Class HK^ Book t U4V*^ CopyrigM°_ COPVKIGHT DEPOSJT. A MEMOIR OF THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY M.P., O.M., LL.D., D.C.L., LITT.D. Member of the French Institute and of the British Academy WORKS BY WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY HISTORY OF ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Library Edition. 8 vols. 8vo. Vols. I. and II., 1700-1760. Vols. III. and IV., 1760-1784, Vols. V. and VI., 1784-1793. Vols. VII. and VIII., 1793- 1800. „ f ENGLAND. 7 vols. Crown 8vo. Cabinet Edition, i tt ,t^ t . , t „ _ , „ D 1 IRELAND. 5 vols. Crown 8vo. LEADERS OF PUBLIC OPINION IN IRELAND. 2 vols. Large Crown 8vo. $4.00 net. HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS FROM AUGUSTUS TO CHARLEMAGNE. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. HISTORY OF THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF THE SPIRIT OF RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY. Cabinet Edition. 2 vols. Large Crown 8vo. $5.00 net. THE MAP OF LIFE: Conduct and Character. Crown 8vo. $2.00. HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS. 8vo. $3.50 net. POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. /rfe c^^c A MEMOIR OF THE RIGHT HON. William Edward Hartpole Lecky M.P., O.M., LL.D., D.C.L., LITT.D. Member of the French Institute and of the British Academy BY HIS WIFE vV^&Aam^Vfc^ You value life ; then do not squander time, for time is the stuff of life. Franklin LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 91 and 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 1909 Copyright, 1909, by Longmans, Green, and Co. : c Ibid. COPYRIGHT 263 uary 25, as an interlude in a musical entertainment at the Lambeth Polytechnic, and he selected for his subject Carlyle's 'Message to his Age/ to which his personal knowledge of Carlyle gave a special interest. It was afterwards published in the Contemporary Review of October 1891. 1 In the summer he contributed an article on Pitt to 'Chamber's Encyclopaedia/ and at the urgent request of Mr. Reeve he wrote a review of Sir Robert Peel's private correspondence which had lately been published by Mr. Parker. This came out in the Edinburgh Review of October 1891. 2 That year there was at last a chance of an American Copyright Bill passing. Hitherto British authors had been entirely at the mercy of American publishers; and though, by some arrangement, they could some- times obtain a small royalty, there were no legal rights by which this could be enforced. Lecky held very strong views about literary property, which he con- sidered rested on 'the highest and simplest title by which property can be held — that of creation.' 3 He thought the argument altogether untrue that the author has no right to legal protection because he gives a form to ideas and knowledge which are floating in the intellectual atmosphere around him. 'An author claims no monopoly in his ideas, but the form in which he moulds them is so essentially the main element in the question that the distinction is for all practical purposes trivial. There is no idea in Gray's Elegy which has not passed through thousands of minds; Gray alone gave them the form which is immortal.' 4 1 Published among the His- 3 Democracy and Liberty, torical and Political Essays. cabinet edition, vol. i. p. 218. 2 Ibid. i Ibid. p. 219. 264 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY He took a good deal of trouble in the matter, com- municating with influential people in both countries and endeavouring to smooth over difficulties. ' I think it so very kind of you/ he wrote to Mr. Lea on March 22, 1891, Ho have written to me so promptly and so fully about the new Copyright Bill. I con- gratulate you very sincerely on the part you have taken in a work which will probably have deeper and more far-reaching consequences than the immense majority of the measures which on either side of the Atlantic fill the minds of men. As for the points of possible difficulty, I have done what I could. . . .' Though the Bill involved irksome complications for British authors, yet it established a recognition of their rights and settled, as far as it went, an impor- tant question. The political horizon meanwhile had undergone a great change. Tn 1890 the Home Rule cause received a severe blow from an unexpected quarter. It may be remembered that the Parnell divorce case had suddenly roused the indignation of the Nonconfor- mists; that they had obliged Mr. Gladstone to break with the Irish leader; and that the Irish Catholic Church had now turned against him and caused a division among Irish Home-Rulers. To the philos- opher the situation presented a curious aspect. ' We most of us here believe/ Lecky wrote to Judge Gowan in December 1890, 'that Home Rule is broken up for an indefinite period. It seems very unlikely that, after the schism in Ireland and the shock the Nonconformists have received, the next Parliament will be in favour of Home Rule; and if it is, the major- ity is almost certain to be far too small to carry it; while Gladstone, being just eighty-one, can hardly live through more than one more Parliament. Besides, CAMBRIDGE HONORARY DEGREE 265 Parnell has succeded in pledging the whole Home Rule party in Ireland to accept no measure which does not give them the control of the Constabulary and of the land. ... I am glad of it, but I do not think all this raises one's respect for the intelligence of the good people of these islands — the English Noncon- formists, who were perfectly unshaken by all the reve- lations of conspiracy, outrage, and organised plunder made before the Special Commission, and yet thrown into hysterics about Mrs. O'Shea; the Irish populace, through the mere love of a fight, throwing up the one chance of their Home Rule!' And in February 1891 he wrote to Mr. Lea: 'The Irish question here is, I think, at last beginning some- what to recede, and socialistic or semi-socialistic ques- tions are rapidly assuming the first place. Mrs. O'Shea has certainly changed profoundly the prospects and currents of English politics — with such wisdom the world is governed!' In the summer of 1891 Lecky received an honorary degree at Cambridge, at the same time as Lord Wal- singham, Lord Dufferin, Sir Alfred Lyall, Professor Archibald Geikie, Sir William Flower, Professor Metschnikoff, and the composer Dvorak. He and his wife enjoyed the hospitality of the Master of Trinity and Mrs. Butler; and among the guests was Madame Albani, a charming woman as well as a great singer, who took the leading part in an oratorio of Dvorak's which was heard for the first time during the festivities. Lecky much appreciated the honour of the degree and the very kind reception he met with; but he never much liked, as he wrote to Mr. Booth afterwards, 'to stand up before an audience, dressed like the Scarlet Lady,' and to hear a long speech about his own merits, even though, happily, in a tongue which was not generally understood. 266 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY The day of his return to London he attended the yearly Trinity College Dublin dinner, which was given this time in the Middle Temple Hall. Lord Ashbourne presided, and Lecky had to propose the Houses of Parliament, to which the Archbishop of Dublin and Mr. Plunket (now Lord Rathmore, who was then M.P. for Dublin University and First Commissioner of Works) responded. Three Gold Medallists of. the old Historical Society were thus brought together once more, and their meeting on this occasion revived many old memories. 'I will not resist,' wrote Mr. Plunket to Lecky next day, ' to write you one little line to tell you how thoroughly I enjoyed your most charming speech yesterday evening — so eloquent, so graceful, and in such perfect good taste. It was to me like a very pleasant whiff of fresh air from the far-off hills of our old friendship — a friendship which I am glad to know holds fast and firmly.' Being more free in his movements after the ' History ' was finished, Lecky took various journeys during the year. In the spring he and his wife made an excursion to the chateaux of the Loire, some of which, besides their great historic and architectural interest, are very picturesquely situated in small but pretty grounds. They spent part of the summer in Ireland, paying on the way a visit to their old friend Lady Stanley of Alderley at Penrhos, near Holyhead, a charming place with beautiful gardens. As Lecky had no researches to make in Ireland on this occasion, he and his wife travelled about a good deal. They visited their friends ; thejr went along the west coast, stayed some days at Mrs. Blake's 1 hotel at Renvyle, and made many 1 Mrs. Blake, who belonged to a good old Irish family, had turned her house into a hotel in consequence of the land troubles. poems 267 pleasant excursions in the beautiful surrounding country. From Ireland they went to Holland, and afterwards to the Italian lakes — Locarno, Pallanza, and Bellaggio — but the season being too far advanced for the lakes, they went for sunshine to Monte Carlo, staying at Bergamo and Milan on the way. 'I had not before/ he wrote to Mr. Booth, 'stopped at Monte Carlo (which is but just opening and very quiet), but it is a place with wonderful attractions to anyone who, like us, is not addicted to gambling: lovely climate and scenery, excellent hotels, music, reading rooms, &c. Next week we start for fogs and the other charms of London, where we shall probably be on the 16th, and where, I hope, we shall not stir for a long time.' In the autumn of 1891 Lecky brought out a small volume of poetry which he had written at different times. It is generally acknowledged that when a man has attained eminence in one field, any attempt on his part to strike out another line is jealously watched and severely criticised. This was the case when Lecky published his Poems. Some of the reviewers were very amiable and appreciative; many were hyper- critical. The chief fault found with the poems was that they were old-fashioned; but if they did not suit the taste of the younger generation, they found more favour with the older one. Mr. Locker-Lampson * and Mr. Aubrey de Vere 2 both expressed their appreciation. The former wrote that, remembering the pleasure he 1 Mr. Locker-Lampson pub- Legends of the Saxon Saints lished the Lyra Elegantiarum and many other poems, as and other books. well as essays. 2 Mr. Aubrey de Vere wrote 268 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY had derived from 'An Old Song/ he had hastened to secure a copy of the poems; that they took his fancy and quite suited his taste. 'They are short and lucid, simple in language, and sincere in spirit. . . singularly unlike the poetry of the present day, with its straining after originality of thought and expression.' Friends who knew how reserved Lecky was by nature welcomed the poems as the expression of his more intimate self. 'I am very glad,' wrote Sir Alfred Lyall, who had read them with 'great interest and sympathy/ 'that you have let us all have in this form some of the inner thoughts, impressions and reminiscences gathered during the journey thus far through the "varied scenes of life.'" There were some who thought that the poems were too melancholy; but Lecky's explanation was that they were written much more in melancholy than in happy moments, and therefore gave a disproportionately gloomy impression. Poetry, he said, lent itself much more naturally to the shade than to the sunlight, and he could not write in verse as he could in prose in such a mood as he wished. In the course of time he received requests from various quarters to allow some of the verses to be included in anthologies or set to music. Sir George Scharf, the Director of the National Por- trait Gallery, was so pleased with Lecky's poem on the subject of the Gallery and with 'the noble manner' in which it was treated, that he asked permission to insert a few lines from it among the quotations in the preface of the Catalogue. He had desired for some time past that Lecky should be a member of the Board of Trustees, but respected his wish not to accept any appointment from a Liberal Government (although, of course, this was purely honorary). It was not till 1895, after Sir George Scharf's death, and when Mr. BEGINS 'DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY' 269 Lionel Cust succeeded him, that Lecky became a trustee. On his return to London in the middle of November, Lecky had his first bad attack of influenza, which pros- trated him for some three weeks. The ' Memoires du General Marbot' was one of the books which helped him to while away some weary hours of inevitable weakness and depression when he could do no work. He went to Brighton, where he got somewhat stronger, but it was some months before he was quite himself again. 'I was shut up in the house in London for three weeks,' he wrote to Mr. Booth from Brighton, Decem- ber 11, 'but got down here last Wednesday and am getting on very well, though still leading an invalid life and obliged to condescend to the ignominy of a bath-chair.' The proof-sheets of the cabinet edition occupied his time that winter, and he also began a new book on politi- cal and social subjects about which he had thought a great deal — afterwards published under the title of 'Democracy and Liberty.' The cabinet edition of the History came out volume by volume, and before the second appeared a new edition was required of the first. 'They originally printed 1500 copies,' he wrote to Mr. Booth, February 12, 1892, 'but have already had to give orders for 1000 more, which, for a book that has been so long before the public and according to the moderate measure of my popularity, is doing very well indeed. I am going all over the proof-sheets again, and have given an immense amount of time and trouble to making it as good as I can. I am also gradually launching on something else which will, I hope, some day take a definite form, and will at least give me occupation.' 270 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY After the death of Mr. Freeman in the spring of 1892, Lord Salisbury, with the authorisation of Queen Victoria, offered him, in very kind and nattering terms, the Regius Professorship of History at Oxford. Hon- oured as he felt by the distinction, and tempting though it was in many ways, he decided, however, not to accept it. He did not believe, as he wrote to Lord Salisbury, that he had any aptitude or vocation for lecturing and other academic duties; and he felt con- vinced that what little good he could do (even for University students) would be best done by keeping steadily to his own line of work. Among the many public institutions in which Lecky was interested the Royal Literary Fund occupied a foremost place. It gave relief to authors of undoubted merit whose works were unremunerative or who had suffered from reverses or ill-health, and to their widows and children. Lord Derby had been its president since 1876, and Lecky was one of its vice-presidents and a member of the committee. The yearly dinner was a great source of revenue to the Fund, and much trouble was always taken to secure a chairman whose name and personality appealed to a literary public. In the spring of 1892 Lord Kelvin had consented to occupy the chair, but unfortunately at the last moment he was prevented from doing so by a family bereave- ment. Lecky was urgently asked by the president to fill his place, and though he had but a day's notice, he felt it his duty to do so. It involved making the speech of the evening, besides various shorter ones. His great gift of speaking enabled him to acquit him- self of the task to everyone's satisfaction. Lord Derby, whose failing health had prevented him from attending, afterwards sent him the resolu- tion passed by the committee, adding, 'Never was a LETTERS ON HOME RULE 271 vote of thanks better earned, and the committee will not soon forget the service you rendered them at a moment of difficulty. It is not everyone who either would or could undertake a speech of that kind at a few hours' notice.' Lord Derby always maintained that Lecky was one of the best after-dinner speakers he knew, and he regretted not being able to hear him on this occasion. During the summer of 1892 the General Election absorbed all atention, and the spectre of Home Rule was again within sight. Conventions were held in the great centres of Ireland — first at Belfast, then in Dublin. Lecky was once more called upon to take his share in fighting the battle of the Union. Not being able to go to the Dublin Convention on June 23, he was asked to write a letter which might be read at the meeting and published. In it he reviewed all that the Unionist Government had done in six years; how it had not only raised Ireland from a condition of disgraceful anarchy to prosperity and peace, but how also it had earned the confidence of the nation by its conduct of foreign affairs, by its restoration of the Navy to its old efficiency, by its administration of finance, and by the many important measures it had carried. ' But the chief of all its merits is that it has defeated a great crime and averted a great calamity. When the glamour of party rhetoric shall have passed away, history will have little difficulty in estimating the character of the English statesman who . . . delib- erately attempted to place the government of an integral part of the Empire in the hands of men whom he had himself denounced in the strongest language as both dishonest and disloyal. After the overwhelm- ing evidence collected by the Parnell Commissioners, 272 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY and after the sentence of the Judges, it is impossible for any candid man to doubt that the Parnellite movement was essentially a treasonable conspiracy, promoting its ends by calculated fraud, violence and lawlessness, by an amount of cruelty and oppression seldom equalled in modern times, by constant and systematic appeals to the worst passions of the Irish people. No respect- able Government ever was or ever will be founded on such methods. Any attempt to place such men at the head of Irish affairs would, in my opinion, only lead to widespread anarchy and ruin, very possibly to Civil War and Separation.' He received the ' heartiest thanks ' of the committee of the Southern Unionist Convention for the ' admirable letter' he had written. ' It produced a great effect at the Convention,' wrote Professor Dowden, who did so much himself for the Unionist cause, ' and, what is more important, it has been reprinted in all the most important papers and will produce an effect we cannot doubt on thoughtful readers among the English and Scotch electorate. None of us can remember any meeting in Dublin at all approaching that of last Thursday in importance. Both the Leinster Hall and the large annexe were rilled with chosen delegates from every constituency outside Ulster. The arrangements were excellent, there was no confusion, and there was entire unanimity of feel- ing. The deputation from Ulster (including the Lord Mayor of Belfast and the Mayor of Deny) was received with great enthusiasm, and as the best effect of the Convention, the loyalty of North to South and of South to North was assured for the future. It will be impossible to separate us now.' He was asked to write a letter for the Scotsman, and he clearly and emphatically explained the whole situ- ation to Scotch electors, warning them of all that Mr. THE ELECTION OP 1892 273 Gladstone's Home Rule policy would involve. ' Scotch Liberal Unionists and Conservative candidates owe you their best thanks/ wrote a prominent Unionist, Mr. Arthur Elliot, 'for the excellent letter appearing in to-day's Scotsman. 1 Appearing in the same paper as Mr. Gladstone's Glasgow speech it comes in admirably.' He had also once more to make it clear in a letter to the Times 2 that passages from a chapter in his early 'Leaders' which had been suppressed in the edition of 1871, and which Mr. Gladstone had used in his Clapham speech, had no application to the present situation. It was a powerful letter, containing, as one friend wrote, 'more than five hundred speeches put together by previous speakers.' It was not a question, wrote Lecky, between Pro- testant and Catholic. 'It is a question between hon- esty and dishonesty, between loyalty and treason, between individual freedom and organised outrage and tyranny;' and he illustrated this with a picture of the state of the country, and referred to the great demonstration in Ulster which seemed 'likely to form one of the great landmarks in Irish history. Nothing approaching it has been seen there since the Volun- teer Convention of 1782.' 'Bravo! Bravo!' wrote Professor Tyndall, in his usual enthusiastic way. 'A thousand times, Bravo!' The elections brought in the Liberals with a small majority, and Mr. Gladstone — who was now eighty- three — saw one more opportunity of bringing forward his Irish policy. Lecky was asked to write an article on the results of the elections for the Fortnightly Review of August. It came out as one of a series by various politicians The Scotsman, July 4, 1892. 2 The Times, June 21, 1892. 19 274 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY under the heading of 'The Political Outlook.' He showed that Mr. Gladstone's majority was certainly not due to the conversion of the nation to Home Rule; that the great Unionist triumphs at Dublin and Belfast had been profoundly significant, andr the immense reduction of Mr. Gladstone's own majority proved how little enthusiasm was felt among the electors for the measure with which he was specially identified. But although a Home Rule Bill was not likely to pass, the accession of a Home Rule Government might inflict great injury on Ireland by shaking the sense of security which she needed above all things and by giving fresh encouragement to the elements of disorder. 'Gladstone's majority,' wrote one of the greatest military authorities to Lecky on July 18, 'means Mr. in Ireland, and that means the complete demoral- isation of the Gonstabulary.' The vicissitudes of politics did not interfere with the regard Sir Charles Gavan Duffy had always, shown for Lecky, and whenever he published a book he gave him a copy. That summer he sent him a pamphlet on a New Constitution for Ireland and his 'Conversa- tions with Carlyle.' In acknowledging the former, Lecky wrote that as a matter of machinery he thought the scheme could hardly be greatly improved on, and that he was ready to admit that if it was worked by men of the same stamp as himself [Sir Charles Gavan Duffy] it would probably succeed. But that as to the practicability of safely entrusting the men who had obtained the leadership of Irish popular politics, and who would undoubtedly direct a Home Rule Parlia- ment, with the maintenance of law and order, property and contract, and individual freedom, they must agree to differ. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy wrote that he was much gratified by Mr. Lecky's recognition of the fact SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY 275 that he did all he could to frame an Irish Constitution designed to be just to every class of Irishmen. 'Of course I understand/ he added, 'why you think it would fail, and if I had the making of the men you would probably have nothing to complain of.' To Lecky the Home Rule question was essentially, as he more than once said, a question of confidence in the men who would be placed in power. 'If Irish opinion/ he wrote to Mr. Booth in 1886, 'followed property and responsibility, I should not have the least objection to Home Rule in moderation; and I always think that the old Parliament of the gentle- men of Ireland deserves much more credit than it has received.' In acknowledging Sir C. Gavan Duffy's 'Conversations with Carlyle/ Lecky wrote, June 2, 1892: ' Although you told me that I must not do so, I must write a line to thank you very sincerely for your new book which I have been reading again with keen interest. It brings back a flood of recollections to me. I have often heard Carlyle talk of you and always with kindness. The last year or eighteen months of his life was very sad — a period of extreme bodily and mental weakness. I used to drive with him regularly once a week, chiefly to light his pipe and lift to his lips a tonic which he had to take — as he could do neither himself, and he used to sink into long unbroken silences. He was still, however, able to take in a little reading, and just before his last illness, I read to him some of Burns' letters — the last book, I think, he tried to read. 1 Both my wife and I saw him when very near the end, and again when all was over, and I was one 1 Sir Charles Gavan Duffy Carlyle's latter days in the asked leave to introduce next edition of the Conversa- Lecky's 'graphic picture' of tions. 276 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY of three who went up to his funeral at Ecclefechan. I must thank you also for your kind letter. I am glad that you can at least understand my point of view, and that Irish politics — which have a peculiar power to sunder and to acidulate — have not extinguished your kind feeling about me.' Early in July, while the elections were going on, Trin- ity College Dublin celebrated its Tercentenary, and Lecky was invited to take part in it. He and his wife were the guests of Lord and Lady Wolseley at the Royal Hospital, where Lord and Lady Dufferin and Sir Alfred Lyall were also staying. On the first day — July 5 — all the University members and delegates walked in procession to St. Patrick's Cathedral, where a solemn service opened the proceedings. One of the most interesting ceremonies was the presentation of addresses in the Leinster Hall by the foreign and other delegates in their various costumes — one of them in a black gown and large ruff, who, though not a Dutch- man, might have walked out of one of Frans Hals' paintings. 1 Some represented ancient and venerable universities, such as that of Bologna, which had cele- brated its eighth centenary, or that of Leyden, which was connected with the famous siege in the Eighty Years' War. There were a variety of entertainments, and a huge banquet in the Leinster Hall crowned the proceedings. The speaking on the occasion struck strangers as being of a very high order. The Master of Trinity, Cambridge, proposed the toast of Trinity College, coupling with it the names of the Provost, Mr. Plunket, M.P. for the University, and Lecky. The Provost, Dr. Salmon, made a speech full of sub- stance, good sense, and humour. Mr. Plunket, in an 1 He was the delegate from the University of Rostock. T.C.D. CENTENARY 277 eloquent speech, recalled the old college days and friendships, and struck a responsive chord among the audience when he said that many of the distinguished men present would no doubt gladly exchange all the successes and triumphs of their later years for the happier and more careless days of their youth, and would join heartily in the sentiment of their own poet, Tom Moore, who, he imagined, was looking back on his experiences in Trinity College when he sang in those most melodious verses: 'Ne'er tell me of glories serenely adorning The close of our day, the calm eve of our night; Give me back, give me back the wild freshness of morning, Her clouds and her tears are worth evening's best light.' He made a graceful allusion to Lecky, his old friend and contemporary, whose triumphs ' as a brilliant and faithful historian had not won him away from oratory, in which he was no less distinguished at the time when they were both competitors in the old Historical Society.' Lecky, in responding, spoke of the great part Trin- ity College had played in Irish life, throwing open its degrees to Roman Catholics more than sixty years before the English universities, and counting among its pupils great men who had distinguished themselves in the most various walks of life and held the most opposite opinions. ' Whatever its enemies may say of it, it has been the University of the Nation, and not merely of a party or sect. ... Of all our Irish institutions,' he said in his peroration, 'I believe Trinity College Dublin is that which has divided us least and has excited beyond its borders and its connections the least animosity and the largest measure of genuine good-will. May the 278 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY spirit that animated this University in the past still continue. Whatever fate may be in store for us, what- ever new powers may arise, may this University at least be true to itself. In a country torn by sectarian and political strife, may it continue to bring together in friendly competition students of different creeds and different political colours, and teach them to respect each other and teach them to respect them- selves. In an atmosphere hot and feverish with over- strained rhetoric and passionate exaggerations, may it continue the home of sober thought, of serious study, of impartial judgment, of an earnest desire for truth, building up slowly, steadily and laboriously the nobler and more enduring elements of national life.' 'I am sorry you were not at the Tercentenary/ Lecky afterwards wrote to Mr. Booth. 'It was a very striking sight: the immense number of universities represented; the curious and brilliant dresses (it reminded me of the opening of the General Council); the great number of remarkable men collected together; and the admirable behaviour of the crowd through which we had to walk in procession from T.C.D. to St. Patrick's, who never pressed or uttered a single disobliging word, though it was in the middle of the election, when strong passions might have been aroused. There was an enormous dinner, in which we all appeared in our red (or other) gowns. The Pro- vost, Plunket, and myself had to answer for T.C.D., and Plunket's speech was an extremely beautiful one.' That year Lecky began his holiday by going to the Italian Alps, which he had wished to see for some time past. He drove from Bourg St. Maurice to Gour- mayeur over the Little St. Bernard, found the pass full of beauty, 'with charming short cuts through fir woods — crocus-covered fields with a few Alp roses TRAVELS IN THE ITALIAN ALPS 279 in bloom, and a few snow-drifts still lying on the road.' He stopped at the top with an interesting Italian party, and looked through the library of a curious old priest who had lived there, winter and summer, for more than thirty years. He thought Courmayeur 'one of the most charming places in the Alps; the beauty of Chamounix without its tourist rush — an almost ideal hotel — very pleasant society — beauti- ful short as well as long walks.' He was delighted with Gressoney, but especially with Ponte Grande and Macugnaga. 'It is hardly possible to exaggerate the grandeur and beauty of the scenery about here/ he wrote; and he thought the air delightful. There were no English, but an intelligent German politi- cian, with whom he talked a great deal. When rain came he had his books to fall back on — Zola's ' De- bacle,' 'a very painful but very terrible story, none of the horrors of war being spared, and I think its influence will be decidedly for good. I have been comparing it with Erckmann-Chatrian's "Waterloo," which I found here and have read through.' He was also reading 'Le Gouvernement dans la Democratie/ an important book by the distinguished Belgian writer, M. de Laveleye, of whom he had seen a good deal; and he was never without a volume of Shakespeare. He went down the Val d'Anzasca, had a lovely sail over Lago Maggiore, drove over the St. Gothard, and met his wife at Innsbruck. 1 Together they went to the Dolomites, which he had never yet explored. He very much admired the soft beauty of the colouring com- bined with the grandeur of the scenery. They stayed at San Martino di Gastrozza, a perfectly beautiful 1 The passages quoted are had gone to Bayreuth with from letters to his wife, who her sisters. 280 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY spot in the very heart of the Dolomites, and they were much fascinated by those wonderful jagged rocks which change their colour almost like the chameleon. Tinged with a warm red hue under sunny skies, they look black and threatening in gloomy weather, and on a clear night appear white, like weird gigantic spectres. Later on they went to Pieve di Cadore, where Titian was born, and where he drew the inspiration of his beautiful backgrounds; to Cortina, Landro, Nieder- dorf, Botzen, Meran, all centres of charming excur- sions. At Meran they saw a stirring representation of the struggle led by Andreas Hofer, in 1809, for the independence of the Tyrol. It was given in the open air, and acted by the townspeople with great dramatic power and with that sense of measure which is the essence of all good acting. The transition from 'those high sunny quarters' to the London atmosphere — ' dim pale figures creeping about through a smoky limbo ' — ■ was always very depressing to him; but he had to be back early in October, as he had promised to be president of the Birmingham and Midland Institute for the year and to give the Presidential Address on the 10th. He chose for his subject 'The Political Value of History,' 1 treat- ing it in his own philosophic way and showing in what spirit history should be studied to be really useful. In the course of his address he laid stress on the fact that the politics of the day are too much concen- trated upon an immediate issue, taking no account of the possible ultimate consequences of political measures, which are often far more important than 1 This has been included in the Historical and Political Essays. DEATH OF LORD TENNYSON 281 their immediate fruits. 'History is never more valu- able than when it enables us, standing as on a height, to look beyond the smoke and turmoil of our petty quarrels, and to detect in the slow devel- opments of the past the great permanent forces that are steadily bearing nations onwards to improvement or decay.' Birmingham once more interested him greatly by its wonderful corporate spirit — stronger, he thought, than in any other English town — and its admirable public institutions. No sooner had he returned to London than he was called upon to attend the funeral of Lord Tennyson as pall-bearer. The loss of friend after friend is one of the severest penalties of increasing years, and within the last few months Lecky had lost many whom he valued: Lord Arthur Russell, Sir William Gregory, Sir Lewis Pelly, Mr. Henry Doyle, and now Lord Tennyson. His 'was a very happy and easy end/ wrote Lecky, 'to a long and glorious life/ and the funeral at Westminster Abbey struck him as less sombre than usual, partly from a Union Jack taking the place of the pall. When the present Lord Tenny- son asked him, in the following spring, to contribute some pages of reminiscences to the Life he was writing of his father, Lecky readily did so. ' Very best thanks/ wrote Lord Tennyson, ' for your admirably true letter. It will be very valuable for future generations as well as for this.' In November 1892 he finished the revision of the 'History' for the cabinet edition, to which he had devoted much time and care. 'I have finished the long task of my cabinet edition/ he wrote to Mr. Booth at the end of November, ' and the final volume will appear in about a fortnight. I think the separa- 282 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY tion of the Irish from the English part has been a great improvement, and that the book as a whole is more accurate. It has been a lOng business, but it is worth while getting one's books as perfect as one can.' CHAPTER XI 1892-1894. 'Thoughts on History' — Home Rule Bill, 1893 — Articles on Home Rule — Carrigart — Letter on the situation — Albert Hall meeting — Irish delegates at Hatfield — Death of Lord Derby — Defeat of Home Rule Bill — President of the Cheltonian Society — Vosbergen — Mr. Rhodes' ' His- tory ' — ' Israel among the Nations ' — ' The Eye of the Grey Monk ' — Death of Sir Andrew Clark — Lecture at the Imperial Institute — Pessimism — French Institute — Memoir of Lord Derby — Due d'Aumale — Resignation of Mr. Gladstone — Lord Rosebery succeeds — Madonna di Campiglio — Mr. Froude's death — Tribute to Lord Rus- sell — Canada and Copyright. In the winter Lecky worked at his new book, and he wrote for the Forum an article, which appeared in February 1893, under the title of 'The Art of Writing History' 1 and in which he expatiated on the various methods of writing history. The Liberal Government had initiated their Irish policy by appointing a Commission to inquire into the case of the evicted tenants, and an English judge — an Irishman by birth — whose Home Rule proclivi- ties were well known, was selected to preside over it. The judge did not conceal his political bias; and the Commission proved a fiasco. Lecky, who was on 1 Published in the Historical and Political Essays as ' Thoughts on History,' the title he had first selected. 283 284 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY friendly terms with this judge, happened to meet him at the Athenaeum on his return from Ireland. 'So you have come to resume your judicial character/ said Lecky. ' Yes/ replied the Judge, ' unless I have left it behind me;' whereupon Lecky rejoined, 'No one could accuse you of that!' Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill was brought in early in the session of 1893, and obliged Unionists in and out of Parliament to continue their strenuous opposition and keep the country informed of the dangers of such a measure. Lecky wrote, at the request of various people, some short articles on Home Rule from different points of view; one appeared in the National Observer of March 4, 1893, under the heading 'Lights on Home Rule'; another, 'The Case against Home Rule from an His- torical Point of View,' in the Pall Mall Gazette of July 24. Both were republished in pamphlet form, with letters and papers by other prominent Liberal Union- ists. The most important of Lecky's contributions was an article in the Contemporary Review of May 1893, ' Some Aspects of Home Rule.' The Bill, he thought, was in some respects even more unworkable than the previous one, and it was certainly worse for the land- owners. While the Bill of 1886 was at least combined with a scheme for settling the land question, in the present Bill there was 'not a single guarantee of the smallest value for the protection of landed property.' 'The profound dishonesty of this legislation is sufficiently clear/ wrote Lecky in the Contemporary Review, 'and it is certainly not surprising that the whole body of the Irish landlords, both Catholic and Protestant, are arrayed against it. Few incidents in the present controversy have been more striking than the powerful and touching manifesto against IRELAND IN 1893 285 Mr. Gladstone's policy which was issued by the lead- ing Catholic gentry of Ireland. Most of these have been lifelong Liberals. Nearly all have been con- stant residents in Ireland. Many of them bear names that have been conspicuous in dark and evil days for the purest and most self-sacrificing patriotism, and the son of O'Connell and the grandson of Grattan are among them.' At Easter he took a short holiday in the West of Ireland; he stayed at Carrigart, where the Rosapenna Hotel had just been opened, and he delighted once more in the ' most magnificent cliff scenery in enchant- ingly beautiful weather.' From Carrigart he wrote to his American correspondent, Mr. Lea, about the condi- tion in which he found Ireland at the time: 'I am afraid that I have been a very long time in thanking you for your last kind and interesting letter, and I avail myself of a short holiday which I am taking in your neighbourhood — for at this extreme west of Ireland there is nothing but the Atlantic between us — to do so. I am extremely interested in the account you give me of your work, and full of admiration for the courage that can alone enable you to grapple with such a vast mass of material as lies before you. I think we have here in Ireland one of the most striking instances I know of the extent to which Catholic ascen- dancy can go. Two very interesting election trials which lately took place show clearly what terrible spiritual threats are habitually employed for election- eering purposes, that not only the pulpit and the altar, but even the confessional, is made use of for those purposes. A return has just been published showing that at the last General Election in Ireland the illiterates (who profess to be unable to read the names on the ballot paper) were more than one in five. We have had what is considered an excellent system of national education since 1831 — many years before 286 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY England possessed such a thing — and in Great Brit- ain the proportion of illiterate voters is about one in a hundred. It is well known that numbers of these Irish electors are not illiterate, but are compelled to declare themselves so in order that they should vote through their priests and that there should be no possibility of evasion. The intimidation which those substantial farmers who dread Home Rule (no small number) undergo can hardly be exaggerated. Only a few days ago a gentleman who mixes much with them told me that again and again numbers of this class have said to him, " We dread this Home Rule as much as you do — but what can we do? If we signed a peti- tion against it we could not appear at the chapel, and in the market no one would be allowed to buy from us." In the meantime, in order to sustain the move- ment, the hope is constantly held out that Home Rule will give the people the land for nothing or at some ridiculously low price. All contracts in land in Ire- land having been already more than once broken by the Imperial Parliament, the idea has rapidly spread that under an Irish Parliament the last vestiges of agrarian contracts would disappear, and it is at least certain that the whole police force would pass into the hands of men who have been the authors of the " No Rent" movement — of the " Plan of Campaign" and of all the violence and fraud that have prevailed in Ireland during the last few years. 'I suppose there never was a time when the oppo- sition between numbers on the one side, and intelli- gence, property and industry on the other was so marked. The whole body of the Protestants of all denominations, all the Catholic as well as all the Pro- testant gentry, and at least 99 in 100 of the men who take any leading part in manufactures, trade, and other forms of finance and industry, think that Home Rule such as Mr. Gladstone proposes would ruin Ire- land. All the chief Irish securities have fallen in a HOME RULE BILL OF 1893 287 panic. Mortgages are being called in. Trade orders are suspended, and a steady drain of capital from the country is taking place. At the same time the six Ulster counties, which form incomparably the richest, the most industrious and the most resolute portion of Ireland, are at fever point; the people there are, I believe, thoroughly armed; they are rapidly organising, and they declare with the greatest emphasis (and I, at least, believe them) that they will never pay taxes or yield obedience to a Parliament under the guidance of such men as . This year the Bill cannot pass — if it does not break down in Committee it will be thrown out by the Lords, and there are many chances that Mr. Gladstone's small majority will break up. But the immense proportion of perfectly ignorant men in our electorate makes all political calculation for the future chimerical, and the growing habit of bribing classes by great offers is very marked. Unfortunately we have not your Constitution, and a simple majority may pull the whole Constitution to pieces. Excuse all this politics — of course, the subject is one of which we are very full. . . . 'I was greatly pleased with the poem on Drake which your illustrious fellow-citizen, Dr. Mitchell, was so kind as to send me. A charming book full of political wisdom has just come out, which ought spe- cially to appeal to Americans — the " Souvenirs de Tocqueville." I am myself duly launched on a new book, but it has not yet taken very definite form, and will probably occupy me for nearly three years. I do not mean it to be more than two moderate volumes. At fifty-five one has already passed the age at which Dante says one should begin to draw in sail.' The debates on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill began early in April 1893. Meanwhile some 1200 delegates came over from all parts of Ireland to protest against it. 288 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY On April 22, the very day the second reading had been passed by the normal small Liberal majority in the early hours of the morning, an important meeting was held at the Albert Hall. About 11,000 people attended, and the Duke of Abercorn, who presided, the Bishop of Derry — now the Primate — and other Irishmen upheld the cause of the Union with the great- est earnestness. Two days later a memorable recep- tion was given to the delegates at Hatfield. It was favoured by lovely summer-like weather, and the beauty of the place, the hospitality dispensed, and the fine oratory were worthy of the occasion. Stirring speeches were made from the steps in the quadrangle by the great Unionist leaders — Lord Salisbury, the Duke of Devonshire, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Goschen. Sir Thomas Butler spoke on behalf of the Irish Unionist Alliance. From those venerable walls, where history has been made ever since the days of Queen Elizabeth, Irish Unionists carried away the solemn promise that England never would abandon them. The speeches were received with the utmost enthusiasm, and the meeting left an impression which no one who attended it could ever forget. Most of the distinguished men who were present on that occa- sion have passed away from the scene, but the record of all they did to maintain the Union remains as an example and a stimulus to those who may have to fight the battle over again. The third reading of the Bill was carried by a majority of 34, including the Irish vote, so that England, Scotland, and Wales pronounced against it, and when the Bill went to the Lords in September they threw it out. While the debates were going on in the House of Commons in the spring, at the very moment the Irish delegates came over, the Unionist cause suffered a PRESIDENT OF THE CHELTONIAN SOCIETY 289 severe loss by the death of Lord Derby. To Lecky it also meant the loss of an old, true and faithful friend. 'I never knew anyone/ he wrote to Lady Derby, 'who distinguished so clearly between the specious and the true, who was so little swayed by the passions and illu- sions of the hour, and who aimed more steadily at promoting the real interests of men.' ' You judged his character rightly/ answered Lady Derby; 'few had better opportunities than yourself of doing so. It was only those in whom he found a sympathetic nature that could appreciate him; even they could not know the depth of his moral qualities.' In the Memoir which Lady Derby asked him to write at a later period he was glad to pay a public tribute to his memory. Lecky had been elected president of the Cheltonian Society for the year 1893, and he had to preside over the annual dinner which took place on July 5. In his speech proposing Cheltenham College he drew a comparison between the college of his time and that of to-day, with all its new developments, the chief of which seemed to him to be the tie of sympathy that continued to exist between former boys and their school. He passed in review many men who had been educated there and who had in various ways, as soldiers or civilians, gained distinction in after-life. Some years later — in 1897 — Lord James of Here- ford, chairman of the Council of Cheltenham College, asked Lecky to become a life member of the govern- ing body, which he accepted. After the usual crowded season he spent his holi- day chiefly in his brother-in-law's old country house in Holland. He always took some solid books with him to read in the quiet, undisturbed life he led there, and this time one of them was the first volume of a 20 290 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY history of the United States, which the author, Mr. James Ford Rhodes, had sent him. ' You will, I am sure, understand,' he wrote to Mr. Rhodes (Vosbergen, September 5, 1893), 'how diffi- cult it is for anyone who has serious literary work of his own on hand, and who at the same time lives amid the whirl of London life, to read with proper care a long history on a subject unconnected with his own pursuits. I have been, however, for the last few weeks staying in a very out-of-the-way country house in a remote part of Guelderland, and your History has been one of my chief companions. I cannot refrain from writing a few lines to say how much pleasure I have derived from it and how much it has taught me. Very few books, indeed, have helped me so much to understand American politics, and the desire you show to do justice to all sides and to tell the exact truth in all controversies is very manifest on every page. It is a rare quality — especially in books dealing with a period of history that is so recent and so steeped in party passion. . . . Few things in writing history, I think, should be more cultivated than the power of throwing ourselves alternately by an effort of the imag- ination into each side of a controversy, and thus presenting the rival arguments and facts as they ap- peared to the best men in the opposing ranks. I hope very much that you may be able to complete your programme. An impartial history of the Civil War, and of the consequences that followed it, would be a most valuable contribution to political as well as to historical literature.' He wrote in the summer of 1893 an article for the Forum on Leroy-Beaulieu's 'Israel Among the Na- tions,' 1 and a short protest in the New Review against the abuses of advertising. Survivals of the old national 1 Published in the Historical and Political Essays. HOLLAND 291 life in a country always interested him particularly, and in Holland he had exceptional opportunities of seeing these. After visiting one of the out-of-the- way parts of the country he wrote to his step- mother : Vosbergen: August 15, 1893. — ' . . . We spent a very pleasant time with the G s from Monday to Friday. There are two or three pleasant families in the neighbourhood whom we know, and we took some long and interesting drives along the banks of the Zuyderzee, a long, high dyke fringing miles upon miles of vast, intensely green meadows intersected with long canals — speckled with great groups of very beautiful cattle, with herons and great flights of sea birds. We went to two curious and old-world villages which in the Middle Ages formed a considerable town, where a very beautiful distinctive costume is univer- sally worn; and the people intermarrying mainly among themselves have quite a distinct type — a singularly beautiful one, with thin, delicate lips and a curious air of refinement. They are fishermen — very pros- perous — and their houses, with their china and silver ornaments and prints of the House of Orange and great Bibles with silver clasps, and perfectly preter- natural neatness, are very interesting to see. They seem well educated, are extremely religious in a Puri- tanical way — some, I am told, considering the use of a looking-glass wrong — and have three distinct Churches representing different inflections of Cal- vinism.' In the autumn he went with his wife to an island, Schiermonnikoog, 1 off the north coast of Holland, and with nothing between it and the North Pole. There 1 ' Eye of the Grey Monk.' There was a description of this visit in Longman's Magazine. 292 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY he enjoyed the magnificent sea air, the beautiful sands, with innumerable sea birds, and the original character of the place, which was quite out of the beat of tourists. They afterwards visited some Belgian towns, and went home by Paris, as usual. The death of his doctor and friend, Sir Andrew Clark, in November 1893 was an irreparable loss to Lecky. He was a most able, kind and disinterested physician, possessed of very remarkable working power, which he used for the benefit of his fellow- creatures. He had a peculiarly sympathetic insight into the temperament of the brainworker, with its high-strung nerves and delicate organisation, and he was the doctor of many eminent men. He was very devoted to his patients, who placed the greatest con- fidence in him, and Lecky felt, with many others, that his loss could not be replaced. On his return to London that autumn he was asked by the Prince of Wales — now King Edward — to inaugurate a series of lectures at the Imperial Insti- tute by giving the opening address. Though he was always anxious to extricate himself from what .he called the entanglements of side-tasks, and to concen- trate himself on his own work, he could not refuse a repeated request. He selected for his theme the Value and Growth of the Empire. The Prince pre- sided, and, in opening and closing the proceedings, said some very gracious and appreciative words. The lecture proved to be exactly suited to the occasion. It not only met with warm approval from his audi- ence in England, it also struck a sympathetic chord among his friends in the Colonies. 'Old as I am,' wrote Judge Gowan from Canada, ' in reading it there was stirred within me all the enthusiasm of younger days. . . . The address will do much good and is very FRENCH INSTITUTE 293 grateful to the feelings of loyal men in Canada.' 1 It was translated into German by Dr. I. Imelmann, and appeared in the Preussische Jahrbilcher. 2 Lecky's views about the future did not escape a tinge of the pessimism which coloured those of many thinking men who had passed middle life. 1 It is curious,' he wrote to Mr. Booth, November 16, 1893, 'how many fellow-pessimists you have just now. Grant Duff, who was an old and steady Liberal, told me not long ago that he was delighted to be sixty-five, as he thought the world was going for some time to come to be a very disagreeable place, and Mundella (from whom I should have hardly expected such a sentiment) said to me, a propos of these labour ques- tions, much the same. I suppose the experiment of Socialism in some form will be tried, and it is highly probable that before it is accomplished a great portion of the English population, having driven away their trade, will find living here impossible.' Mr. Henry Reeve also used to say that he was not sorry to be near the close of his life, as the order of things he cared for was passing away. In Lecky's Commonplace Books there is often a sentence at the end of the year which sums up a dominant idea. On December 31, 1893, he wrote, 'The world seems to me to have grown very old and very sad.' Before the end of the year he first learnt through Comte de Franqueville, an old and valued friend, that he had been elected Correspondent of the French Institute in the Academie des Sciences morales et politiques, an honour which he much appreciated. 'Nous sommes heureux de penser,' wrote M. Georges 1 It has been included in the Historical and Political Essays. * Band Ixxv. Heft 2. 294 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLB LECKY Picot, 'que ce vote cree entre nous des liens et que nous compterons sur nos listes le premier his- torien de l'Angleterre.' Lecky had many friends among eminent Frenchmen, and even some French connexions, 1 and an almost yearly stay in Paris kept him in touch with French life and French thought. Though many attempts had been made to translate his books into French, the translators apparently never could come to terms with the French publishers. His books, however, had many readers in France, and there was an affinity between his own and the French mind which was recognised by some eminent French writers. 'Je ne connais pas d'ecrivain Anglais/ M. Albert Reville once wrote to him, 'qu'un Francais puisse lire avec plus d'aisance et plus de satisfaction litteraire.' He thought Lecky had kept the best tra- ditions of style of the eighteenth century, combining with it the resources which the erudition of the nine- teenth alone could give him; and reading him was therefore an eesthetic as well as an intellectual enjoy- ment. In the winter he wrote, at the request of Lady Derby, the Memoir of Lord Derby, which has already been alluded to. It was to serve as introduction to his ' Speeches,' which she wished to publish. It is not always easy for a candid biographer to please the rela- tions, but Lady Derby was far too large-minded to 1 His wife's uncle by mar- him and M. de St. Albin with riage, M. Paul Grand, and his the publication of his Memoirs. daughter lived in Paris, and These were, however, not always received Mr. and Mrs. published till after the death Lecky very hospitably. M. of both. Introduction to the Grand was the godson of Memoirs of Barras. Barras, who had entrusted LORD ROSEBERY 295 wish for anything but a true picture, and she knew it could not be anything but a sympathetic one. ' Lady Derby/ wrote Mr. Reeve, 'is delighted, as she well may be, with your admirable sketch — most felici- tous, she calls it'; and she wrote herself to Lecky, 'I am greatly pleased. The sketch is exactly the sort of Memoir I wished for; and you are quite right to have been perfectly sincere;' and when it appeared she wrote: ' Let me thank you again for your Memoir, 1 which is quite perfect. . . . The Due d'Aumale has just been here and is very happy you should have written the Memoir.' The Due d'Aumale was a member of 'The Club,' 2 and when in London he always made it a point to attend it. The most able and brilliant of the sons of Louis Philippe, he entertained his fellow-members on those occasions with many good stories of past times. As author of the 'Histoire des Princes de Conde,' he was anxious that they should all have a copy of this work from him on their bookshelves. His munificent gift of Chantilly to the French Insti- tute, which has saved the most priceless collection from dispersion, has earned him the gratitude of all the intellectual world. In the spring of 1894 Mr. Gladstone resigned and Lord Rosebery succeeded him, and great expectations were entertained about a reconstruction of the Liberal party. ' I think from a Colonial point of view the change in Ministry is much to be rejoiced at,' Lecky wrote to Judge Gowan, March 6, 1894, 'as the Imperial idea is certainly the strongest with Lord Rosebery. The 1 It has been included in the Historical and Political Essays. 2 See ante, p. 120. 296 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY general belief is that he cannot hold his present team long together and that an election will take place in the early summer; but I think moderate men look kindly on him, and hope that after a period of opposi- tion he may be able to bury Home Rule and reconstruct the Liberal party on a more respectable basis. . . . We shall probably within the next year or so have some scheme carried out for reforming the Constitu- tion of the House of Lords. If it can provide us with the inestimable blessing of a strong Upper Chamber, I at least will rejoice.' Meanwhile Lecky was working at his 'Democracy and Liberty.' In July he wrote to Mr. Booth: 'I get very much knocked up with London heat, which has been very intense. I shall have not quite finished seven out of ten or eleven chapters of which I mean my new book to consist.' He and his wife went that summer to the Tyrol, and made a pleasant stay at Madonna di Campiglio, a lovely spot, but owing to its altitude, more than 5000 feet above the sea, with a somewhat rough climate. He wrote to his stepmother: 'The place is extremely beautiful, with a delightful mixture of Italian colouring and Alpine air, with large fir woods and fine distant glaciers, and the strangely jagged and pinnacled forms of the Dolomites with their streaks of porphyry, and, I think, perhaps a greater variety of walks than any mountain place I know. We mean to stay here all August, but not, I think, longer. The hotel is very crowded, but we have now got comfortable rooms. Among the few people we know are Sir Charles Halle and his very charming Swedish wife, who plays the violin beauti- fully, and whom I dare say you know under her pro- fessional name of Norman Neruda.' During their stay Sir Charles and Lady Halle gave MADONNA DI CAMPIGLIO 297 an admirable concert for the poor of Campiglio, and there was the usual banquet on the Emperor of Aus- tria's birthday. His Majesty's health was proposed, and representatives of various nationalities — a Hun- garian General, an Italian Prince, a German Minister, and Lecky — paid a tribute on behalf of their country- men to the sovereign whose sagacious influence car- ried so much weight in the councils of Europe. 'One sees a good many interesting people here of different nationalities,' he wrote, 'and I am rather struck with the uniform pessimism of the more intel- ligent Italians I meet. Taxation in Italy seems to have very nearly reached the point of bankruptcy, and the level of public men to have been vastly lowered since the reduction of the suffrage.' 1 Mr. and Mrs. Lecky went afterwards to the Mendel- pass, above Botzen, and to the Italian lakes. They spent a week or two at Cadenabbia, 'and of that time three or four days were as beautiful as could well be — the mountains with that dreamy mist of sunshine over them which is so eminently character- istic of the Lake of Como.' 2 During their stay the first English marriage that took place in the English church was celebrated by the Bishop of Chichester, Dr. R. Durnford, who was then ninety -three, and whom Lecky was much interested to meet. 'The neigh- bouring villas were illuminated: the pair went away in a private boat, the lady steering (as might be ex- pected).' 3 On his return to London in October, he wrote to Mr. Lea: 1 To Judge Gowan, August 2 From a letter to his step- 12, 1894. mother, Lugano, September 25. 3 Ibid. 298 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY 'I have been reading with great pleasure the very- striking paper on the " Increase of Crime " which you were so kind as to send me, and which I found on my arrival a few days since from the Continent. I had just before been reading in a French paper some very startling statistics about the increase of crime, and especially of juvenile crime, in France. This latter increase I find generally ascribed to the present not merely secular, but positively antitheistic system of education. It seems certain that our experience in •England is different from that of France, and I am afraid from yours. Sir J. Lubbock very recently collected some statistics on the subject, and I do not think there is any doubt whatever that crime in Eng- land has largely decreased within the last few years, and that our improved methods of treating juvenile crime (all of which I imagine exist among you) have proved eminently successful. The diminution of drunken- ness may not be so clearly established, but I think it is real, even though the aggregate amount of spirits consumed may have slightly increased. This may, and probably does, merely mean that with increased wages moderate drinkers multiply. I should fancy, as you hint in one of your notes, that the children' of foreign parents must contribute very largely to your crime, as they will probably have lost the restraining moral influences of the creed in which their parents were brought up, and have not yet had time to experi- ence the full moulding moral influences of American life. It is a very curious and important subject of inquiry, for the increase or diminution of serious crime is one of the best tests (though certainly not the only one) of a nation being in a healthy or unhealthy condition. I am very glad that you are able to keep so fully abreast of these modern questions at a time when you are doing so much to elucidate mediaeval history. I have been for the last two years occupied with subjects equally modern, but I do not expect to DEATH OF MB. FROUDE 299 have finished what I am writing for about eighteen months. I was much interested in what you wrote me in your last letter about Socialism in America. In Europe it is tending strongly to form separate parliamentary groups, and is likely in this way to be much more dangerous than when it was merely a form of revolution. It is startling to observe how rapidly it has grown of late years in the German Parliament, and how powerful it already is in the great municipal bodies both of London and Paris. A great deal that is very curious on the subject was published a year ago by M. Guyot in his book on " The Tyranny of Socialism."' Mr. Froude was now living at Oxford, having given up London when he was appointed Regius Professor of History, and he and Lecky only met on rare occa- sions. Once, when on a visit to their friend, Mr. George Brodrick, Warden of Merton College, Mr. and Mrs. Lecky went to see Mr. Froude and received the usual cordial welcome, but before long a fatal illness struck him down. ' Froude is, I believe, dying/ wrote Lecky to Mr. Booth, October 16, 1894, ' a great man vanishing from living literature. It makes me feel very old to find how rapidly I am coming to stand in the oldest generation of writers. If I have a quiet life in my library for the next year or so, I hope to get through the writing (not printing) of my present book, but so many things may happen to prevent it.' A few days afterwards (on October 20) Mr. Froude died, and Lecky wrote the same day to Miss Froude expressing his most earnest sympathy on her father's death. 'Few men, indeed,' he wrote, 'have won more affection, or lived down more animosity, or borne themselves (as I have had much reason to know) amid grave differences of opinion with such a complete absence of personal bitterness. It has been a full and 300 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY brilliant life, brilliant as ever to the end — and I hope that Oxford has thrown a peaceful and happy evening light upon its close.' Lecky was asked that autumn to write a few pages of reminiscences for Mr. Stuart Reid's 'Life of Lord Russell.' Such tributes to the memories of public men whom he had known always derived their value from the sympathetic insight as well as great sincerity which they showed. 'I shall always be grateful to him,' wrote Mr. Rollo Russell after Lecky's death, 'for his words about my father, for he was one of the few who understood his character.' In December, while on a visit to Sir Richard Jebb at Cambridge, he wrote to Judge Gowan: ' I avail myself of a short visit I am making to Cam- bridge (for the purpose chiefly of seeing a Greek play, which is being admirably acted by the young men) to thank you for your kind letter and very interesting paper. . . . Ireland is just now profoundly quiet, the only sounds being the quarrels of the Home Rulers among themselves. The Parnellites (nine votes) have declared openly against the Government and are abusing Morley as much as they once abused Balfour. I think if the next election returns a decided Union- ist majority (which seems probable) we shall hear little more of Home Rule. The indifference of the leading Ministers to it is hardly concealed. ... A good many of us over here are a good deal irritated at the attempts you are making in Canada to overthrow the Copyright Law, 1 enabling your printers to reprint 1 Canada was under the duty at the Canadian Custom British Copyright Act, and House on all American re- the Canadian Government had prints coming into the coun- undertaken to collect for the try, but this was evidently benefit of British authors a evaded. CANADA AND COPYRIGHT 301 our works without the consent or control of the author, and often probably (as constantly happened in Amer- ica) keeping them before the public in their first crude and imperfect form long after new discoveries or fresh materials had led to their revision. We are old- fashioned enough to think that literary property (which perhaps approaches creation more than any other) is real property, and that an English author has a clear right to control the sale of his own works in the Queen's dominions. The greatest step which has been taken in this generation for the benefit of English authors and the establishment of the principle of literary property was the American Copyright Act, and your proceedings are likely gravely to endanger it. More- over, if you adopt the piratical course, other Colonies will doubtless follow your example. The royalty supposed to be collected at the Canadian Custom House for the benefit of English authors has been a pure farce. Sir C. Lyell once told me he had received a notice from the Treasury that 2s. 6d. was waiting for him, having been sent from Canada, but as it was a 2s. cab fare to get it, he did not claim it. As far as I can make out, few authors have received from this source as much as I have, i.e. £1 9s. lOd. in twenty- six years! So, on the whole, I think English authors have some grievances against Canada, however much they may admire some Canadian legislators.' Canada, in wishing to get rid of the British Copy- right Law, had passed an Act of its own in 1889, for which it repeatedly tried to obtain the sanction of the British Government. In 1894, when the Canadian Premier, Sir John Thompson, visited England he pressed the matter, and there was some danger of the Government giving in. An important deputation, including Lecky, waited on the Colonial Secretary, Lord Ripon, on November 26, and forcibly repre- sented to him the injury the Bill would inflict on the 302 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY whole copyright question. After that the matter hung fire, but in the following spring of 1895 the danger seemed once more imminent, and strong protests were made by authors and publishers in the Contemporary Review of April. 'It is surely not too much/ wrote Lecky in his own incisive way, 'to ask the Queen's Ministers in England to protect the property of the Queen's subjects from legalised plunder in any part of her dominions. This is the only favour that Eng- lish literature asks or expects from their hands.' CHAPTER XII 1894-1896. LL.D. degree at Glasgow — General Election — Mr. Rhodes' ' History ' — Mr. Bayard — Offer of Dublin University Seat — Centenary of the French Institute — Contested Election — The Religious Cry — Answer to Correspondents — Clonakilty contra mundum — Result of the Election — Congratulations — Maiden Speech — Land Bill — Publica- tion of ' Democracy and Liberty ' — Appreciative Letters — Critics — Essay on Gibbon — Essay on Swift — Judge O'Connor Morris — Debates on the Land Bill. During the winter of 1894-1895 Lecky worked exclu- sively at his ' Democracy and Liberty/ which was now approaching its completion. Several honours were bestowed upon him at this time. He was elected by the Royal Academy to the office of Honorary Secretary for Foreign Correspondence in succession to the late Sir Henry Layard, and this made a very pleasant connexion between him and that distinguished body, among whom he had many friends. Lord Kelvin wrote that Glasgow University wished 'to have the honour' of conferring the degree of LL.D. upon him and that the ceremony would take place on April 16. The year 1895 was an eventful one in Lecky's life. Early in the spring he lost his brother-in-law, at whose country house he had been in the habit of staying some time almost every summer. Baron W. van Dedem had been Minister for the Colonies in a Liberal Dutch Cabinet, and after his party went out of office in 1894 he 303 304 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY started on a journey to India, wishing to compare its ad- ministration with that of the Dutch East Indies, in which he was particularly interested. The transition of temperature from Calcutta to Darjeeling brought on a fever, which ended fatally on his return to Calcutta, where he intended taking the steamer for Java. The news reached his relations by telegram on April 4, and Lecky greatly felt the loss of a friendship of nearly twenty-five years. Soon after this sad event Lecky went to Scotland to receive the degree. He took the opportunity to make a short tour among the Scottish Lakes to get some bracing, and wrote from Inversnaid to his wife, who had gone to The Hague: April 13, 1895. — 'I can feel how moving, even though in some sense pleasant, it must be to have so many signs of your brother's hold upon the affections of those about him. He had indeed a transparent single-mindedness and high-mindedness of character that it was impossible to mistake, and few men can have devoted themselves more absolutely and exclu- sively to public and unselfish interests. Perhaps in a small country this is more fully appreciated, because it is more observed than in a great one.' He had two lovely days on Loch Lomond, 'quite Italian, and the lake looking beautiful'; and he then went to Glasgow, where he stayed with Lord and Lady Kelvin, whose kindness he much praised. Principal Caird was ill, so there was no address, and Lord Kelvin performed the ceremony. It took place in the large fine hall built by Lord Bute. The students were very civil, and the merits of the new graduates were 'related in the English tongue.' Among his colleagues were Mr. Frazer of the Golden Bough, and an interesting old Scottish natu- ralist of more than eighty, named Robertson, whose life POLITICAL CONDITIONS 305 has been written by Mr. Stebbing. 'There was after- wards a luncheon/ he wrote, 1 'where I was treated as guest of honour and had to reply for all the non-divin- ity LL.D.s, which I duly did.' In consequence of the retirement of Mr. Gladstone from politics the burning question of Home Rule fell into abeyance and a period of relative quiet followed on the excitement of previous years. From Loch Awe he wrote to Judge Gowan on April 21, 1895: . . . ' Politics here are in a state of curious lassitude. The Irish question by a sort of tacit agreement has fallen into the background, and the conviction that the Government cannot through its weakness carry any really dangerous measure, and is half-hearted in all it does, has much diminished the animosity with which it was regarded in the days when Gladstone reigned. It is a curious and I suppose unprecedented thing that the three most important elected bodies in England are just now all of them almost equally bal- anced. A precarious majority of fourteen in the House of Commons — a majority of three in the London School Board — an exact tie among the elected members of the London County Council. On the whole, the present tendencies seem Conservative and Anti-Socialist. I think Gladstone has really given up politics. I met him a few weeks ago at a dining club to which we both belong. He is always very agreeable, interesting, and courteous, but very deaf and rather blind, and not now capable of talking to a whole table, though delightful to those who sit near him. He is at present very full of Bishop Butler and intend- ing, I believe, to edit his works. It is a wonderful old age, whatever one may think of his principles and politics.' 1 To his wife. 21 306 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY After his return to London, Lecky wrote to Mr. Booth, May 30 : ' I have been working very hard all this year, and shall have to do so to the end, as I want if possible to publish my book (two volumes) in the spring, though it is possible I may have to delay it till October. I always find a long task a great solace amid the troubles of life, and a great settling and calming influence.' The general election in the summer of 1895, follow- ing on the defeat of the Liberal Government, brought in the Conservatives with a very large majority. It showed 'beyond all possibility of doubt/ as Lecky said in his ' Democracy and Liberty/ ' that on the Home Rule question the House of Lords represented the true sentiments of the democracy of the country.' 'I sus- pect the last election/ he wrote to Mr. Booth, 'will make many think Lord Beaconsfield right in his belief (which was shared by Bismarck and Louis Napo- leon) that the most uninstructed classes, if. you go deep enough, are essentially conservative.' In the course of the summer he went twice to Hol- land to be present at the weddings of his two sisters-in- law, 1 who had often travelled with him and his wife, and who used to pay them yearly visits in London. He stayed for some weeks in the old country house — everything the same and yet so different without the owner, who was the soul of it. He brought with him the typewritten copy of his book to revise, and an- other volume of Mr. Rhodes' 'History/ the earlier volumes of which he had read at Vosbergen some years before. 'I have been reading it with the greatest interest,' he wrote to Mr. Rhodes, August 25, 1895, 'and have 1 Now Mme. de Beaufort and Baronne de Braun. MR. RHODES' ' HISTORY' 307 learnt much from it. I do not think I ever read a history which is more transparently fair and which deals with subjects that naturally rouse strong party feeling in a spirit of more absolute impartiality. Both in the question between North and South and in the question between America and England you have shown this spirit in an extraordinary degree, and I think your book will do a great deal to appease ani- mosities and to teach different sides to understand and appreciate each other. I am old enough to remember vividly your great war, and was then much with an American friend — a very clever lawyer named George Bemis, whom I came to know very well at Rome. I had been writing just before receiving your book my impressions of English opinions on the war (for a book which I hope to publish next spring) and I do not think you will find that they differ at all materially from yours. The only element you seem to me to have omitted is the Italian question, which in the few years before your war had accustomed English- men to assert, in the most extreme form, the doctrine that every large body of men have a right to form their government as they please. I was myself a decided Northerner, but the 'right of revolution' was always rather a stumbling-block. I much admire the industry with which you have grappled with the newspaper material, which is the terror, almost the nightmare, of the nineteenth-century historians.' 'It is the best account,' he wrote to Mr. Booth, 'I have ever read of the events that led to the American Civil War. American books are much less read in England than they should be. They always interest me greatly, dealing as they do with the more advanced stages of democracy to which we are coming.' A very friendly intercourse with each successive American representative contributed to keep up Lecky's interest in American affairs. 'I have become great 308 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY friends/ he wrote to Mr. Lea, ' with Mr. Bayard, whom we all like greatly. He is not of your party, but I do not think anyone can come in contact with him with- out feeling for him a very warm friendship. Certainly America has been most fortunate in her last three representatives — men very unlike each other but all most respected and admired over here.' Mr. Bayard's warm feelings of regard for Lecky are shown in the following letter, written on receiving Lecky's portrait, which he had expressed a wish to possess : (To Mrs. Lecky.) ' You have given me a great and abiding pleasure in this picture of your husband. My respect and admiration, gathered from his writings, had long ago made me look forward eagerly and with especial interest to making the personal acquaintance of the man himself — ■ and as you know, one is apt to conceive a portrait in imagination which is not always carried out when the real personality comes in view — but Mr. Lecky proved all that my fancy painted him and something even finer and better. The picture is delightful — an admirable likeness of a singularly refined and intellectual head and face.' In the course of the month of October, when the seat for Dublin University became vacant by the elevation of Mr. Plunket to the peerage, Lecky received an urgent requisition from an influential body of elect- ors to stand for the seat. It was represented to him that his doing so would be of great service to his Uni- versity, and also to the cause of University representa- tion; and though his early enthusiasm for Parliament was now extinguished, and he felt somewhat too old to begin a new career, he thought that on the grounds adduced it was his duty to waive all personal objections and accede to the request. He was given to under- DUBLIN UNIVERSITY ELECTION 309 stand at first that he would be returned unopposed, and indeed a contest seemed most improbable. In him the electors had a candidate who not only had made a great reputation by his works, but who had rendered signal services to Ireland and to the cause of the Union. It might even be said that there was no one out of Parliament who had fought the battle of the Union more strenuously and more disinterest- edly, or whose words carried greater weight. The electors as a body would have done themselves and the University credit by unanimously electing such a candidate. But this point of view did not appeal to some of the legal profession, who had held the Uni- versity seat almost uninterruptedly since the Union. They were not going to give it up without a struggle, and they supported a candidate of their own — Mr. Wright, a popular member of the Munster Bar. Lecky's feelings at the time are best described in his own words : (To Mr. Booth.) Athenceum Club: October 18, 1895. — ' So many electors have so very urgently and so very kindly asked me to stand, and have so much insisted that it would be for the advantage of the University that I should do so, that I did not think it right to refuse, especially as I have finished the writing, though alas! not begun the printing of my new book. Plunket, Fitzgibbon, and various others have been very kind about it. As you know, I have not the smallest desire for the House of Commons, and am lamentably deficient in the nerve that is re- quired for a public man, and I feel too old for a new career; but a University seat is much less trying than any other, and I hope I may become a respectable quiet member (if returned) like Jebb and Sir George Stokes of Cambridge.' ' No one can be more surprised at it [the Candida- 310 WILLIAM EDWAED HARTPOLE LECKY ture] than myself,' he wrote to the Provost, Dr. Salmon, 'for of late years nothing has been more contrary to my wishes, nothing more uncongenial to my tastes than to go into the House of Commons. It was rep- resented to me, however, so strongly, that there was a wish in T.C.D. that I should represent it, and that by standing I might render it some real service, that I thought it my duty to accept. If this feeling is as real and as widely spread as is represented to me, I think I have done rightly — though whether for my own happiness I have acted wisely, especially if this matter involves a long delay and an expensive contest, is quite another question. However, the die is cast and you will, I believe, see my election address on Monday or Tuesday. I am just going to Paris for the Institut Centenaire, where I am afraid I shall not meet you though we are colleagues.' Lecky's supporters could not but feel gratified that at this very juncture he should have been the one Irish- man who represented his University among the dis- tinguished men of all nations gathered together at the invitation of the French Institute to celebrate its centenary. 1 The ceremonies and fetes that were given on the occasion; the memorable speeches made in the great hall of the Sorbonne ; the admirable acting at a gala representation at the Theatre Francais; the fine recitations at M. Poincare's, Minister of Public Instruction, were worthy of the best French tradi- tions. Not the least impressive ceremony was the solemn service at St. Germain des Pres in memory of the deceased members of the Institute, among whom was Mr. Reeve, 2 who had died just before. The Due d'Aumale, too unwell to attend the celebration, re- 1 A description of the visit zine, December 1895. appeared in Longman's Maga- 2 Lecky wrote a short me- THE CONTEST 311 ceived the guests at Chantilly, where they were able to inspect the magnificent inheritance of the Insti- tute. Meanwhile Lecky's election address had been issued, and on his return to London he soon found himself in all the turmoil of a contest. As his opponent was also a Unionist there were no political issues; but Lecky had written books and he did not live in Ireland, and these two facts — especially the former — were util- ised against him by his opponents. In drawing their own deductions from certain passages in his writings they sought to prejudice the clerical electors. For weeks columns of the Irish papers were filled with letters discussing Lecky's religious convictions — some of the writers not even having read his books; indeed, as 'a country parson' wrote, the electioneer- ing device would ' completely fail with those who were most familiar with Mr. Lecky's writings.' His posi- tion was very clear. Like Macaulay at Leeds, he was ready to say 'I am a Christian'; but like him also he protested against the use of inquisitorial methods and the introduction of the most sacred subjects into a political election. Several electors wrote to him ask- ing what his religious belief was, and he always an- swered that while he was happy to give any information about his politics he must absolutely decline to answer questions of this sort. 'For a long time past,' he wrote to one of these correspondents, 'I believe all self-respecting candi- dates for Parliament in England have taken this course, and I should far rather lose the election than moir of Mr. Reeve for the published in the Historical January number, 1896, of the and Political Essays. Edinburgh Review, since re- 312 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY recede from it. If you think a religious test should be exacted from members for this University (a purely undenominational body) you had much better vote for my opponent, for I, at least, will never take it. If you care to investigate my opinions on these sub- jects, my books have long been before the public, and are, I presume, known to several of the gentlemen at whose kind request I am coming forward.' The Primate (Dr. Robert Gregg) and most of the higher clergy and important men in other professions were his supporters, and the Press were almost all on his side, foremost among them the Times and the Dublin Daily Express, which fought his cause warmly. Lord Morris happily characterised the contest as 'Clonakilty 1 contra mundum.' His committees in Dublin and in London worked for him with the great- est zeal and devotion. All his friends showed an enthusiasm and sympathy which were most gratify- ing, and many whom he did not know took up his cause warmly. Among those who fought his battle in the Irish newspapers was a clever and high-minded woman, 2 too early taken from her family and friends. Under the signature 'Pro Universitate ' she wrote a series of letters refuting the attacks upon Lecky, with excerpts from his own books, which no one knew better than herself, though at that time she did not know the author. The contest was one of the bitterest there had been in Dublin for a long time, and carried with it a great deal that was unpleasant to him; but there was no bitterness on his side, and he went through it all with the calm of a philosopher. On the day of 1 The centre of the Minister K.C., who was on Lecky's corn- circuit, mittee. 2 The wife of Mr. Samuels, NOMINATION SPEECHES 313 the nomination he was proposed by Dr. Gwynn, Regius Professor of Divinity, and seconded by the late Sir John Banks, Regius Professor of Medicine, in terms of the greatest appreciation. Dr. Gwynn in his speech laid stress on the special significance of this election and on the importance of having a member, such as Mr. Lecky, who held an independent position and who had nothing to gain from any party. . . . For what was the meaning of University representa- tion? Was it not that University members 'should introduce a higher level into the arena of party poli- tics?' Lecky explained his reasons for coming forward as a candidate and dealt with the attacks that were made upon him ; but his speech from the hustings was mainly devoted to the great questions of policy that were before the country, and his supporters expressed their gratification at his dignified and statesmanlike atti- tiude. His speech was drowned, like all the others, amidst the boisterousness of the College boys, who, as he testified, 'were very good-natured and shouted and threw about College caps very impartially during the two and a half hours the proceedings continued.' He was curiously indifferent to the result as far as he was himself concerned; though he felt convinced that no greater damage could be done to the Univer- sity than imposing a religious test, and that few things would do so much to lower its position before the edu- cated opinion of Europe as the belief that it was possible for anyone, by such means, to become its rep- resentative. The polling went on for five days, and from the first it was apparent that he would win. 'It is a very curious experience,' he wrote to Mr. Booth, Dublin, December 4, 1895, ' being in the midst of a fiercely contested election, especially when the 314 WILLIAM EDWAED HARTPOLE LECKY Odium Theologicum plays as great a part as here. Whole columns of the Irish Times are usually occupied with letters about my religious belief, some of these written by very curious persons. ... I hope next Monday to be back in London and again immersed in proof-sheets. We have had an unusually large poll, and my supporters hope that my majority may be only a little less than two to one.' He was finally returned with a majority of 746, 1 though there was no doubt that votes were lost to him through the tactics used by his opponents; these produced a revulsion of feeling which he hoped would do some permanent good. The election excited an extraordinary amount of interest, not only in the three kingdoms but abroad. Congratulations came from far and wide, and even a newspaper from Paraguay recorded the result. 'The House of Commons is to be congratulated,' wrote one of the great scholars of the time, ' as others have doubtless said, on your accession to it, and speak- ing in the capacity of a University member I may express the peculiar satisfaction which will certainly be felt by that much threatened contingent. The enrolment in it of the foremost English man of letters will be welcomed with all the greater warmth because he does not labour under the disadvantage of being a Professor — a thing which no Englishman ever really forgives. I believe that your return has prob- ably added several years to the life of University representation.' Lecky made many warm friends on the occasion. ' When he first consented to stand for the University,' wrote one of them, ' his great name and writings were 1 On a poll of 2768, one of the largest on record. IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 315 sufficient to inspire us all with enthusiasm, but within the last few days, since he came amongst us, that enthusiasm has deepened into the far more human feeling of strong personal regard/ and after the elec- tion some of his opponents became his staunch sup- porters. As for Lecky's own feelings, there is no doubt that when all the unpleasantness of the contest was passed he was pleased and gratified to represent his University. To a man who had keenly followed politics all his life, Parliament — the centre of polit- ical life of a great Empire — could not but have a certain attraction. He was interested to come into closer contact with the practical side of politics, and he found in the House many people whom he liked, among others his old friend Sir George Trevelyan, who to his regret resigned the following year. In 1898 another old friend of his, Mr. Arthur Elliot, 1 came in as member for Durham, and being on the same side of politics they frequently sat together. Lecky watched with much sympathy the careers of younger men. Though Parliament brought him a large in- crease of correspondence, he always maintained that his constituents gave him very little trouble. Still on the whole a literary life suited his tastes better. He felt too old and unambitious to do much in Parlia- ment. 'Literature does not lead to much that is very splendid/ he wrote at that time, 'certainly not in the way of money, but for myself I far prefer it to a political life.' He was conscious of a great deal of waste of time; he found the multitude of questions that had to be made up somewhat overwhelming, and the late hours very tiring. 1 The Hon. Arthur Elliot had succeeded Mr. Reeve as editor of the Edinburgh Review. 316 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY Though he meant to be, at least the first year, the most unobtrusive of members, he was induced to speak very soon after the opening of the Session. It was on February 17, on the question of releasing those Irish prisoners who had been condemned under the Treason Felony Act and who had been in penal servitude for thirteen years. While expressing the strongest con- demnation of their crime — that of setting explosives — he pleaded for clemency on the ground that these prisoners had nearly served their time; that Ireland was now quiet, and that the Government was strong enough to show mercy without exciting the suspicion of being intimidated or overawed. Lecky spoke with- out preparation, and on that occasion took his position in Parliament. Contemporary evidence, from a source which cannot be suspected of bias, is the best one can have: ' The reception accorded by the House of Commons to Mr. Lecky,' said a Liberal paper, the Westminster Gazette, the next day, 'has exploded the popular fal- lacy that the House is jealous of an outside reputation. . . . His appearance was greeted with loud and enthu- siastic cheers from every quarter of the House. . . . Mr. Lecky spoke without notes, in a somewhat thin, clear voice, which was distinctly heard in every corner of the House. The speech, which was admirably put together, was delivered with great force, and the im- pression produced was universally favourable.' From the moment Lecky entered Parliament he be- came a favourite subject for the caricaturist, espe- cially in the Westminster Gazette. Sir F. Carruthers Gould, one of the great masters of the art, has an un- disputed skill in portraiture, and though caricature necessarily means grotesqueness, he rarely, if ever, exceeded its due limitations. A NEW IEISH LAND BILL 317 Lecky, in his 'Democracy and Liberty/ had ex- pressed his views about the increase of predatory legis- lation, and he soon had occasion to say in the House — speaking on the Benefices Bill x — that a member of Parliament could adopt no better rule than steadily to vote against all measures which implied confisca- tion without compensation. One of the chief measures announced for the session was another Irish Land Bill, which purported to amend the defects of previous ones. Though it contained some useful provisions, such as the extension of the Land Purchase Acts, it was very contentious in other ways. Before its introduction Irish landowners were full of apprehension, as the following letter from Lecky to Lord Dufferin shows: Athenaeum: March 9, 1896. — ' I return with many thanks your admirable paper, which I have read very carefully. If considerations of justice or even real considerations of expediency dominated in Irish politics it would be perfectly invincible, but Ireland, which is an exception to many rules, has, I fear, also become an exception to the old rule that honesty is the best policy. Whether the reign of triumphant dishonesty (seldom more marked than in the Union- ist Act of 1887) is now about to terminate it is impos- sible to say. Few things grow with a more portentous rapidity than dishonest precedents, which are gener- ally admitted as purely exceptional and certain to do no practical harm in their restricted sphere, and which soon become the starting-point and logical premise of more extensive measures. I have been going very fully into the Irish land question of late, having de- voted a good many pages to it in a new book which 1 A Bill to amend the law respecting the exercise of Church patronage. 318 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY is coming out at the end of this month. I do not think we shall have much legislation before Easter, as we are threatened with much obstruction on the Estimates, and as there is a large part of the rank and file behind the Government much disinclined to any- new departure. I only hope that the great opportu- nity of a commanding and homogeneous Unionist majority will not be lost.' 'I am sorry to say,' he wrote to a friend, 'one of their [the Government's] measures is a new Land Bill which again raises the questions of improvement and fair rent, and will, I am afraid, do much to unsettle agrarian relations. Another reduction of rents would, I fear, ruin many, and it would check the flow of money to Irish land which, after a long period, had begun again after the last election. If we could only induce this House to leave us alone for a few years it would be the greatest boon Parliament could bestow on us'. One of Lecky's first official duties was to take part in the election of a Professor of Irish for Trinity Col- lege. He went to Ireland during the Easter vacation, and began by going to Donegal, wanting very much, as he wrote to the Provost, 'to get a week or so of good air in the West of Ireland, in some happy region where no speeches have to be made or listened to.' He wrote from there with his usual enthusiasm for the Atlantic air and scenery, and with that interest in animate nature which he shared with his friends Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff and Sir John Lubbock. 1 'The weather, so far, is lovely,' he wrote from Port- salon, 'and the colouring over the mountains, Lough Swilly and the broad Atlantic, quite ideally beautiful.' Carrigart struck him as curiously like the Eye of the Grey Monk (Schiermonnikoog) , 'with, of course, the Now Lord Avebury. 'democracy and liberty' 319 addition of mountains.' In both places small sea birds trotted about in flocks, and 'it is amusing here to see them regularly following the plough to pick up worms.' 'Democracy and Liberty' had now come out, and on his return to London he wrote to Mr. Booth: ' I hope my book may do some good, though it must necessarily offend large classes. ... It will probably be my last long book, and I often feel it a pity that I should have gone into a sphere for which I am very little suited instead of remaining where I could do something of real value. I have now, however, written a great deal, and probably expressed all my best ideas, and I must try to make the best of my new life for a few years. You will find a great deal very interesting on the better side of Socialism in a very interesting Italian book (translated into English) , Nitti's "Catholic Socialism." I have been spending a pleasant fortnight in Ireland, which I much wanted as I had got extremely run down — partly in Donegal, which is to my mind the most delicious air in the world, and where there are now some excellent hotels, and partly with the Provost in T.C.D., where I had to take part, as M.P., in the election of a Professor of Irish — choosing between three very competent scholars. As I do not know a word of the language or any of the candidates, you can appreciate my competence, but really, in the House of Commons one gets quite accustomed to that kind of thing, having to vote almost nightly on matters one does not understand. If you have never watched our proceedings you should come in some night when you are here. As a general rule, there is no difficulty about it. I get very tired with this life, its late hours, the crowd of questions, and the multitude of letters it entails.' The 'Democracy and Liberty' had in some respects 320 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY been written under peculiar difficulties, treating as it does of a vast number of questions and of the laws and institutions of a great many countries. He found that his authorities on foreign countries were not al- ways trustworthy, and he had sometimes to make investigations on the spot. The book excited a great deal of interest, and it was on the whole well received. Men in various parts of the world, whose judgment he valued, wrote to express their concurrence with his views. They knew that these views were not the theories of a scholar who lived a secluded life in his library, but that they represented the experience of a man who had from early days closely followed poli- tics at home and abroad, and who had had much inter- course with some of the foremost statesmen of his time. He had studied the forces that govern the political changes in various countries, and his knowledge of the history of the past added strength to his arguments. He showed the evils and dangers of democracy, but also the counteracting influences. 'Exegisti monumentum/ wrote the Australian his- torian, Mr. Rusden, ' I cannot but believe that you have given the world a text-book on the great and vital questions you have handled.' Lecky's defence of University representation — written before he had any idea of standing for one of them — received grateful recognition from those who were interested in its future, for, as the head of an Oxford College wrote to him, they looked upon him as the representative not of one Uni- versity only but of the whole University system. Lord Dufferin, who was recognised on all hands, even by Mr. Gladstone, 1 to be the best authority on the Irish 1 Life of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, by Sir Alfred Lyall vol. i. p. 160. 'democracy and liberty' 321 land question, wrote after reading Lecky's pages on the subject: 'How grateful we ought all to be to you for showing up the infamy of our treatment, as well as predicting the consequences which will be sure to follow such injustice. I am happy to find how parallel to what you have written my paper runs.' The book met with a very favourable reception in America, as reviews and letters showed. 'If it betters our conditions in any degree,' wrote a corre- spondent from Columbia University, New York, 'you will certainly deserve the gratitude of every American, and in fact of every civilised man.' Mr. Bayard had read the book with deep interest, and said that 'Its high moral courage and independence, elevation of tone, judicial impartiality, scope of investigation, wide learning and philosophical statement ' commanded ' his admiration and respect' — and from 'the judicious' would, he felt sure, receive them. 'Emphatically you are right,' he wrote, 'in pointing out as the most malign and dangerous element in the United States — the growing Plutocracy.' As Lecky anticipated, there were many who did not agree with his views about the evils of democratic government. But he was always interested to hear what honest opponents had to say, and in spite of all differences they recognised in him a political thinker whose opinions were entitled to respect. The book appeared at an unfavourable moment, for the return of a large Conservative majority seemed to show that his apprehensions about the tendencies of democracy were unfounded, or at least exaggerated. His views, however, were not limited to any particular period — he took a broad survey of the political history of the country and of the general trend of affairs, and it very soon became apparent that amidst many shift- 22 322 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY ing elements the tendencies which he had described continued to dominate in English politics. 1 'It is difficult to get people here to believe' — he wrote to Mr. Lea from the House of Commons, May 19, 1896 — 'that there are dangers in Democracies when that of England has recently so emphatically con- demned log-rolling Socialism and class bribery and has established a homogeneous majority stronger than any since 1832. I still think, however, that in the long run a very wide suffrage will prove incom- patible with that complete authority in the State which (unlike your Congress) our House of Commons pos- sesses. The strength of our Government, however, just now is perfectly phenomenal, and the growing dissension between the English Nonconformist and the Irish Catholic Nationalist tends still further to disorganise the Opposition. Foreign troubles are what is chiefly to be feared, and in South Africa there is grave danger of a race division, which we all look on with great alarm. I am afraid in my present life I shall write no more books. A short paper on Gib- bon for an American publication has been, since my election, my sole work in that way. However, I do 1 See Introduction to Be- type of Government to which mocracy and Liberty, cabinet we have been accustomed — edition, p. xix. 'I think,' he that it tended either to a des- wrote to Mr. Booth in 1899, potism resting on a plebiscite 'people rather exaggerate the or, at least, to a considerable pessimism of my Democracy. I abridgment of the powers of a clearly recognised that in nu- democratic house. This is merous fields the world was ad- done in the U. S. A. by differ- vancing, though I do not believe ent provisions of the Con- the democratic theory would stitution. In England the in the long run be favour- manifest tendency is to the able to self-government and increasing monopoly of real especially to the Parliamentary power by the Cabinet.' SPEECH BEFORE EDUCATION LEAGUE 323 not mean to spend all the rest of my life here. The work is physically very tiring, and I often feel that a good deal of it might be done equally well, with a little training, by a fairly intelligent poodle-dog! Of course there are times when it is very interesting and sometimes very difficult, and a few years of such work teaches much.' The essay on Gibbon mentioned in the letter was for an American publication, the 'Warner Classics.' Lecky was also asked at this time for a biographical introduction to a new edition of Swift's works, and it was suggested to him that his essay on Swift in the 'Leaders of Public Opinion' might serve the purpose. With that object he recast and amplified it. He re- ceived a request to be President for the year of the Social and Political Education League, to which he agreed after some demur, on condition that — owing to a heavy press of work — he should not have to deliver an address. At the annual meeting, however, he made a short speech, which contained some philosophic reflections and truths that are very little heeded: 'Renan has said that an undue proportion of the English intellect is devoted to politics; but how little of our political discussion looks beyond the interests of a party or an election, beyond the duration of a Ministry or a parliament; how little of it is concerned with those remote and indirect consequences of meas- ures which are often far more really important than those which are immediate or direct. How seldom do we find the principles that underlie our legislation impartially and judicially examined.' . . . Most of his time was, however, occupied with Parlia- mentary questions, and he was asked to join the London Committee of Irish Landowners, where his services were much valued. He wrote a memorandum upon 324 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY several points in the new Land Bill, which he laid before Ministers to consider, and two letters to the Times on the same subject. He had a great belief in the purchase policy. He thought 'there could be no worse system than that under which rents are arbitrarily reduced on a scale out of all proportion to the fall of agricultural prices, while tenant right rises higher and higher under the pressure of extreme com- petition — under which vast masses of property ■ — bought in innumerable instances at the invitation of Government and held under clear parliamentary titles — are transferred without compensation from one class to another, under which the main object of popu- lar politics is to break contracts and annul debts.' To Judge O'Connor Morris he wrote on June 1, 1896: 'My dear Judge, — I was just going to write to you to say how delighted I was with your article in the Fortnightly — which I have this afternoon been urging all the members of the Landlords' Committee here to read carefully before the second reading of the Bill — when I found at the Athenaeum your new book. I have been looking in it with the keenest interest, and it is a real pleasure to me to know that there is a short history of Ireland which is not the work of a party man. May I thank you very much for the kind way in which in this and various other places you speak of me. I think the book of the son of Grouchy de- fended him successfully about the Bantry Bay affair. ... I am getting some very interesting reviews from America, where it seems the great goddess Democracy is a good deal less venerated than of old.' A few days after he wrote : June 4, 1896. — ' I have been reading a good deal of your History, including the part which I know the best, DEBATES ON THE LAND BILL 325 and I can most truly say that it seems to me a most masterly performance, both from the literary and the historical side. It interested me like a novel, and I am full of admiration for the amount you have put into such a small space and for the admirable sanity of judgment and judicial spirit (that comes of a County Court judge writing history !) you display in writing on subjects about which very few people are either sane or impartial. . . . This History of Ireland seems to me indeed decidedly the best thing of yours I have read.' Part of the session was taken up with an Education Bill, chiefly intended to give some moderate assistance to Voluntary schools and set up some new educational authorities. Lecky approved of its main provisions and meant to speak on it, but the speech was never delivered. Opposition and obstruction made it im- possible for the Bill to pass that session and — like most Education Bills — it was finally dropped. 'Never, I suppose, was there an assembly which wasted more time than this,' was his experience of his first session, 'but then it might do much worse things than waste time.' The Land Bill came up for debate late in the session, and Lecky attended night after night — two all-night sittings — during the hot summer weather, endeavour- ing with the small band of Irish Unionists to amend the clauses which further curtailed the rights of the landowners. Many of the questions at issue were legal and technical, and he found the legal knowledge of his colleague very valuable. 'Carson,' he wrote to Judge O'Connor Morris, 'is a great help to us all. He is so quick and subtle in catching points.' That great and genial fighter, the late Colonel Saunderson, at that time leader of the Irish Unionists, enlivened the debates with his incisive speeches and witty retorts. 326 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY It was a trying time for Irish Unionists who wished loyally to support the Government. Privileges which had been given by the landlords to the tenants were by this Bill given to the tenants as rights. The clause on the turbary rights was one of those which were most contested. Lecky vigorously opposed it in two de- bates. The landlords had hitherto allowed the tenants to cut turf on their property subject to supervision, but by this clause the favour they had granted was transformed to the tenants as a right. Swift had already shown how injurious was the cutting of turf without any regularity, and anyone who knew about Irish land was aware of this fact. The landlord was deprived of his right not, as Lecky said, because he had abused it. 'It was because of his own free will and generosity ' he had chosen to grant these privileges to the tenants, that they were to be taken away from him for all future time and he was to lose all power of supervision and control. It was difficult to conceive a more direct and absolute violation of the rights of property than this.' 1 There was one curious little episode in which Union- ists and Nationalists were agreed. It was provided by the Land Purchase Act of 1891 that the landlords should be paid in Land Stock, although they had asked to be paid in cash, as stock was very low at that time. Now that Land Stock was considerably above par the Government insisted on cash payment. 'The extreme shabbiness of this proceeding/ said Lecky, 'was strongly felt, and the interests of both landlords and tenants were favourable to the existing system.. Both sides of Irish politicians accordingly combined 1 The clause was amended in the House of Lords and made harmless. IRISH LAND BILL CARRIED 327 to oppose the Government scheme. The Irish attend- ance was very full. Many of the English Conserva- tives were absent attending a royal marriage, and the Government was defeated by a majority of sixteen' (July 22). The Irish Unionists' amendments were outvoted by large majorities. English Conservatives neither knew nor cared much, and supported the Government; among the exceptions were the two sons of the Prime Minister, who steadily supported the Irish Unionists' vote. The Bill, however, was considerably improved in the House of Lords, where the Irish landlords were supported by a large body of independent peers. CHAPTER XIII 1896-1898. Mr. Andrew White's 'Warfare of Science with Theology' — Travels in Austria and Hungary — T.C.D. Historical and Philosophical Societies — 'Cambridge Modern History' — The 'Map of Life' — Introduction to 'Life of Lord Strat- ford' — The Irish University Question — Report of Commis- sion on Financial Relations — Over-taxation of Ireland — Combined Protest of Unionists and Nationalists — Sir Horace Plunkett — English Agricultural Rating Act — Ireland's Grievance — Lord Dufferin's Views — Sunday Closing Act — Diamond Jubilee — Privy Councillorship — Society in Trinity College — Private Papers of Wilberforce — Ecclef echan — Burke Centenary — Speech on Burke. During a stay at Ems in the summer Lecky wrote his views on some political tendencies in England for the North American Review, and he reviewed Mr. Andrew White's ' History of the Warfare of Science with Theol- ogy in Christendom.' Mr. White had sent him his book, which Lecky considered one of the most compre- hensive and most valuable historical works that had appeared for many years. The subject specially appealed to him as he had dealt with various aspects of it in his own books, and he had the advantage of knowing the distinguished author, with whom he had much pleasant intercourse both in Paris and in London. 'I have been reading here/ he wrote in a letter to Mr. Bayard, 'very care- fully and with great admiration for your countryman, 328 SPEECH AT THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 329 Mr. Andrew White's " History of the Warfare of Science with Theology." It is a long time since I have read a book which seemed to me so valuable and interesting. I wish it were more known in England. I am sending a short notice to the Times (I do not yet know whether they will find room for it 1 ) in hopes of helping it a little.' In the course of the summer he went with his wife to Munich, Zell-am-See, Vienna, and Budapest. The Hungarians were celebrating the thousand-years jubilee of their national existence, and they had an interesting historical and industrial ex- hibition, where, among other anthropological remains, might be seen the gigantic skeleton of their great founder and hero Arpad. Lecky admired the situ- ation of Budapest and found Hungary a very attrac- tive country. With a strong national bias the Hungarians — at least those of the upper classes — com- bine all the charm of a cosmopolitan education, and intercourse with them was easy and pleasant. The friends Mr. and Mrs. Lecky had made at Campiglio were extremely kind and hospitable to them and they saw the place under the best auspices. In November Lecky had to be again in Ireland, having promised to speak at the inaugural meetings of both the Historical and Philosophical Societies. At the Historical Society the auditor, Mr. Upington, read a paper on South Africa, and Lecky made a speech to which reference has already been made. 2 South African affairs took up a large place that year in the politics of the country, and were eagerly watched. The memory of the Raid, of its causes and consequences, is too fresh in . everyone's mind to need rehearsal. 1 It appeared in the Times of December 8, 1896. 2 See ante, p. 200. 330 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY Lecky, in commenting on the situation, said that the first object of true statesmanship must be to restore the confidence which had been so seriously shaken, and for a long period great tact, patience, firmness, and self-control would be needed in the guidance of South African affairs. Few greater calamities could befall the nation than an armed conflict in the Trans- vaal. In the course of the year he received a pressing request from Lord Acton to write for the 'Cambridge Modern History/ which the syndics of the University Press proposed to edit. Lord Acton wrote, with the courtesy that distinguished him, that so much of his success depended on Mr. Lecky's co-operation that he would be glad to assign to him any part he preferred. He suggested a chapter or two of English history from the middle of the eighteenth century, and especially a history of the French Revolution, as Lecky's treat- ment of the subject in his History of England had shown that no one could do it better. Lecky was not very enthusiastic about the 'com- posite enterprise,' and he did not wish to undertake a long book, such as was proposed, which would require a great deal of fresh research, and for which his parlia- mentary duties left him no time. He had set himself another literary task, but he agreed to write about Canning 'from the death of Londonderry to his own.' The chapter was to be in Volume IX. and would not be required for some years. It was, however, not written. The relations between England and America that year required much judicious statesmanship, owing to the attitude of President Cleveland about the Venezue- lan boundary dispute; and fortunately by the end of the year the matter was in a fair way of being settled. WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY From a Photograph by Bassano, 1897 BEGINS THE 'MAP OF LIFE' 331 In consequence of the election of a new President, Mr. Bayard's departure was now approaching, and Lecky wrote to him on December 23, 1896: ' Thank you so much for thinking of us and for your kind present [the portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Bayard]. I always think these closing days of the year not a cheerful but rather a painful time, when one thinks of partings past and to come. I hope, however, that whatever politics may do, you will not bid a final fare- well to us, but will follow the good example of Lowell, who paid us visits to the end. I am glad the year is ending with the clouds between our nations dispersed, and how much you have done to knit them together! I am sure the warm personal friendships that you and Mrs. Bayard have known so well how to make, do more perhaps than any other »thing to awake the feel- ing of kindred between English and Americans. When you leave us, you will both leave memories behind you that will not speedily be effaced.' In December, Lecky began his book on the conduct of life, in which he intended to embody some of the conclusions he had formed on that subject. For many years past he had written down in his common- place books thoughts and observations bearing upon it, and it had always been his wish to co-ordinate them some day into a whole, embracing conduct and character. As it was a book which required no re- search, he was able to combine the writing of it with his parliamentary work. When Parliament was sitting he had, however, a large number of letters to answer. Added to his usual correspondence were now the many letters from and to constituents applying for places through their members; letters to Ministers on their behalf; those concerning the interests of Trinity College or of the 332 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY various professions or educational endowments; in fact a variety of questions seemed to arise every day. He never kept a secretary; he answered everything himself, and business letters usually the same day, for he disliked arrears. He took much pains always to do what his corre- spondents asked him, and many were the grateful acknowledgments which he received. He daily took a bundle of letters to the House of Commons to answer, endeavouring to keep the mornings as much as possible for literary work. Never was there a man more regu- lar in his habits. Early in the following year he contributed, at the request of Miss Canning, a short introduction to an abridged life of her father, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, which Miss A. L. Lee had written. His personal recollections gave a vivid touch to the subject. 'Sel- dom indeed,' he wrote, 'has there been a man more clearly marked by nature as a king of men. Men might like him or dislike him, but it was scarcely pos- sible to come into his presence without feeling his magnetic power, without recognising the commanding force of his intellect and character.' The session of 1897 was largely occupied with Irish affairs. It was erroneously believed at that time that the Irish University question was approaching its solution, and that a Conservative Government were going to settle it. As these pages have shown, Lecky had for years past watched the various attempts made to meet the demands of the Catholics, and he had given up the hope that the liberal policy of Trinity College would finally overcome their opposition. In Decem- ber 1895, after his election, there had been some cor- respondence on the subject in the Times between him and Dr. O'Dwyer, the Roman Catholic Bishop of IRISH UNIVERSITY QUESTION 333 Limerick. Lecky, in his speech at his nomination — taking a survey of the whole political situation — had said: 'It is also very probable that we shall soon find ourselves face to face with a new University ques- tion. It is idle to discuss its nature until the inten- tions of the Government are disclosed. On this subject it appears to me that two special duties devolve upon the members for this University; one is to guard sedu- lously its national and unsectarian character.' . . . Bishop O'Dwyer, in a letter to the Times, 1 said that he had been struck with these words 'in Mr. Lecky's remarkable speech at his nomination for Trinity Col- lege, Dublin.' He however took exception to the terms 'national and unsectarian/ and put forward the Catholic claims to separate University education. Lecky in his answer 2 defined the position of Trinity College, showing all it had done to place the Roman Catholics on an equal footing with the Protestants, and he upheld its national and unsectarian charac- ter, while he did not contend that nothing more should be done to meet their wishes. The question was further discussed in letters 3 which excited a good deal of interest at the time, and as a leading article of the Times said, 'had thrown much light upon the subject.' At the outset of the session of 1897 the members for Trinity College found themselves confronted with the Catholic claims, which were brought forward in an amendment on the Address. Although this ques- tion has now been settled, it may be of some interest 1 December 13, 1895. of December 19 and 25, and 2 Times of December 15. another from Lecky in the 3 Two more letters from the Times of December 20. Bishop appeared in the Times 334 WILLIAM EDWAKD HARTPOLE LECKY to record the efforts of those who have brought a weighty influence to bear on the matter. On the second day of the debate, Lecky made a speech giv- ing his views and those of the University he repre- sented. He said he felt that the number of Catholics who received University education was inadequate, although the disproportion between the number of Protestant and Catholic students was partly explained by the fact that an enormous preponderance of the Roman Catholic population could not afford Univer- sity education, and also that divinity students formed a large proportion of the Protestant students, whilst Catholic divinity students were educated at May- nooth. 'Trinity College,' he said in the course of his speech, 'regretted that Catholic students did not come to it more freely, and that they did not think the University of Moore and Sheil, and of the immense majority of Catholic laymen who had played a great part in recent Irish history, good enough for them. But it recognised clearly that the time had come for some modifications in the University system in Ireland, and it only wished well to the Government in the action which they might take.' At the same time, he could not agree with Irish members as to the extent of the grievance. He pointed out how, as far back as 1793, long before the English Univer- sities had taken such a step, Trinity College threw open its degrees ' to the Catholics, and how at the present time ' every post, from the highest to the low- est — every honour and prize — was open to every denomination in Ireland.' The Divinity School stood apart from the rest of the College, and had no relation to anyone who was not reading for Anglican orders; and Roman Catholic divinity students were amply provided for at Maynooth, which had received a large SPEECH ON THE UNIVERSITY QUESTION 335 grant from the Irish Church Fund. It might be justly objected that there was no definite religious teaching for Roman Catholic students in Trinity College, but it was notorious that the College authorities were ready to make for them such provision as they had made for Presbyterian students — who were taught by their ministers at the expense of the College — if the Catholics would only accept it. Personally, he owned, he was somewhat half-hearted on the question. In his opinion, 'there could be no greater misfortune for Ireland than that members of the two religions in their early days should be entirely separated ; that young men at a time when their hearts were warm, when their enthusiasms were at their height, and when they were forming friendships which might mould their future lives, should be kept apart and should know nothing of each other. . . the teaching of a University did not come merely from its profes- sors. An immense proportion came also from the stimulus of the students, and he believed the more they narrowed the area from which that competition was derived, the more feeble that stimulus would become/ After going through the history of the various unsuccessful movements to legislate on the subject, he laid down some of the conditions essential to the success of any further legislation, the first one being that the Government should make certain that their offer would be accepted, and he finally repeated that if Trinity was left unmolested to do its own work, it 'would certainly not play the part of the dog in the manger or be hostile to anything that might be set up for the benefit of the Roman Catholics in Ireland.' Lecky's speech was received with much sympathy, and the First Lord of the Treasury, who had for many 336 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY years been favourable to the Roman Catholic demand, expressed his general agreement with it. He showed, however, that the time was not yet ripe for a settle- ment, and that it was essential, as Lecky had said, not to propose a scheme without being certain that it would be acceptable. The sympathetic attitude of Mr. Balfour was once more recognised, and the matter remained in abeyance for the time, the amendment being withdrawn, and the question dropped. Lecky received from both Catholics and Protestants expres- sions of gratification at the attitude he had taken up in regard to this question. His predecessor and old friend, Lord Rathmore, wrote that he thought the speech ' admirable in every way — both the think- ing and the language exactly what was to be de- sired for the good name of Trinity, as well as for your own. You have evidently made a great hit and many will, I am sure, wish you joy of your success.' . . . The moderate tone of the debate seemed to the Irish Roman Catholic archbishops and bishops a hopeful sign that the question was now within measurable distance of a settlement. In June they held a meeting at Maynooth and made an important pronouncement. They referred in an appreciative manner to the vari- ous members who had spoken in the debate on behalf of Catholic University education : 'We desire,' they said, 'to mark in particular the fair and liberal attitude taken up by Mr. Lecky. His own personal eminence, together with the special authority attaching to his statements as the represent- ative of Dublin University, lend importance to his speech, in which we very gladly observe a tone that does credit to himself and to the distinguished constit- uency which he represents. Naturally enough, view- FINANCIAL RELATIONS 337 ing the question from a different standpoint from ours, Mr. Lecky put forward on the minor aspects of the question some views from which we should dissent. But we note with very sincere pleasure the practical conclusions at which he arrived and the expression of his hope "that the Government would see their way to gratify the wish of the Irish Catholics." ' In their statement they endeavoured to meet 'the contingency which, as affecting the Government, Mr. Lecky and Mr. Balfour seemed to apprehend, of pro- posing a scheme without being tolerably sure that it will be accepted/ and they agreed to a prepon- derance of laymen on the governing body; to pub- lic funds being solely applied to secular teaching; to open up degrees, honours, and emoluments to all- comers; and to safeguard the position of the professors, a point upon which Lecky had specially insisted. The question came again before Parliament on July 9 of that year, when the First Lord of the Treasury, while recognising the importance of the statements made by the Roman Catholic hierarchy and endorsing the views he had previously expressed in favour of a Catholic University, did not give much hope that he would be able to introduce such a measure in the fol- lowing session, as it was a very contentious one and he was pledged to one important Bill for Ireland already. It was well known that Ministers were divided on the subject, and that an attempt to legislate on it would break up the Cabinet. Another question had now become prominent, that of the financial relations between England and Ireland. In 1894 a Royal Commission had been appointed to make a thorough investigation into this matter, both as regards the financial relations and the taxable 23 338 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY capacity 1 of the two countries. Their report was published in the autumn of 1896, and their conclu- sions briefly were that whereas the taxable capacity of Ireland was not more than one-twentieth of that of Great Britain, she bore no less than about one- eleventh part of the taxation, so that she was over- taxed to the extent of two and three quarter millions a year. Though Irishmen had long felt that there was a financial grievance, the Report forcibly brought it home to them. Irish Unionists and Nationalists were equally stirred by it. The grievance was a na- tional one, and to obtain redress became a common object. The Government, not satisfied with the con- clusions of the Report, desired to appoint another Commission, but this met with much opposition. A Committee of men holding the most various political opinions was formed in Ireland; public meetings were held all over the country and speeches were made calling for redress. As this was a non-political ques- tion, Unionist and Home Rule members met in con- ference in order to agree upon a common line of action in Parliament. Colonel Saunderson presided, and Lecky took part in the proceedings. Both were sub- sequently deputed, with Mr. Healy and Mr. Clancy, to frame resolutions for further consideration. The question came up for debate in the House of Commons, March 29, on a motion of Mr. Blake, and was discussed for three days. It was not till the last day that Lecky had the opportunity of giving his views on the subject. He clearly showed that Ireland was entitled to have 1 The relative taxable capac- the people of each country ity was mainly determined by according to the income-tax a comparison of the aggregate assessment and other tests. annual income possessed by FINANCIAL RELATIONS 339 separate treatment. There had been no substantial grievance before 1853, when Mr. Gladstone had im- posed the income-tax, from which she had been up to that time exempted. Mr. Gladstone argued that by repealing certain consolidated duties which had forty years to run, Ireland would gain, as the income-tax charge, though a heavier charge, would only last a few years. The result was that a capital debt of four millions was wiped out, but Ireland had since paid more than twenty-four millions of income-tax. Lecky had heard a great deal about that matter in early days, as General Dunne, who had strongly opposed Mr. Glad- stone's measure in Parliament, had been an intimate friend of his father. General Dunne had made the question his own, and had after a struggle of ten years succeeded in obtaining a Committee to inquire into the question of Irish taxation. It was then recog- nised, and at different times subsequently, that Ire- land was a separate fiscal entity. Lecky supported this view up to the hilt with facts and arguments : 'Some people seemed to consider Ireland a kind of intermittent and fluctuating personality — something like Mr. Hyde and Mr. Jekyll — an integral portion when it was a question of taxation and therefore en- titled to no exemptions — a separate entity when it was a question of rating and therefore entitled to no relief. . . . There was hardly any single subject of legisla- tion in which Ireland was not legislated for separately. They had separate legislation about Church establish- ments, about land, police, local government, education, and even in some respects about marriage. All that had gone on for ninety-seven years after the Union, and therefore it was preposterous to say that in askmg that Ireland should be legislated for separately in financial matters they were acting in a manner incon- sistent with the Union.' 340 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY The Government were now proposing to appoint a fresh Commission, which he understood should be sup- plementary to the former one. He suggested that there should be a judicial inquiry into the doctrine of what constituted Imperial taxation and into the way in which the money in each country was expended. As for the remedy, Lecky differed from the National- ist members; he did not think it could be found in abated taxation but in an equivalent grant from the Imperial exchequer. He showed once more very for- cibly how injuriously the land laws had affected Ire- land, and expressed the hope that the Government would succeed in converting Ireland into a country of peasant proprietors, because he believed that 'though it would not bring about a millennium in Ire- land, it was the only way in which they could extri- cate the country from the confusion into which repeated confiscations and breaches of contract had brought it; but ... if they did not wish the peasant proprietary to be the most ghastly of failures they must produce in Ireland a higher level of agricultural industry and agricultural skill than at present existed. This could only be done by extending to Ireland some system of agricultural education like that which prevailed in Denmark and other countries of Europe. This, he believed, was the direction which sooner or later their policy would inevitably take, and it was by such measures that any inequality that now existed in their taxation could, he thought, be best remedied.' This policy has been carried out through the ini- tiative of one for whom Lecky entertained a warm friendship and whom he called 'the only constructive statesman in Ireland/ Sir Horace Plunkett. As far back as 1889, Sir Horace Plunkett had started the co-operative movement in Ireland; out of it grew the AGKICULTURAL RATING ACT 341 Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, which was inaugurated in 1894. The following year, in order further to develop the movement, he formed the Recess Committee, composed of men of all parties. Lecky was asked to join it, but though he was in full sympathy with the object, other calls on his time prevented him taking an active part in the matter. Investigations were made by this Committee into the agricultural and industrial conditions of a great many European coun- tries, and the results were summed up in a valuable report which was forwarded to the Chief Secretary with the recommendation that a Government Department should be created under a Minister responsible to Par- liament. This led up to the creation of the State Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, in 1899, of which Sir Horace Plunkett was the head till the Liberals came into power. Lecky's speech on the financial relations made a great impression, as the letters which he received on the sub- ject showed. It was generally thought, wrote a legal friend from Ireland, 'the speech of the debate.' He had occasion to refer again to the subject on the motion brought forward, on May 6, by Mr. Knox, an Ulster member, to extend the English Agricultural Rating Act to Ireland. Lecky objected to the Govern- ment having excluded Ireland from the operation of the Act, 'the portion of the Empire which was the poorest, which was the most purely agricultural and in which local rates were the most heavy, both abso- lutely and in proportion to the population/ and he made a forcible appeal to them to redress this injustice. But though Irish members were unanimous, the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer was obdurate and the motion was lost. Further efforts, however, were made. An urgent 342 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LEC&Y letter asking the Government to reconsider their posi- tion was addressed to Mr. Balfour by twelve prominent Unionist members, of whom Lecky was one. In the face of pressure brought to bear on all sides, the Gov- ernment could no longer ignore the claims of Ireland and they made a small concession. On May 21 the First Lord of the Treasury stated that while in the view of the Government Ireland possessed no claim to be treated in the rating question on lines similar to those adopted in England, they proposed to deal with the matter in an Irish Local Government Bill to be introduced in the following session, the plan being that by a subvention from the Exchequer the landlords should be relieved of half the poor rates and the tenants of half the county cess. Lord Dufferin had now returned home after a bril- liant career in many parts of the world, and he was making his influential voice heard again in Irish poli- tics, to the great satisfaction of his friends and admirers. On receiving from him a copy of a speech about the land question, Lecky wrote: House of Commons: May 4, 1897. — ' Dear Lord Dufferin, — I had already cut your admirable speech out of an Irish paper, and I am delighted to have another copy, but I most earnestly hope that you will have it printed separately and largely distributed. I know nothing more able on the subject, and even if it had been far less admirably put, it would have a great influence as coming from you. There is some- thing I find almost maddening in the gross and pal- pable dishonesty, of Irish land legislation, and it is all the worse as it is now very difficult to argue against it, as all the premises of dishonesty have passed into the statute-book and been fully recognised by both par- ties. I do not know whether this omnipotent and languid Government — languid because omnipotent LORD dufferin's views 343 — will do anything of real use in the matter. The vestigia retrorsum are, I fear, impossible. Loans to landlords at low interest and a remodelling of tithe rent-charge might do some good. I suppose, how- ever, that owing to the general fall in the rate of interest the charges on the more solvent estates have during the last few years somewhat diminished. I hope you will be sometimes here in London to help us. ' I wrote what I could in my " Democracy and Lib- erty" with a view of bringing the injustice before the public, and (except on the question of compensation for disturbance) I think my views agree with yours. I much object to the references of the new Commission on the financial relations, which absolutely omit the questions of comparative wealth and comparative progress from among the elements of consideration. I venture to send you what I said about it, restoring some passages which the reporters omitted.' Lord Dufferin answered: Clandeboye: May 8, 1897. — ' My dear Lecky, — I have read your speech two or three times over with the greatest admiration. It is so clear, so sober, and so fair. I have not taken any part in the financial relations controversy and do not propose to do so, for now that the fresh Commission may be considered a fait accompli 1 there is no alternative but to wait, at all events before we can expect any great relief to be granted us. But the conduct of the Government in regard to the non-extension of the Rating Bill to Ire- land is monstrous, and I have no patience with all their talk about Ireland not being a separate "entity," as if it had ever been anything else, as you most forcibly demonstrate. I am so glad, too, that you did not lose the opportunity of scourging the infamous land legis- lation of 1881 and the following years. In short, from first to last, I thought your speech most admi- 1 It was never appointed. 344 WILLIAM EDWAKD HAETPOLE LECKY rable, and we ought all to be very grateful to you for it.' Lecky had undertaken to move during the session the second reading of the Irish Sunday Closing Bill, the object of which was to make the Sunday Closing Act of 1878 permanent, to extend it to the five towns that were exempted from its operations, and to pro- hibit throughout the country the sale of intoxicating liquor after nine o'clock on Saturday night. Lecky, in his speech, gave a history of the movement, and showed how efficaciously the Sunday closing had operated and how large a consensus of public opinion was in favour of this Bill. An Irish member tried to checkmate him by quoting some passages from the 'Democracy and Liberty,' but it was not difficult to show that there was no disparity between the views expressed on this occasion and those in his book. He thought 'there should be as little legislative interfer- ence as possible with private habits, and that they ought never in these questions to precede public opin- ion but only to follow it and even lag a little behind it. He believed measures of this kind ought only to be carried when called for by a large and persistent majority, and even then should be as far as possible tentative and gradual. It was because the Bill before the House seemed to him fully to meet these require- ments that he had undertaken to bring it forward/ There was a good deal of cross-voting, Mr. Balfour and Mr. Morley voting for it; but many Nationalists opposed it, and the second reading was only carried by a majority of twenty-nine. The inadequate support with which it met in the House gave it no chance of passing that year. It was the year of the Diamond Jubilee, which was celebrated by all the Queen's subjects with feelings of DIAMOND JUBILEE 345 warm devotion and gratitude. In the course of it, Lecky had to attend a number of Jubilee and other public functions, beginning with a State banquet in St. Patrick's Hall, Dublin, on March 13. Lord Cado- gan, who wished to make the dinner worthy of the occa- sion, had gathered together as far as possible all that was most distinguished and representative in Ireland. It was a unique assembly, and the banquet worthily inaugurated the Jubilee festivities. The Queen's pro- cession to St. Paul's on Jubilee Day was from its very nature peculiarly impressive. The manifestations of loyalty of the millions along the Queen's passage were a most moving sight, and the presence of Colonial premiers, Indian princes, and enormous numbers of troops — Indian, Colonial, British — such as had never been seen before, represented in an imposing manner the united strength of a great Empire. The following day the House of Commons availed itself of an ancient privilege, to present in person a loyal address to the Queen, but by some mistake the cere- mony was so curtailed that many of the members who followed the Speaker were unable to get into the Royal presence. This caused some dissatisfaction among a body of men who, of all others, are the most tenacious about their rights. The Queen, having heard of this, gave her faithful Commons a special garden-party at Windsor, which was one of the most successful func- tions of the year. She drove about among her guests, speaking to some of them and showing a genial interest in the proceedings. 'The whole Jubilee has gone off admirably,' Lecky wrote to Judge Go wan, ' and I am glad that the Col- onies and India have filled, after the Queen, the first place in the picture. At the last Jubilee this place was more taken by foreign princes. I think the Naval 346 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY Review has had a great and most pacific effect. The idea had grown up that England had no strength at all proportionate to her bigness, and this has now a good deal disappeared. We have had on the whole a quiet session, and I think the Government has a good deal strengthened. Irish landlords, however, are being much reduced, and in consequence a good deal discontented. We have a very big Bill before us next session.' Among the honours bestowed, a Privy Gouncillorship was conferred on Lecky, on account of 'your very great literary eminence as well as the position you have acquired in Parliament/ wrote Lord Salisbury. The nomination was received by the public with general approval. Innumerable were the warm letters of con- gratulation which he received from all sides — politi- cal opponents as well as friends, and the way the honour was conferred and the genuine satisfaction which it seemed to cause, could but be gratifying to him. 1 ' Thank you for your kind congratulations/ he wrote to Mr. Booth ; ' I cannot say I care much for the feathers of life, but this is at least a quiet, gentlemanly thing, and honours that come unasked for and unexpected give some little pleasure/ Apart from the Jubilee functions, he had to attend various public dinners and make post-prandial speeches in the course of the season, and he was asked to preside over the annual dinner of the Booksellers' Provident 1 A statesman — now dead Constitutional sentiment and — wrote, in congratulating principle which has, I think, him, 'Apart and distinct from been ever written. I have your other valuable works, often wished to tell you how your last book on Liberty and incomparable a friend and Democracy is the one best companion I have made it.' storehouse of wise and noble ECCLEFECHAN 347 Institution, which took place in May. One of the inter- esting features of the dinner was that Lord Roberts, who had recently published his 'Forty-One Years in India,' was asked to reply to the toast of Literature. It did not often happen, as Lecky said in the course of his speech, that a Field-Marshal was selected as the most appropriate person to speak for Literature. During the summer holidays Lecky went for a few weeks' bracing to Scotland, enjoying some beautiful coach-driving and sails through lovely scenery and very excellent air, and he afterwards spent some weeks in Holland, and in the undisturbed quiet of a rural life he wrote a good deal of the ' Map of Life.' In October he was again in Ireland, full of engage- ments of all sorts. He maintained that in no other country did he find more agreeable and amusing society. He spent some pleasant evenings with the Fellows of Trinity College, 'anecdotes flying about like a perfect meteoric shower/ as he said on one occasion, and he did at the same time a good deal of serious reading, and wrote a short review of the private papers of Wil- liam Wilberforce for Literature. 1 On the way home from the North of Ireland he and his wife stopped at Carlisle and made a pilgrimage to Carlyle's birthplace, Ecclefechan. The house where he was born had been turned into a little museum, where some early auto- graph letters of his were exhibited. They went to Carlyle's grave, characteristic in its simplicity, with only the names and dates of birth and death of himself and his brother on the same slab. A number of Carlyle's relations were buried on either side, con- spicuous among them his father, 'James Carlyle, 1 Now the Literary Supplement of the Times. The review appeared in the number of October 23. 348 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY mason.' It seemed strange to realise that out of such surroundings came one of the men who most influenced English thought in the nineteenth century. But ' genius/ as Lecky says, ' is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth. n The year 1897 was the centenary of the death of Burke. Lecky's study of Burke was fresh in the mem- ory of those who had read his ' History of the Eigh- teenth Century/ and when Dublin University resolved to commemorate the centenary of one of its greatest alumni, the Provost asked Lecky to propose the memory of Burke on the occasion, and he could not refuse. On December 7, a State banquet was given in the dining-hall of Trinity College, at which the Provost, Dr. Salmon, presided and the Lord Lieuten- ant was present. Burke's fine portrait had been trans- ferred from the examination hall and placed, wreathed in palms, before the guests. There was a magnifi- cent display of flowers and old College silver on the table 'and the doctors in their red gowns gave much colour to the scene.' But the chief interest was the speaking, which was, as usual on such occasions- in Ireland, of a very high order. The Provost, Dr. Salmon, in his original and skilful way, paid an appreciative tribute to the Lord Lieuten- ant and to the office which he held ; and Lord Cadogan in his reply showed how much he had identified him- self with everything that concerned the real welfare of Ireland. Lecky spoke to the memory of Burke in the following words: 'I esteem it a great honour to be asked to speak on the memory of Burke in his own University, but it is an honour which carries with it no small embarrass- Historical and Political Essays, p. 12. SPEECH ON BURKE 349 ment. Burke is a man of such encyclopaedic intellect; his splendid genius touches so many and such various fields that it would be impossible to deal with it ade- quately except at a length which would be wholly unsuited to an after-dinner speech, and I have myself the difficulty of having already expressed my thoughts on the subject in a long and elaborate analysis of his merits and defects. ' I have indeed long believed that Mackintosh in no degree exaggerated when he described him as the greatest of all modern political philosophers. I believe that you will learn more from him than from any other — more than from Machiavelli or Montes- quieu — more than from Story or Tocqueville or Maine. For my own part, I doubt whether there is any other writer in all English literature to whom I am so deeply indebted. I was looking only the other day at a very humble little copy of the " Reflections on the French Revolution," marked and annotated at almost every page, which for many years had been my favourite pocket companion in long, solitary mountain walks in Ireland and Switzerland, and I was somewhat startled to find that the year when I acquired it was as far back as 1855 — the very year in which I entered Trinity College. 'And yet it must be acknowledged that Burke is not one of those great men of calm and lucid judgment who stand out in history like some Greek temple, faultless in its symmetry and its proportion. He was a man of strongly contrasted lights and shades, of transcendent gifts united with very manifest defects. His intellect was in the highest degree both penetrat- ing and comprehensive. He saw further and he saw deeper than any of his contemporaries, and none of them could illuminate a subject with such a splendour of eloquence and such a wealth of knowledge and thought. But his judgment was often obscured by violent gusts of passion, by the force of an overmaster- 350 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY ing and almost ungovernable imagination — which sometimes seemed not merely to adorn but to trans- figure what it touched — by violent personal likings and dislikings. He was very deficient in that inesti- mable gift of tact which more than any other leads to success in life. Goldsmith accused him of giving up to party what was meant for mankind, but in judging this accusation there are two things to be remembered. One is that no other writer has shown more powerfully than Burke the absolute necessity of strong party discipline under a parliamentary government if the parliamentary machine is to work for the good of the nation, and that in the early part of his career one of the great evils to be encountered was party anarchy and disintegration. The other is that no man ever made a greater sacrifice of party than Burke did when, on the occasion of the French Revolution, his party in his opinion was acting in opposition to the real interests of his country. Still, in more than one page of his life we have to deplore the violence with which he flung himself into party quarrels and the extreme intemperance of his language. His judgment of the French Revolution was, I believe, far more profound and far-seeing than that of his contemporaries, but it cannot reasonably be denied that he greatly under- rated the faults and exaggerated the merits of the Gov- ernment that preceded it. His crusade for the redress of the wrongs of India is a striking example of a poli- tician devoting long years of thankless toil to the ser- vice of those whom he had never seen and who could never reward him, and it appreciably raised in Eng- land the sense of our duties to other races; but modern research has abundantly shown that Burke was often misled and did grave injustice to Warren Hastings and to the other founders of our Indian Empire. He attained to almost the highest perfection the beauty of style, and his works are full of pages of an eloquence beside which the finest passages of his political con- BURKE AND DEMOCRACY 351 temporaries seem feeble and commonplace rhetoric, but they are also often disfigured by exaggerated invective and gross faults of taste. ' Nor can Burke be said to be in real harmony with our modern type of government. His conception of politics was indeed widely different from that which now generally prevails. He was as far as possible from a democratic statesman. He believed that pure democracy would always in the long run prove subversive of property, subversive of true freedom, subversive of all stability in the State. He believed much more than is now the fashion in the difficulties and dangers of government, and while strenuously maintaining that the welfare of the whole community is the true end of politics, he believed that this could only be attained by a strong representation of intelli- gence, property, and classes, by preserving a balance of power in the State, by carefully maintaining its con- servative elements. He believed there was no greater folly or crime than to bestow political power on those who were certain to misuse it. He utterly repudiated the notion that the same degrees of liberty, the same franchises, the same institutions were good for all nations and stages of civilisation, and that political institutions rest on natural rights and not on expedi- ency. He was prepared to tolerate any amount of political anomalies or inequalities if only they worked well. His idea of political reform was not that of wide, comprehensive, symmetrical, and as the French say "logical" measures, but rather of constant adapta- tions, gradual, tentative, and cautious, arising out of the special circumstances of the nation, correcting positive evils, meeting new wants as they rose and care- fully following public opinion. He believed that an appetite for organic change is one of the worst evils that can befall the State. He carried to the highest point the reverence for old institutions, habits, and traditions, for what he called the 'great influencing 352 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY prejudices of mankind/ and he believed that anything which tended to cut off the nation from its past and make it discontented with its institutions was almost the sure precursor to its decline. While maintaining that a member of Parliament should always consider himself as a trustee, he maintained also that he should never suffer himself to sink into a mere delegate, abdi- cating his independence of judgment and accepting binding instructions from his constituents. ' All this is very alien from the political sentiments of our day, but anyone who will be at pains to exam- ine the subject will convince himself that these views governed the politics of Burke at every period of his life. It is no doubt true that when the great explo- sion of democracy took place at the French Revolu- tion he wrote more on the evils of democracy than in former years, but there is, I believe, no real ground for the notion of Mr. Buckle that his life was divided into two sharply contrasted periods, and the views I have enumerated may all be found in his earliest works. They were, however, coupled with a constant desire for administrative reform. No statesman maintained more strongly that the welfare of the whole people is the true end of politics, and that the true task of. the statesman is to follow and not to precede public opin- ion. Adam Smith declared that he was the only man he knew who had anticipated his views of political economy, and on all such questions he was far in advance of his age. He was one of the first and greatest of our economical reformers. He was a strenuous advocate of a free press, at a time when it was far less recognised than at present, and although he was utterly opposed to any organic change in the constitu- tion of Parliament he was a warm supporter of a crowd of measures for purifying its abuses. He advocated Grenville's Bill for the better trial of contested elec- tions, the abolition of corrupt sinecures, the publica- tion of the names of voters in Parliament, the right burke's political opinions 353 of parliamentary reporting. He placed the authority of the House of Commons very high, but when at the time of the Middlesex election the House endeavoured to create a new disability by maintaining that a mem- ber who had been expelled by the House could not be re-elected, Burke was one of the foremost defenders of the rights of the electors. On all these subjects he was an advanced Liberal. In the American crisis he advo- cated a policy of concession which, if it had been carried out, would almost certainly have averted, or at least deferred, the Revolution. He was the most powerful opponent of the commercial restrictions which during the eighteenth century crushed Irish industry, and he lost his seat for Bristol through his advocacy of Irish free trade. The abolition of the penal laws against Roman Catholics, the better educa- tion of the Catholic population and their introduction into all the privileges of the Constitution, were among the objects he most steadily pursued. He wrote on the subject as far back as 1765, and it was one of the very last that occupied his thoughts. Three things he always dreaded in Ireland — as the greatest calam- ities that could befall her — the permanent separa- tion of Protestants and Catholics into two distinct nations; a class warfare detaching the mass of the Irish people from the influence of property and edu- cation; and a spirit of disloyalty leading to separation from Great Britain. In almost the last letter he ever wrote he said " Great Britain would be ruined by the separation of Ireland, but as there are degrees even in ruin it would fall the most heavily on Ireland. By such a separation Ireland would become the most com- pletely undone country in the world; the most wretched, the most distracted, and in the end the most desolate part of the habitable globe." 'It is not, however, by his active political career that Burke now lives. If this had been his only title to fame more than one of his contemporaries would 24 354 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY have surpassed him. He was never a Cabinet Minister or the Leader of the Opposition. He did not play the same commanding part in Imperial affairs as Chatham or as Chatham's illustrious son, nor could he count upon the same weight of party or popular support as Charles Fox. It is in the profound wisdom and the transcendent beauty of his writings on all political subjects that he stands alone. In this he has no rival, and no approach to a rival among his contempo- raries. If I might venture to give an advice to those who are now at the age when opinions are forming, and when life, for good or ill, is taking its character and its course, I could give them no better advice than to make a serious and thorough study of the writ- ings of Burke. Do not confine yourselves solely to those which are best known — to the " Reflections on the French Revolution," the "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs," the " Letters on a Jacobin Peace" or to the great rhetorical passages in his " Speeches" which are so often quoted. Study his minor pamphlets — his letters on Irish affairs, his own notes for his speeches, and the admirable pages he has written on the true province and limitations of government. Study thoroughly those four most admirable volumes of his correspondence which were published by Lord Fitzwilliam, and which in my opinion contain some of the best lessons of political wisdom in the language. No other political writer has so constantly associated transient or ephemeral controversies with eternal truths, or has brought to the study of politics such a profound insight into human nature or such a wide range of acquired knowledge. No other writer saw so clearly the obscure, distant, indirect consequences of measures, or penetrated so habitually to the bed- rock of principle on which political systems rest. Burke is sometimes wrong, but he is never superficial. In weighing the various arguments of a case his judg- ment is sometimes at fault, but the elements of the BURKE AT TRINITY COLLEGE 355 problem are almost always there. He is pre-eminent among the small class of writers who teach men to think and enlarge our knowledge not merely of politics but of human nature. ' Nor is he less valuable from the purely literary point of view. In one of his letters from this University he complains that in the study of the ancient writers too much attention was paid to the mere language and not enough to the meaning it conveyed. Burke was one of the greatest masters of words, but he was essen- tially great because with him language was never for a moment divorced from meaning. Hardly any other writer since Shakespeare had such a complete mastery of the English tongue, its richness, its vivid- ness, and its force. If you desire to write well, few things will help you more than a careful study of his works. 'It is surely right that in Trinity College we should commemorate this great man, for he was pre-eminently one of our own. Swift lived here for a longer time, but his college career was neither brilliant nor happy, and it was not till long after he had left us that his splendid genius began to flower. Goldsmith entered college the same year as Burke, but he was one of the idlest of students, and I am afraid the " Deserted Vil- lage" and the " Vicar of Wakefield" might have been equally written if he had never been sent here. But Burke certainly owed much to us. In that charming picture of Irish eighteenth-century life, the Leadbeater Papers, you will find many letters to the son of his old schoolmaster Shackleton, written from this place, describing his life here. We claim him as the founder of our Historical Society, and it was certainly here that he first practised the art of debating, of which he became so great a master. He obtained a scholar- ship, and in addition to the regular studies of the Uni- versity he laid here the foundation of his vast and multifarious reading. In one of his letters he men- 356 WILLIAM EDWAED HARTPOLE LECKY tions that in the middle of his college course he was accustomed to spend nearly every day three hours in reading in our great library. ' He was not only a very great man but emphatically a good one. Pure, simple, modest, laborious, and retiring in his private life, a warm and steady friend, his life was full of acts of unostentatious beneficence, and the depth of his affections and the strength of his moral principles appear in every portion of his life. His life was far from a happy one. He knew the bitterness of neglect, poverty, debt, the disappointment of many expectations, the long struggle of an almost hopeless opposition; and the clouds of a great private bereavement and of public calamity hung darkly around his closing hours. His public career was swept by many storms, and was disfigured by some errors, but the more it is studied the more evident it appears that it was governed in every period by a sincere and disinterested patriotism. No sordid motives, no desire for mere popularity ever drew him aside. The chief causes of his errors were of another and a nobler kind — exaggerated party loyalty, an excessive sensi- bility; a compassion for the suffering of others and a burning hatred of oppression and wrong that some- times became so overmastering that they carried him beyond all the bounds of reason and moderation. It was those who knew him best who admired him most. Of the many tributes that were paid to his memory none appear to me more touching than the few simple lines which Canning wrote to a friend on hearing of his death. "Burke is dead. ... He had among all his great qualities that for which the world did not give him sufficient credit, of creating in those about him very strong attachments and affections as well as the unbounded admiration which I every day am more and more convinced was his due. . . . He is the man that will mark this age, marked as it is itself by events, to all time."' MANSION HOUSE SPEECH 357 Professor Dowden followed with an eloquent tribute to Burke. Both speeches, said the Dublin Daily Express, would probably take a permanent place in the literature that clusters round the great career of Burke. Dr. Mahaffy proposed the Historical Society, which had been founded by Burke and had initiated the celebration, and he recalled the time when he had 'the intellectual treat of hearing the debates carried on night after night by the most brilliant group of men that he supposed ever came together in the Society — David Plunket, Edward Gibson, William Lecky, Gerald Fitzgibbon, and by no means least, Thomas Dudley, long since dead, a noble victim of his intense devotion to the poor and the sick under his charge.' The auditor, Mr. Irwin, gave some curious details about Burke's undergraduate days in connexion with the club — the parent of the Historical Society — which he had founded. The day after the Burke celebration Lecky had to speak on the financial relations at a large meeting at the Dublin Mansion House. Unionists and Home Rulers from various parts of Ireland had come to- gether to give their views on financial reform based on the findings of the Commission. Lecky summed up the opinions of the greatest financial experts about the disproportion between the taxation and the taxable capacity of Ireland, and he maintained that Unionists especially should resist the assertion that Ireland had no right to separate treatment. About the remedies he spoke with his usual moderation. ' Let us try not to injure a good cause by exaggerated statements. . . . In my own judgment the real significance of this movement is that the report of the Commission estab- lishes a strong and equitable claim for the expenditure 358 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY of a larger amount of Imperial money in developing Irish resources/ and he showed that much had already been accomplished in that direction. He had looked forward to this speech with a good deal of alarm, feeling that he was, as often happened, between two stools, and that a Mansion House meeting would be naturally addicted to extremes, but he wanted to define his own position clearly, and he wrote afterwards that he had been 'most kindly listened to, though taking a more moderate view than others.' CHAPTER XIV 1898-1900. Irish University Question — Irish Local Government Bill — Centenary of the Rebellion — Introduction to Carlyle's 'French Revolution' — 'Mr. Gregory's Letterbox' — Eng- land and Germany — England and the United States — Holland — Cannes — Dublin — Alexandra College — In- troduction to the revised edition of 'Democracy and Liberty' — Portrait of Mr. Gladstone — Distress in the West of Ireland — Old Age Pensions Committee — Report — Article on Old Age Pensions in the Forum — Irish Liter- ary Theatre — Scotland — Holland — Completion of the 'Map of Life' — South African War — Moral Aspects of the War — Florence — Financial Relations — Defence of T.C.D. — Dean Milman — Queen Victoria's Visit to Ireland — Irish Debates — Holiday in Ireland — Unionist Dissatisfaction — General Election — Spiddal — University Election. The demand for a Catholic University had been kept to the front since the last meeting of Parliament, and was being supported on various platforms throughout Ireland. In January 1898 a large and representative meeting was held in the Dublin Mansion House, where, among others, a letter from Lecky was read which summed up his views and was largely quoted. When Parliament met on February 8 the question was again brought forward in an amendment on the Address. Colonel Saunderson, the Irish Unionist leader, speak- ing for Ulster strongly opposed it, and suggested that 359 360 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY the question might divide the Unionist party. Lecky deprecated this and declared that he did not wish to press for an Irish University Bill in a year crowded with Irish Local Government and other matters, or to embarrass the Government, which had done more than any other for a long time past to bring the ques- tion within the range of practical politics. He had, however, come to the conclusion that the Gatholic demand was a very real one, as all the memorials signed by the classes who could provide University education for their sons had shown. The bishops had condemned unsectarian education and the laity followed the orders of the priests. He had no wish for increased denominational education, but he was convinced that it was a duty to enable Roman Catholic students to compete in all respects with their Protes- tant countrymen on an equal footing. He laid great stress on the intention expressed by some of the Roman Catholic prelates to send candidates for the priesthood to a Catholic University, and he gave some curious his- torical facts about that aspect of the question. Hely Hutchinson, a Provost of Trinity College in the last century, wanted a Catholic as well as a Protestant divinity school in Trinity College, maintaining that it was of the very first political importance that the Catholic priesthood should not be educated apart from their fellow-countrymen; but this was not car- ried out, and in 1795 the Irish Parliament established Maynooth. But, said Lecky, 'if even at this later day prelates are prepared to give the priesthood a higher University education in common with laymen, great good would result, and I for my part earnestly hope the Government will see their way to do what they can to assist them.' The debate went on during two days, and showed as before that there was much opposi- IRISH UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 361 tion in various quarters. Mr. Balfour once more expressed his strong sympathy with the wishes of the Roman Catholics, but he made it clear that he could not 'solve the question' unless he had his party behind him, and the amendment was withdrawn. The question, however, continued to be discussed in the country. A letter from Mr. Balfour to one of his constituents, expressing his views on the subject, attracted much attention. These views in some respects differed from Lecky's, for Mr. Balfour em- phasised the Protestant character of Trinity College, and he also thought that it would not be to its ad- vantage if, through a great influx of Roman Catholic students, it were to lose that character. Lecky al- ways upheld the wholly unsectarian character of his University, and he believed that the number of Catho- lic students, though it should certainly be larger than it was, would from the nature of the case always be much more limited than that of the Protestants. Dr. Salmon, the Provost of Trinity College, felt impelled by Mr. Balfour's letter to express his views, and he contributed to the controversy a remarkable article which appeared in the Contemporary Review of April 1899. With all the experience and knowledge at his command, he maintained the absolutely unsec- tarian character of Dublin University, including its 'atmosphere,' and he declined on behalf of Trinity to become one of three sectarian Universities, accord- ing to one of the proposed schemes. Whatever else was done Trinity would not give up its unsectarian character, nor did he think it would be wise to set up an unsectarian University for the benefit of Roman Catholics instead of frankly giving them what they asked for. ' It is long,' wrote Lecky to the Provost, ' since I have read a better specimen either of reasoning 362 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY or of literature,' and a few days after he wrote in answer to the Provost: Brighton: April 4, 1899, — ' I do not think you have the least reason to regret that you had to do your article hastily. It could hardly, I think, have been better done, and if you have in some degree under- stated your case, this, in my judgment at least, is one of the things which always adds real force to con- troversial writing. I always aim at this myself. . . . I do not think there is the least possibility of anything being done this session about the University ques- tion, and the Duke of Devonshire's speech has put it off for a long time. I myself think that if anything in the sectarian form should hereafter be done, it ought to be in an additional grant to the Stephen's Green establishment. I think, too, that the T.C.D. position would be a good deal strengthened if you had a Ro- man Catholic professor to teach his own people their theology, ecclesiastical history, and moral philosophy. Perhaps if the bishops despair of getting a University for themselves, the time may come in which they may withdraw their veto from T.C.D. and allow students to go there on the understanding that they can get this amount of distinctive teaching.' The principal measure of the session of 1898 was the Irish Local Government Bill. The Irish Secretary, Mr. Gerald Balfour, introduced it on February 21 with a speech which was on the whole well received by all parties. The chief provisions of the Bill were that it abolished the Grand Juries and transferred their powers partly to county councils and partly to county courts; and that, as the First Lord of the Treasury had promised the previous year, it gave relief out of the Exchequer to landlords and tenants for half the poor rate and county cess. In the course of the debates on the second reading, Lecky gave IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT BILL 363 his views on the general aspect of the Bill. He agreed that to establish local government on a democratic basis, corresponding in the main lines with local gov- ernment in England and Scotland, had become politi- cally necessary, though if the question was considered on its own merits apart from all pledges and political necessities, he would not have supported it. He be- lieved that Ireland was as little suited for democracy as almost any country in Europe, and he did not believe in the common doctrine that the same institutions were adapted to countries so profoundly different as England and Ireland. He regretted the abolition of the Grand Juries, which most good judges considered to have worked extremely well, but it was impossible to resist the change, and he duly recognised the safe- guards that had been placed on the new bodies, such as keeping the control of the police out of their hands and maintaining the rule of excluding from them min- isters of religion of all denominations. He wished, how- ever, that the safeguards were increased, and when the Bill was discussed in Committee he moved an amend- ment, giving expression to the wish of a great many public bodies and private persons in Ireland, that the Government should keep the control and management of the lunatic asylums in their own hands and not throw the care of this large, poor and unhappily increasing class of persons upon perfectly new and inexperienced bodies. By keeping the asylums under State control they would be following the example of nearly all the great democracies of the world. The Irish Poor Law guardians were a body most closely resembling the future county councils, and their medi- cal patronage had been marked by more abuses per- haps than any other class of patronage in Ireland. The amendment was lost, but the efficiency of the 364 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY medical officers was subsequently secured by an amendment strongly supported by Lecky — that only those should be selected who had served for no less than five years in an asylum for the treatment of the insane. Lecky closely followed the Bill through all its technical details, and spoke on various amendments tending to improve it. The circumstances for introducing the measure had, he wrote subsequently, been peculiarly favourable. Agitation had gone down: the organisations which chiefly stimulated it were both divided and discredited, and various influences — the question of financial rela- tions being one of the most prominent — had greatly improved the relations of classes : 'If the new councils prove a real success, they will form habits that will make future extensions of self- government much less dangerous than at present. If they become mere centres of corruption, intolerance, and disloyalty, they will furnish a new and powerful argument against Home Rule. In the meantime, the establishment of local government has given the opposition in England a welcome reason for adjourn- ing to a distant future the question of Home Rule. By removing in the eyes of the English public the last real grievance of Ireland, it has greatly strengthened the Unionist position, and it will be probably found to strengthen not less powerfully the case for a reduc- tion of the excessive representation of Ireland.' He felt, however, that there was a great deal of uncer- tainty about the success of the measure, and that much depended on the question whether the members of the old Grand Juries would be elected and exercise influ- ence on the new bodies. If they were excluded, he was afraid it might lead to the disappearance of an educated and loyal gentry, for there would be little FINANCIAL RELATIONS 365 inducement for them to remain in the country after the land legislation had deprived them of all control over their properties, and the new legislation had taken from them their county duties and interests. But he deprecated taking too pessimistic a view of the future. 'Great political changes are nearly al- ways found to produce both less good and less evil than was anticipated' and 'a measure like the Local Government Bill could not possibly be rightly judged until several years have passed and several elections have decided its permanent tendencies.' 1 Meanwhile the financial relations continued to agitate the minds of Unionists and Nationalists. Meetings were held in the House of Commons and pressure was brought to bear on the Government to give a day for discussion. On July 4 Mr. Redmond moved a resolu- tion in the House of Commons to call attention to the over-taxation of Ireland, at the request, as he stated, of a conference of Irish members, presided over by Colonel Saunderson, and which consisted of repre- sentatives from every political party in Ireland and was supported by petitions from 211 Irish representa- tive bodies. Lecky seconded the resolution, but in regard to the remedies he took, as usual, a different standpoint. Having argued that there was a sub- stantial grievance, he said that Irish Unionists did not wish for any alteration in the existing system of taxation or any reduction of the whisky tax; but that special financial assistance might, he thought, be given in various ways — for instance, by the Government taking over the lunatic asylums in Ireland and pro- viding for them out of the Consolidated Fund, or 1 ' The Irish Local Government Act/ Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette, March 3, 1899. 366 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY assisting the great need of technical and agricultural education. No Irish money was ever better spent than the 40,000Z. a year expended on the Congested Districts Board, and no Irish measure of recent years had done more real good than that of opening out the poorer districts by light railways. He spoke of the admirable work of his friend, Mr. Plunkett, which showed how much might be done by very moderate State assistance in developing Irish industries. 'If the Government put economical and industrial devel- opment in the forefront of their Irish policy, and reso- lutely refused to permit any great contentious measure to take precedence of it, they would be taking the course which would be most beneficial to the country.' The centenary of the Rebellion of 1798 was cele- brated that year in many parts of Ireland, and the demonstrations that took place in connection with it were in curious contrast with the better understanding among Irish politicians of different parties. 'It is to be hoped,' wrote Lecky, in August 1898, 1 ' that the spirit that is now appearing in contemporary Irish pohtics may be gradually extended to the judg- ments of the past. Remote Irish history has long been treated by many eminent scholars with an admi- rable research and impartiality. . . Is it too much to expect that a younger generation of Irish scholars will make a serious effort to take the more contentious periods of Irish history out of the hands of mere dema- gogues and partisans ? The commemorations of 1798 are, it is to be hoped, now nearly over. A large sec- tion of the Irish people have done their best to glorify a rebellion which was directed against Grattan's Parliament, which led to the abolition of that Parlia- 'A short article on 'Irish Tendencies,' written for the first number of a new issue of the Dublin Daily Express. ENGLAND AND GERMANY 367 ment, and which planted in Ireland hatred that has been the chief obstacle to all rational self-government. The politicians have had their say. Let us trust that another generation of Irishmen may now arise who will treat history in a different spirit; who will recog- nise that the first duty of an historian is to tell the simple truth, and to the best of his ability, and as in the sight of God, to graduate honestly the degrees of praise and blame. Such men will soon learn that the falsest of all traitors are those whose statements in themselves are mainly true, but who make it their business to pick out of the annals of the past the mis- deeds of one side, and to conceal the misdeeds of the other, and in the interests of a party or a creed habitually to suppress palliations on one side and provocations on the other.' Lecky was unable to do much literary work during the session. He wrote, however, in the course of the year an introduction to Carlyle's ' French Revolution ' for an American publication, 'A Series of the World's Great Books,' and he reviewed in the Spectator 'Mr. Gregory's Letter Box/ by Lady Gregory; the 'Life of Parnell/ and the 'Memorials of the Earl of Selborne' (Part 2). Editors frequently asked him to give his views on modern politics, and he was persuaded to write for a German paper, the Gegenwart, on the alien- ation between England and Germany; and for the London Review on the relations of the United States with other Powers. 1 Lecky said that he did not believe that there was at that time any antagonism of interests between England and Germany, or any jealousy in England of Germany's trade and Colonial expansion. 1 This article appeared also in the New York Independent, July 7, 1898. 368 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY The policy of England was perfectly clear. It was to preserve the strictest neutrality in European quar- rels, to look upon the maintenance of peace as our supreme European interest, and to avoid entangling alliances. Unless Germany were to enter upon a course of gross aggression, German statesmen knew that they had nothing to fear from England. After the war of 1870 there was a large party in England who looked upon the increased influence of Germany as certain to lead to a higher level of international morals, to the growth of a more pacific, progressive, and enlightened spirit in European politics — but this hope had been disappointed, and the malevolent tone of some leading German papers could not but have in the long run a considerable influence on English opinion. He believed, however, that there were many Germans as well as English who deplored the deepen- ing chasm of feeling that was dividing two great nations which had naturally many common bonds of sympathy and interest and no real ground of serious antagonism. On the other hand, he hailed the marked improve- ment which had recently taken place in the relations of the two great branches of the English-speaking race. 'Peace and the open door/ he wrote, 'are the two great real interests of the Anglo-Saxon race, and they are most likely to be attained by common under- standings and common action.' Referring to the war with Spain, he thought it was 'at least likely to have taught America a lesson which she had long neglected. It is that war is not a thing that can be extemporised, and that no nation, however great, is really secure which is not prepared to defend herself both on land and sea in the first weeks after hostilities have been declared.' During the summer, at Vosbergen, he wrote great part of the introduction to the cabinet edition of his INTRODUCTION TO THE 'DEMOCRACY 7 369 'Democracy and Liberty/ in which he was anxious to give an impartial appreciation of Mr. Gladstone. He now enjoyed more than ever the freedom and quiet of his summer retreat. While his wife went to the coronation of the young Queen at Amsterdam, he wrote from Vosbergen, 'All goes on perfectly here — delicious weather — delicious quiet and work, and the village fete was very pretty and orderly.' They returned to England at the end of October. (To Judge Gowan.) The Athenaeum: November 9, 1898. — ' My dear Judge, — I must thank you very much for your kind letter, for the book, and for the paper giving in very concise form the many labours and honours of your long and most useful life. I am much interested by what you say about America. Here I think we were most struck by the skill and resolution with which on the American side the war was conducted, and by the humanity and self-restraint shown by American public opinion, and we certainly desire very strongly a good feeling between the two great branches of our race. I think these feelings have dominated over all others, though the triumph of Tammany at New York and the ascendancy of the Bryan party in both the Western and Southern States are ominous for the future. We have been spending the late summer and autumn in Holland, and I have been very busy writing a long Introduction to a cab- inet edition of my ' Democracy ' which will, I hope, appear in the beginning of January. It contains among other things a somewhat elaborate review of the career of Gladstone, which will, I fear, somewhat clash with the language of extravagant and unqualified eulogy which has of late been general. A book is just coming out which throws a good deal of light on the significance of the later part of his life — the biog- raphy of Parnell, showing beyond all doubt how com- pletely he [Parnell] was the agent of the Fenians and 25 370 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY actuated in his policy by an intense hatred of Great Britain. I hope the fear of war is now over, but Eng- land is certainly in no Quaker mood, and I never remember a time when a great war would have been more readily accepted. One advantage is that for the future it will be understood on the Continent that we are not squeezable ad infinitum. Another is that the expectation of war has greatly helped on the machinery for our Army and Navy. Still I own that I should be glad if the velvet glove was a little more used by our newspapers, some of which have been in no small degree arrogant and provocative. I suppose we shall meet at Westminster at the end of January. It is always interesting, but on the whole I do not look forward to it, and during the six months the House is sitting I find literary work almost absolutely impos- sible. I hope our Local Government Bill will not do much harm; that is all I can say.' Though the Fashoda incident 1 produced no disas- trous results, other clouds appeared on the horizon. The distant rumblings of the gathering storm in South Africa began to be disquieting, but no one at that time thought that patience, tact, and common-sense could not avert so great a calamity as a war between the two white races. 1 The reader may be re- against the occupation of minded that in 1896 Captain Fashoda, and difficult negotia- Marchand had been sent by tions between the two Govern- the French Government on a ments ensued. The question mission to extend French influ- was settled early in November ence in the Valley of the Nile. 1898 by the French Govern- He reached Fashoda in July ment agreeing to evacuate 1898, at the very time when Fashoda, and a subsequent Lord Kitchener had recon- delimitation took place which quered the Soudan. The gave France commercial ac- British Government protested cess to the Nile. ALEXANDRA COLLEGE 371 Lecky spent the end of the year and the beginning of the next with his wife at Cannes, happy to escape for a short time from the gloom of a London winter and enjoy the sun by the blue Mediterranean. They after- wards went to Dublin for some social functions. Among the Irish institutions Lecky was interested in was Alexandra College, which, under the able direc- tion of its distinguished lady principal, Miss White, holds a worthy place beside the Women's Colleges in England. During his stay in Dublin an important meeting was held to further its enlargement. The Archbishop of Dublin presided, and the Lord Lieu- tenant, the Vice-Warden Dr. Bernard, Lord Justice Fitzgibbon, and Lecky were among the speakers. Lecky insisted on the great importance of the higher education of women, as the competitions of life had become much more acute, the standard of requirements had been greatly raised, and the number of women who had to fight the hard battle of life had probably in- creased; and he advocated the policy of the open door at the Universities, a policy which Trinity College as a teaching University has since been the first to adopt. Speaking in the same place the following year, at the opening ceremony of the new buildings, he dwelt on the value of the higher education of women in cor- recting the desultoriness of modern life. Men, as well as women, would benefit by it, for it was a great mis- fortune when, as in some countries, the intellectual life of men was almost wholly severed from the lives of women. They would never have a sound, moral, active, intellectual life among men where the women with whom they habitually lived took no interest in their pursuits and were habitually frivolous, credu- lous, and intellectually unsympathetic. In the beginning of January 1899, Lecky's new 372 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY edition of the 'Democracy and Liberty' came out. He had carefully revised it, as he did all his books before he gave them a stereotyped form — ' correct- ing/ as he said in the Introduction, 'such inaccuracies as I have been able to discover and . . . introducing into the text or notes a few lines relating to contro- versies which were pending at the time of its original publication, and mentioning salient facts which have since occurred and which had a direct and important bearing on the subjects I have treated.' He pointed out how in many respects his predictions had been fulfilled, but the most important part of the Introduc- tion was his estimate of the character and career of Mr. Gladstone. This attracted a great deal of atten- tion and was widely commented on; with admiration by some, with disapproval by others. If Lecky ex- pressed strong views about some episodes in Mr. Glad- stone's political career, and especially his Home Rule policy, no one could have spoken with greater appre- ciation of his eloquence, of his debating powers, of his financial skill, of the readiness and versatility of his mind, of his lifelong hatred of acts of cruelty and wrong, of his charm in private life. ' . . . the elabo- rate character of Gladstone,' wrote Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff in his ' Diary,' ' seems to me very much the best estimate of his merits and defects which has appeared.' Very soon after the opening of Parliament a debate took place on the distress in the West of Ireland. The remedy suggested from the Nationalist side was the enlargement of the holdings, by parcelling out grazing- lands among them and conferring on the Congested Districts Board compulsory powers to acquire these. Lecky was strongly opposed to this plan. He had studied for a long time past the economic conditions DISTRESS IN THE WEST OF IRELAND 373 of the country, and he expressed the conviction that such a policy would be fatal to Ireland's prosperity. The conditions of nature — the Atlantic rain, the poverty of the soil — the bad farming, the tendency largely to subdivide holdings were, in Lecky's eyes, so many reasons for not stereotyping on the soil the present owners of land in the poorer districts of Con- naught. Something, but not much, might be done towards enlarging their holdings; but he thought any attempt to break up the richer grazing-land would be one of the worst things that could happen. The first and most vital industry is the cattle trade. Owing to its natural conditions Ireland must be a pastoral country. It can only be by keeping up that pasture in a flourishing condition that any real prosperity can come. An attack upon the graziers and the cattle trade, coupled with a revival of the land agitation which inevitably drives immense masses of capital out of the country, must be most disastrous. There was no need to confer compulsory powers of purchase on the Congested Districts Board, as they did not require them. The Government had just increased the resources of the Board by a considerable grant, and one of the measures of the session was the estab- lishment of the long-promised Department of Agri- culture and Technical Education which was intended to raise the level of agriculture and to encourage and assist industries. Mr. Horace Plunkett took an im- portant part in the debate, and as the Nationalists attempted to disparage his work, Lecky took the opportunity of saying 'that by turning the minds of the people of a great part of Ireland in a practical direction, and by showing how by patient work they can improve the economical conditions of Ireland and so raise it to a higher level of civilisation, Mr. Plunkett 374 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY had done more than any other non-official member for the benefit of his country.' The question of the Old Age Pensions had now- acquired great prominence. It had been brought forward at the elections, and a pension scheme on a moderate scale had been strongly advocated by Mr. Chamberlain. The Government proposal to appoint a fresh Committee gave rise to a debate in which Lecky, in a forcible speech, expressed his views. He thought that after two singularly able Commissions had been for months investigating the matter and had come to the conclusion that they could not discover any scheme of Old Age Pensions which would not bring the most grave and serious disadvantages, the Government should have dropped the question. He showed all the dangers of such a scheme involving a huge expendi- ture which under certain circumstances the country might find it difficult to meet, and 'leading to the gravest indirect and unsuspected consequences.' The result of his speech was that he was asked to be on the Committee, to which he somewhat reluctantly con- sented. His further investigation of the matter and the evidence brought before the Committee confirmed him in his views, and he finally wrote a report giving his reasons for dissenting from the majority of the Committee who recommended a large pension scheme. It was not from any want of sympathy with those who were destitute in old age that Lecky opposed it; on the contrary, he was most compassionate towards every form of human suffering, but apart from the innumerable existing agencies, he thought a reform of the Poor Law would be the best remedy, without entailing the economic and political evils of a State pension scheme. At the end of the session he wrote to Mr. Booth: IRISH LITERARY THEATRE 375 ' We had a very quiet, not to say dull, session, and the only two Irish Bills — that increasing the revenue of the Congested Districts Board, and that setting up a good system of technical and agricultural education, were both useful and not much contested. I had, however, a good deal of special work on the Old Age Pension Committee. To my mind the Old Age Pen- sion project is one of the most dangerous of all forms of State socialism, and many members of our party and some of our Front Bench are committed to it. ... I am afraid we shall have a good deal of trouble on this matter and that the Unionist party may com- mit itself to a policy which is sure to lead to great corruption and increase of taxation. However, I am pretty sure that Hicks Beach is strongly against this policy.' In the autumn of that ^ear Lecky wrote, at the request of the editor of thjl Forum, an article on Old Age Pensions, which appe/red in the February num- ber, 1900, of that Review .1 He had now become interested in a fresh Irish enter- prise, a National Theatrj. It had been started in 1898 by a small group of/Irish literary people, one of whom was Lady Gregoty" — a friend of his — who enlisted his sympathy in/the movement. He assisted in guaranteeing the exposes and in getting a clause inserted in the Local (Government Bill which made it practicable for amapurs to act in Dublin. By the regulations, hithertFL. TO Qf NOV 6 jyoi#