
 it is a debate on any serious subject. The abolition 
 of death punishments, for instance — a question em- 
 bracing the whole range of subjects connected, not 
 merely with the lives of wretched criminals, but with 
 all the defences by which society would guard itself 
 against crime. We will take the last debate on this 
 subject as an illustration. Mr Ewart has of course 
 defended his motion with his usual ability. Mr Had- 
 field, a Manchester attorney, but representative of 
 Sheffield, with a querulous, unpleasant voice, like that 
 of a man who deserves to be in a minority if he is not 
 in one, has seconded Mr Ewart, and immediately there 
 rises from the gangway — the first bench on the floor 
 on the left — a tall, clerical-looking gentleman, who at 
 once makes the House laugh. Listen to him : — " The 
 proposition was for a Select Committee to inquire into 
 the operation of the law imposing the punishment of 
 death. Now he should have thought the operation of 
 that law was simple enough" (hear, and a laugh). 
 Again the hon. gentleman extracts another laugh on a 
 subject at the first glance certainly not very facetious. 
 
186 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 The speaker continues : — " But the hon. gentleman call- 
 ed upon them to abolish the punishment of death on the 
 ground of its uncertainty. Now, what punishment 
 could be more certain than that of death he could not 
 conceive" — (hear, and alaugh) — and thus at any rate 
 the amusement of the evening is heightened. Now on 
 almost all subjects this eccentric M.P. thus spoke, 
 invariably as much as possible in opposition to every 
 one else. 
 
 In the memoirs of the Brothers Haldane, we read, in 
 the early part of the present century, of the arrival at 
 Geneva of a gentleman whose " pleasing manners and 
 aristocratic bearing, finely-chiselled features and in- 
 tellectual forehead, bespoke his breeding and intelli- 
 gence ; whilst in his acute and penetrating glance, wit, 
 sarcasm, and the love of drollery, seemed to contend 
 with earnestness, benevolence, and an ever-restless 
 Athenian craving after novelty." To this young man, 
 just entering into life, it seemed that all the world could 
 offer was within his grasp. As the grandson of the 
 first Lord Melville, the high offices of State were fairly 
 within his reach. With wit and boundless wealth, 
 what a life of pleasure, such as Alcibiades might have 
 envied, was within his reach ! yet, while other men 
 were climbing up the steep hill of fame, or dimming 
 their lustre in the search after gold — or following the 
 phantom pleasure far over hill and dale, till weary 
 and way-worn she left them in utter darkness and de- 
 spair — Henry Drummond was drawing around him a 
 
THE LATE HENRY DRUMMOND. 187 
 
 select circle to study the dark sayings of the prophets, 
 and to gather from them the weapons with which to 
 turn to folly the wisdom of these latter days. Three 
 curious volumes in octavo, entitled "Dialogues on 
 Prophecy/' written by the host himself, and much 
 subsequent confusion in the Christian Church, evinced 
 that these bewildering conferences were not altogether 
 without influence in their day. But one can't go on 
 studying the prophets for ever. Englishmen especially 
 cannot get rid of their inborn propensity to break- 
 away from cloudland into practical life. Not merely do 
 such as he of " Locksley Hall," with strong hearts torn 
 and bleeding with the bitter agony of a manly love 
 wantonly trifled with, or basely betrayed, exclaim — 
 
 " I must nerve myself to action, lest I wither in despair ; " 
 but all men, whatever be their inward sorrows, recog- 
 nise the truth, not merely as a universal law of hu- 
 manity, but as a blessed means of escape from 
 entanglements of the heart, or difficulties of the head. 
 Another reason may be urged — (the mighty master 
 dead — the eloquent tongue, that, like the voice of a 
 trumpet, terrified our Modern Babylon with the cer- 
 tain coming of a millennial day, silent in the grave — 
 the brain become dust that had to contend, not merely 
 with the wit and wisdom of the world, which in its 
 higher light it would see to be folly, but with the 
 keen and cruel enmities of the Church) — silence in the 
 halls of the prophets, and they 
 
 " Scattered on the Alpine mountains cold," 
 
188 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 what was there to forbid Drummond laying down his 
 spiritual pursuits and betaking himself to others more 
 congenial with human weakness and the claims of 
 actual life. Thackeray sings : — 
 
 " Ho ! pretty page with the dimpled chin 
 That never has known the barber's shear, 
 
 All your wish is woman to win, 
 
 This is the way that boys begin, — 
 Wait till you come to forty year." 
 
 By the light of years one reads things differently to 
 what one does in one's earlier days ; or if that be not 
 the case possession cloys the appetite, and we find in 
 change relief. Just as the elegant roue subsides into fat 
 and matrimony, or the spendthrift becomes penurious, 
 so Henry Drummond left the fathers for the senators, 
 and forsook the school of the prophets that he might 
 become one of the mob that fills St Stephen's with 
 voices almost as obscure and unmeaning as those of 
 prophecy itself. West Surrey contained the country- 
 house of Henry Drummond ; what more natural than 
 that it should return him as its representative ? West 
 Surrey belongs to a few lords, and was not Drummond 
 lordly by connection with wife and mother ? In West 
 Surrey at any rate such logic is not unpalatable, and 
 accordingly in 1847 Henry Drummond, a country 
 gentleman of a sanctimonious turn — a theologian and a 
 banker — a wit, yet a member of the haut ton — became 
 its M.P. The man who combined all these characteris- 
 tics — who could tell a scandal with a relish one moment, 
 
THE LATE HENRY DRUMMOND. 189 
 
 and the next plunge many a fathom deep into the millen- 
 nial controversy; who could talk in the true bucolic vein 
 to the Tyrrells and Newdegates, and at the same time 
 could say a good thing, worthy to be told at the clubs 
 with the last epigram of Moore or the newest sarcasm 
 of Rogers ; who could uphold the sacraments and yet 
 abhor the Pope ; who could abuse the Church and yet 
 spurn Dissent — was not an ordinary man. 
 
 Austere and crotchety, elderly and cynical, Henry 
 Drummond was an extraordinary man merely to look 
 at. He was tall and thin, with an oval head, a calm, 
 passionless face, and short, scant grey air. There was 
 an air of the recluse about him. One would expect to 
 find him at Oxford or Cambridge rather than in the 
 House of Commons. Yet not only did you find him there, 
 but he was a favourite with the House. When he spoke 
 there was always a rush from the smoking-room and 
 the lobbies. In the first place, he was what all Eng- 
 lishmen like — rich ; in the second place, he had the 
 good sense never to bore you, and never to be long ; 
 in the third place, he was often witty, and invariably 
 crotchety and odd. There are several men who at- 
 tempt wit in the House. Lord Palmerston does, but 
 his is generally sheer flippancy, and would be insuffer- 
 able in a man who was not on the pedestal, but had a 
 position to make. Sibthorp did, but his was of an in- 
 ferior character, yet an enlightened English consti- 
 tuency could return him, and will return his family 
 for ever — at any rate, so long as they keep the estate. 
 
190 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 One of the Lennoxes — the stout one, not the thin 
 one that hands sherry cobblers to Mr Disraeli when he 
 is doing the orator on an extensive scale — attempts to 
 be jocose, but his is the tragic mirth of a gay man 
 about town, and has the same effect on you as that of 
 the celebrated peer of whom Tom Moore sang that 
 when 
 
 "The House looks unusually grave, 
 You may always be sure that Lord Lauderdale 's joking." 
 
 Then there is the wit of the cynic of the Dean Swift 
 school, but slightly altered and improved, with all 
 the improper passages omitted, with a dash of extra 
 bitterness gathered from the fairest regions of theolo- 
 gical controversy — scholarly and gentlemanly. That 
 was the wit of Drummond, uttered in the mildest man- 
 ner, and with the thinnest possible of voices, almost 
 inaudible in the gallery, so that the House was kept in 
 a state of the utmost soul-harrowing quiet and suspense, 
 till he got to the end of a sentence, when it occurs to 
 every one that Mr Drummond had been uncommonly 
 funny, and the House relieved itself by a hearty laugh 
 — a laugh generally heralded by a few preliminary 
 explosions from the more impulsive members, as the 
 orchestra tunes up previous to a grand overture, or as a 
 few random shots may be heard ere rank and file on the 
 battle-field may begin their murderous fire ; and when 
 you read the Times next morning you are not surprised 
 to find that "laughter" is reported after most of Mr 
 
THE LATE HENRY DRUMMOND. 191 
 
 Drummond's remarks. I cannot find that the debate 
 gained much by Mr Drummond's speeches. I do not 
 imagine he intended it should. His object appeared 
 to be simply to amuse and mystify the House. He 
 seemed to assume that the House had made up its mind 
 how it should vote long before the discussion com- 
 menced, and therefore in a quiet, unostentatious 
 way Mr Drummond merely uttered a few sentences 
 and attained his object. I need scarcely observe 
 then that he was an original ; no other definition of 
 him can be given. He was neither Whig, Tory, nor 
 Radical. I believe the author of " Who is Who" would 
 be puzzled to describe to what class the member for 
 West Surrey belonged. In the early part of Disraeli's 
 career, a pamphlet was published with the title 
 "What is He? " I could imagine a pamphlet having 
 such a title, with reference to Mr Drummond, would 
 have a very fair sale among his constituents. In 1847 
 Mr Drummond walked over the course unopposed, yet 
 I much question whether his constituents could have 
 told what he was. Dodd tells me Mr Drummond was 
 a Conservative ; that he was a member of the Royal Aca- 
 demy of Fine Arts in Florence ; that he founded the 
 Professorship of Political Economy at Oxford — feel- 
 ing, I suppose, his own deficiency in this respect ; I 
 learn also that he was a magistrate ; and as he always 
 sneered at the present age, I am not surprised to find 
 that he was the president of one of the literary institu- 
 tions (the Western) so peculiar to the present age. He 
 
192 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 believed people cannot live without good beer, yet 
 he only knew one house in Surrey where they 
 can get it good. He said that the food of the 
 people should be as free from taxation as the air 
 they breathe, yet he derided the free traders. He 
 was opposed to all measures for taxing one sect 
 for the support of the clergy of another, yet he 
 always wrote against the abolition of church rates. 
 He believed in God's goodness, and yet rolled as a 
 sweet morsel under his tongue — and would propound 
 it unhesitatingly in the House of Commons, where, of 
 all places, theological dogmas should have no leave 
 to enter — the utter depravity of infants at their 
 birth. He borrowed from Rome the idea of a 
 Catholic and Universal Church, and then abused 
 the Pope. All men are rogues, and therefore it 
 is folly to expose honesty in politics or in the ad- 
 ministration of state affairs. He thought so meanly of 
 his constituents that he told them they do every day 
 what the Czar did when he originated the late war. 
 He was an author, yet he abominated the press. But 
 time fails me, and I give up the task of attempting to 
 chronicle the opinions of the eccentric member for 
 West Surrey. All his speeches are strange — some are 
 clever and some are new. Once or twice the Times 
 was guilty of the folly of attempting to write him 
 down ; but in this country you cannot write down a 
 statesman with an aristocratic iconnection and a good 
 estate. Mr Drummond was more than the Times im- 
 
THE LATE HENRY DRUMMOND. 193 
 
 agined, and hence its ridicule was thrown away. Mr 
 Drummond was not a statesman in the common accept- 
 ation of that term. You could never fancy him, with a 
 penitent air, tying up red tape, and doing the work of the 
 Circumlocution-office. Still less was he a party man ; 
 for if he sat on one side of the House, he generally voted 
 on the other, and his speech was no index to his vote. 
 Nor was he a worshipper of public opinion, nor did he 
 stand forth as its representative in the House. He was 
 merely a country gentleman, cultivated into a paradox 
 — at all times consistent in his aim at originality in po- 
 litics and theology — with atone of extravagance caught 
 in the prophetic conferences of his earlier years ; a 
 man with a keen perception of the vanity of practical 
 politics, and yet not strong enough to attain unto 
 something purer and better. 
 
 13 
 
XVI. 
 
 WILLIAM S. LINDSAY. 
 
 A good man of business need not necessarily be a bad 
 politician. Algernon Sidney, speaking of trie Floren- 
 tine republic, said " it was for a short time the most 
 perfect republic that ever existed. In the morning 
 they used to attend to their counting-houses, in the 
 humble garb and manner of citizens. In the evening 
 they used to attend in their places as legislators, with 
 their Gonfaloniere, who was elected every three 
 months, as their head ; and at night, when necessary, 
 eighty thousand men, at the sight of the war-fires on 
 the hills, assembled in the vale of Arno to march against 
 the foe." In England trade and commerce have been 
 looked upon almost as ignoble ; only a landed pro- 
 prietor could be a true gentleman, and contained the 
 raw material out of which might be formed the ac- 
 complished orator or the heaven-born statesman. 
 This idea has been latterly somewhat rudely shattered 
 by the severe logic of facts, but it is a fallacy which 
 
WILLIAM S. LINDSAY. 195 
 
 exists still in a mild form, especially in agricultural 
 districts. Hence is it that even in our time the regular 
 red tapists are very much annoyed at a gigantic inno- 
 vation introduced since Lord Palmerston has been in 
 office. They are angry that a man of business should 
 have been sent to Paris to negotiate a commercial 
 treaty, and they were still more angry when an exten- 
 sive ship-owner was reported to have gone to America 
 to try and get better terms from the American govern- 
 ment for our shipping than at present we are able to 
 do. This complaint might be well founded if our dis- 
 tinguished and noble diplomatists were well acquaint- 
 ed with commercial affairs. As notoriously they are 
 not, there can be no harm on special occasions in call- 
 ing in the aid of men well acquainted with particular 
 subjects. Surely Mr Cobden should know something 
 about the manufactures of Lancashire and Yorkshire, 
 and Mr Lindsay ought to know something about ships. 
 Our great statesmen may cram for a specific object, 
 but knowledge so acquired is of very doubtful value. 
 The success of the late much-lamented Mr Wilson 
 was chiefly owing to the fact that he was practically, 
 not theoretically, a man of business. For a similar 
 reason Lord Cowley has been glad to call in the aid 
 of Mr Cobden, and Mr Lindsay has set sail for the 
 United States. 
 
 Every now and then the name of Mr Lindsay is put 
 very prominently before the public. There was a time 
 when the Administrative Reform Association was very 
 13 * 
 
196 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 popular, and was not Mr Lindsay one of its greatest 
 men ? There was a time when emigration was in vogue, 
 and did not Mr Lindsay's ships form the bridge by 
 which the ocean was passed, and El Dorado, as some 
 idly dreamt, won ? And now the ruined British ship- 
 owners — the men who have amassed fabulous wealth 
 by the trade they denounce as irretrievably ruined — 
 are moving heaven and earth for a return, in some form 
 or other, of Protection, and can find no language bad 
 enough or harsh enough for Mr Lindsay, because he 
 will not join them in what he deems their mistaken 
 course. It was almost amusing, at the City meeting 
 held about twelve months ago, after Mr Lindsay had 
 tried to get a word in on behalf of Free Trade, to hear 
 Duncan Dunbar recall the word " friend " he had 
 applied to Mr Lindsay (" a man who could utter such 
 sentiments as Mr Lindsay had, he," Mr Dunbar, 
 " could never, never call his friend "). One was re- 
 minded of the famous scene in the House of Com- 
 mons, when the aged Burke renounced for ever the 
 friendship of his pupil and admirer, Fox. What a 
 pity we should have to exclaim, in language but too 
 familiar to the schoolboy — 
 
 " Tantaene animis coelestibus irae." 
 
 In the year 1816, in a humble station of life, Mr 
 Lindsay was born at Ayr' — that town dear to all ad- 
 mirers of Burns for its 
 
 " Honest men and bormie lasses." 
 
WILLIAM S. LINDSAY. 197 
 
 At six, the future ship-owner was left an orphan ; and, 
 when only fifteen years of age, he commenced his 
 career, leaving home with only three shillings and 
 sixpence in his pocket, to push his fortunes as a sea 
 boy. He worked his passage to Liverpool by trim- 
 ming coals in the coal-hole of a steamer. Arrived in 
 that great commercial emporium, he found himself 
 friendless and destitute, and seven long days passed 
 before he was able to find employment. Let those 
 who tell us that the poor man has no chance in this 
 country — that, be he industrious, moral, and intelli- 
 gent, he can never rise — that capital is a hard task- 
 master, and holds its victims in worse than American 
 slavery — learn, then, that during this time young 
 Lindsay experienced the most abject poverty — that he 
 was reduced to the necessity of sleeping in the sheds 
 and streets of Liverpool, after eating nothing but what 
 he begged for ! At length he was fortunate enough to 
 be engaged as cabin-boy on board a West Indian man- 
 of-war. Frightful were his hardships even then ; 
 but his heart never failed him, and in three years he 
 rose to be second mate. The following year he was 
 first mate, and in his nineteenth year became captain 
 of the " Olive Branch." By this time he had enough 
 of the sea. He had suffered one shipwreck ; had had 
 both legs and one arm broken ; had been cut down by 
 a sabre stroke in a hostile encounter in the Persian 
 Gulf. So we are not surprised to find Mr Lindsay in 
 1841 agent for the Castle Eden Coal Company. In 
 
198 MODERN STATESxMEN. 
 
 1845 he removed to London, and laid the foundation 
 of that extensive business which makes him a com- 
 petent authority on all matters connected with his 
 craft, and which entitles him to rank with the mer~ 
 chant princes of the metropolis. 
 
 Mr Lindsay, in the midst of his upward struggle 
 from poverty to wealth, sedulously sought his own 
 mental improvement. Instead of wasting his spare 
 evening hours in dissipation and idleness, or even 
 harmless recreation, he diligently sought to make up 
 for the defects of his early education, and to acquire 
 that knowledge which, in his case, emphatically be- 
 came power. The result was, he soon acquired popu- 
 larity as a writer, especially by his important work on 
 " Our Navigation and Mercantile Laws." His next 
 step was to get into Parliament. He contested New- 
 port, Monmouthshire, in April, and Dartmouth in 
 July, 1852. In March, 1854, after a severe struggle, 
 by a majority of seventeen, he was returned for Tyne- 
 mouth. In 1857 he was re-elected without opposition, 
 and of Tynemouth he continues to be representative 
 to this day. In every sense of the word he is a free 
 trader. At the City meeting, already referred to, he 
 claimed the right to address the meeting in opposition 
 to the resolution, as he could not allow it to go forth 
 that the distress of the shipping interest was attribut- 
 able to the existing system of maritime commerce, or 
 the repeal of the navigation laws. The resolution and 
 the memorial presented to the Crown last year were 
 
WILLIAM S. LINDSAY. 199 
 
 fallacious. He was favourable to reciprocity ; but not 
 enforced reciprocity, because that was protection in 
 its worst form. It would revive the war of classes and 
 the system of commerce which prevailed in the time of 
 Cromwell. Mr Lindsay's opponents may be right, 
 but the extent of our shipping under free trade points 
 to an opposite conclusion. 
 
 In size, Mr Lindsay resembles Mr Cobden, nor is 
 he unlike him in shape ; but he has a redder face, 
 darker hair, and his voice is of that rich Doric of which 
 a little is quite enough. Pure Scotch is very pleasant 
 to read in the Nodes Ambrosiance, but one soon tires 
 of it in the House of Commons. It is very probable 
 Mr Lindsay would have remained an obscure man in 
 that illustrious assembly, had not the Crimean war 
 broken out, and our great heads of departments com- 
 pletely broken down. Mr Lindsay was fortunate in 
 finding that the weakest part of the whole affair was 
 precisely that which he knew most about. Accord- 
 ingly he exposed Government blunders in many ways, 
 and became all at once a notoriety. He was known 
 to speak as one having authority. Had he not 
 originally been a cabin-boy, and now had he not at his 
 command a fleet almost as extensive as that belonging 
 to the Lords of the Admiralty ! Heads of depart- 
 ments trembled, for they knew Mr Lindsay understood 
 his own business; whereas, they could make neither 
 head nor tail of theirs. The Times admitted Mr 
 Lindsay to be an authority, and the House of Com- 
 
200 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 mons, always ready to hear a man when he has some- 
 thing to say, listened when he spoke ; strangers stared 
 over the gallery, to the great disgust of the door- 
 keepers, who in vain bawled out, " Keep your seats , 
 gentlemen ! " when Mr Lindsay was on his legs. In 
 the lobby he was pointed at as the man who was to save 
 the State ; and when Old Drury opened its wide doors 
 for the administrative Reformers, and Mr Lindsay was 
 the attraction of the night, the multitudes who flocked 
 in showed how easily and completely Mr Lindsay had 
 achieved an extensive fame. Yet Mr Lindsay is no 
 orator — no statesman — no scholar, with wise saws and 
 modern instances. Burke would have turned from him 
 with disgust, and Sheridan would have swallowed a 
 bottle of wine in the attempt to elaborate, with regard 
 to him, what he would have endeavoured to pass in so- 
 ciety as some extempore jokes. A temporary emergency 
 gave to Mr Lindsay a temporary importance ; he said 
 the right thing at the right time ; he had to perform 
 the very easy task of picking holes in a very rotten coat, 
 and he performed it easily. More than this he never 
 attempted — more than this, if he be a wise man, he 
 will not attempt. As it is, he has been fortunate in 
 life, more than most men, and need not be ungrateful 
 or rail at the gods if he have not the privilege of dying 
 a Cabinet Minister. 
 
 Nor is this to be regretted. A man is happier with- 
 out the responsibilities of office. Still I like to point 
 out to the illustrious stranger as imperial senators men 
 
WILLIAM S. LINDSAY. 201 
 
 who talk provincial English ; I like to say, Sir, thirty 
 years back that man was a ragged boy ; he was lucky ; 
 he got on the right track; he made a fortune, and the 
 people of this country, out of their deference to wealth 
 combined with talent, chose him as a representative. 
 Let me here demonstrate the evanescent nature of re- 
 putations. Except when ship-owners are clamorous, 
 Mr Lindsay is forgotten — 
 
 " Oh, no, we never mention Mm, 
 His name is never heard." 
 
 His life devoted to commerce, his intellect sharpen- 
 ed, yet have not made him a statesman. The shipping 
 question over, he sinks into the usual track of ordinary 
 M.P.s; in an assembly of educated gentlemen, of 
 logical reasoners, of trained rhetoricians, he is on 
 general subjects easily distanced, and, by his own con- 
 fession, was easily duped into voting for the Derby 
 Reform Bill, in the belief that it was to have been all 
 that the most ardent reformer could desire. It is not 
 wealth — not success in life — not a lucky speculation, 
 that can compensate for the liberal views and opinions, 
 which, it is true, education does not invariably supply, 
 but which rarely exist without it. In an assembly 
 which ought to be as eminent for its genius and talent 
 and statesmanship as it is now lamentably the reverse, 
 we want something more even than practical men. 
 
XVII. 
 
 MR EDWIN JAMES, M.P. 
 
 Lord, how this world is given to lying ! The remark 
 is not original, but true nevertheless. What lies the 
 higher authorities in Church and State sanction ! Of 
 course we cannot wonder at lies in public or private 
 life. When Smith tells you he is hasty to have the 
 pleasure of your acquaintance, or that he hopes you 
 will give him a call one evening, you are sure to find 
 him at home. • You know Smith does not care a straw 
 whether he ever sees you again or not. King David 
 said all men were liars ; but, for unscrupulous lying, 
 for lying like truth, for lying to the utter damnation 
 of the soul, commend me to a barrister. Other men 
 occasionally speak the truth, stick at enormous false- 
 hoods, have now and then qualms of conscience, 
 sometimes display an honest blush of shame ; but a 
 lawyer, with a brazen face, with leathern lungs, with 
 front of brass, under the convenient cloak of profes- 
 sional etiquette and zeal, is, I fear, the biggest liar 
 
MR EDWIN JAMES, M.P. 203 
 
 this side the bottomless pit. In the language of that 
 great thinker, John Foster, I remark — " It is a re- 
 markable and incontestable fact that, throughout the 
 community, men of the legal profession have, as 
 a class, collectively, a much worse reputation for 
 integrity than any other class of men not direct- 
 ly and formally addicted to iniquitous employments. 
 There is a very general and decided feeling that 
 their consciences are of a loose texture; that they 
 easily make their own rules of right and wrong ; 
 and that it is peculiarly hazardous and unfortunate 
 to be thrown on their mercy, or to have any im- 
 portant points of interest depending on the discretion 
 of their integrity. . . Again, the public and political 
 conduct of this class of men, as exhibited during the 
 last melancholy stage of our history" (this was written 
 in 1812), " furnishes a strong proof of the general 
 baseness of their principles. It is nearly as a body — 
 it is with a most extremely small number of exceptions 
 — that they supported all manner of corruptions ; that 
 they have fiercely and insolently opposed all man- 
 ner of reforms ; that they have gone with the ministry 
 (such a ministry as this country has been under dur- 
 ing the last twenty years) through thick and thin. All 
 this, or the substance of all this, it would be mere 
 quibbling and folly to attempt to deny." Well does 
 Bulwer make the chivalrous Captain de Caxton 
 horrified at the thought of his nephew being a lawyer ; 
 but in public life we make much of the race. A bar- 
 
204 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 rister, of seven years' standing, is a great favourite in 
 the eye of the law. If any berth is to be given away, 
 any commission to be sent to make inquiries, any job 
 to be done, we either send military men or lawyers. — 
 Government could not well make worse selections. 
 Hence it is there are so many lawyers in the House of 
 Commons. The nation is to be robbed and plundered, 
 and they are there to do it. I walk up Regent-street, 
 and meet flaunting females all rouge and lies, I know 
 what they want ; and if I go into the House of Com- 
 mons, and hear lawyers with their tedious orations, "on 
 public grounds, sir, opposing this detestable and perni- 
 cious bill," I know what they want, as plainly as if they 
 wrote on their backs the price per annum at which 
 they were on sale. The time when lawyers were ser- 
 viceable in the House has gone by. The country gen- 
 tlemen, the commercial gentlemen, the representatives 
 of our boroughs, can now make very decent speeches 
 themselves, and the professional speaker, except in the 
 case of some Indian nabob affair, or the injuries of 
 Baron Bode, are of little avail. 
 
 Sir Charles Wetherell was one of the oldest and 
 truest Tories that ever lived. He would have died 
 rather than voted for reform. To the men of Man- 
 chester, and Sheffield, and Birmingham, and Leeds, 
 he would have denied the suffrage, while Old Sarum 
 and Gatton he worshipped with religious awe. On 
 one occasion, while travelling through Sussex, Wilber- 
 force stopped to change horses at an old country town. 
 
MR EDWIN JAMES, M.P. 205 
 
 It suddenly occurred to him that that was the place 
 which he represented in Parliament. He had never 
 been there till then, as it were by accident. Could 
 anything have been more absurd ? Yet this was the 
 system which Wetherell declared to be perfection itself. 
 But "Wetherell was a lawyer, and a clever one, as 
 well as a politician. In his former capacity, he had to 
 defend "Watson on his trial for high treason. Lord 
 Brougham tells us that a lawyer must sacrifice every 
 consideration on earth to insure the success of his client. 
 Sir Charles Wetherell did so, and triumphed. The mob, 
 in its profound ignorance, was delighted — it confound- 
 ed the lawyer with the politician. Sir Charles Wether- 
 ell was in danger of becoming as popular as Sir Francis 
 Burdett; and actually an enlightened radical constitu- 
 ency went so far as to offer its representation to Sir 
 Charles. Mr Edwin James, owing to a similar 
 blunder, attained his political advancement. As 
 a liberal politician, nothing was known of him. 
 He had come forward, it is true, once or twice, 
 but, on each occasion, he had retired in a most 
 mysterious and unaccountable manner. However, 
 it came to pass that a man, of the name of Bernard, 
 was tried for complicity with the Orsini plot. The 
 trial was instituted at the desire of the French Emperor, 
 who, in this case, was served very badly by Lord Pal- 
 merston and his English friends. Mr Edwin James 
 was retained for the defence. English sympathies, of 
 course, were in favour of the refugee. The man was 
 
206 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 acquitted, and the speech of his advocate was lauded 
 to the skies. The speech was not a great speech, but 
 it was that of a mob orator. It delighted small boys ; 
 it was read with rapture in pot-houses. Was not the 
 man who could utter such lofty sentiments, who could 
 thus beard the French Emperor, worthy of a place in 
 the House of Commons ? " Most assuredly " was the 
 reply of Marylebone, who returned Mr James at the 
 head of the poll. The triumph was the proudest mo- 
 ment in the lawyer's life ; an archangel — supposing an 
 archangel would go through the dirty work of a canvas 
 for a metropolitan and enlightened borough — would 
 have had no chance. On the hustings, immediately 
 after the victory, I never saw a man much more good-na- 
 tured, or heard a man more facetious, than Mr James. 
 And the crowd were equally exultant ; one man, stand- 
 ing by my side, informed me that that night would be 
 discussed, in the House of Commons, the foreign policy 
 of Government — that that night Mr James would take 
 his seat — that there could not have been a more lucky 
 circumstance ; and my informant intimated that that 
 night his hero would make a speech that undoubtedly 
 would make despotism tremble all over the earth. My 
 informant was too sanguine ; he was evidently under 
 the influence of beer. Mr James did not take his seat 
 that night ; did not make his maiden speech there and 
 then ; and, for a few days, the proud and perjured 
 tyrants of the world had a merciful reprieve. Let me 
 add that, when Mr Edwin James did make his dt- 
 
MR EDWIN JAMES, M.P. 207 
 
 but, the effect was not very great. His plain intima- 
 tion to Lord John Russell, that no reasonable offer 
 would be refused, was considered indelicate and pre- 
 sumptuous, even in a gentleman of the bar ; and, by 
 the time the distinguished advocate had taken his seat, 
 it was clear that he had let himself very considerably 
 down in the estimation of the House. Yet it was ap- 
 parent, even to the most prejudiced, that the hon. 
 gentleman had much fitting him to gain considerable 
 influence in any assembly. JNTone could deny him con- 
 siderable fluency of language — considerable readiness, 
 when on his legs — a voice well fitted to claim atten- 
 tion, and a modest assurance not easily to be abashed. 
 Then he was the chosen of Marylebone, and Maryle- 
 bone is supposed to be one of the wealthiest, the most 
 intelligent, and the most influential, of our metropoli- 
 tan boroughs. Mr Edwin James sits below the gang- 
 way, on the ministerial side, on the benches where the 
 Manchester school, and the very crime de la crime of 
 liberalism is gathered. Personally, he is inclined to 
 be stout and red ; and his thick neck and full 
 cheeks give him a decidedly apoplectic appearance. 
 His figure is not one calculated for display, nor 
 does he attempt it. He is generally very plainly 
 dressed, and wanders about in the lobby as if 
 he were desirous to have a chat with any one who 
 would take the trouble to have a chat with him ; occa- 
 sionally he may be seen talking with very seedy indi- 
 viduals, chiefly, it may be presumed, deputations from 
 
208 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 the Marylebone constituency ; for, undoubtedly, the 
 metropolitan constituencies work their members hard. 
 Every man with a grievance, goes to them ; every dis- 
 gustingly unappreciated individual, if he be connected 
 with a metropolitan constituency, looks to his repre- 
 sentative to vindicate his claim, and to guarantee him 
 his rights. Happy is the M.P. who represents the 
 Orkney Isles ; his berth is a sinecure. He seldom sees 
 his constituencies after he has once taken his seat. 
 Fortunately, seas, mountains, valleys are between; but, 
 alas ! a Marylebone constituent has only to get into a 
 twopenny 'bus and is down upon his M.P. at once. 
 Then, the Marylebone M.P. has to reside in his parish ; 
 he must attend the vestry occasionally ; he must attend 
 its public meetings. When its Odd Fellows dine to- 
 gether, he must be there. If Jones' apple-cart is upset 
 by a policeman, he must call the attention of the House 
 to a flagrant outrage on a respectable and unoffending 
 citizen. Churchmen are at him ; dissenters will not 
 leave him alone; the licensed victuallers more especially 
 claim him as their own. Every one of his constituents 
 blessed with a crotchet is after him. Alas ! there is no 
 peace for a Marylebone M.P. but "where the wicked 
 cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." 
 Marylebone may rejoice in her representative ; is he 
 not a first-rate advocate, Recorder for Brighton, a 
 friend of Garibaldi and the oppressed ? 
 
 Mr James's success can be understood immediately 
 you look at him. You can't put a man down who has 
 
MR EDWIN JAMES, M.P. 209 
 
 made up his mind that he won't submit to such treat- 
 ment, and Mr James belongs very evidently to this 
 latter class. Nature has meant him for a successful 
 lawyer, and has given him rare faculties for browbeating 
 witnesses and humbuging juries. Mr James shines in 
 this latter capacity ; the art with which he performs 
 his task is admirable, and it is that highest kind of art 
 which the victim never for a moment suspects. He 
 seems to say so frankly, and with such an honest air, 
 "Now, gentlemen of the jury, this is a very pretty 
 tale the opposite party have been telling us, it sounds 
 very plausible, and it might impose on some people, 
 but we, old stagers, men of the world, shrewd, deep — 
 very deep — very wide awake, are not to be thus led 
 away. No, no, gentlemen, we — you and I — for you 
 see through the matter quite as plainly as I do — are 
 old birds, and are not to be caught with chaff." And 
 thus Mr James gets the jury on his side. He gratifies 
 their vanity ; he does not profess to make things clear 
 to them ; he quietly assumes that they know as much 
 about it as himself; his "cheek" — if I may use such 
 a word, and I suppose I may, since our leading 
 critical journal is actually quoted in the Slang 
 Dictionary as an authority for slang — is perfectly 
 bewildering, and must more or less insure success. 
 You are first astonished, then applaud. Thus was 
 it with Mr James's maiden speech. Its cool impu- 
 dence was too much, even for that illustrious assembly 
 of self-seeking placemen and loungers. Old sinners 
 
 14 
 
210 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 felt shocked at his refusal of office, except on certain 
 conditions, before it was offered to him, just as ladies of 
 a certain age are horror-struck at the boldness of pretty 
 girls. But Mr James was in no ways daunted. He felt 
 himself to be just as good as any one else, and, in a little 
 while, he had proved himself to be as hard, and in- 
 dustrious, and able M.P. as any other gentleman. He 
 has secured his position. He has nullified all the preju- 
 dices as to his being a failure. It is clear that, with 
 a little more time, he will have vindicated his claims 
 to the lawyer's reward — that reward which, I fear, is 
 more potent than patriotism in a lawyer's breast. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 SIR JAMES GRAHAM. 
 
 The Life of Sir Thos. Fowell Buxton is one that de- 
 serves to be studied by candidates for parliamentary- 
 renown. In a letter to the late J. J. Gurney, Sir 
 Thomas says the debate on the Manchester Riots 
 " convinced me that I have the opportunity of being 
 a competitor on the greatest arena that ever existed, 
 but it also taught me that success in such a theatre is 
 only for those who devote their lives to it." Sir Thos. 
 declined to make the requisite sacrifice. Sir James 
 Graham has paid the price and takes a foremost rank 
 in any gallery of modern statesmen. He has devoted 
 his whole life to the House of Commons, and he is a 
 fair specimen of a House of Commons orator. " The 
 speaking," wrote Sir Thomas, " required, is of a very 
 peculiar kind. The House loves good sense and joking 
 and nothing else, and the object of its utter aversion 
 is that species of eloquence which may be called 
 Philippian. There are not three men from whom a 
 
 14* 
 
212 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 fine simile or sentiment would be tolerated ; all at- 
 tempts of the kind are punished with general laugh- 
 ter." This was written before Parliamentary Reform 
 was won, but the description is still applicable. Par- 
 liamentary speaking has not altered in the least, and Sir 
 James Graham, who won his laurels in the old days 
 of corruption, is still a skilful debater in the greatest 
 arena that ever existed. 
 
 " Vidth and visdom grows together "was the remark 
 of no less an acute observer of human nature than the 
 respected parient of the immortal Samiwell Veller. In 
 the case of Sir James Graham this truth is strongly 
 exemplified. In a work, published in 1839, entitled 
 " St Stephens ; or, Pencillings of Politicians," I find 
 a chapter devoted to a trio of turncoats. One of 
 them is Sir Francis Burdett — he has long ceased to 
 interest mankind ; another, is Lord Stanley — as Lord 
 Derby, he is now the leader of the Conservatives ; and 
 the third is Sir James Graham, who is quoted as an 
 example of " the wretched stuff which poor human 
 nature submits to admire and wonder at." No man 
 has been more odious in the eye of the British people. 
 When Sir James, as Secretary of State for the Home 
 Department, laid before the House of Commons the 
 outline of his Factory Education Bill, the Dissenters 
 raised such a storm that the hon. baronet was soon 
 compelled to give way. When Mr Thomas Duncombe 
 proved that he had opened Mazzini's letters, the fer- 
 ment and outcry was greater still. At his head was 
 
SIR JAMES GRAHAM. 213 
 
 hurled a torrent of abuse ; an ti- Graham wafers were 
 advertised, and met with an extensive sale. One 
 could scarce believe that Sir James was the same indi- 
 vidual who had made radical speeches of the most 
 violent character, who had a hand in drawing up the 
 Reform Bill, and who, as Secretary to the Admiralty, 
 had effected unexampled savings. And now, as you 
 look below the gangway on the ministerial side, and 
 see the gigantic form of Sir James, it cannot but occur 
 to you that in that illustrious assembly there is not 
 another man apparently so wise and wide. 
 
 Good fortune has done much for Sir James Graham. 
 She has made him one of the strongest men in the 
 House of Commons, and one of the wealthiest ; and, by 
 reason of those two qualities, has he ever been a man 
 of mark. To hear a wealthy baronet talking radicalism 
 thirty years ago, was something wonderful ; and, by 
 reason of his immense physical capacity, has he lived 
 down his unpopularity, his political inconsistency, his 
 recklessness on the platform and the hustings, his 
 bitter partizanship, inside St Stephens or out ; and his 
 patriarchal appearance quite touches the heart of the 
 stranger in the gallery. If there be truth in physiog- 
 nomy, Sir James cannot be the atrocious criminal at 
 one time his enemies affirmed he was. He has a 
 portly frame and a most benign presence. See him in 
 a parliamentary fight. Sir James Graham has always 
 a meek smile upon his face, and as he turns to listen to 
 the orator, the Sir Charles Napier it may be, who 
 
214 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 pours out upon him the vials of his wrath, he seems to 
 say, " Oh, go on, my good fellow, you are not hurting 
 me, but you are injuring yourself." There he sits, a 
 great mountain of a man, with a calm placid face, 
 which apparently no storm can ruffle or disturb, and 
 with a frame that would make its possessor conspicuous 
 wherever men assembled. Perhaps you are a stranger 
 to the House, and of an excitable temperament. I 
 was wonderfully amused once in the lobby with a 
 youth fresh from his father's flock, who seemed inclined 
 to cheer an orator. fe My good friend," said a police- 
 man in the gentlest way, " if you cannot control your 
 feelings, you had better leave the lobby." Perhaps 
 you belong to that class, and cannot control your feel- 
 ings. As the orator grows frantic, you do the same. 
 As his bile rises, so does yours. You turn the light- 
 ning of your eye on the apostate knight of Netherby, 
 the opener of Mazzini's letters, the betrayer of the 
 brothers Bandiera — even in his green old age the slan- 
 derer of Layard — and you wonder the earth does not 
 open and swallow him up, as it did Dathanand Abiram 
 of old. Wait a little while. The age of miracles is gone ; 
 and yet I will show you a miracle. The orator sits 
 down. Sir James is in no hurry to reply. Slowly he lifts 
 up his big body and rises to speak. At any rate, you 
 say, the House will hoot him — it does nothing so rude, 
 it receives him with cordial cheers. Well, then, Sir 
 James himself will speak with the faltering accents of 
 conscious guilt — on the contrary, he is perfectly un- 
 
SIR JAMES GRAHAM. 215 
 
 embarrassed. Well, then, his defence will be impotent 
 and lame ; it will convince no one and disgust all — the 
 real fact is nothing of the land. It comes out slowly 
 and calmly, as if the orator felt its truth. Letters are 
 read, but all in the calmest and most deliberate manner, 
 which show how very right was Sir James, and how 
 very wrong the wicked man by whom he was attacked. 
 You never heard such a candid speaker in your life. 
 He looks as if he would not do a naughty thkig for the 
 world. What a depth of untold tenderness there is 
 in that man's bosom ! How kindly he speaks of every 
 one ! What innocent simplicity lurks in his face ! As 
 he stands, slightly stooping, his arms behind his back, 
 his voice seemingly broken with emotion, you fancy 
 never was there a more injured person; and when he 
 indignantly asks if it is to be supposed that he would 
 forfeit the reputation of a life, when he declares that his 
 character is at stake, that at his time of life — so soon 
 to pass away from among men — it was monstrous to 
 suppose that he would do anything so paltry and 
 mean as that with which he was charged, your warmest 
 sympathies are aroused for the injured baronet, and 
 you become indignant as you remember how he has 
 been the helpless victim of party slander, of personal 
 pique, or lying tongues. 
 
 His juvenility is, I imagine, another reason of Sir 
 James's success. He is a boy, and will remain so to 
 the end of the chapter. I know he was born in 1T92, 
 that he has been in and out of office times innumerable, 
 
216 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 that lie has sat on all sides of the House, advocated 
 all sorts of measures, and coalesced with all parties ; 
 but the enthusiasm with which he does all this is 
 youthful. He is an artless, simple, unsophisticated 
 boy, devoted to politics. He has accepted office be- 
 cause he delights in activity. He has done some very 
 mischievous and disgraceful things for the same reason ; 
 actually, in some instances — as when he denounced 
 Lord John Russell's Ecclesiastical Titles Bill — he has 
 evinced a sagacity, for which few gave him credit, and 
 which fewer still appreciated at the time ; but a boy 
 he is, and will ever remain — his principles not yet 
 fully formed, his judgment not yet fully ripe ; but 
 still, from his position, from his abilities, from his 
 cleverness as a debater, from his wide experience, 
 from his intimacy with the great chiefs departed — a 
 man with great influence in the House of Commons, 
 one of the half-dozen whose speeches are looked for- 
 ward to in every great political crisis. We all know 
 Sir Robert Peel had a high opinion of Sir James, and 
 Sir Robert's opinions had, and still have, immense 
 weight in the House of Commons. In truth, in the 
 House of Commons a man is judged independently 
 of the opinions formed of him out of doors. Hence 
 no juvenile indiscretion on the part of Sir James has 
 permanently affected the high position he took in that 
 assembly when he first entered it, and has ever since 
 retained. 
 
 Sir James is emphatically a man of the times and 
 
SIR JAMES GRAHAM. 217 
 
 for the times. As a politician he is again in a some- 
 what chrysalis state. Perhaps, as he has been some- 
 what hard on the ballot, he intends supporting that 
 when Parliament meets again. He, it is clear, has 
 cut himself from the Derby party. For the same 
 reason he can never be very closely allied with Lord 
 John Russell. Sir Robert Peel was his Magnus 
 Apollo, and, deprived of his leader, his course is some- 
 what desultory. His main fault has been this, that 
 as a hard-working, busy party-fighter, he has never 
 studied politics as a science, never been above the tu- 
 mult and turmoil of party — never risen into the su- 
 perior elevation of the political philosopher — never 
 got a glimpse of abstract principles. He has contented 
 himself with politics in the concrete ; he has wrestled 
 with parties and persons as we can imagine one of his 
 ancestors fought in the jolly old moss-trooping times. 
 Sir James's faults and official blunders have been those 
 of his class. Fontaine tells us of a motherly crab, who 
 exclaimed against the obliquity of her daughter's gait, 
 and asked her if she could not walk steady. The 
 young crab very reasonably pleaded the similarity of 
 her parent's manner of stepping, and asked whether 
 she could be expected to walk differently from the 
 rest of her family. Sir James is like the rest of his 
 family. Letters had been opened by previous Secre- 
 taries of State, and when he opened Mazzini's letters 
 he was neither worse nor better than others. If he 
 lay about him pretty freely, it is the manner of all 
 
218 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 faction and party fighters to do so ; and if he oc- 
 casionally exhibits intense ignorance of the middle- 
 class public — as shown in his Factory Education Bill 
 — why, country baronets with thirty thousand a year 
 have but little chance of understanding the shopkeepers 
 and Dissenters of our borough towns. An amusing 
 instance of this Sir James displayed not long since. 
 In his speech, a session or two back, in favour of vol- 
 untary education, Sir James quoted Mr Baines, of 
 Leeds — not then what he now is, a member of the 
 House — as " a man of talent, though a Dissenter ; " 
 as if a man's talents depended on his profession of re- 
 ligion. A man of more philosophical insight than Sir 
 James would have known that genius and talent are of 
 no church. Yet, in the House of Commons, so ignor- 
 ant are the leading men in it, necessarily, such a 
 phrase passes muster, and Sir James, no doubt, thought 
 he paid Mr Baines a high compliment. 
 
 Sir James's deeds will remain to vindicate his claims 
 to respect. On the whole he has been on the side of 
 progress. During the Reform agitation he did much 
 to insure the passing of that measure ; and the aid he 
 gave to Sir Robert Peel in fighting the great battle of 
 commercial freedom was of the most invaluable charac- 
 ter. As one of the faithful band of "paid janissaries" 
 and " renegades," as they were termed by Lord George 
 Bentinck, Sir James stood by his leader manfully, and 
 fought with a courage the memory of which yet re- 
 
SIR JAMES GRAHAM. 219 
 
 mains ; and when, by means of a combination of Pro- 
 tectionists and Whigs, Lord John Russell was placed 
 in office, Sir James helped to preserve the ministry in 
 their free-trade career. 
 
XIX. 
 
 MR W. WILLIAMS. 
 
 It is very odd how little the general run of Members 
 of Parliament understand business. How they can 
 have passed their time to grow thus ignorant is a 
 puzzle. There are, however, illustrious exceptions, 
 and one of these is the Lambeth M.P. Just behind 
 the Treasury Bench, at the end nearest to the strangers' 
 gallery, may be seen a stout, tall, plain-looking gentle- 
 man ; any one will tell you that is Mr Williams. He 
 is elderly, but looks still strong and useful, and likely 
 to do the state good service. When the late Joseph 
 Hume died, Mr Williams, who prided himself on 
 being his pupil, seated himself in the vacant seat, and, 
 as a disciple, is not unfaithful to the teachings and 
 traditions of his great and lamented master. 
 
 The member for Lambeth has this one advantage 
 over the men who laugh at him, that, at any rate, he 
 has one idea, and that idea one of the right sort. He 
 is not a learned man, nor an orator, nor a poet. He 
 
MR W. WILLIAMS. 221 
 
 cuts no dash, even as regards his personal appearance, 
 but he has an idea as to economy being a benefit, and 
 is plain, plodding, and persevering. His figure indi- 
 cates strength rather than grace. His speeches deal 
 rather with facts and figures than with figures of 
 speech, classical quotations, or great principles. In 
 the beginning or the middle of the session you hear 
 little of him. It is true he is in his place, it is true 
 he patiently sits out all the debates, but he seldom 
 addresses the House, and is seldom reported in the 
 daily papers. Wait a little ; let July and August 
 arrive, let M.P.s rush out of town in scandalous haste, 
 let burning patriots, who have made grand speeches 
 at the beginning of the season, deliver their farewell 
 orations, shake off the dust of their feet, and indig- 
 nantly depart ; let the long, dull, wearisome nights be 
 devoted to the consideration of the miscellaneous esti- 
 mates. When the benches are deserted, when jobs 
 are done, when the money of the nation is recklessly 
 and foolishly squandered away, when almost the only 
 men who stop are those who have some little game of 
 their own, then you will see — almost alone, with the 
 voting paper in his hand, which he appears to study 
 as if it were the charter of his salvation — Mr 
 Williams, the Lambeth M.P. He rises and objects ; 
 asks for particulars, gets snubbed by officials ; some- 
 times he divides the House ; now and then he may 
 snatch a hasty triumph ; but it is clear that his pre- 
 sence greatly interferes with the harmony of the even- 
 
222 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 ing, and that most of the gentlemen present wish him 
 elsewhere. His role is an unpopular one, but it is one 
 which the people who pay the piper ought, at any 
 rate, to appreciate and admire. 
 
 Mr Williams, somehow or other, has got it into his 
 head that the nation would be much better off if dis- 
 tinguished statesmen and leaders of the House had a 
 better acquaintance with the principles associated, all 
 the world over, with the memorable name of Cocker. 
 A little reflection will show that Mr Williams is not 
 so far wrong as is generally supposed. 
 
 We put it to our thoughtful readers whether, in the 
 general break-up of party, and in the confusion of all 
 classes, which exists in the political word, the time has 
 not arrived for a new party and a new cry ? A bitter 
 experience has made the general public place very lit- 
 tle confidence in public men. The painful truth is 
 becoming gradually clearer and clearer to the most 
 obfuscated intellect, that the aim of professed politicians 
 is place and power rather than the promotion of the pub- 
 lic welfare. It is true that the distinguished foreigner, 
 who so often figures in parliamentary debates, were he 
 to judge by the cries he hears during an election, would 
 arrive at a different conclusion. " Palmerston and the 
 vindication of our national honour," te Lord Derby and 
 our glorious constitution in Church and State," "Lord 
 John Russell and Reform," sound very plausibly ; and, 
 as he rises from the perusal of the addresses of the ri- 
 val candidates — as he reads how this one lives only for 
 
MR W. WILLIAMS. 223 
 
 the public good ; how that one, a lawyer though he be, 
 has refused office rather than not carry out his princi- 
 ples ; how a third will die on the floor of the House of 
 Commons, rather than allow an obnoxious measure to 
 pass; and, above all, as he learns from innumerable 
 paragraphs the virtue of the free and independent 
 elector — he is in doubt whether most to admire the fe- 
 licity of the public in having such devoted M.P.s at 
 its service, or the good fortune of the latter in having 
 so illustrious a body to serve. It is long before the 
 real truth flashes across his mind. That the whole 
 thing has much of the character of a farce ; that the 
 election is really carried by a few dirty scoundrels, 
 when contested, and when not, by the influence of some 
 local magnate; that the patriotism of the candidate is 
 about as sincere as the solemn conviction of an Old 
 Bailey barrister, that his client is the most innocent 
 creature under the sun, does not enter into the brain 
 of the distinguished foreigner for a long time ; yet, is 
 not such in reality the case ? 
 
 Far be it from us to inculcate a spirit of political 
 scepticism. The absence of public spirit is a bad sign 
 of the times, it is, indeed, a political calamity when the 
 nation does not believe in its public men. At such 
 times — and surely the present is such a time — it does 
 not become us to fold up our arms and slumber, but 
 rather to rouse up ourselves to activity and effort. A 
 great work lies before us, and a man who would seek to 
 accomplish it would be a public benefactor. We are, 
 
224 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 as a nation, weighed down with taxation; the tax- 
 gatherer follows us from the cradle to the grave ; there 
 is no solitude in which he does not find a place. Every 
 year the evil is becoming greater. The Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer gives us little hope for the future, and 
 tells us that he must increase that tax which already 
 presses so unfairly on precarious incomes. To the 
 large landlord, to the enormous capitalist, an increase 
 of taxation matters but little. Where an income con- 
 sists of thousands, a hundred pounds more or less is 
 not of much consequence ; but it is very different with 
 the millions to whom a shilling of extra taxation implies 
 the actual abandonment of some comfort or necessary 
 of life. We want to know how long this heavy bur- 
 den is to be laid on the shoulders of the people ? In 
 ordinary life a man with a limited income, if he has an 
 increased expenditure in one direction, economises in 
 another. Pie wears his old clothes a little longer; 
 takes a less expensive trip ; denies himself a few usual 
 indulgences ; why should not a nation do the same ? 
 Every farthing voted away by a British House of 
 Commons is taken out of the pockets of the people of 
 this country. This is bad in many ways. In the first 
 place, people who can ill afford it have to make many 
 sacrifices to meet the demands of the tax-gatherer ; in 
 the second place, it is evident that so keen is the rivalry 
 we have to sustain in the markets of the world with 
 other nations, that it will be our extra taxation that 
 will cripple us in the race ; in the third place, it is bad, 
 
. MR W. WILLIAMS. 225 
 
 morally and politically, for ministers to have so much 
 of the nation's money in their pockets. It is in this 
 direction, then, that we must turn. The money votes 
 will tell whether a man is a true patriot or not. "We 
 want more Joseph Humes in the House of Com- 
 mons ; yet, actually, so unpopular is economy in the 
 House, that the senators sneer and would pooh-pooh 
 the only man — we refer to Williams, of Lambeth — who 
 does what few other men in the House have the ability 
 or the courage to perform. Our thoughtless contem- 
 porary, Punch, repeats the sneer, and an ignorant public 
 applauds. Now Mr Williams deserves better of his 
 countrymen, and Lambeth especially ought to be 
 proud of its representative. It is no joke to stand up 
 in the House of Commons to protest against money 
 votes. The gentleman who does so must wait till late 
 in the evening, and then, if he insists on a discussion, 
 whippers-in, and members, and reporters, who are all 
 tired and want to go home, are angry. Every man 
 hoping at some time or other to dip his fingers in the 
 national purse — that is, as regards the House of Com- 
 mons — almost every barrister and naval or military 
 officer at least, and a promiscuous multitude beside, 
 however grandly they may talk on financial reform out 
 of doors, are sure to take exception to the amendment, 
 and vote with the majority. Hume lived long enough 
 to overcome the odium of this, but Mr Williams must 
 wait another ten years ere his constant perseverance 
 will first be respected, and then become popular. 
 
 15 
 
226 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 Dod describes Mr Williams as a merchant and a 
 Radical reformer, he is in favour of the repeal of the 
 Inquisitional Income Tax, and for the ballot. As an 
 author, he has published two pamphlets ; one on the 
 -State of Education in Wales, and another on the De- 
 fective State of the Representative System. He was 
 first returned to Parliament by Coventry, which city 
 •he represented from January, 1835, till the general 
 election in 1847. He was first returned for Lambeth, 
 July, 1850. At the last election there was some talk 
 of a formidable local opposition. Happily, however, 
 the good sense of Lambeth prevailed. When a con- 
 stituency gets a faithful and hard-working M.P., to 
 cashier him merely to gratify some paltry local vanity 
 is very insane, to say the least. People who, for 
 their own ends, throw dust in other people's eyes, are 
 not to be blamed, but those who submit to that opera- 
 tion, who are thus blinded and bamboozled, are fools 
 indeed. 
 
XX. 
 
 PRANK CROSSLEY, ESQ. 
 
 The West Riding of Yorkshire is the parliamentary- 
 blue ribbon. A king can make a belted knight, but 
 it is not in the province of king or queen to create 
 any man, however gifted, knight of the shire for the 
 West Riding. It returned Wilberforce, and struck 
 the knell of the slave trade. It returned Henry 
 Brougham, and inaugurated the triumph of Reform. 
 By its return of Richard Cobden, in 1847, all England 
 felt that free trade had been secured. To canvass 
 the West Riding a man must have a considerable 
 amount of spare time, and energy, and cash, and if 
 he be an unknown man, even these will fail him in 
 the hour of trial. At the last election of Wilberforce, 
 in 1807, upwards of 23,000 persons voted. The poll 
 was kept open for fifteen days, and the costs of the 
 contest were estimated at half a million. Elections 
 are not quite such costly affairs as they were, but they 
 are still far too expensive and wearying ; the conse- 
 15* 
 
228 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 quence is, the public lias but a limited choice. People 
 select not the best man, but the best man with cash. 
 In 1852 the registered electors for the West Riding 
 were 37,319. It is not easy to reach this mass of peo- 
 ple — a people perhaps less dominated over by landlords 
 than any constituency in the kingdom — for little more 
 than four per cent, of them live by agriculture. The 
 candidate, it is evident, must be well known — he 
 must have money, for that is a sine qua non in a West 
 Hiding election — he must have brains, for in York- 
 shire people mostly have big heads — and his politics 
 must be popular, for as the aristocracy send their 
 sons and scions into Parliament to preserve the go- 
 verning power in their own hands, it is evident that 
 the democracy when they have the chance will expect 
 their candidate to do battle on their behalf. Now 
 with all these conditions Frank Crossley complies. 
 By honest labour and the exercise of his brains he 
 has got to be where he is. He is a representative 
 man. In our villages and towns there are many such, 
 but they have not chosen the better path. They 
 have become intemperate or dissipated, they have 
 missed the tide which, taken at the flood, leads on to 
 fortune, and they have listened to the Circe voices 
 which wreck men's careers and ruin men's souls. 
 All along our land they lie in swinish repose, the 
 men who misrht have won for themselves fame and 
 power, and conferred benefits untold on their fellows. 
 If they have become rich, with ineffable littleness they 
 
FRANK CROSSLEY. 229 
 
 have turned against the class from whence they 
 sprung, and have vainly endeavoured to ape the 
 fashions of those by whom they are justly derided 
 and despised; but it is chiefly under the cloud of 
 adverse circumstances that the capabilities which lie 
 hidden in all men, as much in the Saxon peasant as in 
 the Norman lord (for wonderful is the generosity of 
 nature), are obscured and blotted out. Of too many 
 it may be said, in the language of Gray, language 
 likely to be applicable to large masses to the end of 
 the chapter, that 
 
 " Chill penury repressed their nohle rage, 
 And froze the genial current of the soul." 
 
 Happily, in Frank Crossley's case the " chill penury " 
 of the poet existed only in a comparative degree, as 
 contrasted with the wealth he and his family were in 
 time to attain, and was soon turned into a genial af- 
 fluence. Happily, we say, but it is not always that 
 affluence has a genial effect ; it acts on some as an 
 east wind, and withers up all the graces of human 
 character. Some men it altogether ruins. God 
 grants them their desire, but sends leanness to their 
 souls. If they were Dissenters they become High 
 Church, and sneer at the conventicles. If they were 
 Liberals they become Conservatives, and think Lord 
 Derby the most chivalrous nobleman under the sun. 
 If they have poor relations they despise and cut 
 them; they treat them as Jeames de la Pluche did 
 poor Mary Ann. " Once for all," as that distinguish- 
 
230 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 ed individual informed the Lady Angelina, "once 
 for all. suckmstances is changed betwigst mejjand er ; 
 it's a pang to part with her, says I, my fine hi's filling 
 with tears ; but part with her 1 must." 
 
 As an active philanthropist Mr Frank Crossley is 
 well and widely known. Halifax, which he first re- 
 presented in Parliament, and where his manufactory is 
 situated, bears witness to his munificence. These Lan- 
 cashire and Yorkshire people, when they make money, 
 make it not as we do in the South, by hard and unre- 
 mitting industry, but on a grand scale. And they spend 
 it on an equally, grand scale. Go to Scarborough and 
 see the expenditure of these men ; it quite pales our 
 London extravagance; fortune has been liberal to 
 them, and they are liberal to all around. No ladies 
 are so splendidly dressed, so expensively educated, 
 so well provided with handsome equipages, and the 
 other outward signs of wealth, as their wives and 
 daughters. And the wealth they have freely won, 
 they freely distribute ; charity finds in them willing 
 friends ; misfortune rarely appeals to them in vain. 
 If the town in which they reside requires a literary 
 institution, arboretum, or a park, they are not back- 
 ward in giving it. A thousand pounds or two is of 
 little consequence to them. And thus Mr Brown 
 gives Liverpool a free library, or Mr Strutt presents 
 Derby with an arboretum, or Mr Frank Crossley be- 
 stows on Halifax a free park. And we all admire the 
 generosity, and feel that such use of wealth — to the 
 
FRANK CROSSLEY. 231 
 
 credit of our great merchants and manufacturers be 
 it written — is by no means rare. For the successors 
 of the Medici we have to look now-a-days to the mer- 
 chants and manufacturers, who, in defiance of Mr 
 Ruskin, have become rich. 
 
 As a politician, Frank Crossley may be defined as 
 belonging to his class. He is a manufacturer, not a 
 landlord ; and he represents a manufacturing, not an 
 agricultural constituency. It is just such men we want 
 in the House of Commons. Men who have no connec-; 
 tion with trade and commerce are sure to make a mess 
 of it when they come to legislate respecting such mat- 
 ters. As an instance, let me take the following extract, 
 from the Times of October 6th. " It appears," says the 
 writer, " a statement was published a few months back 
 to the effect that a large trade might be opened up by 
 a short land route from our Indian possessions to the 1 
 western frontier of China, and the project excited 
 very favourable attention among the commercial 
 classes in London and the provinces. Any one 
 glancing at a map of Asia will be struck with the 
 proximity we .have already attained to China by 
 means of our acquisitions in Pegu. From the port of 
 Rangoon our territory extends towards China a dis- 
 tance of 250 miles. We then come to the territory 
 of the King of Burmah, and across this, which is also 
 about 250 miles in width, we come to the Chinese 
 frontier town of Esmok. We are thus brought into 
 direct communication with that people almost at our 
 
232 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 own doors, the whole of the navigation via Singapore 
 and the Chinese Sea would be saved, and we should 
 moreover reach a class of the population with whom 
 we could never otherwise come in commercial con- 
 tact, even if our political relations with the Chinese 
 Government were of the most unrestricted and cor- 
 dial character. "What, then, is the difficulty ? The 
 first idea likely to occur is that the King of Burmah 
 would throw obstacles in our way. Such, however, 
 is not the case. The King of Burmah seems to un- 
 derstand commercial interests better than some Eng- 
 lish statesmen, for he is represented to be friendly to 
 anything that will promote traffic through his do- 
 minions. Apparently there is no difficulty except 
 the old one. Our Foreign-office are not fond of new 
 questions, and least of all of commercial questions. 
 The Leeds Chamber of Commerce recently memorial- 
 ized the Government on the subject. They repre- 
 sented its important bearing on the interests not only 
 of our home manufacturers, merchants, and shipowners, 
 but of our traders in all parts of India. The Cham- 
 bers of Commerce of Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, 
 and Liverpool had previously made similar represent- 
 ations. The reply has been such as to damp as far 
 as possible all effort in the matter. Nothing was re- 
 quired but a civil negotiation with the King of Bur- 
 mah, which the Government alone can make, and 
 that in any future diplomatic arrangements with the 
 Chinese authorities the town of Esmok should be re- 
 
FRANK CROSSLEY. 233 
 
 cognized as a legal place of trade. Lord John Rus- 
 sell, however, thinks that ( much inconvenience ' 
 might arise from such a i novel ' proposition. More- 
 over, it would be ( impossible to protect British trade 
 at so inland a city,' or ' to exercise due control over 
 British subjects.' Next to the possibility of anything 
 that might cause ' inconvenience ' to the Foreign- 
 office, the idea of allowing f British subjects ' to run 
 without leading-strings has always been most distaste- 
 ful to that department. The Chambers of Commerce 
 have likewise been furnished with a hint that they 
 know nothing about the true interests of trade, since 
 the very measure for which they are now praying, 
 under the idea of extending it, would only bring it 
 into jeopardy. ' Eedress for any wrong done in 
 such a remote quarter as Esmok,' observes his Lord- 
 ship, ' could in all probability only be obtained by 
 applying pressure at places more accessible, and so 
 placing in jeopardy the more important interests of Brit- 
 ish trade on the seaboardof China.' " Gentlemen of rank 
 in the Government departments do not see — as people 
 connected with trade and commerce see and feel — the 
 importance of little things — the advantages of even 
 the slightest reduction in taxation ; that where the 
 farmer feeds and maintains ten families, the manufac- 
 turer, or large employer of labour, can do the same 
 for a hundred, and that the primary care of a states- 
 man or legislator should be that, in every way pos- 
 sible, the taxes on industry should be annihilated and 
 
234 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 the sources of labour set free. Gentlemen fail to un- 
 derstand these things as great employers do, The 
 latter have not had their fair share in Parliament. A 
 change is taking place in this respect. It is time it 
 were so, for so eager is the rivalry of commerce, that 
 it is quite impossible we can maintain our position at 
 the head of the world's markets unless we reduce our 
 national expenditure, sweep away all vexatious im- 
 posts — such as that on paper — from our statute book, 
 and give the working man and his master all the help 
 we can. If we do not do this, America, France, Ger- 
 many — where the cost of living is less — will day by 
 day surpass us, and we shall decline, as did Tyre. 
 and Sidon in days gone by. It is for this reason that 
 men like Frank Crossley are so useful in the House of 
 Commons, and need to have their number increased. 
 As to dogmatic politics, of course Mr Crossley is de- 
 cidedly an advanced Liberal. We know what are the 
 politics of his class ; the extension of the suffrage, the 
 protection of the ballot, and the separation of Church 
 and State. The temperance world find in him an un- 
 compromising champion, and the dissenting religious 
 public is familiar with his face when May arrives, and 
 Exeter Hall is thronged. Dissenting ministers who 
 have gone down to Halifax to preach have told us of 
 their surprise at finding an M.P. and a rich and great 
 manufacturer acting as a clerk, and giving out the 
 hymns. But we speak of him as a statesman. 
 In the House of Commons he is easily discernible 
 
• FRANK CROSSLEY. 235 
 
 below the gangway on the Ministerial side. He is a 
 strong, well-looking man, in the very prime of life — 
 just such a powerful-looking man as you may often see 
 in the streets in fustian ; and his black beard and white 
 waistcoat render him conspicuous from afar. You can 
 see Mr Frank Crossley is not a man to be daunted — has 
 true Anglo-Saxon capacity for work and solid pluck 
 — and if the time comes when statesmanship will be 
 synonymous with administrative capacity, such a man 
 will be in request. Surely it is no bad test of a man's 
 qualification for office, that as a manufacturer, or 
 merchant, or shipowner, he should have organized and 
 carried out successful operations in many lands and 
 amongst many men. Surely such an education is at 
 least equal to that which can be acquired by contact 
 with grooms and stable-boys, and game-keepers, and 
 ballet -girls, and the toadies who always prey upon 
 elder sons. Surely some of our ablest legislators — 
 the men most potent in the Commons — are men of 
 Mr Crossley's class. The admirers of our aristocracy 
 tell us that it is the finest race in the world. You 
 would not get this idea from a glance at the Commons. 
 There are few more puny-looking men than Lord 
 John Russell. You pass Lord Stanley in the street 
 without giving him a second look. "We know more 
 than one lord in the House who, all curled and scent- 
 ed, and bedizened, reminds you rather of a baboon 
 than a man. In Mr Crossley's pale and full, yet de- 
 termined face, you read that his life has been one of 
 
236 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 hard endeavour ; that he has had little time to 
 waste. As an orator, you see that he is in earnest ; 
 that he has no words to spare ; that he means what 
 he says ; that he is not a professional talker — that 
 curse of our age and country — and that when he has 
 said what is in him, he will not detain you one 
 moment longer. Hence it is seldom that he speaks in 
 the House of Commons ; but he is regular in his 
 attendance, and votes always — according to the opinion 
 of his constituents — on the right side. 
 
XXI. 
 
 MR BENTINCK. 
 
 An attempt was made last session to repudiate the 
 leadership of Mr Disraeli by a certain portion of the 
 Conservative party, and an article in the Quarterly 
 Review, supposed to have been written by Lord 
 Robert Cecil, was undoubtedly a manifesto in favour 
 of the attempt. It was clearly with reluctance that 
 the Tory party were compelled to do homage to the 
 strength of brain of their cleverest man and most 
 accomplished debater. Had Lord George Bentinck 
 lived, his lead would have been universally acknow- 
 ledged. Upon his sudden and lamented decease, the 
 respectable and virtuous Sir John Pakington would 
 have taken his place, had he been at all equal to the 
 position ; but as he was not, and as Disraeli was 
 the only man who was,' the latter gained at once the 
 lead, for which, undoubtedly, he had long been aim- 
 ing ; but he did so under considerable disadvantages. 
 In the first place, his origin was unpleasing to the 
 
238 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 landed gentry ; in the second place, he was one of 
 your " author fellows ; " and, in the third place, he 
 occasionally indulged in language that sounded alarm- 
 ingly liberal ; but there was no help for it, and so for 
 years the country gentlemen followed Mr Disraeli 
 into the lobby, and cheered him when he pitched into 
 Lord John Russell or Mr Bright, as they always do 
 cheer their chiefs. However, a change was at last 
 determined on. On the second bench on the Oppo- 
 sition side, at the extreme end, furthest from the 
 Speaker, sat a very florid, large-limbed, light-haired, 
 English country gentleman, by no means backward 
 in addressing the House, and one of its most patient 
 and industrious members. You rarely saw Mr Ben- 
 tinck — for it is he of whom we write — absent when 
 the House was sitting. Like Sir James Graham, Mr 
 Bentinck is a man of powerful and well-developed phy- 
 sical constitution ; and in the House of Commons, as 
 almost everywhere else, physical strength carries the 
 day. There is no standing up against matter ; you may 
 despise it; you may , demonstrate its non-existence ; 
 you may show how absurd it is for matter to wrestle 
 with mind; but matter is omnipotent, nevertheless. 
 Tom Sayers had more science than the Benicia Boy, 
 but the latter would have, I believe, beaten the for- 
 mer, nevertheless, because he stood a few inches 
 higher in his shoes. In a crowd, the bigger a man is, 
 and the louder his voice, the better I can see and hear 
 him ; and the House of Commons is a crowd. The 
 
MR BENTINCK. 239 
 
 House of Commons will not, like most crowds, accept 
 mere bigness and hardiness ; unlike a religious crowd, 
 for instance, it would not grow frantic in favour of a 
 Spurgeon, but of a certain number of men who devote 
 themselves to it ; and the House of Commons is a 
 jealous mistress — as a rule, the most successful will 
 be the men of size ; and Mr Bentinck is a man of 
 size — one of the biggest men on his own side of the 
 House. Mr Bentinck, born in 1803, is the eldest son of 
 the late Vice-Admiral William Bentinck, representa- 
 tive of a junior branch of the Duke of Portland's 
 family, — entered Parliament, and was first returned 
 for West Norfolk in 1852. West Norfolk is always 
 supposed to be very Conservative, as much so as any 
 district in England ; and Mr Bentinck is Conservative 
 from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. 
 Of the celebrated minority who, in 1853, voted a cen- 
 sure of free trade, he was one ; and of course he is 
 for inquiry into Maynooth. 
 
 The position of Mr Bentinck may be described 
 graphically as in the very heart of the Conservative 
 party. Neither on the first bench of Opposition nor on 
 the Treasury bench may you look for the finest speci- 
 mens of unmitigated Whiggery or Conservatism ; on 
 neither of those prominent seats are the clever men — 
 the parliamentary tacticians — the leaders who do not 
 wish to say more than they can help — to compromise 
 themselves more than they can help — to excite too 
 inconvenient an enthusiasm, or too audacious a hope. 
 
240 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 Very old stagers and very artful dodgers are they. 
 Somewhere or other, I have read of an Eastern sage, 
 who advised his disciples in adversity to act as if they 
 might one day be prosperous ; and, in prosperity, to 
 act as if they might soon be reduced to want. The 
 spirit of this precept is admirably carried out by party 
 leaders on either side the House. Sir Robert Peel 
 understood this better than any one, and hence his 
 extraordinary success. When speaking, he always 
 sought for what, in a letter to the Bishop ■ of Oxford, 
 he called House of Commons arguments. In a letter 
 to the same individual, dated March 20th, 1828, — dur- 
 ing the Roman Catholic crisis, — he says, "The mode in 
 which it is most prudent to discuss any question in the 
 House of Commons, must be determined by a variety 
 of considerations, of which it is not easy for persons at 
 a distance to judge. One of these circumstances, and 
 a most material one, is the prospect of being victorious 
 or being beaten. If you are to be beaten, the higher 
 the tone you take the more creditable it may be to 
 the individual member who takes it ; but, let me add, 
 the more complete is the triumph over the party on 
 whose behalf it is taken." And thus all leaders speak 
 with more or less reserve, and when seemingly most 
 open or candid, are always, in the language of the 
 turf, attempting to hedge. Lord Palmerston has 
 done this. In the great free trade debate, Mr Dis- 
 raeli tells us, in his " Lord George Bentinck : a politi- 
 cal Biography," how, in the midst of a first-rate free- 
 
MR BENTINCK. 241 
 
 trade speech, the noble premier expressed himself in 
 favour of a low fixed duty on the importation of corn, 
 and how the countenances of the free-traders changed, 
 and how a metropolitan member, who had been ap- 
 plauding vociferously, whispered to a friend, l( He 
 has spoilt a capital speech ; what could have induced 
 him to bring in a fixed duty ? " Lord Palmerston 
 knew what he was about. Mr Disraeli adds, i{ There 
 is diplomacy even in debate. Lord Palmerston threw 
 a practised and prescient eye over the disturbed ele- 
 ments of the House of Commons ; and, two months 
 afterwards, when a Protectionist Ministry on moderate 
 principles was not impossible, the speech of the noble 
 lord was quoted by many as a rallying point." In 
 the same session Lord John Russell did the same in 
 the debate on the Irish measures, which he first ap- 
 proved of, but was induced to oppose, when he saw 
 that, by joining with the Protectionists, he could put 
 Sir Robert Peel in a minority. Now, immediately 
 behind the chiefs are the second benches, and on these 
 second benches are the men who make brave speeches, 
 and declare the faith that is in them without reserve. 
 They have no need to mince matters, to be constrained 
 or reserved ; they make the speeches which youthful 
 politicians admire as bold, and manly, and outspoken ; 
 and it is they who, when the time comes, at the bidding 
 of their leaders, and for the credit of their party, very 
 quickly swallow all their big words, and vote, not per- 
 haps that black is white, but in a very different manner 
 
 16 
 
242 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 to that which you would have anticipated. In the 
 House of Commons they answer a useful purpose. All 
 legislation is more or less of a compromise ; no Minister 
 can expect to carry what he likes ; no chief of opposi- 
 tion can hope for victory in every struggle ; but it is 
 well on either side that the extreme views of either 
 party are uttered. Just as out-of-doors, by the platform 
 orators of our public meetings things are said, and 
 enthusiastically received at the time, the consideration 
 of which may materially advance or retard a measure, 
 and yet which, in the cool light of reason, may appear 
 utterly senseless and absurd. Now, what public ora- 
 tors are to the House of Commons the gentlemen on 
 the second benches are to their respective leaders. 
 They are the men who exclaim, " Fiat justitia, ccelum 
 ruat" who never betray their principles, who never 
 abuse the sacred trust reposed in them by their con- 
 stituents, who have a solemn duty to discharge, (see 
 parliamentary reports everywhere,) and will discharge 
 it at whatever cost. It would be inconvenient for 
 leaders of party to talk in this way. " No man knows 
 what an hour may bring forth " is true everywhere, 
 but especially in public life ; but every man has his 
 opinions, and if it is inexpedient for him to state them, 
 still he is not sorry to hear them ventilated by irres- 
 ponsible speakers on irresponsible benches. Mr Ben- 
 tinck, however, may be taken not only to perforin this 
 useful work, but as more or less a representative of 
 the county party — a party fallen in some degree from 
 
MR BENTINCK. 243 
 
 its high estate, but still, very rightly, a formidable 
 power in the House of Commons. No minister can 
 stand against them — "the men of metal and large- 
 acred-squires." How graphically has Disraeli spoken 
 of their desertion of Sir Robert Peel, on the memor- 
 able 25th of June, 1846 ! It was impossible, Disraeli 
 writes, that he could have marked without emotion 
 the secession of " the flower of the great party which 
 had been so proud to follow one who had been so 
 proud to lead. They were men to gain whose hearts, 
 and the hearts of their father, had been the aim and 
 exultation of his life. They had extended to him an 
 unlimited confidence and an admiration without stint. 
 They had stood by him in the darkest hour, and had 
 borne him from the depths of political despair to the 
 proudest of living positions. Right or wrong, they 
 were men of honour, breeding, and refinement, high 
 and generous character, great weight and station in 
 the county, which they have ever placed at his dis- 
 posal. He must have felt something of this while the 
 Mannerses, the Somersets, the Bentincks,theLowthers> 
 and the Lennoxes, passed before him." There was a 
 time when land indicated everything — wealth and fit- 
 ness for rule ; and the possession of ripe experience 
 and administrative capacity were all supposed to reside 
 in the landowners, just as, at one tinie, the clergy 
 were the great statesmen of England, of Europe, of 
 the world. And still the landed class must be a power. 
 They have leisure, wealth, and can command a certain 
 
 16 * 
 
244 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 amount of political influence. They are of course Con- 
 servative. The present state of things gives them 
 power ; why then should they find fault with it 1 In 
 the Army, or the Navy, or the Church, they find em- 
 ployment and emolument for their younger sons ; why 
 then should they seek for reform, especially as on 
 all hands it is admitted to be difficult to stop the tide 
 of innovation ? They have a natural horror of France, 
 for in France there are no great landed proprietors, 
 and the peasants are landowners, and almost as inde- 
 pendent as themselves. They are partial to 
 
 " Squires, with brains made clear 
 By the irresistible strength of beer." 
 
 In their way, they are well-meaning, honest men, and 
 fervent believers in old ways and ancient traditions u 
 Mr Bentinck is a fine specimen of the class ; but 
 leadership in the House of Commons requires some- 
 thing more — a something more which, unfortunately, 
 he does not possess. Generally, parliamentary leaders 
 have been distinguished men. The second-class men 
 who have taken that high position may be counted on 
 one's finger. Their time is gone by. 
 
XXII. 
 
 EDWARD BAINES. 
 
 Lord Holland was a "Whig nobleman, and, we dare 
 say, gave on appropriate occasions the Liberty of the 
 Press. Tom Moore was a gentleman of the press, 
 and in common with more exalted literary gentle- 
 men had the run of Holland House. We read in 
 Moore's diary an account of a breakfast in that head- 
 quarters of Whiggery in 1831 : "Talked of the state of 
 the press, the great misfortune of the total separation 
 that had taken place between those who conduct it 
 and the better rank of society ; even from literature 
 it had become in a great measure separated, instead 
 of forming, as in France, a distinguished branch of it. 
 Now you," he said, "and all the other eminent literary 
 persons of the day, keep as much aloof from the gen- 
 tlemen of the press as we of the political world do, 
 and they are therefore thrown, with all their force and 
 their virulence unsoftened by the commerce of society, 
 to form a separate and hostile class of themselves." 
 
246 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 We have here the accepted creed in good society. It is 
 true Lord Palmerston tells us he has met Mr Delane 
 of the Times in society, and he has had the honour of 
 receiving him at his own house, that he found him a 
 very agreeeble and intelligent gentleman; but then 
 Lord Palmerston never was a Whig, and people at 
 his time of life are not particular as to what company 
 they keep. 
 
 In England journalism, like virtue, is its own re- 
 ward. Wordsworth tells us, 
 
 " We poets in our youth begin in gladness, 
 "Whereof comes in the end despondency and madness." 
 
 But the poet may become a lion, may have a pen- 
 sion, may die poet-laureate. All abuse the literary 
 man. — Lord John Russell says he is prone to be 
 discontented with the Government under which 
 he lives — a feeling as natural to him as the at- 
 tachment of the Bedford family to Woburn Abbey 
 and the glorious Reformation. Undoubtedly the 
 proper place for the journalist is the House of Com- 
 mons. Did we proceed upon the supposition that 
 governing was a science and not an hereditary gift, 
 not a freak of nature, as the thick upper lip of the 
 House of Hapsburg, but a capacity only to be found 
 in men of strong natures, a capacity, moreover, be- 
 coming stronger and wiser — as it is wisely nurtured 
 and exercised, the journalists in the House of Com- 
 mons would be a numerous class. As it is, the loss 
 
EDWARD BAINE3 24? 
 
 is chiefly that of the nation, for perhaps the journalist 
 is the only man in England who studies politics for 
 their own sake. The scion of the aristocracy looks 
 upon the representation of his division of the county" 
 as one of his hereditary rights and duties — a bore, 
 perhaps, but one of the penalties he must pay for be- 
 ing so immensely cleverer and wiser than the rest of 
 humanity. His father is the largest proprietor in 
 Blankshire, and the estate always returns the M.P. 
 That honour is transmitted with the family spoons, 
 and will be till such time as Mr Bright's reformed 
 constituencies shall ask of a man — not what acres are* 
 his by the accident of birth — but what are his capa- 
 bilities and brains. The lawyer would laugh at you as 
 a simpleton if you supposed for an instant that he goes 
 through the expense and trouble of a parliamentary 
 election for any other purpose than that of his own 
 promotion. The soldier or the sailor seeks a seat in 
 Parliament for the same reason. The merchant and 
 the contractor, and the manufacturer, are more prone 
 to look after their own interests than those of the 
 public. There are many well-meaning men blessed 
 with long purses who are returned on account of local 
 influence and unlimited expenditure, merely for the 
 sake of a little natural and not discreditable vanity, 
 but the journalist is the only man whose days and 
 nights are devoted to politics, who knows better than 
 all other men the state of public feeling, the ignorance 
 or the prejudice and the passions of the hour, who can 
 
248 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 best distinguish the genuine wants and wishes of the 
 age, and is most given to the solution of temporary 
 problems by the application of abstract principles and 
 eternal truths ; and yet this is the man who most 
 rarely enters the walls of St Stephen's. Kemember 
 how the Tories despised and ill treated Canning, and 
 how Whigs, like Fox and Lord Holland, underrated 
 Sheridan and Burke on account, chiefly, it may be 
 presumed, of their literary character. In politics, it 
 seems as if there was a dead set against brains. It is 
 true that we suffer for this ; that if we go to war our 
 armies perish, as in the Crimea or at Walcheren ; 
 that we hold India by an army where mutiny seems 
 chronic ; that our taxation has reached a climax which 
 to all thoughtful men is appalling ; that we have 
 forfeited our continental friendships ; that nowhere 
 are the poor so poor, so depraved, so ignorant, as in 
 this land of enormous wealth, where we have an aris- 
 tocracy and a State Church the wealthiest in Europe. 
 It is true we suffer all this in good company, and that 
 so indomitable is English pluck that we keep right in 
 the main; but this could be achieved at a much less 
 expenditure of precious treasure and still more pre- 
 cious blood and brain. Tom Moore tells us of a party 
 at which were present a country squire and a poet ; 
 the former was wonderfully polite to the latter, and 
 in adjourning to the next room offered him precedence. 
 When told, however, the individual was a mere poet, 
 " Oh ! " said he, " I know my place," and rudely 
 
EDWARD BAINES. 249 
 
 pushing in before, left the poor poet to follow. Our 
 statesmen treat the journalist in the same way. If we 
 are ruined we are rejoiced to learn that it is not by 
 what Lord John Russell termed, when he was making 
 such a mess of it at Vienna, " the ribald press." Of 
 the institution thus termed, Mr Edward Baines is one 
 of the most distinguished members. Few country 
 journals have a wider circulation than the Leeds 
 Mercury, and of that journal Mr Baines has been the 
 chief conductor and proprietor these many years. 
 His father founded the paper ; was a model middle- 
 class man, and represented the borough of Leeds ; 
 and the son has religiously followed in his father's 
 steps. He has been a public man ever since he has 
 arrived at manhood ; but it was only at the last elec- 
 tion, -and when he had reached middle age, that he 
 became M.P. for his native town. Mr Baines, senior, 
 was a Whig, for the Whigs abolished the Test and 
 Corporation Acts, the Whigs made Leeds a borough, 
 the, Whigs made Mr Baines an M.P., and the present 
 M.P. for Leeds still retains that veneration for Lord 
 John Russell which formed part of the political creed 
 of all Whig families in the Reform epoch. Yet in 
 some things he has outgrown his early training. 
 The dissent of the present generation is more a mat- 
 ter of principle and less of a practical grievance than 
 it was, and Mr Baines is an earnest dissenter, and 
 this earnestness has led him far from Whiggism. It 
 is easy to see how this is the natural result of rigid 
 
250 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 Nonconformity. If, as Mr Baines believes, the vo* 
 luntary principle is amply sufficient to satisfy the 
 spiritual wants of the nation, a fortiori the educational 
 wants of the nation may be satisfied in a similar man- 
 ner. Carry out this principle, and Government be- 
 comes little better, as regards home matters, than a 
 matter of police. Lord Macaulay, in one of his papers 
 in the Edinburgh Review, in reply to Mr Gladstone, 
 came to a similar conclusion ; but the difference be- 
 tween him and Mr Baines is, that the one contemplat- 
 ed the case in its spiritual, the other in its secular 
 aspect. It is Mr Baines's religiousness that has made 
 him a politician and an M.P., and hence it was the 
 moment he became the latter that he obtained a Par- 
 liamentary committee to do away with what is called 
 the Bible monopoly, that is, a monopoly by whieh no 
 one is allowed to print the Bible in England but the 
 printers of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 
 and the printers to the Queen's Most Excellent Ma- 
 jesty. His other public acts all flow from the same 
 principle. Let the voluntary principle be fully car- 
 ried out, and what, argues Mr Baines, what evil can it 
 not remove ? Temperance societies will abolish drunk- 
 enness, educational societies will abolish ignorance, 
 religious societies — alias churches — will clothe the 
 land with Gospel life and light. Mr Baines may be 
 right or wrong, but we always know where to find 
 him. Let the voluntary principle prevail, is the bur- 
 den of his song ; this has led him far from Whiggery, 
 
EDWARD BAINES. 251 
 
 otherwise lie is a Whig, and inclines to Lord John 
 Russell's lead. Of the school, not growing, rather 
 otherwise, and somewhat inclined to intolerance, of 
 which Edward Miall of the Nonconformist is the 
 literary, Edward Baines may be considered as the 
 parliamentary head ; he represents a society which 
 has a very long name, and which flatters itself that it 
 has become respectable since it has dropped the vul- 
 gar designation of Anti-State Church. As an orator, 
 Mr Baines is in no wise remarkable. There is no 
 brilliancy or attempt at display about him. He is a well 
 made man, of average size, pale, industrious, and per- 
 severing. As a man of business he bears a high charac- 
 ter. In the House of Commons he represents the 
 great middle-class dissenting public, a public that 
 takes delight in missionary societies — in the anti-sla- 
 very cause — in the promotion of peace — in philan- 
 thropy in general ; and sure are we that in that as- 
 sembly they could not have a more fitting or more 
 creditable representative. 
 
XXIII. 
 
 W. JOHNSON FOX. 
 
 There is a virtue in our English constitution that, 
 however aristocratic it may be, it is not exclusive ; 
 here a low-born man may rise. It is true, at first he 
 has a hard time of it, but it is equally true that, if he 
 have talents — and sense enough to use them — he can 
 climb up into a position of equality with the highest 
 and the noblest in the land. When the Ten Hours' 
 Bill was before the House of Commons, the late Mr 
 Joseph Brotherton, then M.P. for Salford, alluded to 
 the period of his life when he was a factory boy, and 
 detailed the hardships and wrongs to which he was 
 subjected, and the resolution that he had formed — to 
 improve the condition of the factory hands, should 
 he ever have the power. At the conclusion of his 
 speech, Sir James Graham rose up and declared, amid 
 the plaudits of the assembly, that he did not know 
 before that Mr Brotherton had sprung from so humble 
 
W. JOHNSON FOX. 253 
 
 an origin, but that it made him more proud than ever 
 of the House of Commons, to think that a man rising 
 from that condition should be able to sit side by side 
 and on equal terms with the hereditary gentry of 
 the land. A barber's grandson we have known to 
 become Lord Chancellor ; a linen-draper's son, in 
 our time, has been an archbishop. Privates rise 
 from the ranks, and some of our naval heroes had 
 names not supposed to indicate good family. A 
 successful commercial career has also lifted a man 
 into the privileged circles of the Upper Ten Thou- 
 sand. Still, the cases are few in which a man 
 without wealth or aristocratic connection has been 
 chosen by the English people to represent them in their 
 own house. Even when a class has been strong enough 
 to send a man to St Stephen's to look after their own 
 peculiar interests, his career has not been flattering 
 nor his success great. The West Indian proprietors 
 did not do themselves much good by returning Peter 
 Borthwick. Feargus O'Connor got into Parliament, 
 and Chartism immediately died out. The Tower 
 Hamlets had little to pride themselves on in the suc- 
 cess of Mr George Thompson ; and Edward Miall, 
 though he once sat for Rochdale — and took a respect- 
 able position in the House — was defeated, I fear, in 
 not the most creditable manner, and has since found 
 no constituency sufficiently independent of local in- 
 fluences to return him. But occasionally we have an 
 illustration of the fact that learning is better than 
 
254 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 house or land, and this has been illustrated in the 
 person of Mr Fox — whose father was a very small 
 farmer in Suffolk, whose connections were of the 
 humblest character, who himself worked as a lad in a 
 Norwich factory, and who now represents one of our 
 most democratic boroughs — that of Oldham. Mr 
 Fox's position is creditable alike to himself and his 
 constituents. Practically, it is an argument in 
 favour of the extension of the franchise, which can- 
 not be lost on a thinking, impartial public. 
 
 Years and years back, in the thinly-populated dis- 
 trict of Homerton, there was an academy — belonging 
 to that most respectable body of dissenters then called 
 Independents, now Congregationalists — presided over 
 by that learned and pious divine, the late Dr Pye 
 Smith, whose Scriptural Testimony to the Messiah is 
 still an authority in theological circles. To this 
 academy the youthful Fox was sent, at the suggestion 
 of a congregation worshipping in a very ancient build- 
 ing — yet, I believe, existing in Norwich — who had 
 witnessed the talents of the youthful disciple, and 
 deemed that he might become a teacher and preacher 
 among themselves. Mr Fox passed through his. 
 academical career successfully, and was settled, as the 
 phrase is, as a minister somewhere in Hampshire. So 
 far the result was favourable, and the Norwich people 
 prided themselves on their sagacity. The time now 
 arrived when they were to be disappointed. In those 
 days Neology had not made its appearance, but Unita- 
 
W. JOHNSON FOX. 255 
 
 nanism had ; and by the orthodox it was regarded as 
 just as bad. To borrow a simile from Dryden's " Hind 
 and Panther/' Reynard ravaged the garden, and pull- 
 ed up and destroyed fruit and flower. One of the buds 
 thus rudely torn away was William Johnson Fox. 
 Possibly, he was of a disputatious turn ; possibly, he 
 was led away by that celebrated William Taylor, the 
 correspondent of Southey, who first made German 
 literature known to the English, and who conferred 
 on the old cathedral city in which he lived a literary 
 reputation, which Norwich has ever since done its 
 best to retain; possibly, Fox had never been very 
 orthodox. However, the time came when he publicly 
 abandoned the denomination to which he belonged, 
 and became a Unitarian minister. Ultimately he 
 settled down in South-place, Finsbury-square, Lon- 
 don. His Sunday morning orations were a great suc- 
 cess ; he gathered around him many of the wits of 
 London — Dickens, and Douglas Jerrold, and Mac- 
 ready were among his auditors ; he edited a maga- 
 zine now defunct, wrote in the Morning Chronicle and 
 other papers ; and as lecturer, and wit, and man of 
 letters, took high rank in London life. 
 
 Nor is this to be wondered at. A man of wide 
 reading, ready memory, with a strong sense of humour, 
 and inclining to the liberal and popular view of things, 
 if able to talk at all may be sure not to talk in vain. 
 The times also were propitious. When Mr Fox com- 
 menced public life, people had not become indif- 
 
256 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 ferent to politics, and struggled fiercely against the 
 optimist conclusion — 
 
 a 'Whatever is is right." 
 
 The men with whom he lived had seen Sidmouth 
 cover the land with a network of spies and informers ; 
 had seen the Habeas Corpus Act suspended; had 
 heard of the massacre at Peterloo ; had applauded 
 while Hone badgered Ellenborough to death; and 
 had sympathized with Hunt when in his cell for call- 
 ing the Prince of Wales an Adonis of fifty. They had 
 been seduced by Godwin as he wrote of political 
 justice ; by Owen's New Moral World ; by Shelley, 
 as he passionately inveighed against the society which 
 had robbed him of his children, and had driven him an 
 outcast from his ancestral home. They had seen Sir 
 Samuel Romilly in vain pleading that a poor wretch 
 should not be hung for stealing goods of the value of 
 five shillings ; and their newspapers had told them how 
 bishops and royal dukes had swelled the majority in 
 the British senate in favour of the accursed slave trade. 
 Hints that reached them of doings at the Brighton Pa- 
 vilion — of the disgusting revelations of Mrs Clarke — of 
 the great trial at Westminster Hall, when the character 
 of an English Queen was at stake, had made the mid- 
 dle and lower classes view with infinite alarm the 
 aristocracy and all connected with them. In those 
 days a powerful writer, an eloquent orator, could do 
 much, and Mr Fox laboured at his vocation, and not 
 
W. JOHNSON FOX. 257 
 
 in vain. It seems to me we have no snch orators 
 now. It seems to me that we have fallen on evil 
 days. It seems to me that duty has lost her charms, 
 and that right or wrong are viewed by men now only 
 with an impartial eye. I may be wrong — I hope I am. 
 But it is time I point him out. You are in the 
 Speaker's gallery. As you look towards the minis- 
 terial side, about half-way down, you will see at the 
 end of the fourth bench the subject of the present 
 sketch. You cannot mistake him ; there is not such 
 another figure in the House. There are fat men in the 
 House, there are short men ; but there are none who 
 so combine fatness and shortness as does Johnson 
 Fox. There are serious, reverend-lo.oking gentlemen 
 in the House, Mr Spooner is one ; but there are none 
 so serious and reverend-looking as Fox, who not only 
 wears a Puritan hat, but who wears it with a Puritan 
 air, and whom you might easily imagine side by side 
 with Praise-God-Barebones, or Hew Agag in pieces 
 before the Lord. The upper part of the face is that 
 of the divine, the lower part that of the alderman. 
 There is a rare world of speculation in that eye, and 
 of good cheer in that double chin. How out of that 
 pile of flesh there can come forth a clear, articulate 
 sound, and some considerable amount of superior 
 thought, is to me a mystery, or would be, did I not 
 see upon the shortest and fattest possible body the 
 largest possible head, still adorned by thick masses of 
 grey hair, parted in the middle and hanging down on 
 
 17 
 
258 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 each side — altogether a face resembling very much 
 that of John Bunyan. Mr Fox's collar is down — no 
 collar could stand up round such a chin — and an old- 
 fashioned suit of black completes his tout ensemble. If 
 his hat is on, you feel inclined to adopt the slang of 
 the streets, and respectfully to ask the honourable 
 gentleman, " Who is his hatter ? " for it is low and 
 broad-brimmed, and of a style that never would have 
 won the smile of a Count d'Orsay. The resem- 
 blance, then, is complete ; and if you could be- 
 lieve there were Puritans in these degenerate days 
 — these days, when even the press has become 
 nunkified, when actually one of our popular teachers 
 tells us, that it is a sign of respectability to have 
 an account at a bank — if, I repeat, that in such 
 times as these you can imagine the men whose 
 quaint words, and gloomy creeds, and self-sacri- 
 ficing lives were heroic and marvellous then, and 
 are heroic and marvellous still — still existent, you 
 would swear that chief among them was William 
 Johnson Fox. 
 
 But Mr Fox is on his legs. What a clear, 
 musical, yet somewhat melancholy and mannered 
 voice he has — how studied yet how natural is his 
 air — how effective is his humour, and how marvel- 
 lous his power of constructing climaxes ! At any 
 rate, there is nothing of the demagogue about him. 
 There is no screaming, no vulgarity, no disgusting 
 vehemence of matter or manner ; but he gives you the 
 
W. JOHXSON FOX. 259 
 
 idea of gentleness, and thought, and power. You 
 tell me he is monotonous. Well, so he is. He stands 
 in the same position invariably, and speaks with the 
 same tone. When you have heard him once you need 
 not hear him again. Look at him ; his head is slight- 
 ly on one side, his left arm crossing his breast supports 
 his right elbow, and, as he declaims, the fore-finger 
 on his right hand emphatically rises and falls. But 
 Mr Fox is a speaker, not a debater. His style of 
 speaking has been born elsewhere than on those 
 benches, and may be read and understood as well out 
 of the House as in it — as well next year as this. Mr 
 Fox is the pulpit orator in the House of Commons. 
 His speaking is that of a man who has, all his life, 
 had a little perch to himself, in which he can teach, 
 and from which he can lay down the law ; and Mr 
 Fox is as much in it in St Stephen's as when stand- 
 ing in South-place, Finsbury- square. Well might 
 George Stephenson once say to Sir Robert Peel, 
 " Why of all the powers above and under the earth, 
 there seems to me to be no power so great as the gift 
 of the gab." 
 
 17 
 
XXIV. 
 
 MR FREDERICK PEEL. 
 
 The newspapers have just recorded the appointment 
 of Mr Frederick Peel as Financial Secretary of the 
 Treasury, in the place of Mr Samuel Laing. The 
 office is an important one, and one in which a man 
 inclined to be economical may do an immense amount 
 of good in these days of extravagant expenditure. 
 His duties are of the most onerous character. The 
 Treasury is that department of the British Govern- 
 ment which controls the management, collection, and 
 expenditure of the public revenue. It is the business 
 of the Exchequer to take care that no issues of public 
 money are made by the Treasury without their being 
 in conformity with the authority especially enacted 
 by Parliament. When money is to be paid on ac- 
 count of the public service, this is almost always done 
 on the authority of a Treasury warrant ; and, in other 
 cases, the countersign of the Treasury is requisite. 
 The departments immediately subordinate to the Trea- 
 
1VIR FREDERICK PEEL. 261 
 
 sury are the Boards of Customs, of Excise, of Stamps 
 and Taxes, and the Post-office. The Financial Se- 
 cretary, if he does his duty, must check the tendency 
 to jobs on the part of the Government, and to extra- 
 vagance on the part of the Commons. If he is a mere 
 tool in the hands of his superiors, he becomes mis- 
 chievous. An honest Financial Secretary may be an 
 immense benefit to the nation. Mr Frederick Peel is 
 well off — has a good character — much official experi- 
 ence, and there is no reason why he should suffer 
 himself to become a cipher. 
 
 In England, the hereditary feeling is strong. We 
 are not an ungrateful people. We pay our benefac- 
 tors handsomely ; the lords who helped to make 
 England Protestant did not labour in vain ; the 
 statesmen of the revolution all managed to make it 
 pay ; Marlborough and Wellington won something 
 quite as good, in its way, as military glory by their 
 splendid victories. No man devotes himself to politics 
 for nothing, unless he is very poor, and cannot afford 
 to buy a select constituency. Hear a patriotic journal- 
 list : " See how I have defended Gladstone ! " says 
 one ; " How I have always taken Lord John Russell's 
 part ! " exclaims another ; " What man has done 
 more than I have for Lord Palmerston ? " says a 
 third. According to all these reports, these distin- 
 guished gentlemen have been cruelly treated. It 
 would not be so if they had a seat in Parliament. 
 Undoubtedly, the Ministry of the day has loaves and 
 
262 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 fishes at its disposal ; but the multitude is great who 
 are hungry, and cannot be sent empty away. No 
 miracles are wrought now-a-days. The only thing 
 to be done, then, is to distribute the loaves and fishes 
 as widely as possible amongst independent M.P.s. 
 There is no law so strong as that of self-preserva- 
 tion. The Premier would commit political suicide 
 who would go out of his way to reward virtue out of 
 the House of Commons, and be indifferent to the 
 immense supply of that valuable article under his very 
 nose. The Peel family are an illustration of the 
 gratitude of the English people. Sir Robert Peel, 
 from his childhood, was a politician. He was rich, 
 and gifted, and of a good constitution, and he went 
 from one office to another, till he became England's 
 foremost man. He died, cut off suddenly, in his very 
 prime, and there was not a town, or village, or se- 
 cluded hamlet in the land, in which men did not 
 mourn as if they had lost a friend. Did the nation for- 
 get him ? — oh ! no. It extended to the sons the regard 
 it had learnt to entertain for the father. Already 
 they had entered on a public career. The elder one 
 had tried diplomacy, as it was always understood, at 
 a very considerable expense to his respected parent ; 
 the younger one had devoted himself to politics. The 
 deceased statesman's brothers had also profited by 
 bearing his name, and had become one a general, and 
 the other an Indian judge. If there be a Peel ecclesias- 
 tically inclined, we may be sure he will die a bishop, 
 
MR FREDERICK PEEL. 263 
 
 at the least. The family is one of the most popular 
 in England, on account, simply, of the character of 
 Peel the statesman. 
 
 The contrast between the two brothers is of the most 
 extraordinary character. Frederick has devoted 
 himself to politics, and is the finest specimen of official 
 red tape existing. With long, light hair neatly 
 brushed on each side of his light- complexioned face, 
 with his tall figure slightly stooping, his clothes of the 
 soberest hue, all neatly brushed, he seems the very 
 picture of a model young man. His great character- 
 istic, I should think, is steadiness. I don't suppose 
 he ever did an improper thing in his life. When the 
 House sits, he is always in his place ; and when he 
 speaks, if he is not impressive or striking, at any rate 
 he does not forget what he has to say. He is never 
 guilty of vehemence or parliamentary gancherie ; on 
 a small scale, he is an exact copy of the great Sir 
 Robert ; and, after all, he made a much better war 
 secretary than Sir John Eamsden or Mr Monsell. 
 Mr Frederick Peel is always respectable. Now, his 
 brother is the reverse of all this. It is seldom he fa- 
 vours the House with his presence, and it is seldomer 
 he speaks ; and, when he does, it is generally admit- 
 ted discretion is not his forte. Sometimes the House 
 laughs with him ; sometimes at him ; but it makes 
 little difference — he will atone for the failure of to- 
 day by the success of to-morrow ; and he knows that 
 so long as he lives Tamworth will never think of re- 
 
264 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 turning any one else in his place. Then, what a 
 jolly-looking, roystering blade he is ! He does not 
 look careworn, like Fred, nor is he by any means as 
 neat and proper. He has a tendency to fat, his eye 
 sparkles with fun, his face is as red as that of an alder- 
 man, and with his jaunty air, and his great oak stick 
 in his hand, and a camellia in the button-hole of his 
 coat, he strikes you as belonging to quite a different 
 race to his brother Fred, and you find it hard to 
 believe how such a man as Sir Robert Peel can be the 
 son of the great statesman, who, in his proper sphere, 
 in the House of Commons, was the most patient, 
 the most persevering, the most prudent, and the 
 most careful of men. The King of Brentford, in 
 describing the characters of his sons, says of 
 one : — 
 
 " At school they never flogged him : 
 
 At college, though not fast, 
 Yet his ' little go ' and ' great go ' 
 
 He creditably passed : 
 And made his year's allowance 
 For eighteen months to last." 
 
 Similar language might be applied to Mr Frederick 
 Peel ; but it is by no means applicable to his brother. 
 The industrious and the idle apprentice of Hogarth 
 scarce differ more. Position, of course, has something 
 to do with this ; but the difference is a radical and in- 
 nate one. One of the effects of the law relating to 
 land, writes Mr Kay, late travelling bachelor of the 
 
MR FREDERICK PEEL. 265 
 
 University of Cambridge, is, that " it emancipates the 
 heir almost entirely from the influence and authority 
 of the father. The son knows that his chance of 
 succeeding to the lands does not depend upon his 
 being dutiful or undutiful, moral or profligate, indus- 
 trious or idle ; the father cannot stimulate the eldest 
 son to exertion or honourable conduct by the fear of 
 the property being left to one of the younger children. 
 A strict settlement therefore diminishes, and, in fact, 
 destroys, the inducements which would otherwise have 
 actuated the eldest child in some degree, and it tends 
 to render him idle, careless, disrespectful towards his 
 father, and often profligate in his habits ; and having 
 done this, it puts him into one of the most influential 
 places in the country, as an example to the nation." 
 It is wonderful, then, considering all things, that eldest 
 sons should turn out as well as they do. Sir Robert 
 Peel may yet adorn the family name. His gallant 
 defence of Switzerland touched all hearts. Captain 
 "William Peel is still held by the nation in veneration ; 
 and Mr Frederick Peel, we may be sure, will not 
 sully or discredit the name he bears. But if the eldest 
 son is gay, and the younger one studious and pains- 
 taking, we must remember one had his position made 
 for him ; the other had in a great degree to make it 
 for himself. It is true that, as the son of his father, 
 he would have gained a patient and attentive hearing 
 for his maiden speech ; but his subsequent success is 
 due to merit of some kind or other of his own. I 
 
268 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 doubt whether he will ever take very high stand in 
 the House of Commons ; but he will be always safe 
 and sure ; and very often in the race the tortoise beats 
 the hare. Perhaps, indeed, it is better for us all that 
 • it should be so. The Times, in order to spite Mr 
 Gladstone, hailed the advent of Mr Frederick Peel 
 to power in language unusually enthusiastic. Since 
 then, however, Mr Peel has addressed his constituents 
 at Bury, and as he has eulogised the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, the Times has begun to sneer at its 
 model statesman. Fortunately for our officials, the 
 public soon forget the criticisms of the press, and the 
 judgment of the press is by no means infallible. 
 What is written in haste, is hastily forgotten. 
 
 The Right Hon. Frederick Peel is the second son 
 of the late Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, Bart., M.P. 
 He was born in 1823, and was educated at Harrow 
 and Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining consider- 
 able honours in both institutions. In 1845 he took 
 his B.A. degree as eighth junior optime and sixth 
 classic. He was called to the bar in 1849, but never 
 practised. In this latter year he was returned 
 M.P. for Leominster, and on the 7th of May in that 
 year signalised himself by his maiden speech in favour 
 of the Parliamentary Oaths (Jews) Bill ; a speech 
 which so much pleased the anxious sire, that he sent 
 his son a cheque for the trifling sum of £10,000 im- 
 mediately after its delivery. The hon. gentleman 
 represented Leominster up to 1852, and Bury from 
 
MR FREDERICK PEEL. 267 
 
 1852 to 1857, not being returned at the general elec- 
 tion of the latter year. He was Under Secretary for 
 the Colonies 1851-52 and 1853-55; Under Secretary 
 for War 1855-57 ; and on resigning office, owing to 
 the loss of his seat in Parliament, was made a privy 
 councillor. He was again returned for Bury in 
 1859. 
 
XXV. 
 
 MR BERNAL OSBORNE. 
 
 Why should English gentlemen engage in politics? 
 As a profession, it does not pay. Lord John Russell 
 is not supposed to be immensely wealthy; yet he 
 must have spent, in election contests and for election 
 purposes, quite as much as he has ever received back 
 in the shape of official salary. We all know what 
 serious remonstrances were made by the firm with 
 which Mr Poulet Thompson was connected, on account 
 of the money he spent with a view to secure himself a 
 seat in Parliament. Theoretically, the system is as 
 bad as it can well be. "I bought you," said an 
 exultant M. P. to a discontented constituency, on one 
 
 occasion, " and, by G , I '11 sell you." Such a 
 
 feeling, of course, naturally rises in the hearts of 
 men who have acquired their parliamentary position 
 by their wealth ; and some Radicals will always prove 
 to you, that if a man parts with his cash, unless he 
 be born a fool, he does not do it for nothing. It is 
 
MR BERNAL OSBORNE. 269 
 
 too bad such should be the case. We can never 
 expect a reformed House of Commons till we get 
 M.P.s to be ashamed of the dirty and disgraceful 
 work at election contests. Constituents and M.P.s 
 are deeply dishonoured with such things. I do not 
 know who are the most to blame — the scoundrels 
 who are dirty enough to bribe, or the scoundrels 
 who are dirty enough to take the bribe. Is it 
 not strange that we get men of honour on either side 
 of the House ? 
 
 The Osborne family illustrate and confirm this view. 
 Some years back there was a very respectable gentle- 
 man M.P. for Rochester and chairman of committees 
 in the House of Commons. In the discharge of his 
 duties in this latter capacity he received the respect- 
 able allowance of twelve hundred a-year; but, in order 
 to secure that sum, he had paid away in the course of 
 his life a sum amounting, it is said, to £60,000. This 
 gentleman was the father of the present M.P. for 
 Liskeard. A description of the former will almost 
 suit the latter. Mr Grant thus describes Mr Bernal : — 
 i( His face is round, and his features are intelligent 
 and agreeable; his complexion indicates an ample 
 stock of health ; he has a fine forehead ; his hair is 
 of a dark brown colour ; he is of Jewish description ; 
 he is a commanding person, and in the prime of life." 
 The resemblance may be carried still further. Mr 
 Grant says of the father, that " he speaks very seldom, 
 and never at any length on any question of command- 
 
270 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 ing importance." The son, also, in common with the 
 father, illustrates the fallacy involved in the idea that 
 the House of Commons is a place for common people. 
 Both have found that the parliamentary existence, as 
 a rule, requires a very considerable property qualifi- 
 cation. Some people will tell you it is abolished. It 
 is not, nor ever will be. The more democratic is a 
 constituency the more essential a requisite will it be 
 for its representative to be a man of wealth. What 
 could a poor M.P. do in Westminster, or Finsbury, or 
 Marylebone, or the Tower Hamlets, without being 
 backed by large sums of money ? If by a miracle he 
 were to be returned, depend upon it his constituency 
 would soon tire of him. I write this with full know- 
 ledge of the fact that the House of Commons forbids 
 bribery at elections, and that the returns of expenses 
 certified by the auditor appointed for the purpose are 
 ridiculously small. It is really wonderful, consider- 
 ing all things, how we get such good members of 
 Parliament as we do ; and that we do get them at all 
 is, we fear, in a very small degree the fault of the 
 electors, but chiefly the result of that esprit de corps 
 which exists amongst English gentlemen, and which 
 is even found in an assembly of patriots. It is not 
 knowingly that the House of Commons is a party to 
 anything dirty or mean. When they truckled to the 
 Lords, and suffered the latter to continue the paper 
 tax which they had rejected, they did so because 
 there was not spirit enough in the country to back 
 
MR BERNAL OSBORNE. Zii 
 
 them, if they had resisted the dictation of the Lords. 
 The event proved they were right. There was a 
 Constitutional Defence Committee formed, but it was 
 found impossible to get up the steam. The Reform 
 Bill languished and died for a similar reason. If the 
 nation had cared for reform we should have had it. But 
 to return to Mr Osborne ; he is the saucy boy — the enfant 
 terrible — of the House of Commons. He is the charter- 
 ed libertine of the Liberal party. He is popular in the 
 House, and popular out of doors. His speeches are 
 always reported at considerable length, and — if we 
 may believe the reporters, and I see no reason to 
 doubt them — they always elicit a great deal of laugh- 
 ter. He makes much fun out of Mr Newdegate; 
 and nothing pleases him better than to see Mr 
 Spooner shake his grey and reverend head. Occa- 
 sionally he flies at higher game, and is only too happy 
 if he can catch Mr Disraeli napping. He has plenty 
 of fun — the fun of a good constitution and of animal 
 spirits, and that fun he infuses into his speeches. 
 Occasionally, he is very happy ; thus, in his speech 
 on the Derby-Disraeli Reform Bill, he protested 
 against such " political millinery." " The franchise," 
 he contended, " would be completely at the mercy of 
 a scolding landlady or smoky chimney/' He inti- 
 mated to Mr Disraeli that he had a heavy omnibus 
 of country gentlemen to pull up the hill. Mr Osborne 
 is also great in interruptions, and pretty often raises a 
 laugh. Thus, when Mr Heywood was gravely arguing 
 
272 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 in favour of the retention of the Crystal Palace in 
 Hyde Park, on the ground that gentlemen had no 
 place of amusement at the West-end, Mr Osborne's 
 question, " Where is Cremorne 1" was greatly to the 
 amusement of a House always disposed to laugh, even 
 when hard at work. The wit in which Mr Osborne 
 deals is not difficult of achievement. Sydney Smith 
 writes—" It is argued that wit is a sort of inexplicable 
 visitation, that it comes and goes with the rapidity of 
 lightning, and that it is quite as unattainable as beauty 
 or just proportion. I am so much of a contrary way 
 of thinking, that I am convinced a man might sit down 
 as systematically and as successfully to the study of wit 
 as he might to the study of mathematics ; and I would 
 answer for it that, by giving up only six hours a-day to 
 learning wit, he should come on prodigiously before 
 midsummer, so that his friends should hardly know him 
 again/' Parliamentary wit, it is clear, is often studied 
 and far-fetched. MrWilberforce said of Sheridan, that 
 general impression was,that he came to theHouse of Com- 
 mons with his flashes prepared and ready to let off. Mr 
 Osborne, we fancy, resembles Sheridan in this respect. 
 He is not a frequent debater. It is seldom he attempts 
 to catch the Speaker's eye. So long as he is in office, he 
 generally contents himself with a silent vote. Out of 
 office he is vehement ; or if the ministry with which 
 he is connected be in danger, he exerts himself, and 
 makes one or two telling speeches. While M.P. for 
 Dover, and at the Admiralty, he made no complaints ; 
 
MR. BERNAL OSBORNE. 273 
 
 but no sooner was he turned out of Dover, and a 
 Conservative in his place, than his righteous soul was 
 grieved beyond all endurance at the corrupt adminis- 
 tration at the Admiralty. Such a state of affairs was 
 intolerable, and not to be borne ; but Mr Osborne once 
 more at his old place, and he sleeps quietly, only 
 waking up at quarter-day. It is as a parliamentary 
 wit, rather than as a statesman, or debater, or able 
 administrator, that Mr Osborne's reputation is based. 
 Now, wit in the House of Commons, or in any large 
 assembly, is of the lowest possible character. For 
 instance, how childish is a joke of Lord Campbell's, or 
 other facetious judge on the bench, when it appears in 
 print, and yet with what shouts of laughter was it 
 received ! The cause of this is twofold : in the first 
 place, in a business assembly, when men's minds have 
 long been on the stretch, the faintest excuse for a smile 
 is welcomed as a grateful relief and change ; in the 
 second place, there is a contagious principle in jokes 
 as well as in fevers. A man is acted on by others. You 
 laugh when you see others around you laughing. Go 
 to a crowded theatre or public meeting. There is a 
 mass of human bodies piled up in front of you, so 
 you can neither see nor hear actor or speaker, wherever 
 and whichever he may be ; yet you hear every 
 one around you laughing, and you do the same. 
 The wits of the House of Commons are not very witty 
 men. Lord Palmerston, Mr Berkeley, and Mr Os- 
 borne are, for instance.,, not to be named in the same 
 
 18 
 
274 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 day with. Mr Canning ; but they are successful in rais- 
 ing laughter for the reasons I have already mentioned. 
 The ready wit of a good, sound, physical constitution is 
 invaluable in a man who is in a position to be a little 
 independent and impudent. In a poor man, of course, 
 it would not be tolerated an instant ; but Mr Osborne 
 is not poor, and hence he successfully elicits the loud 
 laugh, that speaks the vacant mind. Besides, an impu- 
 dent man is always a successful one. There is no 
 standing up against impudence. Sir Peter Laurie 
 cannot put it down. It acts on us as the poet says vice 
 acts on us — "We are first shocked; then endure; then 
 embrace." The Marylebone vestry were in arms against 
 Mr Osborne because he called them a lot of political 
 tinkers — we should like to have seen the expression of 
 Mr Osborne's face as he seriously assured them that 
 " thinkers " was the word he used. The exhibition 
 must have been amusing in the extreme. 
 
 Mr Osborne's career may be very easily told. He 
 began life in the army. He then became a Liberal 
 M.P. in favour of the ballot and free trade. In 1852 
 he was appointed Secretary for the Admiralty. He 
 sat in Parliament as M.P. for Wycombe from 1841 
 to 184T, when he was returned for Middlesex. His 
 connection with the Admiralty helped to return him 
 for Dover. Being, however, ultimately driven out of 
 that borough, when the Tories had the command of the 
 Admiralty influence, he retired into private life. To 
 Liskeard is the merit due of having restored him to 
 the public service. Liskeard might have done worse. 
 
XXVI. 
 
 MR THOMAS S. DUNCOMBE. 
 
 ISu ^ount of parliamentary orators would be com- 
 plete or sa: xtory that did not include the name 
 of Mr Duncombe. It is true he belongs to the past 
 rather than to the present ; but he was the pet of the 
 people at one time, has done good service in his day, 
 and represents a class of men becoming rare. The 
 gay young aristocrats, who went in for popular ap- 
 plause, have been a numerous class. When we think 
 of them, the names of Alcibiades, Count Mirabeau, 
 and Charles James Fox, instinctively recur to our 
 minds. They had a love of liberty which they car- 
 ried out to the fullest extent. They were the wonder 
 and admiration of their contemporaries. How intense 
 was their contempt of money, how ardent was their 
 pursuit of pleasure, and how complete was their devo- 
 tion to the cause of the people ! Men smiled on them, 
 and women too. In this soberer age of ours, we 
 can scarce understand their ways, or do justice to 
 18* 
 
276 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 their character. Mr Duncombe is almost the last of 
 his class. A rising statesman now must work hard to 
 win his laurels. He must lecture at Mechanics' In- 
 stitutions, he must attend at the sitting of the Social 
 Congress, he must be always at his place in Parlia- 
 ment, and, if he appears on the platform of Exeter 
 Hall, so much the better. It may be that we have 
 gained in honesty, but I am not quite so sure of that. 
 There are whited sepulchres now as there were when 
 the Gospel story was first published to the world. 
 
 Middle-aged and elderly gentlemen will tell yoti 
 that young Thomas Duncombe, then M.P. for Hert- 
 ford, was one of the handsomest and gayest men about 
 town some twenty or thirty years ago. Whatever are 
 their politics, they will all confess how dashing was 
 his appearance, how sparkling was his eye, how mu- 
 sical his voice, and how gentlemanly his breeding. 
 I take up a series of parliamentary portraits by a Con- 
 servative writer. He says, " If the shade of Beau 
 Brummell had revisited the earth to nominate his 
 presiding genius in the departments of fashion in 
 the senate, his choice must have fallen on the hon- 
 ourable member, for in person Duncombe is the 
 beau ideal of a gentleman ; dresses well, and always 
 in keeping, as far as fashion goes, with its most 
 approved modes; never seen with less than a 
 brilliantly-polished and well-fitting boot, a smart, 
 somewhat d'Orsay hat, beautiful lavender or straw- 
 coloured kid gloves, and a turn-out, by way of equi- 
 
MR THOMAS S. DUNCOMBE. 277 
 
 page, worthy of an aristocrat of the highest order. 
 If a line be pardoned in favour of his personal at- 
 tractions, we might venture to observe, in conclusion, 
 that if the days of chivalry were returned, and a dash- 
 ing cavalier selected from some gay troubadours to pay 
 homage to the shrine of his ladye love, few knights 
 would stand more prominent in the ranks than the 
 popular M.P. for Finsbury." Mr James Grant, in 
 his " Random Recollections," gives an equally agree- 
 able character of Mr Duncombe. He was then a 
 favourite in the House and a favourite out of doors. 
 Of course, much was due to his singularly-attractive 
 personal appearance. Few could be angry with such 
 a well-bred, agreeable man of the world. However 
 extreme might be his opinions, however uncompro- 
 mising his speeches, however he might tease and irri- 
 tate in office (for when Mr Duncombe was an ardent 
 politician there were thousands of Chartists in the 
 country — men who believed in Feargus O'Connor 
 and the Northern Star, of whom Mr Duncombe was 
 the mouth- piece), somehow or other men did not get 
 angry when the Finsbury M.P. was on his legs. 
 There was always a merry twinkle in his eye, as if he 
 were in fun, and then his manner was so easy, his 
 voice so pleasant, his tact so admirable, that his bit- 
 terest enemies could not find it in their hearts to be 
 angry. It was seldom that he made long and labour- 
 ed speeches ; his forte was rather in asking questions, 
 in presenting ultra-Radical petitions^ and in making 
 
278 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 statements relative to aggrieved (more especially 
 Finsbury) individuals ; and this he did to perfection. 
 No man in the House had a happier knack of giving 
 a clear, intelligible statement in a manner simple and 
 unaffected, and of occasionally relieving it with a 
 little touch of humour ; and when he took up the case 
 of Mazzini, and convicted Sir James Graham of open- 
 ing letters sent through the Post Office, he achieved 
 a triumph of which almost every man, woman, and 
 child in the British dominions was proud. The old 
 poet tells us of a certain individual, that 
 
 " If to his share some trifling errors fall, 
 Look in his face, and you'll forget them all." 
 
 Duncombe could stand this test better than any man 
 in the House ; and yet he was not merely a Liberal 
 but an ultra-Radical, when merely to be Radical 
 was to be low, and ungentlemanly, and little better 
 than one of the wicked. How came Mr Duncombe 
 connected with such a set ? the question is interest- 
 ing. Sheridan said Lord Holland (Tom Moore is our 
 authority) was an annual parliament and universal 
 suffrage man, but it seemed rather as a waggery that he 
 adopted it. " There is nothing like it, he would say ; 
 it is the most convenient thing in the world. When 
 people come to you with plans of reform, your answer 
 is ready, Don't talk to me of your minor details. I 
 am for annual parliament and universal suffrage ; no- 
 thing short of that." Did Duncombe act in this man- 
 
MR THOMAS S. DUNCOMBE. 279 
 
 ner ? The thought is uncharitable, yet some burning 
 and shining lights of the popular party have been 
 open to the charge. We are told Wilkes was indig-, 
 nant when taken for a Wilkesite. Men often act 
 from mixed motives, and even patriots are imperfect. 
 Mr Duncombe can, however, do what few men can — 
 point to an independent career of many years. There 
 was a time when the sweets of office would have been 
 acceptable ; yet he has remained unshackled by its 
 trammels, nor has he, even to please the very large 
 religious public of Finsbury, in any way identified 
 himself with their proceedings. I never heard even 
 of his being at a Ragged School meeting, or subscrib- 
 ing a farthing for the reforming young females. This 
 is something, when we remember how old sinners by , 
 such means die in the odour of sanctity, — when we 
 remember that our Solicitor- General has just laid the 
 foundation of a Primitive Methodist Chapel, and when 
 we remember the Wolverhampton speech of Sir Rich- 
 ard Bethell. But I have been speaking of Mr Dun- 
 combe as he was ; let me describe him as he is. The 
 gay Tom Duncombe of the fashionable world is now 
 sedate and elderly, keeps good hours, and takes great 
 care of his health. You do not often see him in the 
 House after midnight, and it is seldom that he speaks 
 now after the dinner-hour. The agile frame is now 
 almost a skeleton ; age has dimmed those eyes once 
 so full of fire and light; the jet-black hair is gone, 
 and in its place we have a wig ; the pleasing, cheery 
 
280 
 
 MODERN STATESMEN.. 
 
 voice sounds now very hollow and reedy ; yes, there, 
 behind the Treasury benches — that pale, tall, thin, 
 elderly gentleman in black — is all that remains of that 
 universal favourite, Tom Duncombe. To this com- 
 plexion we must come at last. There is still about 
 him something of the old style. In that hour devoted 
 to notices of motion and questioning of Ministers be- 
 fore the orders of the day are read, Mr Duncombe 
 often speaks, and almost as effectively as of yore — 
 often, as of old, by his ready wit, provoking laughtei* ; 
 but he is growing old, and let us hope that he may do 
 so for many, many years to come. We, in these latter 
 days, have reason to be thankful to men who, like 
 Duncombe, aided in the great struggle of the past. 
 ^Religiously, and commercially, and politically free, 
 the last thirty years have been years of wonderful 
 progress, of softening of party hates, of abandonment 
 of prejudice, of rooting out of error, of exploding ab- 
 surdities and injustices, and for this we have to thank 
 men like Duncombe. 
 
 His career, as I have intimated, has been a long 
 one. His parliamentary existence began in 1824, 
 when he sat for Hertford, which place he continued 
 to represent till 1832, when he was ejected by Lord 
 Ingestre, the honour of which was not long enjoyed, 
 as a petition against Lord Ingestre's return, by the 
 friends of Mr Duncombe, had the effect of unseating 
 the noble lord. In 1834 the retirement of the Right 
 Hon. Robert Grant caused a vacancy for Finsbury, 
 
MR THOMAS S. DUNCOMBE. 281 
 
 and, agreeably to the powerful requisition of its elect- 
 ors, Mr Thomas Duncombe, according to his own 
 words, " was translated, as the bishop says, to its see." 
 By descent Mr Thomas Slingsby Duncombe is the de- 
 scendant of a staunch line of Tory ancestry. His father 
 was a brother of Lord Faversham, and his mother was 
 the daughter of a High Churchman, Dr HinchclifFe, 
 Bishop of Peterborough. His connections are not of 
 the class from which advocates of the Charter have 
 sprung, though, possibly, his birth and breeding may 
 have tended to make him more acceptable to Fins- 
 bury constituencies. Dod briefly sums up the gen- 
 tleman's political creed as follows : — " A Badic'al re- 
 former, is in favour of triennial parliaments and the 
 ballot." Said I not rightly, Mr Duncombe belongs 
 to the past rather than the present ? ■ What elections 
 now are decided with reference to triennial parlia- 
 ments and the ballot ? We have got beyond these 
 formulas. The years have brought to us 
 
 " A higher height — a deeper deep." 
 
 I question if even a declaration of attachment to a 
 complete and comprehensive measure of parliamentary 
 reform would secure a single vote. 
 
XXVII. 
 
 THE RIGHT HON. E. HOR8MAN. 
 
 Mr Horsman, the M.P. for Stroud, is unfortunate in 
 his parliamentary position. He is a man of first-rate 
 abilities ; he is an admirable speaker ;• but he is an 
 independent M.P., and an independent member is an 
 unpopular one. Yet he did not begin life as an inde- 
 pendent member. He was not averse to office when 
 Cockermouth sent him to parliament, pledged to vote 
 in favour of " an efficient Church reform, of vote by- 
 ballot, and of the removal of all taxes on knowledge." 
 In 1841 he was one of the Lords of the Treasury. 
 At a later period, when M.P. for Stroud, he was Irish 
 Secretary — an office which he professed himself to 
 have resigned because the salary was too great and 
 the duties too light — an office in which, however, it is 
 said, he contrived to offend most of the Irish M.P.s 
 with whom he came in contact. Since that time 
 more than one Liberal administration has been form- 
 
THE RIGHT HON. E. HORSMAN. 283 
 
 eel ; on the Treasury benches have been seated M.P.s 
 with nothing of Mr Horsman's abilities, experience, 
 or parliamentary position. Such a state of things Mr 
 Horsman does not approve of; and hence the sharp- 
 est thorn in the Ministerial side of the House is no 
 other than the Liberal M.P. for Stroud. 
 
 Speaking of Mr Peel's giving up his Irish Secre- 
 taryship, Mr Wellesley Pole said to Mr Plumer 
 Ward, " It is folly to attempt to be a power in the 
 Commons without a party." The part Mr Horsman 
 attempts is an exceedingly difficult one. In the 
 House of Commons to be a power you must have a 
 tail. If you can only answer, as one of Wordsworth's 
 heroines, " We are seven," you are of account, and 
 leaders of parties will pay to you a deference which 
 otherwise you might seek in vain. The faintest ut- 
 terances of Lord John Russell, the feeblest jokes of 
 Lord Palmerston, the mildest platitudes of Sir John 
 Pakington, the fine old Toryism of Mr Bentinck, or 
 the extremest views of Mr Bright, are listened to most 
 attentively, because the House understands that 
 they all speak, not so much individual opinions, as 
 those of large parties in the State. A man who sets 
 up on his own hook, as it were, insults the amour pro- 
 pre of all. De Foe tells us — 
 
 " The only safety of society 
 Is that my neighbour 's just as proud as I — 
 Has the same will and wit, the same design, 
 And his abortive envy ruins mine." 
 
284 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 So it is in tho House of Commons, where such a man 
 as Mr Horsman is an eyesore to every one else. Every 
 other M.P. feels chagrined by his display. It is an 
 assumption of virtue on his part which every one 
 resents. Nor can a man hold this position long, how- 
 ever honestly he may have originally taken it up. 
 Finding himself always alone, he will learn to look on 
 men and things with a jaundiced eye. More or less, 
 he will become cynical and misanthropical. If he is not 
 so, people will think he is ; and even when he is right 
 the public will be sure to think that he is wrong. 
 " Matthew Lewis," says Tom Moore, " though a 
 clever fellow, was a bore of the first description." 
 Well, a man, however clever he may be, who is al- 
 ways finding fault, is a bore. And if the public sus- 
 pects that he is not the best of tempers — that he is 
 a little irritable — he stands a very fair chance of being 
 sent to Coventry, and very rightly too, for a man of 
 such a temperament is never to be depended on. " A 
 gentleman of my country," says Montaigne, " who 
 was very often tormented with the gout, being impor- 
 tuned by his physicians totally to reclaim his appetite 
 from all manner of salt meats, was wont presently to 
 reply that he must needs have something to quarrel 
 with in the extremity of his fits, and that he fancied 
 that railing at and cursing one time the Bologna sau- 
 sages, and another the dried tongues and the hams, 
 was some mitigation to his pain." Possibly this 
 ebullition of temper might have been a relief to the 
 
THE RIGHT HON. E. HORSMAN. 285 
 
 victim of the gout, but surely it was anything but 
 pleasant to his friends. We may depend upon it, 
 while the fit lasted, no one who could help it went 
 near the cursing and swearing invalid. Yet he could 
 plead ill-health for his anger. Mr Horsman has no 
 such excuse for his. Only this very last session he 
 displayed a temper which, however, led to some valu- 
 able discoveries where least expected. The Times 
 ventured to find fault with Mr Horsman, and what 
 did the hon. gentleman do but actually, to a crowded 
 House, retailed the story of his wrongs ? Mr Walter, 
 M.P. for Berkshire, was to be held personally respon- 
 sible. A prepared speech was delivered ; all sorts of 
 charges were made against the Times ; it required an 
 unusual exertion of the premier to get the House to 
 avoid a row, but the public reaped the benefit, as the 
 short and sharp debate left on all minds an impression 
 that influences were applied to a certain paper, which 
 materially accounted for its tone on certain occasions. 
 Latterly, Mr Horsman has been a true Ishmaelite, and 
 has lifted his hand against every one. Our Indian 
 Legislation ; the Reform Bill, which was to have 
 been ; the French Treaty, and the Ministerial Budget 
 — all have come in for his studied invective and hos- 
 tile criticism. I do not say that Mr Horsman has 
 forfeited the confidence of his constituents ; and I do 
 think his absence from the House of Commons would 
 be much to be deplored ; but, if the hon. gentleman 
 thought less of self, and more of the public interests ; 
 
286 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 if he would curb that unruly member, the tongue ; if 
 he would display a little more courtesy to his oppo- 
 nents, he would take that high position to which his 
 abilities evidently entitle him to lay claim. 
 
 Mr Horsman sits below the gangway, on the first 
 bench on the floor, on the seat where Mr Drummond 
 sat. Mr Walter sits by his side, and in the little 
 fracas anent the Times, the hon. gentlemen were rather 
 too near to be pleasant. Personally, he is a fine-look- 
 ing man, in the prime of life, tall, thin, and gentle- 
 manly, though certainly not so amiable-looking as 
 might be. As a speaker, I am inclined to place him 
 in the foremost rank. He does speak. Many of the 
 parliamentary orators would cut a wretched figure out 
 of doors, and are under lasting obligations to the re- 
 porters, who polish their ill-formed sentences, collect 
 their straggling remarks, prune away their redund- 
 ancies, and actually sometimes succeed in turning their 
 nonsense into something like sense. Some mumble so 
 that you can scarce hear a word in the gallery, and 
 present to a patient House the awkwardest appearance 
 possible. It is a charge against our nation that we 
 often sacrifice the ornamental ; and certainly many 
 M.P.s, when on their legs, are open to this charge. 
 Their arms and legs are sorely in their way ; their 
 voice is utterly unmanageable. They may have much 
 sense and wit, but, like Sir Hudibras, they are shy of 
 showing it. You would tremble for your country if 
 you really thought these were its most eligible and 
 
THE RIGHT HON. E. HORSMAN. 287 
 
 wisest men. How they stammer, and hesitate, and re- 
 peat themselves ; how they consult their notes, and 
 thus cruelly prolong the torture of all around ! If you 
 do listen, you find it is but a repetition of what has 
 been better said before. Mr Horsman is not of thi's 
 class. His style is polished; his command of the 
 choicest language extensive ; his voice is clear, and 
 his delivery striking and impressive. I should think 
 his speeches are carefully and conscientiously pre- 
 pared. So far, he respects himself and the House. 
 Let me not be understood to hint that his polish is of 
 that kind that detracts from strength. Such is by no 
 means the case. There are few more vigorous speak- 
 ers in the House. His damning drawback, in the 
 eyes of certain Radical reformers, is that his opinions 
 have become more Conservative than they were form- 
 erly. I fear the whole nation is guilty of a similar 
 crime. The reaction of the public mind since the 
 passing of the Reform Bill, the disappointment it creat- 
 ed, the corruption that has grown up under it, the want 
 of faith evinced in our public men, the jobs done by 
 Pharisees, claiming to be better than the publicans 
 and sinners of our political world, the selfish greed 
 of the official class, have begotten in all classes of 
 the general public an atheism, under the influence 
 of which even the most ardent statesmen have had 
 to abandon the creeds, and hopes, and visions of an 
 earlier day. It ought not so to be in politics. We 
 ought to 
 
288 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 "Hold it truth with him who sings 
 To one clear harp in divers tones, 
 That men may rise on stepping-stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things." 
 
 Mr Horsman's public life commenced at Cocker- 
 mouth in 1836, which place he represented in Parlia- 
 ment till July, 1852. In June, 1853, he was first 
 returned for Stroud without opposition. Stroud is a 
 Liberal and Dissenting borough, and there was a time 
 when Mr Horsman acquired no small fame as a 
 Church reformer. He and the present Lord Llan- 
 over were a terror to the Church by night and day, 
 and, if a job was done, they were sure to scent it 
 out, and drag it to light. As a Commissioner of 
 Church Inquiry in Scotland, Mr Horsman saw a 
 religious system less pretentious than that of England, 
 and certainly quite as effective, for on all sides it is 
 admitted the Scotch are quite as religious as the 
 English. Mr Horsman's philippics must have tended 
 to keep deans and bishops in order, for since the 
 Church Establishment has increased in usefulness 
 and popularity. Mr Horsman's Scotch parentage 
 may have made him look with a suspicious eye on 
 prelacy ; at any rate, it was in battle with that he 
 won his earliest fame — a fame which he will have to 
 work very hard next Session to retain. Mr Horsman 
 has reached a critical period in his history ; it behoves 
 him to mind what he is about. 
 
XXVIII. 
 
 THE HON. MR WHITESIDE. 
 
 I cannot understand the use of long sermons, or long 
 speeches. I suppose the House of Commons can. 
 Eor instance, let us take the Kars debate. Lord Pal- 
 merston confessed — what every one knew — that Lord 
 Stratford de RedclifFe was very much to blame ; that 
 he is an obstinate, irascible old gentleman, with a 
 laudable hatred to Russia, and an intense love of 
 bullying ; that he fancied he had £7000 a-year for 
 the sake of playing the Bashaw on a grand scale ; and 
 that it was high time he were ordered home. Why, 
 then, for three nights did people keep on reiterating this, 
 or making long speeches to which no one listened, and 
 repeating points of which every one was convinced ? 
 One reason — and the chief one — is this : the House is 
 an old-fashioned assembly, and acts according to pre- 
 cedent. People made long speeches, and got very 
 red in the face, and indulged in pompous declamation, 
 and were always plunging the country into a crisis in 
 
 19 
 
290 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 the days of Pitt and Fox, so why should not Britons 
 do so now ? are they not Britons ? and " Britons 
 never, never, never will be slaves." Unfortunately, 
 M.P.s forget the days of Pitt and Fox were the days 
 of the slow coaches, when a man was a week or a 
 fortnight going from Edinburgh to London, and made 
 his will first. These are the days of Hansoms and 
 electric telegraphs — of the steam-ships and the railway, 
 and the thoughts that shake mankind. 
 
 Again, this is as much a lawyer-ridden as it is a 
 priest-ridden country. What the curate — starched, 
 lean, and leaden-eyed — is to the weak-minded females 
 of Putney and Hampstead, the lawyers are to the rest 
 of the House of Commons — a terror by night and a 
 plague by day. Unfortunately for the country, al- 
 most all our places are given to barristers, and, there- 
 fore, the barristers must make speeches, good, bad, 
 often — chiefly — indifferent, or they will not get Go- 
 vernment places. As they have tongues to sell, they 
 must let the Government have a taste of their quality ; 
 so the House wastes its time, and the strongest constitu- 
 tions give way. Mr John Bright was seriously hurt by 
 his parliamentary attendance ; Mr Blackett, one of the 
 most promising young men in the House, not long since 
 died, ere his prime, thoroughly worn out. Will the 
 House never subside into short speeches and common 
 sense ? I fear not, so long as the constituencies return 
 gentlemen of the long robe. I read somewhere a tale 
 of a French opera performer who visited Constantino- 
 
THE HON. MR WHITESIDE.' 291 
 
 pie, and had the honour of performing before the 
 ruler of the Ottomans. With Oriental gravity, the 
 Sultan looked and smiled, and made no sign. The 
 Frenchman exerted himself to the utmost ; his pir- 
 ouetting was extraordinary ; his pas were terrific, if 
 not sublime. The performance over, the Sultan beck- 
 oned the performer. The latter drew near, expecting 
 as the reward of his unparalleled agility, the shawls of 
 Cashmere, the silks of Persia, the Jewels of Golcon- 
 da, possibly, the revenues of a province. Grave- 
 ly smoking his chibouque, said the Sultan, " I have 
 seen So-and-so and So-and-so — naming one operatic 
 star after another — but I have never yet seen any one 
 who perspired as much as you." The tale may be 
 mythical; nevertheless, it has a true report. The 
 Sultan is the British House of Commons ; the French 
 operatic performer is Mr Whiteside. I should ima- 
 gine, when he speaks, no one perspires so much as the 
 member for the University of Dublin. I am sure he 
 ought to do so, for he is the longest and loudest speak- 
 er in the House. Lord Palmer ston never said a wit- 
 tier thing than when, in the Kars debate, he assured 
 the hon. member that all who saw his speech would 
 consider it as highly creditable to his physical powers. 
 As a party man Mr Whiteside is very useful. Oc- 
 casionally, he makes a blunder, as he did in that Kars 
 debate, which, after engrossing three nights, ended in 
 smoke, and rather aided than damaged the Govern- 
 ment ; but I imagine there are few more useful or 
 19 * 
 
292 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 reacty gentleman on his side of the House. Some- 
 how or other, an Irishman seems naturally a thorn in 
 the sides of the Saxon ; and in Ireland party spirit 
 exists in a degree of which we on this side of the Irish 
 Channel can form no idea. In a parliamentary melee, 
 no one is so indispensable as an Irishman ; he lays 
 about him thoroughly ; with him, evidently the affair 
 is no child's play ; he has an enviable command of 
 very expressive adjectives, rendered still more ex- 
 pressive by means of his brogue, which, however edu- 
 cated he may be, he finds it impossibly utterly to 
 shake off; and, as I fear there is a great deal of job- 
 bery in Irish politics, he has very often on his side 
 the advantage which every man has when he happens 
 to be in the right. This fervour is natural and to 
 the manner born. Ireland is famed for faction fights, 
 and a party is but a faction on a larger scale. How 
 fierce and fanatic Irishmen can be we have seen ex- 
 emplified in the conduct of the Orangemen to the 
 Prince of Wales while in Canada, and in the recent 
 meeting of the Religious Propagation Society, at 
 Down, when the bishop was almost kicked out of the 
 chair and the rector of the parish seated in his place. 
 It is in this fervour that we must seek the cause of 
 the success of Irishmen in parliament. Sheridan and 
 Burke, in the palmy days of parliamentary eloquence, 
 are splendid specimens of this ; nor must we forget 
 Canning or Grattan, Shiel, or O'Connell, or Plun- 
 kett, all names indicative of great oratorical power, 
 
THE HON. MR WHITESIDE. 293 
 
 and of men who achieved great parliamentary suc- 
 cess. An Irish writer tells us that " the fighting age 
 in Ireland is from sixteen to sixty/' ' and I may add 
 that this is true as far as the House of Commons is 
 concerned. It is true we have no Irishmen so young 
 as sixteen, but we have them older than sixty, and 
 the most ancient of these scents a battle from afar, and 
 rushes to it as the war-horse of the book of Job. 
 
 Dod tells me that James Whiteside, son of the late 
 Rev. William Whiteside, and brother of the Rev. Dr 
 Whiteside, Vicar of Scarborough, was born at Del- 
 gany, county of Wicklow, 1806; educated at the 
 University of Dublin, where he graduated M.A. with 
 honours, and the London University College law 
 classes, where he took honours. He was called to 
 the bar in Ireland in 1830, and is a Queen's Counsel; 
 was Solicitor-General for Ireland from March till De- 
 cember, 1852 ; author of works on Italy and ancient 
 Rome ; a Conservative in favour of a grant to the 
 Church Education Society — rather an obscure defini- 
 tion of a man's political opinions ; first returned for 
 Enniskillen, April, 1851. But I must point him out in 
 the House of Commons. You will see him on the first 
 bench of the Opposition, sitting somewhat near the 
 end furthest from the Speaker. Of course he is bald. 
 In England no man attains distinction until he has 
 reached an age when time begins to tell upon the face 
 or figure. Our young poets are middle-aged, and our 
 rising novelists are compelled to resort to wigs. We 
 
294 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 have young-looking statesmen, but then they are 
 lords. We English are wonderfully afraid of talent 
 in political life. As much as possible, we fence round 
 place and power, and put up "No admittance except 
 to the- aristocracy ; " and when a man with brains 
 does force his way in, it is generally when he has be- 
 come almost worn out in the struggle. The only ex- 
 ception is that in favour of lawyers ; as the chances 
 are that a lawyer, from the force of habit, becomes 
 attached to some party or other, and thus gets a start 
 which, if he be clever, he will be sure not to lose. 
 Mr Whiteside won his laurels by his defence of 
 O'Connell, and, on the strength of that defence, at 
 first seemed rather inclined — if I may be allowed such 
 a phrase — to ride the high horse. Latterly, however, 
 he has assumed less, and gained a respectable posi- 
 tion. There was a time when lawyers were the 
 champions of popular right, and the dread of all who 
 assumed a despotic power. " Who," says Mr Town- 
 send, " took the lead in those memorable discussions 
 which established the freedom of His Majesty's poor 
 Commons, and confirmed a wavering House in their 
 resolution, but Sir Edward Coke, Selden, and Lyttle- 
 ton ? Who but these great constitutional lawyers 
 managed the memorable conference with the Lords 
 which preceded the Bill of Rights ? Who drew up 
 that Magna Charta but Sergeant, Glanville, and Pym, 
 and Hyde ? At the restoration, the cautious wisdom 
 of Sir Matthew Hale would have fettered the King 
 
THE HON. MR WHITESIDE. 295 
 
 with conditions that might have saved his reign from 
 alternating between anarchy and despotism. Whose 
 voice more loud than that of Maynard, Sawyer, 
 Somers, and Williams in denouncing the tyranny of 
 James ? — whose suggestions so valuable in establish- 
 ing the happy revolution ? Henry IV. on one occa- 
 sion called a parliament from which he excluded law- 
 yers ; Old Coke tells us, "The prohibition that no 
 apprentice or man following the law should be chosen, 
 made the parliament fruitless, and never a good law 
 passed thereat, and called the Lack-learning Parlia- 
 ment." Mr Whiteside does not belong exactly to 
 this class. He is undoubtedly too much of a party 
 man, and out of his party he will never rise. The 
 most nefarious characters — of course, I speak politi- 
 cally — in this country are the Irish Orangemen ; men 
 whose advent in the Green Isle was a result of victory, 
 whose continuance there has been a curse ; who cared 
 not that the nation rotted away — that the people 
 grew up in heathenism, that the land was ravaged with 
 civil war, so long as they grew rampant on the pa- 
 tronage and privilege doled out to their class. It is 
 not in Ireland as it was ; emigration, cholera, the po- 
 tato famine, the Encumbered Estates Court, the 
 growth of common sense in the English Cabinet, 
 where Ireland is concerned, have somewhat diminish- 
 ed the extent and the frightful consequences of what 
 was called Protestant ascendancy in the Sister Isle ; 
 but the habit of thought engendered by that fierce 
 
296 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 partisanship still lives, and in the person of the Hon. 
 James Whiteside still too often finds utterance also, 
 in what should he the most enlightened assembly in 
 the world. 
 
 As an orator Mr Whiteside seems to have chiefly 
 studied Demosthenes' advice as to action, and literal- 
 ly to have adopted it. It is all action with him. 
 He has his countrymen's great command of language, 
 which is the command, as Whately remarks, of a rider 
 over his horse when it is running away with him. 
 His language is not pregnant with meaning, so as to 
 afford delight and instruction when the occasion 
 which called it into existence has passed away ; nor 
 is it sharp and well defined, so as to hit hard home ; 
 nor does he descend to plain, unadorned sense like 
 Cobden, or rise into a sublime personality like Dis- 
 raeli. He has more the appearance of a lawyer, 
 strutting his hour upon the stage, seeking to make 
 mountains of hills, to invest the most obscure inci- 
 dents with the most important consequences, to keep 
 the truth of the question altogether out of sight, and 
 to be reckless of everything so that he succeeds in 
 making out a case. I fear Mr Whiteside forgets the 
 advice of a celebrated countryman. " When I told 
 Curran," says Moore, " of the superabundant florid- 
 ness of the speech, he said to me, ' My dear Tom, it 
 will never do for a man to turn painter merely upon 
 the strength of having a pot of colours, unless he 
 knows how to lay them on.' " 
 
XXIX. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Eoe. the present, at any rate, our sketches of eminent 
 statesmen are over. We have taken pains with them; 
 we have endeavoured faithfully to portray the illus- 
 trious individuals who have come under our notice, 
 and, if we have pleased or instructed our readers, our 
 object has been attained. But, before we make our 
 bow, we would say a word or two about the individ- 
 uals seated on the first bench on the Speaker's right 
 — viz. the Treasury bench, the object of so many a 
 hard struggle and bitter fight. In the Cabinet are 
 the following individuals ; Viscount Palmerston, Et. 
 Hon. W. E. Gladstone, Lord John Eussell, Et. Hon. 
 Sidney Herbert, Et. Hon. T. Milner Gibson. These 
 gentlemen we have already described. Besides the 
 Cabinet consists of the Et. Hon. Sir G. C. Lewis, a 
 learned man, but a somewhat heavy speaker ; Sir 
 Charles Wood, tall and volatile ; Mr E. Cardwell, a 
 promising young man in Sir Eobert Peers time — with 
 
298 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 red hair — and a promising young man still ;. Mr Vil- 
 liers, a veteran in the cause of Free Trade ; and Sir 
 G. Grey, an elderly gentlemar, with a wonderful 
 capacity for talking on any subject at any length. 
 These gentlemen, with some peers, form the Cabinet. 
 The Cabinet, it may be as well to inform our readers, 
 consists of the more eminent portion of the Adminis- 
 tration, but does not constitute more than a fourth 
 part of those whom a change of Ministry deprives of 
 office. The Cabinet being more immediately re- 
 sponsible for the conduct of public affairs, their de- 
 liberations are always considered confidential, and 
 kept secret even from their colleagues who are less 
 exalted in office. The distinguished individual who 
 fills the situation of First Lord of the Treasury is the 
 chief of the Ministry, and therefore of the Cabinet ; 
 he is usually styled the Premier, or Prime Minister. 
 It is at his immediate recommendation that his col- 
 leagues are appointed, and, with hardly an exception, 
 he dispenses the patronage of the Crown. Every 
 Cabinet includes the following high officers : — The 
 First Lord of the Treasury, the Lord Chancellor, 
 the Lord President of the Council, the Lord Privy 
 Seal, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the 
 Secretaries of State. But, of course when parlia- 
 ment is sitting, all eyes are turned to the Premier. 
 " He fills," said Canning, one of our most brilliant 
 Premiers, " that station in the House of Commons 
 which points out him who holds it as the representa- 
 
CONCLUSION. 299 
 
 tive of the Government in that House — the possessor 
 of the chief confidence of the Crown and of the 
 ministers. Its prerogative is, that in all doubtful 
 questions — in all questions which have not previously 
 been settled in the Cabinet, and which may require 
 instant decision, he is to decide, upon instant com- 
 munication with his colleagues, sitting by him un- 
 doubtedly, if he be courteously inclined ; but he is 
 to decide with or without communication with them, 
 and with or against their consent." Not of the Cabi- 
 net are the remaining gentlemen, seated very often in 
 very ungraceful postures, on the Treasury bench. 
 There you may see Mr Lowe — with white hair and 
 eyes, almost like those of an Albino, but with a very 
 impressive and striking aspect, nevertheless ; Mr 
 Charles Gilpin — a very Cato in appearance; Lord 
 Clarence Paget — a nobleman destined to do the State 
 some service ; and Sir Richard Bethell, with his bald 
 head and broad frame — the atlas of the Ministry, as 
 far as the law is concerned ; a man listened to, in spite 
 of his peculiarly precise, and affected, and unpleasant 
 way of talking. At present, I can say nothing of 
 Mr Atherton, the new Solicitor- General. These gen- 
 tlemen do not earn their money easily. They have 
 little to be thankful for. In parliament those who re- 
 ceive the half-pence are sure to come in for a fair share 
 of kicks. 
 
 In taking farewell of the reader I have to express 
 my regret that I had proceeded too far in the public- 
 
300 MODERN STATESMEN. 
 
 ation of my book to be able to omit the sketch of Sir 
 Charles Napier when he suddenly died. I see Mr 
 Layard tells the Southwark electors Sir Charles was 
 a persecuted man. I bow to such an authority, but 
 the sketch stands as it was written long, long before 
 the gallant old admiral was no more. I have only to say 
 as my apology for personal criticisms, that I have taken 
 only representative men, and that I have done so in 
 the faint hope that, in these days of languid faith, 
 by means of personal sketches I may call the at- 
 tention of the public to political principles. Man, 
 as Plato says, is a political animal; and the worst 
 sign of the times is the indifference and sneering- 
 scepticism with reference to political matters which 
 have laid hold of the public mind — a state which, 
 as my readers will have perceived who have followed 
 me thus far, is not kindly to the growth of Modern 
 Statesmen. 
 
 the END. 
 
 JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PEINTEBS. 
 


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