c/c rlc ( j y i THE ' (&unn%mtbt BdUv® ' LONDOH : PEINTEI' BY 8POTTISW0ODK AND CO., JiKW-STSBCT SQL'AUE AMD PABL1AMENT STUKBT y H [J THE ' (Runn^mebe Betters' WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY FRANCIS HITCHMAN AUTHOR OF "THE PCBI.IC LIKE OK THE KARL OP BEACONSKIELD ' irrc. LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET PnblisbtrB in ©rbinarn to J)tx Ulajcslp Ibr (Queen 1885 All i i v A / .< reset t ■ J LIBRARY UNIVERSITY Ol CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA INTEODUCTION. [The ' Runnymede Letters,' of which the following pages are a reprint, were evoked by the events of 1835 and 1836. The authorship has never been acknowledged, but it is a matter concerning which there can be no doubt. ' Runnymede,' and the author of ' The Crisis Examined,' must have been one and the same person. Lord Beaconsfield himself never disavowed the Letters, though he never claimed them, and it was universally understood, when he explained that he ' was a gentle- man of the press and bore no other escutcheon,' and said in a letter to Lady Blessington, that he ' had never made a shilling by all his journalising,' that he referred to his association with the ' Times ' in the matter of these Letters. The course of events during 1834-5-6 was very singular. In January 1834, Earl Grey was still at the head of the Government, and Brougham was Lord Chancellor ; Lord Althorp was Chancellor of the Ex- chequer ; Lord Melbourne was at the Home Office, and Palmerston was Foreign Secretary. The Cabinet had been going to pieces for some time. Lord Durham was the first to desert the sinking ship, and one after another, Ministers went their way. The King was only too glad to be rid of them. He disliked the Whigs gene- rally, and he hated Brougham with a holy hatred. He ' never wanted to see his ugly face again.' Brougham, on his side, in spite of the ardent protestations of loyalty and affection for the King, which he vented in a sickening fashion on every possible occasion during vi gnhrofcuciion his ' progress ' through Scotland, as Campbell calls his tour, had an equal dislike for the persou of his Majesty, and when the King laughed his Whig counsellors out of office, Brougham committed an unpardonable breach of etiquette by sending the Great Seal back to the King in a bag by the hands of General Sir Herbert Taylor. By so acting, Brougham effectually barred all chances which he might have had of returning to office. He tried every expedient, even to offering to undertake the duties of Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer under Lyndhurst, but after 1834 he was rigorousty excluded from place and power. Lord Grey's Ministry went out of office on the 9th of July. A week later a Whig Cabinet was recon- structed, with Lord Melbourne at its head. Lord Grey took no part in it. The Privy Seal was offered to him, but he was disgusted with the unfaithfulness and in- triguing of his quondam colleagues, refused the offer, and withdrew to Howick. The death of Lord Spencer, on the 10th of November, gave the King the excuse he had been eagerly seeking, and Peel was ' sent for.' Unfortunately he was in Rome, and a King's messenger had to be despatched in pursuit, the Duke of Wellington undertaking to administer the Government until he could be brought back. In December, Peel was at the head of affairs, with Lyndhurst as Chancellor and the Duke of Wellington as Foreign Secretary. Then came the Lichfield House compact, in the spring of 1835, when O'Connell patched up a truce with the ' base, bloody, and brutal Whigs,' and bound himself to support their measures and their policy generally in considera- tion of their friendly aid to his proposals. The first effect of the coalition was an attack on the Irish Church, in which the services of the Irish brigade were freely given to the Whigs. The Church was to be despoiled, and the efforts of the Government to save her revenues for religious uses were frustrated by the coalition of Whigs, Radicals, and Repealers. An amendment to the Address was carried on February 26, by which gnfrofcuctton vii Ministers were left in a minority of seven. Three ad- verse divisions followed in quick succession on the Irish Church. First came a resolution proposed by Lord John Russell. ' that the House do resolve itself into a Committee of the whole House to consider the tempo- ralities of the Church of Ireland,' which was carried by 309 to 302. On April 6, another division was taken on the same subject, and Ministers found themselves in a minority of 25. On the following day the minority was increased to 27, and on the 8th the Duke of Wellington in the Lords, and Sir Robert Peel in the Commons, announced the resignation of the Ministry. Ten days later the second Melbourne administration was complete. It may be convenient to give a list of the Ministry in this place : — First Lord of the Treasury . Viscount Melbourne. President of the Council . Marquis of Lansdowne. Privy Seal .... Lord Duncannon. Chancellor of the Exchequer . Mr. Spring Rice. Home Secretary . . . Lord John Russell. Foreign Secretary . . . Lord Palmerston. Colonial Secretary . . . Mr. Charles Grant ; afterwards (May 1835) Lord Glenelg. Admiralty .... Lord Auckland. Board of Control . . . Sir John Cam Hobhouse. Secretary at War . . . Lord Howick. Board of Trade . . . Mr. Poulett Thomson ; after- wards (1840) Lord Syden- ham. Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster .... Lord Holland. The Great Seal was in Commission untilJanuary 19, 1836, when Pepys became Chancellor with the title of Lord Cottenham, the reasons for which unusual step were in the first place the King's dislike to Brougham, and in the second, Brougham's own impracticable tem- per and determination to domineer over his friends and colleagues, which made him, to use Lord Melbourne's phrase, ' impossible.' vi-ii gitfro&ucftott It will be observed that the Letters breathe through- out a spirit of profound detestation of the principles of Whiggism, the explanation of which is to be found in the little tract ' The Spirit of Whiggism,' appended to the ' Letters of Eunnymede.' They are equally distin- guished by the fervour of their author's attachment to Sir Robert Peel. There can be no doubt of the sin- cerity of the writer's feelings at that time. In 1836 Peel had not executed that famous volte face which, ten years later, turned his warmest friend and supporter into the bitterest and most unrelenting of his opponents. In the present condition of public affairs, when the nation is witness to the spectacle of a Minister clinging to office by the help of the votes of disaffected Irishmen, won from them by treaties as disgraceful as the Lich- field House compact itself; when attacks are daily made on the House of Lords ; when the Church is threatened in unmistakable terms by members of the Government itself; and when concessions are constantly made to lawlessness, rebellion, and outrage, at the expense of the landed interest, it has been thought de- sirable to reproduce in a convenient form the comments of the great lost leader of the Tory party on the events of fifty years ago. There is so great a likeness between the two periods that those comments must surely be good for the present distress. Some notes have been appended which it is hoped will be found useful in explaining what might be otherwise obscure, and in recalling to the minds of the students of politics, the personages who filled the political stage in 1836. There are some few repetitions in the notes, but it has been thought wiser to risk a reproach on that score than to give the reader the trouble of turning back in search of an explanation which may be given in half a line.] CONTENTS, LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE. PAGE DEDICATION* TO THE EIGHT HONOURABLE SIR ROBERT PEEL, BART., M.P . . 1 LETTER I. TO VISCOUNT MELBOURNE II. TO SIR JOHN CAMPBELL III. TO MR. THOMAS ATTWOOD, M.P. IV. TO LORD BROUGHAM .... V. TO SIR ROBERT PEEL . . . . VI. TO THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER VII. TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL . . . . VIII. TO THE PEOPLE IX. TO LORD STANLEY . X. TO LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK XI. To VIsroiXT PALMEP.STON XII. TO BIB JOHN HOBHOUSE 11 ■23 35 53 67 79 a: 107 119 129 145 169 (Ecmfcttfo LETTER PAGE XIII. TO LORD GLENELG. . . . . . . .169 XIV. TO TEE RIGHT HON. EDWARD ELLIOT: . . . 179 XV. TO VISCOUNT MELBOURNE . . . . .191 XVI. TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS . . . . 199 XVII.. TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS . . . . .211 XVIII. TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR . . . . . . 221 XIX. TO VISCOUNT MELBOURNE ..... 23.3 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM 243 i HE LETTERS OF BUNNYMEDE ' Neither for shame nor fear this mask he wore, That, like a vizor in the battle-field, But shrouds a manly and a daring brow' LONDON MDCCCXXXVI Qebication TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR ROBERT PEEL, BART., M.P. July 27, 1836 B DEDICATION. TO THE RIGHT HON. SIR ROBERT PEEL, BART., M.P. Sir, — I have the honour to dedicate to you a volume illustrative of Whigs and Whiggism. It has been my object to delineate within its pages not only the present characters and recent exploits of the most active of the partisans, but also the essential and permanent spirit of the party. It appeared to me that it might be advantageous to connect the criticism on the character of the hour with some researches into the factious idiosyncrasy of centuries. Political parties are not so inconsistent as the superficial imagine ; and, in my opinion, the Whig of a century back does not differ so materially as some would represent from the Whig of the present day. I hope, therefore, that this volume may conduce, not only to the amusement, but to the instruction of my countrymen. It is now, Sir, some six months past since I seized the occasion of addressing you another d 2 4 ^f)c fetters of ^unnmnebe letter, written under very different auspices. The session of Parliament was then about to com- mence ; it is now about to close. These six months have not been uneventful in results. If they have not witnessed any legislative enact- ment eminently tending to our social welfare, they Have developed much political conduct for which our posterity may be grateful: for this session, Sir, has at least been memorable for one great event — an event not inferior, in my estimation, in its beneficial influence on the fortunes of the country, to Magna Charta itself — I mean the rally of the English Constitution; I might use a stronger phrase, I might say its triumph. 1 1 Referring to the reviving spirit of the Lords, who in the course of the session had rejected in succession the Bill to Reform the Irish Municipal Corporations, the Irish Tithe Bill, the Bill for governing Charitable Trusts by popular election, and the Bill for the Disfranchisement of Stafford. The reason for this succession of disasters is to be found partly in the care- less incompetency of Lord Melbourne, but principally in the fact that Lord Lyndhurst led the opposition in the Upper House. In his Autobiography Lord Campbell says : ' In the House of Lords we were at the mercy of our opponents. . . . Lyndhurst avowed their object to be to turn against Lord Melbourne a sentiment of William III. which Lord Melbourne himself had once quoted with approbation, that " while there were debates about the best form of government, some preferring monarchy, some aristocracy, some democracy, he would not pre- tend to decide between them, but he was sure that the worst government was that which could not carry its own measures." . . . Our party was deplorably ill-off for some peer to take JpcMcafton And it has triumphed because it has become understood. The more its principles have been examined, the more the intention of its various parts has been investigated, and its general scope comprehended, the more beneficent and profound has appeared the polity of our fathers. The public mind of late has been cleared of a vast amount of error in constitutional learning. Scarcely a hired writer would have the front at this day to pretend that a difference of opinion between the two Houses of Parliament is a colli- sion between the Peers and the People. That phrase ' the People ' is a little better compre- hended now than it used to be ; it will not serve for the stalking horse of faction as it did. We know very well that the House of Commons is not the House of ' the People ; ' we know very well that ' the People ' is a body not intelligible in a political sense ; we know very well that the Lords and the Commons are both sections of the Nation, and both alike and equally represen- tative of that great community. And we know very well that if the contrary propositions to all these were maintained, the Government of this English Empire might, at this moment, be the charge of such Bills. Lord Melbourne would give himself no trouble about them. They were left to Duncannon (Lord Privy Seal), who, though a man of excellent good sense, was wholly incompetent to enter the lists with Lyndhurst.' 6 <|f)e c£effers of ^xtnngmebc pastime and plunder of some score of Irish adventurers. When, Sir, you quitted Drayton in Febru- ary, 1 the vagabond delegate of a foreign priest- hood 2 was stirring up rebellion against the Peers of England, with the implied, if not the definite, sanction of His Majesty's Ministers. Where is that hired disturber now ? Like base coin de- tected by the very consequences of its currency, and finally nailed against the counter it had deceived, so this bad politician, like a bad shilling, has svorn off his edge by his very restlessness. Parliament met, and the King's Ministers ex- hibited with a flourish their emblazoned cata- logue of oligarchical coups-d'etat, by which they were to entrench themselves in power under the plea of ameliorating our society. 3 Not one of these measures has been carried. Yet we were told that their success was certain, and by a sim- ple process — by the close and incontestable union 1 William IV. opened Paidiament in person for the last time February 4, 1836. 2 Daniel O'Connell. 3 The Bills promised in the King's Speech included measures for the Reform of Ecclesiastical Establishments, for Tithe Com- mutation, for the Redress of the Grievances of Dissenters, for the Reform of the Court of Chancery, for the Settlement of the Irish Tithe Dispute, for the Reform of Irish Municipal Corpo- rations, and for the Assimilation of the Irish Poor Law to that of England. J)efctcattcm between all true reformers. The union between all true reformers has terminated in the mutiny of Downing Street. 1 I believe that I have commemorated in this volume that celebrated harangue, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the commence- ment of the session, addressed at a dinner to his constituents. 2 You may perhaps remember, Sir, the glowing promises of that Right Honourable Gentleman: they seemed almost to announce the advent of a political millennium. 'Eirst and foremost,' announced the Right Honourable Chancellor, ' we shall proceed in our great work of the reform of the Court of Equity ; ' the opus magnum of the gifted Cottenham. It seems the course of nature was reversed here, and the butterfly turned into grub. ' Our earnest atten- tion will then be directed,' quoth Mr. Rice, 3 ' to the entire and complete relief of our Dissenting brethren and fellow-subjects.' How liberal, how condescending, and how sincere ! The Dissenters are absolutely our fellow-subjects. None but a Whig, a statesman almost eructating with the plenary inspiration of the spirit of the age, could 1 When Lord John Russell quarrelled with his colleagues on the Irish Church question. See the Greville Memoirs, vol. iii. pp. 295 et seq. 2 Letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, post, p. 83. '■' M r. Spring Rice, afterwards Lord Monteagle. 8 ^c fetters of ^Utnnmneoe have been capable of making so philosophical an admission. In the meantime six months have passed, and nothing has been done for our unhappy ' fellow-subjects,' while the Dissenting organs denounce even the projected alleviations as a miserable insult. To justice to Ireland Mr. Hice of course was pledged, and most determined to obtain it ; but his Bills have been dishonoured nevertheless. And the settlement of the Irish Tithe, and the Reform of the Irish Corporations, are about as much advanced by this great Whig Government as the relief of the Dissenters and the reform of the Court of Chancery. What have they done then ? What pledge have they redeemed ? The Ecclesiastical Courts remain unpurged. Even the Stamp Act, through the medium of which the Whigs, as usual, have levelled a blow at the liberty of the press, has not passed yet, and in its present inquisitorial form can never become a law. What then, I repeat, have they done ? They promised indeed to break open the prisons like Jack Cade ; but as yet the gates are barred ; the pensions are still paid, and the soldiers still flogged. Oh ! ye Scribes of the Treasury and Pharisees of Down- ing Street ! Supported in the House of Lords by a body inferior in number to the Peers created by the Whigs during the last five years, upheld 5>c5tcctfion 9 in the House of Commons by a majority of twenty-six, Lord Melbourne still clings to his mulish and ungenerative position of place without power ; and with a degree of modest frankness and constitutional propriety equally admirable, pledges himself before his country, that, as long as he is supported by a majority of the House of Commons, he will remain Minister. I apprehend the ratification of a Ministry is as necessary by one House of Parliament as by the other ; but I stop not to discuss this. The choice of Ministers was once entrusted to a different authority than that of either Lords or Commons. But this is an old almanack ; and I leave Lord Viscount Melbourne to shake its dust off at his next inter- view with his projected Doge of Windsor. UUNNYMEDE. July 27, 1836. LETTEK I. TO VISCOUNT MELBOURNE January 18, 1836 LETTER I. [It was a curious irony of fate that made William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne, into a Prime Minister. When in 1834 the success of the intrigue against Earl Grey and his colleagues of the Keforin Ministry brought him to the front, Greville wrote : — ' Nobody thinks the Government will last long, and everybody " wonders " how Melbourne will do it. He is certainly a queer fellow to be Prime Minister, and he and Brougham are two wild chaps to have the destinies of this country in their hands. I should not be surprised if Melbourne was to rouse his dormant energies, and be excited by the greatness of his position to display the vigour and decision in which he is not deficient. Unfortunately, his reputation is not particularly good ; he is considered lax in morals, indifferent in religion, and very loose and pliant in politics. He is supposed to have con- sented to measures of which he disapproved, because it suited his ease and convenience to do so, and because he was actuated by no strong political principles or opinions.' It would be difficult to put the case against Lord Melbourne more accurately. His immoralities were notorious, and his relations with his wife had been for years the talk of the town. In a few months he was to figure as the defendant in an action for crim. con., in which, though Campbell succeeded in winning a verdict for him, posterity has very generally agreed that he came out with a sadly smirched reputation. His religious views were peculiar, to say the least. Habitu- ally a curiously profane talker, he delighted in the study H ^I)e goffers of jHunntmteoc of patristic theology — which landed him in a conviction of unbelief — which he alternated with studies of a very different kind, as hinted more than once by ' Runny- mede,' and he was a victim to idleness and lounging to an almost incredible extent. Part of his weaknesses may, of course, have been affectation. The story, for example, of his dandling a sofa cushion whilst re- ceiving a deputation on the subject of the Corn Duties, and that of his blowing a feather about the room whilst some grave city men were arguing about the Currency, may be exaggerations, but the fact that they were re- lated and coninionly believed, affords very clear evidence of the opinion popularly entertained of him. His political views seem to have been summed up in the saying that the Whigs were the best of all possible political parties ; that the policy of leaving things alone was the wisest and most statesmanlike ; and that to keep in office was the first duty of a Whig Minister.] To Viscount Melbourne. My Lord, — The Marquis of Halifax l was wont to say of his Royal Master, that, ' after all, his favourite Sultana Queen was sauntering.' It is. perhaj)s, hopeless that your Lordship should rouse yourself from the embraces of that Siren Desidia to whose fatal influence you are not less a slave than our second Charles, and that you should cease to saunter over the destinies of a nation, and lounge away the glory of an empire. Yet the swift shadows of coming events are 1 Saville, Marquis of Halifax ; not to be confounded with Montagu, Earl of Halifax. HHscomtf "gdelbouxnc is assuredly sufficiently dark and ominous to startle from its indolence even The sleekest swine in Epicurus' sty. 1 "When I recall to my bewildered memory the perplexing circumstance that William Lamb is Prime Minister of England, it seems to me that I recollect with labour the crowning incident of some grotesque dream, or that in some pastime of the season you have drawn for the amusement of a nation a temporary character, ludicrously appropriate only from the total want of connec- tion and fitness between the festive part and the individual by whom it is sustained. Pre- vious to the passing of the famous Act of 1832, for the amendment of popular representation, your reputation, I believe, principally depended upon your talent for prologue writing. No one was held to introduce with more grace and spirit the performances of an amateur society. With the exception of an annual oration against par- liamentary reform, your career in the House of Commons was never remarkably distinguished. Your Cabinet, indeed, appears to have been con- structed from the materials of your old dramatic company. The domestic policy of the country is entrusted to the celebrated author of Don 1 ' The fattest bog in Epicurus' sty.' — Mason, Heroic Epistle. i6 ^l)e goffers of ^lunnmncbc Carlos ; 1 tlie Fletcher of this Beaumont, the author of the Siege of Constantinople 2 (an idea apparently borrowed from your Russian allies) is the guardian of the lives and properties of the Irish clergy, under the charitable supervision of that * first tragedy man,' the Lord of Mul- grave ; ' 3 Lord Glenelg 4 admirably personifies a sleepy audience ; while your Chancellor of the Exchequer 5 beats Mr. Power 6 ; and your Secre- 1 Lord John Russell, Home Secretary. 2 Viscount Morpeth (Hon. G. W. F. Howard, afterwards seventh Earl of Carlisle), author of The Last of the Greeks, or the Fall of Constantinople, a tragedy in five acts and in verse, Chief Secretary for Ireland. 3 Earl of Mulgrave, Lord- Lieutenant of Ireland. 4 Lord Glenelg (Right Hon. Charles Grant, first and last Baron Glenelg, of Glenelg in Invernessshire) was the last of the Canningites. He turned Whig at the period of the Reform Bill, and was from 1834 to 1839 Secretary of the Colonies. Lord Glenelg passed out of sight in consequence of his approval of the notorious ' Ordinance ' of Lord Durham, in which the Canadian rebels of 1838 who had submitted to the Queen's pleasure, were to be sent to Bermuda under constraint, and punished with death if they returned. The Ordinance was dis- allowed : Lord Durham resigned and Lord Glenelg retired. He was made a Commissioner of the Land Tax and ' accepted a pension of 2,000£. per annum.' He died on April 23, 1866, aged eighty-seven, having enjoyed his pension twenty-seven years. 6 Mr. Spring Rice, afterwards Lord Monteagle. Tyrone Power, the actor, then (1836) in the height of his popularity. He was drowned in the steamship President, which left New York in April, 1841, and was never heard of after- wards. discount Melbourne n tary for Foreign Affairs, 1 in his mimetic sym- pathy with French manners and intimate ac- quaintance with French character, is scarcely inferior to the late ingenious Charles Mathews. That general adapter from the Spanish, Lord Holland, gives you all the advantage, in the affairs of the Peninsula, of his early studies of Lope de Vega, and, indeed, with his skilful assis- tance you appear, by all accounts, to have woven a plot absurd and complicated enough even for the grave humour of Madrid or the gay fancy of Seville. For yourself is still reserved a monopoly of your peculiar talent, and doubtless on February 4 you will open your House with an introductory composition worthy of your pre- vious reputation. I remember some years ago listening to one of these elegant productions from the practised pen of the present Prime Minister of Great Britain, if not of Ireland. I think it was on that occasion that you annunciated to your audience the great moral discovery that the characteristic of the public mind of the present day was ft A taste for evil. Our taste for evil does not seem to be on the wane, since it has permitted this great empire to 1 Lord Palmerston. is "(gfjc heifers of Stunngmeoc be governed by the Whigs, and has induced even those Whigs to be governed by an Irish rebel. 1 Your prologue, my Lord, was quite prophetic. If your Royal Master's speech at the opening of his Parliament may share its inspirations, it will tell to the people of England some terrible truths. It will announce, in the first place, that the policy of your theatrical Cabinet has at length succeeded in dividing the people of England into two hostile camps, in which numbers are arrayed against property, ignorance against knowledge, and sects against institutions. It will announce to us, that your theatrical Cabinet has also been not less fortunate in matur- ing the passive resistance of the enemy in Ireland into active hostility, and that you have obtained the civil war from which the Duke of Welling- ton shrank, without acquiring the political security which might have been its consequence. It will announce to us, that in foreign affairs you and your company have finally succeeded in destroying all our old alliances without substitut- ing any new ones ; and that, after having sacri- ficed every principle of British policy to secure an intimate alliance with Erance, 2 the Cabinet of 1 O'Connell — an allusion to the Lichfield House compact of 1835. - Always a ' note ' of Whig policy from 1789 to 1884. IPiscomtf ^Tclbournc 19 the Tuileries has even had the airy audacity to refuse its co-operation in that very treaty in which its promises alone involved you ; and that, while the British Minister can with ex- treme difficulty obtain an audience at St. Peters- burg, the Ambassador of France passes with a polite smile of gay recognition the luckless representative of William IV., who is lounging in an ante-chamber in the enjoyment of an in- dolence which even your Lordship might envy. It will announce to us, that in our colonial empire the most important results may speedily be anticipated from the discreet selection of Lord Auckland as a successor to our Olives and our Hastings ; 1 that the progressive improve- ment of the French in the manufacture of beet-root may compensate for the approaching destruction of our West Indian plantations ; and that, although Canada is not yet indepen- dent, the final triumph of liberal principles, under the immediate patronage of the Govern- ment, may eventually console us for the loss 1 George Eden, second Earl of Auckland, born 1784, suc- ceeded to the title May, 1811 ; President of the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint, with a seat in the Cabinet of Earl Grey, 1830. First Lord of the Admiralty in 1834 and made Governor-General of India in 1835. His administration of India was chiefly memorable for the disastrous Afghan war of 1838. Lord Auckland's services were rewarded with an Earl- dom in 1839. c 2 20 Igfyc fetters of ^tttnttgmefce of the glory of Chatham, and the conquests of Wolfe. At home or abroad, indeed, an agreeable prospect on every side surrounds you. Your Lordship may exclaim with Hannibal, ' Behind us are the Alps, before us is Eridanus ! ' And who are your assistants to stem the profound and impetuous current of this awful futurity ? At an unconstitutional expenditure of four coronets, which may some day figure as an article in an impeachment, the Whigs have at length obtained a Lord Chancellor, 1 as a lawyer 1 Christopher Charles Pepys, Earl of Cottenham, who was made Lord Chancellor in order to get rid of the inconvenience of keeping the Great Seal in Commission. According to, Campbell, ' Lord Melbourne announced that Brougham could not be reappointed, saying with deep emphasis, " It is im- possible to act with him ; " and stated the plan proposed to be that Pepys should be Chancelloi and that Bickersteth (after- wards Lord Langdale) should succeed him as Master of the Rolls, with a peerage. It was well foreseen that Brougham's exclusion from office would drive him into furious opposition, and Pepys being known to be very feeble in debate, the object was to select an assistant champion for the defence of the Government. A most unfortunate choice was made, and it was very speedily repented of.' It is hardly a secret that on this occasion Brougham's reason gave way. Campbell refers to the fact twice (Lives of the Chancellors, vol. viii. pp. 110 and 476-7), and his hint has been more than confirmed by contemporary evidence. The other coronets referred to in the text were . those of Lord Oranmore and of Lady Stratheden, the latter of which was bestowed to console her husband, Sir John (after- wards Lord) Campbell for his exclusion fxom the Chancellorship. ^Hscotmf Melbourne 21 not illustrious, as a statesman a nonentity. The seals of the principal office of the State are en- trusted to an individual, who, on the principle that good vinegar is the corruption of bad wine, has been metamorphosed from an incapable author into an eminent politician. 1 His brother Secretaries remind me of two battered female sinners ; one frivolous, the other exhausted ; one taking refuge from conscious scorn in rouge and the affected giggle of fluttering folly, and the other in strong waters and devotion. 2 Then Mr. Spring Ptice waves a switch, which he would fain persuade you is a shillelagh ; while the Bienzi of Westminster smiles with marvel- ling complacency at the strange chapter of acci- dents which has converted a man whose friends pelted George Lamb with a cabbage-stalk, into a main prop of William Lamb's Cabinet. Some yet remain ; the acute intelligence of Lansdowne, the polished mind of Thomson, 3 Howick's 4 calm maturity, and the youthful energy of Holland. 5 1 Lord John Russell, author of Don Carlos, a Tragedy. 2 Lords Palnierston and Glenelg. The allusion is of course to Foote's farce, The Minor. 3 Poulett Thomson, the President of the Board of Trade. 4 Viscount Eowick (the present Earl Grey), Secretary at War; ' the bitterest of all that party,' says Greville. 5 Fox, Lord Holland, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster — a martyr to gout and almost in his dotage in 1836. 22 ^l)c Setters of "-Kunngmcoo And this is the Cabinet that controls the destinies of a far vaster population than owned the sway of Rome in the palmiest hour of its imperial fame ! Scarron or Butler should cele- brate its political freaks, and the shifting expe- dients of its ignoble statecraft. But while I watch vou in your ludicrous councils, an awful shade rises from behind the chair of my Lord President. Slaves ! it is your master ; it is Eblis with Captain Bock's bloody cap shadow- ing his atrocious countenance. In one hand he waves a torch, and in the other clutches a skull. He gazes on his victims with a leer of fiendish triumph. Contemptible as you are, it is this dark connection 1 that involves your fate with even an epic dignity, and makes the impending story of your retributive fortunes assume almost a D antes que sublimity. January 18, 1836. 1 The Lichfield House compact. LETTER II. TO SLR JOHN CAMPBELL January 19, 1836 LETTER II. [' Plain John Campbell ' is perhaps the pleasantest figure in the crowd of mediocrities who came to the front after the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832. He was a Scotchman of the best type — shrewd, con- scientious, and of unflagging industry. So much did this last quality impress his contemporaries that it is told of two of the most distinguished of them that meeting in Court on the day of his euthanasia — for surely no man ever had a happier ending to his life- one said to the other, ' So poor Campbell's gone ! Well, we shall meet him at the Day of Judgment.' ' Yes,' replied the other, ' and you may take your affi- davit that he will be offering to assist the business of the Court by taking the short causes.' In the cata- clysm of 1835 he gave great offence by accepting the post of Attorney-General, which he probably did be- cause, with the proverbial shrewdness of his nation, he foresaw the speedy downfall of Lord Melbourne's second administration, and did not care to relinquish a very lucrative practice at the bar for the barren honour of a chancellorship which might be brought to an end at any moment and leave him stranded in the Upper House with a pension, it is true, but without any rlnince of that work which we may fairly believe was dearer to him than its pecuniary rewards. He had held the post of Attorney-General in the first Melbourne ad- ministration, with a somewhat inexplicable understand- ing that he was not to expect to succeed as a matter of right to any vacancy in the Courts ('Greville,' vol. iii. 26 ^1)0 ^cffcre of "gtuttttgme&e p. 141). When Melbourne returned to power after the short-lived administration of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, Campbell's aid as Attorney-General was found to be indispensable, and he was consoled for any seeming slight by the elevation of Lady Campbell to the rank of a peeress in her own right with the title of Stratheden, on which account the present Lord Campbell bears a double title. The matter was an arrangement to suit the convenience of the Ministry, and Campbell's acquiescence in it was very generally condemned. ' Pollock and one or two others,' he says in his Autobiography, ' blamed me for not resigning, and said I had lowered the office of Attorney- General, but Abercromby, Follett, and those whose opinions I most regarded, approved, and I have never since re- pented of any part of my conduct on this occasion.'] To Sir Jo/in Campbell. Sir, — I have always been of opinion — an opinion I imbibed early in life from great autho- rities — that the Attorney- and Solicitor- General were not more the guardians of the honour and the interests of the Crown than of the honour and the interests of the Bar. It appears to me that you have failed in your duty as representa- tive of this once illustrious body, and therefore it is that I address to vou this letter. Although your political opponent, I trust I am not incapable of acknowledging and appreciating your abilities and acquirements. They are sound, but they are not splendid. You have mastered considerable legal reading, you are gifted with g>tr goljn gctntpbell 27 no ordinary shrewdness, you have enjoyed great practice, and you have gained great experience ; you possess undaunted perseverance and in- vincible industry. But you can advance no claim to the refined subtlety of an Eldon, and still less to the luminous precision, the quick perception, the varied knowledge, and accom- plished eloquence of a Lyndhurst. In profound learning you cannot cope for a moment with Sir Edward Sugden ; l as an advocate you can endure no competition with your eminent father-in-law, 2 or with Sir William "Follett, or — for I am not writing as a partisan — with Mr. Serjeant Wilde. As a pleader I believe you were distinguished, though there are manv who, even in this humble province, have deemed that you might yield the palm to Mr. Baron Parke and Mr. Justice Littledale. But, whatever be your merits or defects, you are still the King's Attorney- General, and as the King's Attorney- General you have a prescriptive, if not a positive, right to claim any seat upon the judgment bench 3 which becomes vacant dur- 1 Afterwards Lord St. Leonards. 2 Sir James Scarlett, afterwards Lord Abinger, to whose daughter Campbell was married in September 1821. 3 Greville says that he did urge his claims on Leach's death, but he allows it to be understood that they were over- ruled by Lord Melbourne. 2s ^|f)e goffers of ^lunnpmcoc ing your official tenure. This prescriptive right has never been doubted in the profession. It has been understood and acted upon by members of the bar, of all parties, and at all times. In recent days, Sir Hobert Gifford, 1 though a com- mon law lawyer, succeeded to the equity tribunal of Sir Thomas Plomer. It is true that Sir Hobert Gifford, for a very short time previous to his accession, had practised in the Court of Chancery, but the right of the Attorney-General to succeed, under any circumstances, was again recognised by Lord Eldon, when Sir John Copley, 2 who had never been in an Equity Court in his life, became Master of the Holls. On this occasion it is well known that Leach, 3 the Vice- Chancellor, was anxious to succeed Lord Gifford, but his request was not for a moment listened to in preference to the claim of the Attorney-General. In allowing a judge, 4 who a very short time back was your inferior officer, to become Lord 1 Lord Gifford, Master of the Rolls 1824. 2 Lord Lyndhurst. 3 When Lord Grey formed his Ministry in 1830, it was expected that Sir John Leach would have been his Lord Chancellor. Lord Grey himself would have preferred Lord Lyndhurst, but Lord Althorp having declared that he could not undertake the leadership in the Commons if Brougham re- mained there in an official capacity to domineer over him, the well-known arrangement was made. 4 Lord Cottenham (Pepys, Solicitor- General in Lord Mel- bourne's former Administration). S5ir §oI)tt ©ctmpbett 29 Chancellor of England, and in permitting a barrister, who had not even filled the office of Solicitor- General, to be elevated over your head into the seat of the Master of the Rolls ; either you must have esteemed yourself absolutely incompetent to the discharge of those great offices, or you must have been painfully con- scious of your marked inferiority to both the individuals who were promoted in your teeth ; or last, and bitterest alternative, you must have claimed your right, and been denied its enjoy- ment. 1 In the first instance, you virtually declared that you were equally unfit for the office you at present hold, and what should have been your consequent conduct is obvious ; in the second, you betrayed the interests of the bar; and in the third, you betrayed not only the interests of the bar, but its honour also. "Without imputing to Sir John Campbell any marvellous degree of arrogance, I cannot bring myself to believe that he holds himself absolutely unfit for the discharge of the offices in question. I will not even credit that he has yielded to his unfeigned sense of his marked inferiority to the supernatural wisdom and miraculous acquire- ments of my Lord Cottenham, or that his down- cast vision has been dazzled by the wide extended 1 Which last alternative is now known to have been the case. 30 ^|f)e fetters of ^Utnngmeoe celebrity that surrounds with a halo the name of Bickersteth ! L No, sir, we will not trench upon the manorial right of modesty which is the monopoly of your colleague, Sir Monsey Rolfe, 2 that public man on the lucus a non luoendo prin- ciple, that shadowy entity which all have heard of, few seen. An individual, it would appear, of a rare humility and admirable patience, and born, as it were, to exemplify the beauty of resignation. I believe, therefore, that you claimed the office — that you claimed your right, and that you were refused it. That must have been a bitter moment, Sir John Campbell — a moment which might have made you recollect, perhaps even repeat, the Johnsonian definition of a Whig. 3 You have not hitherto been held a man deficient in spirit, or altogether uninfluenced by that nobler ambition which spurs us on to great careers, and renders the esteem of our fellow- countrymen not the least valuable reward of our exertions. "When therefore you were thus 1 Afterwards Lord Langdale. 2 Afterwards Lord Cranworth. 3 Whig. The name of a faction. Johnson's Dictionary, 1st edition. Boswell. I drank chocolate, sir, this morning with Mr. Eld, and to my no small surprise found him to be a Staffordshire Whisr, a beins* which I did not believe had existed. Johnson. Sir, there are rascals in all countries. Croker's Bosicell, edition 1848, p. 606. g>ir §of)tt §ampbcii 31 insulted, why did you not resent the insult ? When your fair ambition was thus scurvily balked, why not have gratified it by proving to a sympathising nation that you were at least worthy of the high post to which you aspired ? He who aims to be the guardian of the honour of the Crown, should at least prove that he is competent to protect his own. You ought not to have quitted the Ministers ante-chamber the King's Attorney- General. Why did you then ? Because, as you inform us, your lady is to be ennobled. Is it the carnival, that such jests pass current? Is it part of the code of etiquette in this saturnalia of Whig manners, that the honour of a man is to be vindicated by a compliment to a woman ? One cannot refrain from admiring, too, the con- sistent propriety of the whole arrangement. A gentleman, whom his friends announce as a resolved republican, and to whom, but for this slight circumstance, they assert would have been entrusted the custody of the Great Seal, is to be hoisted up into the House of Lords in the masquerade of a Baron; while yourself, whose delicate and gracious panegyric of the Peers of England is still echoing from the movement benches of the House of Commons to the reeking cellars of the Cowgate, find the only consolation for your wounded honour in your son inscribing 32 ^Ijc goffers of 3Hmtngmc6e his name in the libro d'oro of our hereditary legislators. Why, if Mr. O'Connell were but simultaneously called up by the title of Baron Hathcormac, 1 in honour of his victory, the batch would be quite complete. What compensation is it for the injured in- terests, and what consolation to the outraged honour, of the bar, that your amiable lady is to become a peeress ? On the contrary, you have inflicted a fresh stigma on the body of which you are the chief. You have shown to the world that the leading advocate of the day, the King's Attorney- General, will accept a bribe ! Nay ! start not. Eor the honour of human nature, for the honour of your high profession, of which I am the friend, I will believe that in the moment of overwhelming mortification you did not thus estimate that glittering solace, but such, believe me, the English nation will ever esteem the coronet of Strath-Eden. Was the grisly spectre of Sir William Home 2 1 A small market town and polling place in the county of Cork. 2 Attorney-General in Earl Grey's Ministry, 1832. Under date February 26, 1835, Greville writes: ' Home, the late Attorney-General, seems likely to fall between two stools. When Brougham proposed to him to take a puisne judgeship he said he had been an equity lawyer all his life, and had no mind to enter on a course of common law for which he was not qualified, and proposed that he should not go the circuits and <5ir goI)n fmnpBcII 33 the blooming Eve that tempted you to pluck this fatal fruit ? Was it the conviction that a rebel- lious Attorney- General misjht be shelved that daunted the hereditary courage of the Campbell ? What, could you condescend to be treated by the Minister like a fro ward child — the parental Viscount shaking in one hand a rod, and in the other waving a toy ? I have long been of opinion, that, among other perfected and projected mischief, there has been on the part of the Whigs a systematic attempt to corrupt the English bar. I shall avail myself of another and early opportunity to discuss this important subject. At present I will only observe, that whether they do or do not obtain their result, your conduct has anticipated the consequence of their machinations; the Whigs may corrupt the bar of England, but you, sir, have degraded it. January 19, 183G. be Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords. Brougham told him there would be no difficulty, and then told Lord Grey he had settled it with Home, but did not tell him what Home required. The general movement was made, and when Home desired to see Lord Grey he told him that his terms could not be complied with, so he became a victim to the trickery and shuffling of the Chancellor who wanted to get him out and did not care how.' D LETTEE TO MR. THOMAS ATTWOOD, M.P. January 21, 1836 d2 LETTER III. [Thomas Attwood— the ' King Tom ' of Cobbett's 'Political Register '— was one of the most violent agitators of the pre-Reform era and the real inventor of the Caucus. His father, Matthias Attwood, was an ironmaster of Hales Owen, who realised a considerable fortune by obtaining a monopoly of Swedish iron. With this capital he associated himself with Mr. Richard Spooner the elder, and founded the once famous banking house of Spooner, Attwood & Co., with head-quarters in Birmingham and a branch in Grace- church Street, London. Thomas Attwood presided over the Birmingham business, and distinguished him- self from a very early period by the vehemence of his views on financial and political subjects. When the famous Orders in Council during the hostilities with America in 1812 were promulgated, Attwood made him- self conspicuous by the violence with which he de- nounced them, and when in 1817 specie payments were resumed he was equally loud in his condemnation of that step. In fact, throughout the whole of his life he posed as a currency reformer as well as a Radical politician, and at one period appeared before the world as the author of a couple of forgotten pamphlets on the advantages of a paper currency. His theories found small acceptance, and, stung by the indifference with which they were received, he threw himself with ardour into Radical agitation. During the period between 1820 and the passage of the Whig Reform Bill of 1832 he was exceedingly active, and when in 1829 an 38 ^[)c fetters of "glititnpntcbc unwilling Government had passed the Roman Catholic Eelief Bill (Catholic Emancipation) he founded at once the notorious ' Political Union ' of Birmingham. His power in Birmingham at this time was something enormous. Mr. McCullagh Torrens, in his ' Life of Lord Melbourne,' quotes a letter in which the then ex- Minister speaks of him as 'the most influential man in England,' and Mr. R. K. Dent, in the extraordinarily sumptuous three volumes which commemorate the glories of ' Old and New Birmingham,' states that in the month of July, 1812, his fellow-townsmen presented Mr. Attwood with a silver cup weighing 128 ounces, the cost of which was subscribed in sixpences. From 1812 his popularity had gone on increasing. He had opposed the monopoly of the East India Company, and, if the accounts of his admirers are to be credited, he was the main instrument in breaking it down, and he was for many years an advocate of all those proposals which are associated with the name of Liberalism. Throughout the whole of the Reform agitation he was one of its most conspicuous figures, and shared with ' Orator Hunt ' the very questionable glory of inciting the working classes to rebellion. The ' Political Union for the Protection of Public Rights ' was the outcome of a meeting held in the Royal Hotel at Birmingham at which Attwood pre- sided, supported by Messrs. Scholefield, Muntz, and Shorthouse — the last the father of the author of ' John Inglesant ' — and the spirit in which it was devised may be guessed from a few phrases printed in capital letters in the requisition to the High Bailiff" for a towns- meeting. The requisitionists speak of the ' gross mis- management of public affairs,' the ' general distress which now afflicts the country,' which is only to be remedied by ' an effectual reform in the Commons House of Parliament.' They talk of the further ' re- dress of public wrongs and grievances,' and speak of a ' political union between the lower and middle classes of the people ' as tlie only means by which that end may be attained. The French Eevolution of 1830, which had a much greater share in bringing about the Whig Revolution of 1832 than is commonly believed, 1 was earnestly watched in Birmingham, and at a dinner to celebrate that event at which between 3,000 and 4,000 persons sat down, Attwood made what appears to have been the first amongst many rather foolish speeches on the subject of reform. One sentence will show its character. After the ' Union Hymn ' had been sung Attwood asked his excited audience, ' Where is the one among you who would not follow me to the death in a righteous cause ? ' The answer was given by the whole assembly, ' who rose as one man and shouted, " All ! " ' At a meeting in 1831 Attwood made another bombastic speech, allusion to which will be found in ' Runnymede's ' letter, in which he said, ' If the king required it, they could produce him in this district at his order within a month two armies each of them as numerous and 'brave as that which conquered at Waterloo.' When the Lords threw out the Reform Bill, the * Political Union ' issued a proclamation calling for Political Unions like itself all over the country, and threatening: in no uncertain manner the alternative of civil war. There is, indeed, an affectation of peaceful- ness and moderation, but when after speaking of the horrors of war as 'the last dread alternative of an oppressed nation,' the manifesto goes on to say that the reformers will ' humble the oligarchy to the dust,' there cannot be much doubt of what is meant. That paper bore the signature of Thomas Attwood as chair- man of the Union. At this time also Attwood distinguished himself in other ways. Having already in 1830 proposed in writing the formation of an association the members 1 See Roebuck's History of the Whig Ministry of 1830. vol. ii. p. 3 'it ■<',]. 40 ^[)c ^cffcrs of £Utnngmc6e of which should pledge themselves to pay no taxes if the Government of the day should dare to interfere in the conflict between Belgium and Holland, he next suggested a similar association for the coercion of the Government in the matter of the Reform Bill, and pre- sided at a meeting which was held to vote thanks to Lords Althorp and John Russell, and to pass a reso- lution to ' stop the supplies.' The Reform Bill once passed, Liberals on all sides recognised the share which Attwood had had in its success, and the Cit} r of London, on that ground, presented him with its freedom. In the course of his reply he made a somewhat curious admission : ' I may have given offence,' said he, ' to abler men because I had recourse to measures which trenched on the verge of the law ; but I did not resort to such measures until I saw that the extremity of the country required extreme remedies.' After these ' ex- treme remedies ' — which, by the way, have always been very much to the taste of Birmingham — nothing could be more natural than that Attwood should be one of the first two members for the newly enfranchised borough. He sat in Parliament until 1839, speaking very frequently there and almost as frequently in public meetings outside. It cannot be said that he was altogether successful in his capacity of member. The House of Commons — at all events until within a very recent period — was one of the most keenly critical assem- blies in the world, and one in which the most preten- tious of demagogues speedily found his level. The Rochdale manufacturer who went in as ' the successor to Richard Cobden ' was made chairman of the Com- mittee for the selection of cigars, and has never held any more distinguished place in the House. In like manner Attwood, who demanded the abolition of the House of Lords and posed almost even as a Re- publican, never succeeded in winning the ear of the House. When, as in August 1835, he boasted having just returned from a meeting of ' 10,000 individuals' (men, -women, and children of course) at which it had been observed that k under the present march of education and diffusion of knowledge, the time would soon approach when the country would neither need a House of Lords nor a King,' members simply smiled and no one attempted to answer. And when, as in February 1836, he presented a petition from 20,000 ' individuals ' of Birmingham for the Reform of the House of Lords, and made a somewhat absurd speech on the occasion, the petition was ordered to lie upon the table, after a vigorous protest from 2,000 inhabitant householders 'against the proceedings of this self-constituted body' had been read by Mr. Dugdale, M.P. for North War- wickshire. Attwood's parliamentary career was not prolonged. As the writer of an obituary notice which was published in the ' Annual Register ' for 1856 put the matter, ' when Mr. Attwood had sat for some years in Parliament he began to perceive that the reformed House of Com- mons was not more disposed to accept his currency theories than the unreformed, and he thought also that it had shown a decided inability to grapple with great questions.' He therefore applied for the Chiltern Hundreds in Januaiw, 1840, and subsided into private life. He died on March 6, 1856, at Great Malvern, and in 1859 his fellow-townsmen erected a colossal statue to his memory. When in 1865 the bank of Attwood, Spooner, Marshall, and Co. suspended payment with a deficiency of 340,000/., bringing down in its fall the Penny Bank, in which were invested nearly 10,000L, the property of the poorest class of artisans and of their children, Attwood's statue narrowly escaped destruction, but was spared, apparently because he had been ' the Father of Political Unions.'] 42 ^I)e ^cffcrs of 'gtiutttmncfce To Mr. Thomas Attwood, M.P. Sir, — You may be surprised at this letter being addressed to you ; you may be more sur- prised when I inform you that this address is not occasioned by any conviction of your political importance. I deem you a harmless, and I do not believe you to be an ill-meaning, individual. You are a provincial banker labouring under a financial monomania. But amid the seditious fanfaronnade which your unhappy distemper oc- casions you periodically to vomit forth, there are fragments of good old feelings which show you are not utterly denationalised in spite of being ' the friend of all mankind,' l and contrast with the philanthropic verbiage of your revolutionary rhetoric like the odds and ends of ancient art which occasionally jut forth from the modern rubbish of an edifice in a classic land — symp- toms of better days, and evidences of happier intellect. The reason that I have inscribed this letter to your consideration is, that you are a fair re- presentative of a considerable class of your countrymen — the class who talk j>olitical non- 1 A phrase used by Attwood to describe Mr. Muntz : ' My friend and your friend ; the friend of humanity am' benevolence, the friend of all mankind.' sense ; and it is these with whom, through your medium, I would now communicate. I met recently with an ohservation which rather amused me. It was a distinction drawn in some journal between high nonsense and low nonsense. I thought that distinction was rather happily illustrated at the recent meeting of your Union, which, by-the-hye, differs from its old state as the drivellings of idiotism from the frenzy of insanity. When your chairman, who, like yourself, is 'the friend of all mankind,' called Sir Robert Peel ' an ass,' l I thought that Spartan description might fairly range under the head of low nonsense ; but when you yourself, as if in contemptuous and triumphant rivalry with 1 At the meeting of the Birmingham Political Union on Monday, January 18, 1836, to address the King and petition the House of Commons for a change in the constitution of the House of Lords, which called forth this letter, Attwood said : ' Sir Robert Peel in his Tamworth letter boasted that he was able to carry on the Government, but in a House of Commons of his own choosing he was beaten on the election of Speaker, (i.e. when Sir Charles Sutton was displaced by Mr. Aber- crombie), and then he quarrelled with everybody and every- thing, because that old humbug had been dismissed. What did he do then ] Why, he lost everything, and courted, and flatteredj and greased over as he had been till one could hardly see him, off he went again to Tamworth and acknowledged, like an ass as he was, that he had been completely deceived.' Mr. Muntz, the chairman of the meeting, had about half an hour before distinguished himself by applying the same epithet to Sir Robert Peel. 44 ^I)c ^offers of "gtitnnmne&e his plebeian folly, announced to us that at the sound of your blatant voice 100,000 armed men would instantly rise in Birmingham, it occurred to me that Nat Lee himself could scarcely com- pete with you in your claim to the more patrician privilege of uttering high nonsense. If indeed you produce such marvels, the name of Attwood will be handed down to posterity in heroic emu- lation with that of Cadmus ; he produced armed men by a process almost as simple, but the teeth of the Theban king must yield to the jaw of the Birmingham delegate, though I doubt not the same destiny would await both batches of warriors. 1 But these 100,000 armed men are only the 1 According to Aris's Birmingham Gazette, the meeting at which this speech was made was held in the Town Hall, and ' at this time (noon) the building was abouthalf filled, hut about one o'clock the number began to increase, and for an hour after- wards the hall was two-thirds full.' It was upon this occasion that Attwood asserted that ' within one single week the Union could produce 100,000 fighting men upon Newhall Hill,' and further, that ' if the Tories had their way — if they again re- covered their ascendency — a deluge of blood must and would be shed in England.' Later on in the same speech Attwood called for 5,0001. to send delegates all over England to carry on a campaign for the reform of the House of Lords, adding, that ' he doubted not the influence which the men of Birmingham possessed over their countrymen would command the success of 20,000,000 of people and 20,000,000 of hearts. When the men of Birmingham offered to guide them, these 20,000,000 of brave men would respond to their call.' advanced guard, the imperial guard of Brumma- gem, the heralds of a mightier host. Nay, com- pared with the impending legions, can only count as pioneers, or humble sappers at the best. Twenty millions of men are to annihilate the Tories. By the last census, I believe the adult male population of Great Britain was computed at less than 4,000,000. Whence the subsidiary levies are to be obtained, we may perhaps be informed the next time some brainless Cleon, at the pitch of his voice, bawls forth his rampant folly at the top of Xewhall Hill. Superficial critics have sometimes viewed, in a spirit of narrow-minded scepticism, those traditionary accounts of armed hosts which startle us in the credulous or the glowing page of rude or ancient annals. But what was the Great King on the heights of Salamis or in the straits of Issus, what was Gengis Khan, what Tamerlane, compared with Mr. Thomas Attwood of Birmingham ! The leader of such an army may well be ' the friend of all mankind,' if only to recruit his forces from his extensive connec- tions. The truth is, Xerxes and Darius, and the valiant leaders of the Tartars and the Mongols, were ignorant of the mystical yet expeditious means by which 20,000,000 of men are brought into the field by a modern demagogue, to change 46 ^I)c fetters of ^xtnxt^mebe a constitution or to subvert an empire. When they hoisted their standard, their chieftains rallied round it, bringing to the array all that population of the country who were not required to remain at home to maintain its order or civili- sation. The peasant quitted his plough and the pastor his flock, and the artisan without employ hurried from the pauperism of Babylon or the idleness of Samarcand. But these great leaders with their diminutive forces which astounded the Lilliputian experience of our ancestors, had no conception, with their limited imaginations, of the inexhaustible source whence the ranks of a popular leader may be swollen ; they had no idea of ' The People.' It is ' the people ' that is to supply their great successor with his millions. As in private life, we are accustomed to associate the circle of oar acquaintance with the phrase ' The World,' so in public I have in- variably observed that ' The People ' of the politician is the circle of his interests. The ' people ' of the Whigs are the ten-pounders who vote in their favour. At present the municipal constituencies l are almost considered 1 An allusion to the Municipal Reform Act (5 & 6 Will. IV. cap. 76) which abolished the ancient franchises, and placed local self-government in the hands of the ratepayers. It was the first work of Lord Melbourne's second administration, which came into office April 18, 1835, after the short-lived Govern- itfr. I^omas JUtooofc, W-W- 47 by Lords Melbourne and John Russell as, in some instances, to have afforded legitimate claims of being deemed part and parcel of the nation ; but I very much fear that the course of events will degrade those bodies from any length- ened participation in this ennobling quality. It is quite clear that the electors of Northampton- shire have forfeited all right to be held portion of ■ the people,' since their return of Mr. Maunsell ; * the people of Birmingham are doubt- less those of the inhabitants who huzza the grandiloquence of Mr. Attwood ; and the people of England, perchance, those discerning indivi- duals, who, if he were to make a provincial tour of oratory, might club together in the different towns to give him a dinner. I hardly think ment of Sir Robert Peel — a Government which lasted only from December 10, 1834, to April 8, 1835, and which went out on the question of the Irish Church. The catastrophe was notable inasmuch as it was the first fruits of that alliance between the Irish party and the ' base, bloody, and brutal Whigs ' whom O'Connell had abused so heartily and for so many years. The alliance was brought about at Lichfield House, in St. James's Square, early in the year 1835, and is consequently generally known as the ' Lichfield House compact.' 1 Thomas Philip Maunsell, of Thorpe Malsor, sat for North Northamptonshire from 1835 to 1857. A Conservative country gentleman, not distinguished as an orator, but faith- ful to his party. He was succeeded in the representation of North Northamptonshire by Mr. George Ward H,unt, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer from February to December 1S58. 48 ^c c^eficrs of ^xutnpmcoe that, all together, these quite amount to 20,000,000. Yourself and the school to which you belong 1 are apt to describe the present struggle as one between the Conservatives and the people — these Conservatives consisting merely of 300 or 400 peers, and their retainers. You tell us in the same breath, with admirable consistency, that you possess the name, but not the heart of the King ; that the Court is secretly, and the Peerage openly, opposed to you ; the Church you an- nounce as even beholding you with pious terror. The Universities, and all chartered bodies, come under your ban. The Bar is so hostile, that you have been obliged to put the Great Seal in com- mission for a year, 1 and have finally, and from 1 William IV., after Brougham's progress through Scotland in 1834, and after the famous letter in the Times which de- clared that the fall of the Whigs in that year was the exclusive work of the Queen, absolutely refused to allow him to resume the Chancellorship. There was a personal as well as a political reason for this slight. According to Campbell, Brougham was allowed to retain the Great Seal for some time after his col- leagues had been deprived of the insignia of their offices, in order that he might deliver judgment in the cases which had been argued before him. At the proper moment he was bound by the established etiquette to return the Great Seal into the hands of the Sovereign. Instead of doing so he sent the clavis regni to the King in a bag by the hands of a messenger, ' as a fishmonger,' says Campbell, ' might have sent a salmon for the King's dinner.' When Lord Melbourne formed his second sheer necessity, entrusted it to the custody of an individual l whom by that very tripartite trusteeship you had previously declared unfit for its sole guardianship. The gentlemen of England are against you to a man because of their corn niomypoly; the yeomanry from sheer bigotry; the cultivators of the soil because they are the slaves of the owners, and the peasantry because they are the slaves of the cultivators. The free- men of the towns are against you because they are corrupt ; the inhabitants of rural towns because they are compelled ; and the press is against you because it is not free. It must be confessed that you and your party can give ex- cellent reasons for any chance opposition which you may happen to experience. You are equally felicitous in accounting for the suspicious glance which the fundholder shoots at you ; nor can I sufficiently admire the admirable candour with which the prime organ of your faction has recently confessed that every man who possesses 500/. per annum is necessarily your opjionent. After this, it is superfluous to remark that the merchants, bankers, and ship-owners of administration in 1835, the Great Seal was consequently put into commission, the Commissioners being the Master of the Rolls, the Vice-Chancellor, and Mr. Justice Boeanquet. 1 Pepys, Lord Cuttenbam. E 50 ^c fetters of ^Utmtgnteoe this great commercial and financial country are not to be found in your ranks, and the sneers at our national glory and imperial sway which ever play on the patriotic lips of Whigs, both high and low, only retaliate the undisguised scorn with which their anti-national machinations are viewed by the heroes of Waterloo and the conquerors of Trafalgar. Deduct these elements of a nation, deduct all this power, all this authority, all this skill, and all this courage, all this learning, all this wealth, and all these numbers, and all the proud and noble and national feelings which are their consequence, and what becomes of your ' people ? ' It subsides into an empty phrase, a juggle as pernicious and as ridiculous as your paper currency ! But if you and your friends, c the friends of all mankind,' have, as indeed I believe you have not, the brute force and the numerical superiority of the population of this realm marshalled under your banners, do not delude yourselves into believing for a moment that you are in any degree more entitled from that circumstance to count yourselves the leaders of the English people. A nation is not a mere mass of bipeds with no strength but their animal vigour, and no collective grandeur but that of their numbers. There is required to constitute that great crea- tions a people, some higher endowments and Stfr. Comets lltfwoofc, W-W- 51 some rarer qualities, — honour, and faith, and justice ; a national spirit fostered by national exploits; a solemn creed expounded by a pure and learned priesthood; a jurisprudence which is the aggregate wisdom of ages ; the spirit of chivalry, the inspiration of religion, the supre- macy of law ; free order, and that natural grada- tion of ranks which are but a type and image of the economy of the universe ; a love of home and country, fostered by traditionary manners and consecrated by customs that embalm ances- tral deeds ; learned establishments, the institu- tions of charity, a skill in refined and useful arts, the discipline of fleets and armies ; and above all, a national character, serious and yet free, a charac- ter neither selfish nor conceited, but which is con- scious that as it owes much to its ancestors, so also it will not stand acquitted if it neglect its posterity; — these are some of the incidents and qualities of a great nation like the people of England. Whether these are to be found in ' the people ' who assemble at the meetings of your Union, or whether they may be more successfully sought for among their 20,000,000 of brethren at hand, I leave you, sir, to decide. I shall only observe, that if I be correct in my estimate of the con- stituent elements of the English people, I am persuaded that in spite of all the arts of e 2 52 ^gfje ^etfers of ^jiunnmncoc plundering factions and mercenary demagogues, they will recognise, with a grateful loyalty, the venerable cause of their welfare in the august fabric of their ancient constitution. January 21, 1836. LETTER IV. TO LORD BROUGHAM January 23, 1836 LETTEB IV. [Brougham was at this period at the height of his unpopularity. A few years before the case had been very different. In 1828 he had been a guest at Pans- hanger, and Greville speaks of the extreme pleasure he derived from his society. ' Brougham/ he says, ' is certainly one of the most remarkable men I ever met ; to say nothing of what he is in the world, his almost childish gaiety and animal spirits, his humour mixed with sarcasm, but not ill-natured; his wonderful in- formation and the facility with which he handles every subject, from the most grave and severe to the most trifling, displaying a mind full of varied and extensive information, and a memory which has suffered nothing to escape it ; ' and so forth. Rogers, too, shared in the very general belief in Brougham's extraordinary capa- city. Everybody knows the famous quotation : ' This morning Solon, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Archimedes, Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Chesterfield, and a great many more, went away in one post-chaise.' By 1830 a change had come over the spirit and temper of the Whig leaders with regard to Brougham. He was no longer regarded with complacency, and his ambition was found to be exceedingly inconvenient. When Lord Grey formed his administration in November 1830, the difficulty which first made itself felt was, as Lord Campbell puts it, 'What was to be done with Brougham?' Lord Grey was afraid of him in the Cabinet, knowing his restless eagerness to distinguisli himself, and he dreaded the alternative of leaving him 56 ^fye fetters of ^nnn^mebe out of the new administration, knowing also how dangerous an enemy he might be. A Radical opposi- tion headed by Brougham would ruin any Government of moderate Whigs. Lord Grey suggested that he should be made Attorney-General ; Lord Althorp shook his head but did not oppose the experiment, and Brougham was accordingly sent for. He called on Lord Grey in due course ; the offer was made, but re- jected with every mark of indignation. In conversation with Lord Grey he uttered the portentous threat, that he would support the administration only ' in as far as he conscientiously could ; ' and in the House of Com- mons the same night he let off the angry temper which had been accumulating for some days past. ' It so happened,' says Campbell, ' that this was the very day for which his notice stood on the great question of Parliamentary Reform, and he entered the House evi- dently in a very perturbed state, having resolved to bring it on whatever confusion might arise from such a discussion in the existing distracted state of the Government.' At the request of Lord Althorp he post- poned his motion, saying, after a brief explanation of his repugnance to doing so, ' As no change that may take place in the administration can by any possibility affect me, I beg it to be understood that in putting off the motion I will put it off until the 25th of this month, and no' longer. I will then, and at no more distant period, bring forward the question of Parlia- mentary Reform, whatever may be the then state of affairs, and whosoever may then be His Majesty's Ministers.' He intended, in short, to be Chancellor, and he suc- ceeded in forcing Lord Grey to give him the post in spite of the fact that he was probably the most unfit person who could have been chosen for it, and that he was of all men the least likely to distinguish himself or to add lustre to the administration in the House of Lords. His talents were those of a Nisi Prius advocate. £cvb 7&xoxtc$am 57 Versatile as he was, he knew but little of law and nothing of equity ; and Lord Grey was naturally un- willing that his administration should be weighted with a Chancellor whose conduct might seriously discredit it. Campbell, indeed, tells an absurd story of Lord Grey being c platonically under the fascination of the beautiful Lady Lyndhurst,' and of his being in conse- quence anxious to retain her husband as his Chancellor. The political circumstances of the time are, however, quite sufficient to explain the hesitation about Broug- ham without any such blundering scandal. In the end Brougham's obstinacy prevailed, and by November 20 it was announced authoritatively that he was to take the Great Seal. It was not expected that he would have accepted this piece of promotion. ' I was persuaded,' says Greville, ' that he had made to himself a political existence the like of which no man had ever before pos- sessed, and that to have refused the Great Seal would have appeared more glorious than to take it; intoxi- cated with his Yorkshire honours, swollen with his own importance, and holding in his hands questions which he could employ to thwart, embarrass, and ruin any Ministry, I thought he meant to domineer in the House of Commons, and to gather popularity through- out the country.' Such seems to have been the general opinion outside official circles ; but moderate men re- joiced in his election, fancying that when he had taken his seat upon the woolsack his terrible vivacity might be fairly checked. As Chancellor Brougham was eminently unsuccess- ful. He tried his hand at legislation, but failed most con- spicuously. He attempted by getting Lyndhurst made Lord Chief Baron to muzzle that doughty foe of the Whigs, and succeeded only in putting a new weapon into his hands. He assumed ridiculous airs, and by his egregious vanity contrived to offend the King most seriously. On one occasion when on his way to the Drawing Boom he -was stopped by the guard with the 58 ^I)c fetters of SUtmttnneoe information that the King had given orders ' that no carriage save that of the Speaker should pass through the Horse Guards, but he defiantly called to the coach- man to drive on, and broke through the ranks — an esca- pade which grievously affronted William IV., and brought down upon Brougham a solemn reproof in the House of Lords. When in the midst of the Reform struggle Parliament was suddenly dissolved, he actu- alty, according to Roebuck, usurped the functions of royalty by giving orders not merely for the regalia and royal robes to be prepared, but even for the movements of the troops. If Roebuck's story be true — and there is reason to believe that it is in spite of Campbell's denial of it — no one can be surprised at the King accusing his Chancellor of high treason. In the House of Lords he was not popular. His manner was need- lessly offensive at times, as is occasionally the case with successful lawyers ; his loquacity was intoler- able ; and he sometimes fell into errors of taste, which excused if they did not justify Campbell's more than once repeated insinuation of intemperance. Again, when Lord Melbourne formed his first adminis- tration Brougham assumed the air of a dictator, and though he formally spoke of the Premier as ' my noble friend at the head of the Government,' he habitually addressed him, to Melbourne's intense annoyance and disgust, as ' Lamb ' or ' William ' ; while in the royal presence he is said to have spoken in a haughty and dictatorial manner which added to the offence given by his previous escapades. Greville says in his diary, under date August 29, 1835, ' The House of Lords has become a bear-garden since Brougham has been in it.' In short, he had by the middle of 1834 done quite enough to justify the ' Times ' in saying as it did, that ' For some months past Lord Brougham has been under 1 It is understood that the order was really given by the Duke of Cumberland as ' Gold Stick.' £oxb 38rottg§am 59 a morbid excitement, seldom evinced by those of his Majesty's subjects who are suffered to remain masters of their own actions.' His crowning folly was, however, his tour in Scot- land in the autumn of that year, where the Whigs and the Eadicals united to give him a startling reception, and whence he wrote perpetually to the King by post, enraging the sovereign and proving to all reasonable people, by his egregious vanity and self-complacency, that his reason was endangered. He gave further offence by carrying the Great Seal out of England, the King being decidedly of opinion that no judge could legally leave the country without his permission, and that the Great Seal was absolutely sacred. His return was followed by the dismissal of the Whig Ministry by the King — the last occasion on which the sovereign of these realms has taken so decided and so independent a step. It was certainly done in a very peremptory fashion. William IV. was at Brighton when Lord Spencer died, and Lord Althorp was consequently trans- lated to the Upper House. Lord Melbourne went down to make arrangements, and saw the King on the afternoon of Thursday, November 14. On the following day he had a second audience, when he re- ceived his dismissal and was informed that the Duke of Wellington had been 'sent for.' Melbourne re- turned to London and received a visit from Brougham, who was on his way to Holland House. As a matter of course the Chancellor heard the news, but was compelled to promise silence. To the disgust of the other members of the Ministry the Times of the next morning contained a full and particular account of the whole proceeding, with the addition that ' the Queen had done it all.' That letter sealed Brougham's fate. The King was furious. He had never liked the Whigs and he hated Brougham, whose ' mountebank exhibitions,' as Gre- ville calls his performances in Scotland, had thoroughly 60 ^l)e getters of ^xxnntymebe disgusted hint. "When Peel's short-lived administration went out of office in May 1835, and Lord Melbourne returned to power, Brougham fully expected to be restored to his old place of Chancellor. He was dis- appointed. The King ' wanted never to see his ugly face again,' and the other members of the new Ministry dreaded his intolerable loquacity and his capacity for compromising both himself and his colleagues. He was accordingly passed over. The Great Seal was put in commission, as already mentioned, and Brougham retired to his seat in Westmoreland, where he fretted himself into an attack of mania which, if not absolutely acute, was at least sufficiently so to cause his physicians to keep him under gentle restraint. Unpopularity speedily followed disgrace, and it is not too much to say that at the accession of her present Majesty to the throne, there was no one whose general conduct commanded less respect than that of the ex-Chancellor. His services to that extremely unpleasant personage, 'England's injured Queen,' were forgotten; his ex- ertions in the great and sacred cause of Reform were unheeded ; even his contributions to the ' Penny Maga- zine' and to the publications of the Society for the Confusion of Useless Knowledge were put on one side. All that people remembered was that a Scotch lawyer, not of the first rank — ' a bully and a buffoon,' as Sheil called him — had thrust himself into the office of Lord Chancellor of England and had played sundry fantastic tricks therein, with the effect of alienating from him- self even those whom he might most reasonably have expected to be his staunchest allies. The following passage from Lord Campbell's Autobiography will explain many things. Writing of 1835, he says : ' In an interview I had with Lord Melbourne he said to me : " Brougham is such a man that I cannot act with him." . . . The removal from the Cabinet of Lord Grey, of whom he stood in some awe, probably aggra- vated his rashness, capriciousness, and faithlessness. Sorb 5SroitgI)cmt ei He would lay important Bills on the table of the House of Lords for " measures " of which he had never dropped a hint in the Cabinet ; he would promise places five or six deep which Avere not in his gift ; he would communicate irregularly with the King upon subjects out of his department ; and he was strongly suspected of writing anonymously against some of his colleagues in the newspapers.'] To Lord Brougham. My Lord, — In your elaborate mimicry of Lord Bacon, 1 your most implacable enemies must confess that, at least in one respect, you have rivalled your great original — you have con- trived to get disgraced. In your Treatise on Hydrostatics you may not have completely equalled the fine and profound researches of ' the Lord Chancellor of Nature ; ' your most ardent admirers may hesitate in preferring the Fenny Magazine to the Novum Organon; even the musings of Jenkins and the meditations of Tomkins 2 may not be deemed to come quite as much home ' to men's business and bosoms ' as the immortal Essays ; but no one can deny, 1 This allusion to Lord Bacon is not a mere gratuitous piece of spite. ' He thought Lord Bacon's fate was most to be envied. ... As a judge he boldly and openly said he should excel him ... he had treatises part begun and part conceived in his own mind which would excel the Novum Organum. 1 — Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors, vol. viii. p. 382. 2 See Brougham's Dialogue ' On the Objects, Advantages, and Pleasures of Science.' 62 'glje ^tetters of ^jUtmtmncoe neither friend nor foe, that you are as much shunned as their author — almost as much de- spised. Whether the fame of his philosophical dis- coveries and the celebrity of his literary exploits may console the late Lord Chancellor of William IV. in the solitude of his political annihilation, as they brought balm to the bruised spirit of the late Lord Chancellor of James I. in the loneliness of his sublime degradation, he best can decide who may witness the writhings of your tortured memory and the restless expedients of your irritable imagination. At present, I am informed that your Lordship is occupied in a translation of your Treatise of Natural Theology into German, on the Hanriltonian system. The translation of a work on a subject of which you know little, into a tongue of which you know nothing, seems the climax of those fantastic freaks of ambitious superficiality which our lively neighbours de- scribe by a finer term than quackery. But if the perturbed spirit can only be prevented from preying on itself by literary occupation, let me suggest to you, in preference, the propriety of dedicating the days of your salutary retirement to a production of more general interest, and, if properly treated, of more general utility. A memoir of the late years of your career might afford your fellow-countrymen that of which at Jioxb ^rottgfjcrot 63 present they are much in want — a great moral lesson. In its instructive pages we might per- haps learn how a great empire has nearly been sacrificed to the aggrandizement of a rapacious faction ; how, under the specious garb of patriot- ism, a band of intriguing politicians, connected by no community of purpose or of feeling but the gratification of their own base interests, for- feited all the pledges of their previous careers, or violated all the principles of their practised sys- tems, how, at length, in some degree palled with plundering the nation, according to the usual course, they began plundering themselves ; how the weakest, and probably the least impure, 1 were sacrificed to those who were more bold and bad ; and, finally, how your Lordship especially, would have shrouded yourself in the mantle, while you kicked away the prophet. If your Lordship would have but the courageous candour to proceed in this great production, you might, perhaps, favour us with a graphic narra- tive of that memorable interview between your- self and the present Premier, when, with that easy elocution and unembarrassed manner which characterise the former favourite of Castlereagh, 1 This phrase is apparently intended as in some sort of way a balm to Brougham. His colleagues had jobbed, but he had, in his own phrase, 'kept his hands clean.' The evidence in the Edmunds case will show how far the boast was warranted. 64 Igfye ^offers of ^uxtn^mebc the present First Lord of the Treasury, 1 robbing you of the fruit after you had plundered the orchard, 2 broke to your startled vision and incre- dulous ear the unforeseen circumstance that your Lordship was destined to be the scapegoat of Whiggism, and to be hurried into the wilderness with all the curses of the nation and all the sins of your companions. This animated sketch would form an admirable accompaniment to the still richer picture when you offered your con- gratulatory condolence to Earl Grey on his long meditated retirement from the onerous service of a country as grateful as his colleagues. Your Lordship, who is well informed of what passes in the Cabinet, must have been scarcely less astonished than the public at the late legal arrangements. 3 Every post, till of late, must have brought you from the metropolis intelli- gence which must have filled you with anxiety almost maturing into hope. But the lion was suddenly reported to be sick, and the jackals as suddenly grew bold. The Prime Minister con- sulted Sir Benjamin ; 4 the Serjeant Surgeon 1 Lord Melbourne. 2 An allusion to the intrigue by which Lord Grey was driven from office. 3 i.e. when the Chancellorship was put in commission. The patronage of the Lord Chancellor at this period was, it is worthy of note, enormous and proportionately valuable. 4 Brodie, Serjeant Surgeon to the King. Sorb 5$rougf)cun 65 shook his head, and they passed in trembling precipitation the paltry Rubicon of their spite. When we remember that one voice alone decided votir fate, and that that voice issued from the son of Lord Grey, we seem to be recalled to the days of the Greek drama. Your Lordship, although an universalist, I believe, has not yet tried your hand at a tragedy ; let me recom- mend this fresh illustration of the sublime destiny of the ancients. You have deserved a better fate, but not a degrading one ; though Achilles caused the destruction of Troy, we deplore his ignoble end from the unequal pro- geny of Priam. And is it possible, — are you indeed the man whose scathing voice, but a small lustre gone, passed like the lightning in that great Assembly where Canning grew pale before your terrible denunciation, and where even Peel still remem- bers your awful reply ? Is this indeed the lord of sarcasm, the mighty master of invective ? Is this, indeed, the identical man who took the offer of the Attorney-Generalship, and held it up to the scorn of the assembled Commons of England, and tore it, and trampled upon it, and spat upon it in their sympathising sight, and lived to offer the cold-blooded aristocrat, who had dared to insult genius, the consoling compensation of the Privy Seal ? E go %i)c Setters of ^vitttvtgmeoe For your Lordship has a genius ; good or had, it marks you out from the slaves who crouch to an O'Connell and insult a Brougham. Napoleon marched from Elha. You, too, may have your hundred days. What though they think you are dying — what though your health is quaffed in ironical humpers in the craven secresy of their political orgies — what if, after all, throw- ing Brodie on one side and your Teutonic studies on the other, your spectre appear in the House of Lords on February 4 ! Conceive the confusion ! I can see the unaccustomed robes tremble on the dignified form of the lordly Cottenham, and his spick and span coronet fall from the obstetric brow of the baronial Bicker- steth, 1 Lansdowne taking refuge in philosophical silence, and Melbourne gulping courage in the goblets of Sion ! 2 January 23, 1836. 1 Bickersteth (Henry, Lord Langdale) was the son of a ' general practitioner.' 2 Sion House ; the seat of the Duke of Northumberland. LETTER V. TO SIR ROBERT PEEL January 26, 183G f2 LETTER V. [The letter to Peel was written at the time of his retirement in 1835. The immediate cause of the downfall of the Administration was that disgraceful compact with the disaffected Irishry under the leader- ship of O'Connell, to which Lord Melbourne com- mitted himself in the middle of March 1835. Mr. McCullagh Torrens writes, that on the first Sunday in that month, the Duke of Sussex, uncle to the Queen, entertained all the members of the Whig Cabinet, with the exception of Brougham, who seems to have been somewhat pointedly left out. At that entertainment it was, it appears from another account, remarked that ' parties in this country were pretty equally balanced, and that power was really the possession of some thirty Irish members. The result was the Lichfield House meeting, a fortnight after the Duke's dinner, where it was resolved to merge past differences for the sake of securing an administration founded on the general principles in which all could consistently agree.' In other words, the Whigs, whom the King had turned out of office and who had contrived during the three years which had elapsed since the passage of the Reform Bill to achieve an amount of unpopularity without prece- dent in the annals of any political party, magnanimously consented to forget the ruffianly abuse which O'Connell hud heaped upon them for more than twenty years, in consideration of his giving the support of himself and 70 Igfye Jitters of ^tmtntnne&e his 'tail' to their measures. Melbourne of course denied officially having done anything of the sort in the most formal terms, and indeed it is not to be sup- posed that a Prime Minister would commit himself in any such absurd way. But that the compact was entered into is beyond all question, and the effect was seen in the vote on Lord John Russell's motion to ap- propriate the surplus funds of the Irish Church to the purposes of general education in Ireland, a proposal which would never have been brought forward but for the determination of the Whigs to conciliate the Irish at any cost. On that occasion Peel was left in a minority first of twenty-five and then of twenty-seven, and found that, the fight being over, there was nothing left for him but to surrender. Melbourne returned to office, by no means to the satisfaction of either the King or the nation, and Peel remained in opposition, though at that time lie was, as Lord Beaconsfield has put it elsewhere, the ' only hope ' of a suffering people.] To Sir Robert Peel. Sir, — Before you receive this letter you will, in all probability, have quitted the halls and bowers of Drayton ; those gardens and that library where you have realised the romance of Verulam and where you enjoy 'the lettered leisure ' that Temple loved. Your present pro- gress to the metropolis may not be as pictur- esque as that which you experienced twelve months back, when the confidence of your sovereign and the hopes of your country summoned you from the galleries of the Vati- §ix Robert ^ccl can and the city of the Caesars. 1 It may not be as picturesque, but it is not less proud — it will be more triumphant. You are summoned now, like the Knight of Rhodes in Schiller's heroic ballad, as the only hope of a suffering island. The mighty dragon 2 is again abroad, depopulating our fields, wasting our pleasant places, poisoning our fountains, menacing our civilisation. To-day he gorges on Liverpool, to-morrow he riots at Birmingham-: as he ad- vances nearer the metropolis, terror and disgust proportionately increase. Already we hear his bellow, more awful than hyaenas ; already our atmosphere is tainted with the venomous aspira- tions of his malignant lungs ; yet a little while and his incendiary crest will flame on our horizon, and we shall mark the horrors of his insatiable jaws and the scaly volume of his atrocious tail ! In your chivalry alone is our hope. Clad in the panoply of your splendid talents and your spotless character, we feel assured that you will subdue this unnatural and unnational monster; 1 When William IV. dismissed Lord Melbourne's first administration in July, 1834, Sir Robert Peel was in Italy, and a special messenger bad to be sent out to bring him home, the Duke of Wellington consenting to carry on the Government until his return. « O'Connell. 72 ^l)c tellers of "glunninncoe and that we may yet see sedition, and treason, and rapine, rampant as they may have of late figured, quail before your power and prowess. You are about to renew the combat under the most favourable auspices. When, a year ago, with that devotion to your country which is your great characteristic, scorning all those refined delights of fortune which are your inheritance, and which no one is more capable of appreciating, and resigning all those pure charms of social and domestic life to which no one is naturally more attached, you threw yourself in the breach of the battered and beleaguered citadel of the constitu- tion, you undertook the heroic enterprise with every disadvantage. The national party were as little prepared for the summons of their eminent leader by their sovereign as you yourself could have been when gazing on the frescoes of Michael Angelo. They had little organisation, less system ; their hopes weak, their chieftains scattered ; no communication, no correspondence. Yet they made a gallant rally ; and if their numerical force in the House of Commons were not equal, Sir, to your moral energy, the return of Lord Melbourne, at the best, was but a Pyrrhic triumph ; nor perhaps were your powers ever sufficiently appreciated by your countrymen until you were defeated. Your abandonment of office was worthy of the motives which induced fpir ^tobcrf Igccl 73 you originally to accept power. It was not petty pique ; it was not a miserable sentiment of personal mortification, that led you to decide upon that step. You retained your post until you found you were endangering the King's prerogative, to support which you had alone accepted his Majesty's confidence. What a con- trast does your administration as Prime Minister afford to that of one of your recent predecessors ! No selfish views, no family aggrandisement, no family jobs, no nepotism. It cannot be said that during your administration the public service was surfeited with the incapable offspring of the Premier ; x nor, after having nearly brought about a revolution for power which he has de- graded, and lucre which degraded him, can it be said that you slunk into an undignified retire- ment with a whimpering Jeremiad over ' the pressure from without.' Contrast the serene retirement of Drayton and the repentant solitude of Ilowick ; contrast the statesman, cheered after his factious defeat by the sympathy of a nation, with the coroneted Necker, the worn-out Machiavel, wringing his helpless hands over his 1 The complaint was made somewhat loudly in the Thirties that the whole of the most lucrative and most comfortable posts in the public service were monopolised — as Sir William Harcourt would say — by ' scions ' of the three houses of Grey, Russell, and Elliott. Another family has since been added to the list — that of the Barings. 74 ^c fetters of ^tunngmeoe hearth in remorseful despair and looking up with a sigh at his scowling ancestors ! But affairs are in a very different position now from what they were in November 1835. You have an addition to the scutcheon of your fame in the emblazoned memory of your brief but masterly premiership : they cannot taunt you now with your vague promises of ameliora- tion : you can appeal to the deeds of your Cabinet, and the plans which the applause of a nation sanctioned, and the execution of which the in- trigues of a faction alone postponed. Never, too, since the peace of Paris, has the great national party of this realm been so united as at the pre- sent moment. It is no exaggeration to say, that among its leaders not the slightest difference of opinion exists upon any portion of their intended policy. Pitt himself, in the plenitude of his po wer, never enjoyed more cordial confidence than that which is now extended to you by every alleged section of the Conservative ranks ; all private opinions, all particular theories, have merged in the resolute determination to maintain the English constitution in spite of Irish rebels, and to support, without cavil and criticism, its eminent champion in that great course of con- duct which you have expounded to them. That this admirable concord, a just subject of congratulation to the suffering people of this §ix globed Ifeel 75 realm, has been in some degree the result of salutary conferences and frank explanations, I pretend not to deny; nor do I wish to conceal a circumstance in which I rejoice, that at no period have you displayed talents more calculated for the successful conduct of a great party than at the present ; but, above all, this admirable concord is to be attributed to the reason, that, however individuals of the Conservative party may have occasionally differed as to the means, they have at all times invariably agreed as to the end of their system, and that end is the glory of the empire and the prosperity of the people. But it is not only among the leaders in the two Houses of Parliament that this spirit of union flourishes ; it pervades the country. England has at length been completely organ- ised ; the battle which you told us must be fought in the registry courts has been fought, and in spite of the fanfaronnade of the enemy, we know it has been won. Every parliamentary election that has of late occurred, in country or in town, has proved the disciplined power of the national party. It is not that they have merely exceeded their opponents on the poll, and often by vast majorities ; but they have hastened to that poll with an enthusiasm which shows that they are animated with a very different spirit 76 ^f)c tellers of "gtumtgme&c to that which, impels their shamefaced rivals. Contrast these important triumphs with the guerilla warfare of the Government party on town-clerks and aldermen, and be convinced how important have been our efforts in the registry courts, by their feeble yet feverish attempts at what they style Preform Associa- tions. If we contrast also this faithful picture of the state and spirit of the party of which you are the leader with the situation of your oppo- nents, the difference will be striking. Between the Opposition and the Government party there is this difference ; that, however certain sections of the Opposition may occasionally have differed as to measures, their end has always been the same ; whereas the several sections of the Minis- terial party, while for obvious reasons they agree as to measures, avowedly adopt them because they tend to different ends. The oligarchical Whigs, the English Radicals, the Irish Repealers — the patrons of rich livings, the enemies of Church and State, hereditary magistrates, pro- fessors of county reform — the sons of the nobles, the enemies of the peerage — the landed pro- prietors, the advocates of free corn, can only be united in a perverted sense. Their union then is this : to a certain point they all wish to destroy ; but the Whigs only wish to destroy the Tories, gtr Robert l?eel the Radicals the constitution, and the Repealers the empire. The seeds of constant jealousy and inevitable separation are here then prodigally sown. What are to be the tactics of this hetero- geneous band time will soon develop. Dark rumours are about which intimate conduct too infamous, some would fain think, even for the Whigs. But as for myself, history and personal observation have long convinced me that there is no public crime of which the Whigs are not capable, and no public shame which for a sufficient consideration their oligarchical nerves would not endure. But whether they are going to betray their anti -national adherents, or onlv to bribe them, do you, Sir, proceed in your great course, free and undaunted. At the head of the most powerful and the most united Opposition that ever mustered on the benches opposite a trembling Minister, conscious that by returning you to your constituents he can only increase and consolidate your strength, what have you to apprehend ? We look to you, therefore, with hope and with confidence. You have a noble duty to fulfil — let it be nobly done. You have a great task to execute — achieve it with a great spirit. Rescue your sovereign from an un- constitutional thraldom, rescue an august Senate which has already fought the battle of the 78 %ty fetters of ^jtunnpmcoe people, rescue our National Church, which our opponents hate, our venerahle constitution at which they scoff ; but above all rescue that mighty body of which all these great classes and institutions are but some of the constituent and essential parts — rescue the nation. January 26, 1836. LETTER VI. TO THE CHANCELLOK OF THE EXCHEQUER January 28, 1836 LETTER VI. [Mr. Spring Eice (afterwards Lord Monteagle) was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1836, and was, perhaps, one of the most utterly incompetent persons who ever filled that responsible office. His abilities were of the kind known as * respectable ' — that is to say, he took an ordinary degree at Cambridge and afterwards went to the Bar, where, however, he never practised. He wrote 4 F.R.S.' and 'F.G.S.' after his name, but his attain- ments in geography and science were somewhat limited. He obtained office under the Whigs and held on to its emoluments with prehensile tenacity until the day of his death. Having entered Parliament in 1820, he sat for his native city of Limerick until 1832, when he obtained a seat for the borough of Cambridge, which he retained until his elevation to the peerage. He began as Under Secretary at the Home Office in 1827, in the administration of Mr. Canning ; he held afterwards the post of Secretary of the Treasury from 1830 to 1834, in which latter year he was for a short time Colonial Secretary. When Lord Melbourne scrambled back into office in 1835, Mr. Spring Rice was promoted to the Ex- chequer and held the Chancellorship until 1839. In that year he recognised the fact of his incompetency, which had been patent to the rest of the world ever since his appointment, and having succeeded in getting the finances of the country into an all but inextricable confusion, he obtained from his party leaders the post of Controller of the Exchequer — a patent office value 2,000/. per annum — and a seat in the House of Lords as Baron Monteagle. G 'a' 82 ^[)c goffers of ^Utnngmeoc During his public life there was probably no man who excited more derision and contempt than Mr. Spring Rice. He was a dismally bad speaker, but that fact did not save the House from constant inflictions of his oratory. He was accused of perpetrating one or two flagrant jobs in the exercise of his office, and though the charge was indignantly denied it was never quite satisfactorily disproved. The charge of meddlesome- ness was frequently brought against him, and he was recognised as one of those ' uncrowned kings ' whom Ireland produces with so much prodigality. As Mr. Hayward puts the matter, Mr. Spring Rice was not merely member for Limerick — he was ' member for all Ireland.' In that capacity he was naturally the friend and associate of O'Connell, and to that fact ma} r undoubtedly be attributed much of the unpopularity of which Mr. Spring Rice was the victim about the time of the publication of this letter. His personal appear- ance was assuredly not in his favour. In the obituary notice which appeared in the 'Times' in 1856, it is remarked that ' He was undersized of stature ... a most flagrant offence in the eyes of all Cabinets, and "H.B." (Doyle, the father of 'Punch's' Richard Doyle) made much of it. Dr. Chalmers had just then come to London to deliver addresses, and in one of his addresses he announced with all the emphasis which characterised his oratory, that the then age was an age of little men, or as he was supposed to pronounce it, " leetle " men. " H.B." seized upon the idea, and at once exhibited a specimen of the " leetle " men who governed the nation, Mr. Spring Rice being prominent amongst them. Sometimes, however, he got praise for his smallness, as when in combat with O'Connell, when O'Connell had turned against the Whigs, he fought and beat off the great Irish giant — on which occasion his merits were displayed to the eyes of the world in a picture of little David conquering Goliath.' Both cari- catures, the first especially, would probably find favour ^[)c (£()cutccttcn- of ff)c Qxcfycqixcx §3 in the eyes of King William IV., when in the latter months of his life he made those solitary pilgrimages up St. James's Street to stare in the shop-windows, which so greatly alarmed his household. When Mr. Spring Rice became Lord Monteagle he retired into private life, for which he was certainly better fitted than for the cares of a great office of the State. He made one effort to emerge from obscurity by attacking Mr. Gladstone's Budget of 1860. The attempt was a failure, though, as Mr. Hayward re- marks, ' Mr. Gladstone and his friends naturally spoke with contempt of an attack upon the Budget led by a Whig financier who had been laughed out of the Exchequer ; but this did not necessarily invalidate the criticism of Lord Monteagle.' With that effort Spring Rice passed out of the public mind, and during the last few years of his life his name was scarcely heard.] To the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sir, — I really think that your celebrated compatriot, Daniel O'Rourke, 1 when, soaring on the back of an eagle, he entered into a conversa- tion with the man in the moon, could scarcely be more amazed than Mr. Spring Rice must be when he finds himself, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, holding a conference with the First Lord of the Treasury. Your colleagues, who, to do them justice, are perpetually apologising for your rapid promotion, account for your rockct- 1 See the ludicrous story in Crofton Croker's Fairy Legend 's and Traditions of the South of Ireland, edition 1859, pp. 134- 144. G 2 84 %fye potters of ^jtmtnpmcfce like rise by the unanswerable reason of your being * a man of business ! ' I doubt not this is a capital recommendation to those who are not men of business ; and indeed, shrewd without being sagacious, bustling without method, loqua- cious without eloquence, ever prompt though always superficial, and ever active though always blundering, you are exactly the sort of fussy busy-body who would impose upon and render himself indispensable to indolent and ill-informed men of strong ambition and weak minds. Cum- berland, 1 who, in spite of the courtly compliments of his polished Memoirs, could be racy and significant enough in his conversation, once- characterised in my presence a countryman of yours as ' a talking potato.' The race of talking potatoes is not extinct. Your recent harangue at Cambridge was quite worthy of your reputation, and of those to whom it was addressed. 2 Full of popular common-places and ministerial propriety, alike 1 Richard Cumberland, author of the West Indian, and the Sir Fretful Plagiary of Sheridan's Critic. 2 The occasion of this letter was a speech made by Mr. Spring Rice at Cambridge, at a dinner to celebrate the return of Mr. Thomas Hovell, the first Mayor of Cambridge under the Municipal Reform Act, the chief effect of which, as far as Cambridge itself was concerned, was, in Mr. Spring Rice's own words, ' to establish a Liberal domination in the place of a Tory domination.' ^fje g^anccllor of tf)c @*tf)cqttcr 85 the devoted delegate of 'the people' and the trusty servant of the Crown, glorying in your pledges, but reminding your audience that they were voluntary, chuckling in your 'political triumph,' l but impressing on your friends that their 'new power' must not be used for party purposes, I can see you with Irish humour winking your eye on one side of your face as you hazard a sneer at ' the Lords,' and eulogising with solemn hypocrisy with the other half of your countenance our 'blessed constitution.' How choice was the style in which you pro- pounded the future measures of the Cabinet ! What heartfelt ejaculations of ' Good God, sir ! ' mingled with rare jargon about 'hoping and trusting ! ' You even ventured upon a tawdry simile, borrowed for the occasion from Mr. Sheil, 2 who, compared with his bolder and more lawless colleague, always reminds me of the fustian lieutenant, Jack Bunce, in Sir Walter's tale of the Pirate, contrasted with his master, the bloody buccaneer, Captain Cleveland. You commenced your address with a due recollection of the advice of the great Athenian 1 The ' triumph ' referred to, on which Mr. Spring Rice laid great stress, was the passage of the Municipal Corporations Act. 2 Richard Lalor Sheil, a prominent advocate of Catholic emancipation, and a Whig placeman from 1839 to his death at Florence, where he held the office of British Minister, in 1851. 86 ^I)c goffers of ^timnpmcoc orator, for your action was quite striking*. You clasped the horny hand of the astonished Mayor, and, full of your punch-howl orgies, aptly alluded to your ' elevated feelings.' 1 As for the exquisite raillery in which your graceful fancy indulged about Tory port and Whig sherry, you might perhaps have recollected that if ' old Tory port affects to be a new mixture, is ashamed of its colours, and calls itself Conservative,' that the Whig sherry has disappeared altogether, and that its place has been deleteriously supplied by Irish whisky from an illicit still, and English Blue Ruin. Your profound metaphysics, how- ever, may amply compensate for this infelicitous flash of jocularity. A Senator, and a Minister, and a Cabinet Minister, who gravely informs us that ' the political history of our times has shown us that there is something in human motive that pervades and extends itself to human action,' must have an eye, I suspect, to the representation of the University. This is, indeed, 'a learned Theban.' That human motives have some slight connection with human conduct, is a principle 1 See the speech : ' I grasp that hand with more and more elevated feelings when I view in an old and valued friend the first fruits of the Municipal Reform Bill.' Mr. Hovell, the first Mayor of Cambridge under the Municipal Reform Act, had proposed Mr. Spring Rice at the first general election after the Reform Bill. ^l)c @f)cmceIlor of ff)c <$xcfy>qucx 87 which will, no doubt, figure as an era in meta- physical discovery. The continental imputations of our shallowness in psychological investigation must certainly now he removed for ever. Neither Kant nor Helvetius can enter the arena with our rare Chancellor of the Exchequer. The fall of an apple was sufficient to reveal the secret of celestial mechanics to the musing eve of Newton, but Mr. Spring Rice for his more abstruse reve- lations requires a revolution or a Reform Bill. It is ' the political history of our times ' that has proved the connection between motives and actions. The Chancellor of the Exchequer must have arrived at this discovery by the re- collection of the very dignified and honourable conduct to which the motives of power and place have recently impelled himself and nis friends. I cannot help fancying that this display of yours at Cambridge may hereafter be adduced as irre- futable evidence that there is at least one portion of the Irish Protestant population which has not received 'adequate instruction.' 1 It seems that you and your Katerfelto crew are going to introduce some very wonderful measures to the notice of the impending Parlia- ment. And, first of all, you are about to ' remedy 1 The word 'adequate' was used with some superfluity in Mr. Spring Rice's speech. 88 ^fye fetters of ^unnvmebe the still existing grievances to which the great dissenting bodies are subject.' ' Good God ! sir/ as you would say, are you driven to this ? The still existing grievances of the Dissenters ! Do you and your beggarly Cabinet yet live upon these sores ? Dissenting grievances are like Stilton cheeses and Damascus sabres, never found in the places themselves, though there is always some bustling huckster or other who will insure you a supply. ' The still existing grievances of the Dissenters,' if they exist at all, exist only because, after four years of incapacity, you and your clumsy coadjutors could not contrive to remove and remedy what Sir Robert Peel could have achieved, but for your faction, in four days. Then we are to proceed in ' our great work of the reform of the Courts of Equity.' I 'hope and trust ' not. What ! after creating the Court of Review, the laughing-stock of the profession ; after having at length succeeded in obtaining a second-rate Lord Chancellor * at the expense of four coronets, whose services might have been secured without the waste of one ; after having caused more delay, more expense, more mortifi- cation and ruin in eight months of reform than the annals of the Court can offer in a similar 1 Lord Cottenham. ^gf)c gljanccllor of if)c §xcl)cqucv s;> period in the worst days of its management — still must you amend ! Spare us, good sir ; be content with your last achievements of law reform ; be content with having, by your corpo- ration magistrates, made for the first time in England since the days of Charles II., the ad- ministration of justice a matter of party. Will not even this satisfy the Whig lechery for mis- chief ? Then, ' Ireland must be tranquillised.' So I think. Feed the poor, hang the agitators. That will do it. But that's not your way. It is the destruction of the English and Protestant interest that is the Whig specific for Irish tranquillity. And do you really flatter yourself, because an eccentric course of circumstances has metamor- phosed an Irish adventurer 1 into the Chancellor of the English Exchequer, that the spirited people of this island will allow you to proceed with impunity in your projected machinations ? Rest assured, sir, your career draws rapidly to a close. Providence, that for our sins and the arrogance of our flush prosperity has visited this once great and glorious empire with five years of Whig government, is not implacable. Our God is a God of mercy as well as justice. We may have erred, but we have been chastened. And 1 Spring Rice himself. 90 Qfyc fetters of jHttmttnncoe Athens, when ruled by a Disdar Aga, who was the deputy of the chief of the eunuchs at Con- stantinople, was not so contemptible as England governed by a Limerick lawyer — the deputy of an Irish rebel ! Prepare, then, for your speedy and merited dismissal. It is amusing to fancy what may be the resources of your Cabinet in their permanent retirement. The First Lord of the Treasury, in all probability, will betake himself to Brocket, and compose an epilogue for the drama just closed. Your Lord Chancellor may retire to his native village, like a returned cheese. Lord John, perhaps, will take down his dusty lyre, and console us for having starved Coleridge by pouring forth a monody to his memory. As for the polished Palmerston and the pious Grant, and the other trading statesmen of easy virtue — for them it would be advisable, I think, at once to erect a political Magdalen Hospital. Solitude and spare diet, and some salutary treatises of the English constitution, may, after a considerable interval, capacitate them for re-entering public life, and even filling with an approximation to obscure respectability some of the lower offices of the State. But, sir, for yourself, with your ' business-like talents,' which must not be hid under a bushel, it appears to me that it would be both the wisest and the kindest course to <£()c (£l)ctncol(or of tljc (gxcfyeqxtcx m entrust to vour charge and instruction a class of beings who, in their accomplishments and inde- fatigableness, alike in their physical and moral qualities, not a little resemble you — the Indus- trious Fleas. January 28, 18:>6. LETTEB VII TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL January 30, 1836 LETTER VII. [The line of action adopted by Lord John Eussell throughout the intrigue which ended in the retirement of Lord Grey from the Eeform Ministry was very gene- rally condemned. He occupied in the administration of Earl Grey the position of Paymaster of the Forces, notoriously rather because of his staunchness to the principles of Liberalism than on account of any af- fection entertained for him by his chief. The latter did not, indeed, conceal his sentiments in society. Eussell retaliated in characteristic fashion by asserting a species of independence which no Minister in the position of Lord Grey could tolerate without a serious loss of dignity and self-respect. Dissensions conse- quently broke out in the Ministry, and when the Irish Church Establishment was attacked in 1834, Lord John Eussell made a speech on the Appropriation Bill which drew from Sheil the remark that ' Johnny had upset the coach.' This was on May 6 ; and then came the memor- able split when the Duke of Eichmond, Postmaster- General, Lord Eipon, Privy Seal, Mr. Stanley, Cabinet Secretary, and Sir James Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty, seceded. They were followed in their re- spective offices by the Marquis of Conyngham, the Earl of Carlisle, Lord Auckland, and Mr. Spring Eice. The secret of the whole business was as usual an Irish intrigue. The Catholics spared no effort to secure a provision for their clergy out of the funds of the Irish Church. Sheil was put up to ask the question which drew Lord John so effectively, and afterwards took 96 ^ije fetters of ^jtitmtpme&e great credit to himself for having, as he said, ' sown the seeds of salutary discord.' The strife was ended by the resignation of Lord Althorp, which in its turn was succeeded by that of Lord Grey. Lord Melbourne's feeble first administration, which came to an end through the direct action of the King in the following November, succeeded. He returned to office in April 1835, with Lord John Russell as Home Secretary. ' Runnymede's ' letter is a personal attack, based in the main upon the intrigues of July 1 834. Lord Beaconsfield's aversion for Lord John Russell was in the early part of his life somewhat pronounced ; nor is the fact a matter for surprise, seeing that he regarded him as the type and essence of Whiggism, for the principles of which he always entertained the greatest antagonism. His feeling towards the noble Lord may be best appreciated from a sentence or two from a speech delivered ia 1840, on Sir John Yarde Buller's motion of want of confidence in the Melbourne Government. ' The time would come,' he said on that occasion, ' when the Chartists would discover that in a country so aristocratic as England, even treason to be successful must be patrician. They would discover that great truth, and when they found some desperate noble to lead them, they might, perhaps, achieve greater results. When Wat Tyler failed, Henry Bolingbroke changed a dynasty ; and although Jack Straw was hanged, a Lord John Straw might become a Secretary of State.' Time modified the severity of these judgments. Earl Russell died during the ad- ministration of Lord Beacon sfield (May 28, 1878). Lord Beaconsfield did not ' miss his train,' as happened to another great statesman on a somewhat similar oc- casion, but promptly offered a public funeral in West- minster Abbey, and on the first available opportunity paid due tribute to the ' eminent career ' of the noble Earl in the only fitting place — the House of Lords.] JlOXb §Ol)U ^USSCU 97 To Lord John Russell. My Lord, — Your name will descend to pos- terity — you have burnt your Ephesian temple. But great deeds are not always achieved by great men. Your character is a curious one ; events have proved that it has been imperfectly compre- hended, even by your own party. Long and, for a period, intimate opportunities of observing you will enable me, if I mistake not, to enter into its just analysis. You were born with a strong ambition and a feeble intellect. It is an union not uncommon, and in the majority of cases only tends to convert an aspiring youth into a querulous and discon- tented manhood. But under some circumstances — when combined, for instance, with great station, and consequent opportunities of action — it is an union which often leads to the development of a peculiar talent — the talent of political mischief. "When you returned from Spain, the solitary life of travel and the inspiration of a romantic country acting upon your ambition, had per- suaded you that you were a great poet; your intellect, in consequence, produced the feeblest tragedy in our language. The reception of ' Don Carlos ' only convinced your ambition that your imaginative powers had been improperly H 93 ^()c fetters of llumttnncoc directed. Your ambition sought from prose-fic- tion the fame which had been denied to your lyre ; and your intellect in consequence produced the feeblest romance in our literature. 1 Not deterred by the unhappy catastrophe of the fair maid of Arrouca, your ambitions ought consolation in the notoriety of political literature, and your intellect in due time produced the feeblest political essay on record. 2 Your defence of close boroughs, however, made this volume somewhat popular with the Whigs, and flushed with the compli- ments of Holland House, where hitherto you had been treated with more affection than respect, vour ambition resolved on rivalling the fame of Hume and Gibbon. Your Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe, published with pompous parade in successive quarto volumes, retailed in frigid sentences a feeble compilation from the gossip of those pocket tomes of small talk which abound in French literature. Busied with the tattle of valets and waiting maids, you accident- ally omitted in your Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe all notice of its most vast and most rising empire. This luckless production closed your literary career ; you flung down your futile pen 1 The Nun of Arrouca. A Tale by Lord John Russell. London, 1822, 12mo. 2 The Causes of the French Revolution. By Lord John Russell. London, 1832, 8vo. £or6 §of)tt ^Utssett on o" in incapable despair ; and your feeble intellect having failed in literature, your strong ambition took refuge in politics. You had entered the House of Commons with every adventitious advantage — an illustrious birth, and the support of an ancient and haughty party. I was one of the audience who assisted at your first appearance, and I remember the cheer- ing attention that was extended to you. Cold, inanimate, with a weak voice and a mincing manner, the failure of your intellect was com- plete; but your ambition wrestled for a time with the indifference of your opponents and the ill-concealed contempt of your friends. Having, then, failed alike in both these careers which in this still free country are open to genius, you subsided for some years into a state of listless moroseuess which was even pitiable. Hitherto your political opinions had been mild and moderate, and, if partial, at least constitu- tional ; but, as is ever the case with persons of your temperament, despairing of yourself, you began to despair of your country. This was the period when among your intimates you talked of retiring from that public life in which you had not succeeded in making yourself public, when you paced, like a feeble Catiline, the avenues of Holland House ; and when the most brilliant H 2 ioo ^gf)e ^etfers of gtmtitgmeoe poet 1 of the day, flattered by your friendship, addressed you a remonstrance in which your pique figured as patriotism and your ambition was elevated into genius. Your friends, — I speak of the circle in which you lived 2 — superficial judges of human character as well as of everything else, always treated you with a species of contempt, which doubtless ori- ginated in their remembrance of your failure and their conviction of your feebleness. Lord Grey, only five years ago, would not even con- descend to offer you a seat in the Cabinet, and affected to state that, in according you a respect- able office, he had been as much influenced by the state of your finances as of your capacity. Virtual Prime Minister of England at this moment, you have repaid Lord Grey for his flattering estimate and his friendly services, and have afforded him, in your present career, some curious meditations for his uneasy solitude, where he wanders, like the dethroned Caliph in the halls of Eblis, with his quivering hand pressed upon his aching heart. A finer observer of human nature than that forlorn statesman might have recognised at this crisis in a noble with an historic name and no fortune, a vast ambition and a balked career, 1 Mcore, Poetical Works, Ed. 1850, p. 458. 2 i.e. the Holland House coterie. JHoxb Qofyn ^IudscII 101 and soured, not to say malignant, from dis- appointment, some prime materials for the leader of a revolutionary faction. Those mate- rials have worked well. You have alreadv hanished your great leader ; you have struck down the solemn idol which you yourself assisted in setting up for the worship of a deluded people ; you have exiled from the Cabinet, by your dark and dishonourable intrigues, every man of talent who could have held you in check ; and, placing in the seat of nominal leadership an indolent epicurean, 1 you rule this country by a coalition with an Irish rebel, 2 and with a council of colleagues in which you have united the most inefficient members of your own party with the Palmerstons and Grants, the Swiss statesmen, the condottieri of the political world, the ' British legion ' of public life. A miniature Mokanna,^vou are now exhaling upon the constitution of your country which you once eulogised, and its great fortunes of which you once were proud, all that long-hoarded 1 Melbourne. Mr. Hay ward's Essay in the Qu arterlyBcv iew of January 1878 proves how fully this character was deserved. 2 O'Connell. 3 S?e Moore's Veiled Prophet of Khorassan. The name was given by Hakim ben Haschem from a silver gauze veil worn by him to 'dim the lustre of his facf,' or rather to hide its ugliness. The story is told by D'Herbelot in the BibliotJteque Orientale. 102 ^[)c goffers of "gtumtgmeoe' venom and all those distempered humours that have for years accumulated in your petty heart and tainted the current of your mortified life — your aim is to reduce everything to your own mean level — to degrade everything to your malignant standard. Partially you have suc- ceeded. You have revenged yourself upon the House of Lords, the only obstacle to your degenerating schemes, by denouncing with a frigid conceit worthy of ' Don Carlos,' its solemn suffrage as ' the whisper of a faction,' and hallooing on, in a flimsy treble, your Scotch and Irish desperadoes to assail its august in- dependence. You have revenged yourself upon the sovereign who recoiled from your touch, by kissing, in spite of his royal soul, his outraged hand. Notwithstanding your base powers and your father's fagot votes, the gentlemen of Eng- land inflicted upon you an indelible brand, and expelled you from your own county ; x and you have revenged yourself upon their indignant pa- triotism by depriving them of their noblest and most useful privileges, and making, for the first time since the reign of Charles II., the admini- stration of justice the business of faction. In all your conduct it is not difficult to detect the 1 Lord John Russell sat for South Devon in the first re- formed Parliament, but being defeated there at the next election was compelled to take refuge at Stroud. workings of a mean and long-mortified spirit suddenly invested with power — the struggles of a strong ambition attempting, by a wanton exer- cise of authority, to revenge the disgrace of a feeble intellect. But, my Lord, rest assured that yours is a mind which, if it succeeded in originating, is not destined to direct, a revolution. Whatever may be the issue of the great struggle now carry- ing on in this country, whether we may be per- mitted to be again great, glorious, and free, or whether we be doomed to sink beneath the ignoble tyranny which your machinations are preparing for us, your part in the mighty drama must soon close. To suppose that, with all your efforts and all your desperation, to suppose that, with all the struggles of your ambition to supply the deficiency of your intellect, your Lordship, in those heroic hours when empires are destroyed or saved, is fated to be anything else than an in- strument, is to suppose that which contradicts all the records of history and all our experience of human nature. I think it is Macrobius who tells a story of a young Greek, who, having heard much of the wealth and wisdom of Egypt, determined on visiting that celebrated land. When "he beheld the pyramids of Memphis and the gates of Thebes, he exclaimed, ' wonderful men ! what 104 ^f)c goffers of 'gtitmtpme&e must be your gods ! ' Full of the memory of the glorious divinities of his own poetic land, the blooming Apollo and the bright Diana, the awful beauty of the Olympian Jove and the sublime grace of the blue-eyed Athena, he entered the temples of the Pharaohs. But what was his mingled astonishment and disgust when he found a nation prostrate before the most contemptible and the most odious of created beings ! The gods of Egypt are the ministers of England. I can picture to myself an intelligent foreigner, attracted by the fame of our country, and visiting it for the first time. I can picture to myself his admiration when he beholds our great public works ; our roads, our docks, our canals ; our unrivalled manufactories, our matchless agriculture. That admiration would not be diminished when he learnt that we were free ; when he became acquainted with our social comfort and our still equal laws. ' ! wonder- ful men,' he would exclaim, ' what must be your governors !' But conceive him now, entered into our political temple ; conceive Iris appalled astonishment as he gazes on the ox-like form of the Lansdowne Apis. On one side he beholds an altar raised to an ape, on the other incense is burned before a cat-like colleague. Here placed in the shapes of Palmerston and Grant, the Jiotb §oI;n ^tusseU 105 worship of two sleek and long-tailed rats ; and then learns, with amazement, that the Lord Chan- cellor of this great land is an onion or a cheese. Towering above all, and resting on a lurid shrine bedewed with blood and encircled with flame, with distended jaws and colossal tail, is the grim figure of the O'Connell crocodile. But, my Lord, how thunderstruck must be our visitor when he is told to recognise a Secretary of State in an in- finitely small scarabseus ; — yes, my Lord, when he learns that you are the leader of the English House of Commons, our traveller may begin to comprehend how the Egyptians worshipped — An Insect. January 30, 1836. LETTER VIII TO THE PEOPLE February 2 1S;;G LETTER VIII. To The People. This is the first direct address that has ever been made to the real people of England. Eor the last few years, a gang of scribblers, in the pay of a desperate faction, have cloaked every incendiary appeal that they have vomited forth to any section of your numbers, however slight, or however opposed to the honour and happiness of the nation, by elevating the object of their solicitude into that imposing aggregate, the people. Thus have they played, for their ulterior purposes, dissenting sects against the National Church, manufacturing towns against agricultural districts, the House of Commons against the House of Lords, new burgesses against ancient freemen, and finally, the Papists against the Protestants. With scarcely an exception, you may invariably observe, that in advocating the cause of ' the people ' these writers have ever stimulated the anti-national passions of the minority. Bur, in addressing no ^fye goffers of "gluttnpntc^c you now, I address myself in very truth to the English people — to all orders and conditions of men that form that vast society, from the merchant to the mechanic, and from the peer to the peasant. You are still a great people. You are still in the possession and enjoyment of the great results of civilisation, in spite of those who would destroy your internal prosperity. Your flag still floats triumphant in every division of the glohe, in spite of the menaces' of dismember- ment that threaten your empire from every quarter. Neither domestic nor foreign agitation has yet succeeded in uprooting your supremacy. But how long this imperial integrity may sub- sist, when it is the object of a faction in your own land to array great classes of your popula- tion in hostile collision, and when from the Castle of Dublin to the Castle of Quebec, your honour is tampered with by the deputies of your sovereign, is a question which well de- serves your quick and earnest consideration. In the mesh of unparalleled difficulties in which your affairs are now entangled, who are your guides ? Are they men in whose wisdom and experience, in whose virtue and talents, principle and resolution, in whose acknow- ledged authority and unblemished honour, and deserved celebrity, you are justified in reposing ^£1)C people in your hopes and entrusting your confidence ? Lucian once amused the ancients with an auction of their gods. Let us see what Mr. George Robins misjht think of an auction of your Ministers. The catalogue may soon be run over. A Prime Minister in an easy-chair, reading a French novel. What think you of that lot ? Three Secretaries of State, one odious, another contemptible, the third both. 1 They have their price, yet I would not be their purchaser. A new Lord Chancellor, 2 like a new cheese, crude and flavourless : second-rate as a lawyer, as a statesman a nonentity, bought in by his own party from sheer necessity. A President of the India Board, 3 recovering from the silence of years imposed upon him by Canning, by the inspiration of that eloquent man's chair which he now fills. As we are still a naval nation, our First Lord of the Admiralty should be worth something ; but, unfortunately, nobody knows his name. 4 The President of the Council 5 has always indicated a tendency to join any 1 Palmerston, Foreign Secretary; Glenelg, Colonial Secre- tary ; and Russell, Home Secretary. 2 Pepys, Lord Cottenham. 8 Sir John Cam Hobnouse. 4 Lord Minto. ' Marquis of Lansdowne. ii2 ^e ^Letters of ^unngmcfte Government, and therefore should be a market- able article enough. In Egypt, where their favourite food are pumpkins that have run to seed, such a solid and mature intelligence might be worth exporting to the Divan. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1 being ' a man of business,' would doubtless fetch ' a long figure ; ' refer for character to the mercantile deputations who leave the Treasury after an interview, bursting with laughter from sheer admiration of his knowledge and capacity. Lord Howick,- who is a Minister on the same principle that the son of an old partner is retained in the firm to keep together the connection, might com- mand a price on this score, were it not notorious that liis parent has withdrawn with his person, his capital, and confidence. The remainder may l)e thrown into one lot, and the auction con- cluded with the item on the Dutch system. Were the destinies of a great people ever yet entrusted to such a grotesque and Hudibrastic crew ? Whv, we want no candid confessions or triumphant revelations from Mr. Sheil ; we want no audacious apostacy of a whole party to teach us how such a truckling rout governs England. They govern England as the mock dynasties governed Europe in the time of the Revolution, 1 Spring Rice. 2 The present Earl Grey succeeded Lis father in July 1845. ^tl)c people by a process as sure and as simple, as desperate and as degrading, by being the delegates of an anti-national power. And what is this power beneath whose sirocco breath the fame of Eng- land is fast withering ?. Were it the dominion of another conqueror, another bold bastard with his belted sword, we might gnaw the fetter which Ave could not burst ; were it the genius of Napo- leon with which we were again struggling, we might trust the issue to the God of battles with a sainted confidence in our good cause and our national energies : but we are sinking beneath a power, before which the proudest conquerors have grown pale, and by which the nations most devoted to freedom have become enslaved, the power of a foreign priesthood. The Pope may be an old man, or an old woman, once the case, but the Papacy is inde- pendent of the Pope. The insignificance of the Pope is adduced by your enemies as evidence of the insignificance of the Papacy. 'Tis the fatal fallacy by which they mean to ride roughshod over England Is the Pope less regarded now than when Bourbon sacked Eome ? Yet that exploit preceded the massacre of St. Bartholomew and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Constable of Bourbon lived before Sir Phelim O'Neale. The Papacy is as rampant now in Ireland as it was in Europe in the time; of I 114 ^fye fetters of jHumtmnebc Gregory ; and all its energies are directed to your humiliation. Who is this man whose name is ever on your lips? Who is this O'Connell? He is the feed advocate of the Irish priesthood ; he is the hired instrument of the Papacy. That is his precise position. Your enemies, that wretched anti- national faction who wish to retain power, or creep into place, hy clinging to the skirts of this foreign rebel, taunt those who would expose his destructive arts and unmask the purpose of his desperate principals with the wretched scoff, that we make him of importance by our notice. He cannot be of more importance than he is. Demoralised in character, desperate in fortunes, infinitely over-estimated in talents, he is the most powerful individual in the world because he is entrusted with the delegated influence of the greatest power in existence. But because an individual exercises a great power, it does not follow that he is a great man. O'Connell is not as yet as great as Robespierre, although he resembles that terrific agitator in everything ex- cept his disinterestedness. Robespierre presided over public safety as O'Connell over Reform. A precious foster-dam! Would it have been any answer to those who would have struggled against the great insurer of public security, that his in- tended victims made him of importance by their ^f)c people 115 notice ? Would it have been endured that these deprecators of resistance should have urged, ' He is not a Caesar, he is not an Alexander, he has no amplitude of mind, he is not a great genius ; let him go on murdering, you make him of import- ance by noticing; his career of blood and havoc ! ' This man, O'Connell, is the hired instrument of the Papacy ; as such, his mission is to destroy your Protestant society, and, as such, he is a more terrible enemy to England than Napoleon, with all his inspiration. Your empire and your liberties are in more danger at this moment than when the army of invasion was encamped at Boulogne. Now we have a precise idea of the political character of O'Connell. And I have often mar- velled when I have listened to those who have denounced his hypocrisy or admired his skill, when they have read of the triumphant derna- cjojme humbling himself in the mud before a simple priest. There was no hypocrisy in this, no craft. The agent recognised his principal, the slave bowed before his lord ; and when he pressed to his lips those sacred robes, reeking with whisky and redolent of incense, I doubt not that his soul was filled at the same time with unaffected awe and devout gratitude. If we have correctly fixed his political cha- racter, let us see whether we can as accurately i 2 116 ^§l)c coffers of ^tumtjnncfce estimate his intellectual capacity and his moral qualities. The hired writers would persuade you that he is a great man. He has not a single quality of a great man. In proportion as he was so gifted, he would he less fitted for the part which he has to perform. There is a sub- lime sentiment in genius, even when uncontrolled by principle, that would make it recoil with nausea from what this man has to undergo. He is shrewd, vigorous, versatile ; with great know- ledge of character, little of human nature ; with that reckless dexterity which confounds weak minds, and that superficial readiness that masters vulgar passions ; energetic from the certainty of his own desperate means, and from the strong stimulus of his provisional remuneration ; inex- haustible in unprincipled expedients, and auda- cious in irresponsible power ; a nisi prius lawyer, with the soul of a demagogue. That is the man. He is as little a great orator as a great man. He has not a single quality of a great orator except a good voice. I defy his creatures to produce a single passage from any speech he ever delivered illumined by a single flash of genius, or tinctured with the slightest evidence of taste, or thought, or study. Learning he has none ; little reading. His style in speaking, as in writing, is ragged, bald, halting, disjointed. He has no wit, though he may claim his fair ^f)C ^COpIc 117 portion of that Milesian humour which every one inherits who bears a hod. His pathos is the stage sentiment of a barn ; his invective is slang. When he aspires to the higher style of rhetoric, he is even ludicrous. He snatches up a bit of tinsel, a tawdry riband, or an artificial flower, and mixes it with his sinewy commonplace and his habitual soot, like a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Of his moral character it might be enough to say, that he is a systematic liar and a beggarly cheat, a swindler and a poltroon. But of O'Con- nell you can even say more. His public and his private life are equally profligate ; he has com- mitted every crime that does not require courage : the man who plunders the peasant can also starve his child. 1 He has denounced your national character and insulted your national honour. He has said that all your men are cowards and all your women wantons. He has reviled your illustrious princes — he has sneered at your pure religion — he has assailed your National Church. He has endeavoured to stir up rebellion against your august Senate, and has described your House of Commons, even when reformed, as an assembly of ' six hundred scoundrels.' Every - 1 There was much meaning in this denunciation. See T. Campbell-Foster's Letters on the Condition qf-ihe People of Ireland, 1846. ns %t)c goffers of llmtttpincoc thing which is established comes under his ban, because everything which is established is an obstacle to the purpose for which he is paid — the destruction of everything which is English. February 2, 1S36. LETTER TO LORD STANLEY February C, 1830 LETTER IX. [Lord Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), having retired from the Ministry of Earl Grey when that Government went to pieces on the question of redistri- buting the property of the Irish Church, speedily took up an attitude of direct hostility to his former colleagues and allied himself with Peel, sitting with him on the front Opposition bench during the second Melbourne administration. He, however, refused office under Sir Robert Peel.] To Lord Stanley. My Lord, — The classical historian of our country l said of your great ancestor that ' the Countess of Derby had the glory of being the last person in the three kingdoms, and in all their dependent dominions, who submitted to the victorious rebels.' Charlotte de la Tremouille'" was a woman who might have shamed the dege- nerate men of the present day ; but your Lord- ship may claim, with a slight though significant alteration, the eulogium of that illustrious 1 Hume. 2 Countess of Derby, who stood the sieges of Lathom House by Fairfax in 1644-5. 122 ^()c Jletiets of ^luxxnmixebe princess. The rebels are again victorious, and to your Lordship's lasting honour, you have heen the first to resist their treasonable au- thority. Never has a statesman yet been placed in a position so difficult and so trying as the present heir of the house of Derbv ; never has a states- man under similar circumstances yet conducted himself with more discretion and more courage. When the acerbities of faction have passed away, posterity will do justice to your disinterestedness and devotion, and the future historian of Eng- land will record with sympathising admiration the greatness of your sacrifice. If the gratification of your ambition had been your only object, your course was clear. Less than three years ago the Whigs, and loudest among them my Lord Melbourne, announced you as the future Prime Minister of England. Young, of high lineage, of illustrious station, and of immaculate character, and unquestionably their ablest orator — among your own party you had no rival. They looked upon you as the only man who could at the same time maintain their power and effectually resist the machinations of those who would equally destroy the constitution and dismember the empire. With what enthu- siastic cheers did they not greet the winged words with which you assailed the anti-national enemy Sorb gtcmleg 123 when you rose in the House like a young eagle, and dashed back his treason in the baffled countenance of the priestly delegate ! Who could believe that the same men who cheered you in the House, and chuckled over your triumphs in their coteries, should now be the truckling slaves of the sacerdotal power from whose dark influence they then shrank with disgust and terror? Who could believe that the projected treason of these very men should have driven you and your high-minded colleagues from the contagion of their councils ? Who could believe that the famous ' Reform Ministry,' that packed a Parliament by bellowing ' gratitude to Lord Grey' throughout the empire, should finally have expelled that same Lord Grey from his seat, under circumstances of revolting insult ; that the very Lord Melbourne who had always indicated yourself as Lord Grey's successor, should himself have slid into that now sullied seat, where he maintains himself in indolent dependence by a foul alliance with the very man whom he had previously denounced as a traitor ? Can the records of public life, can the secret archives of private profligacy, afford a parallel instance of conduct so base, so completely degrading, so thoroughly demoralised ? You, my Lord, preferred your honour to your interest, the prosperity of your native land to the 124 ^e ^letters of "gtiumpmeoe gratification of your ambition. You sacrificed without a pang the proudest station in your country, to pro ye to your countrymen that public principle was not yet a jest. You did well. The pulse of our national character was beating low. We required some great example to rebrace the energies of our honour. Prom the moment that you denounced this disgusting thraldom and the base expedients of your chicaning colleagues, a better feeling pervaded England and animated Englishmen. In this sharp exigency you did not forget your duty to yourself as well as to your country. Yours was no Coriolanus part; neither the taunts of the recent supporters who had betrayed you, nor the ready compliments of your former adversaries, tempted you to swerve for a moment from the onward path of a severe and peremptory prin- ciple. When Sir Eobert Peel was summoned to the helm, in the autumn of 1834, your position was indeed most painful. Your honour and your duty seemed at conflict. You reconciled them. You supported the policy while you declined the power. These, my Lord, are great deeds. They will live. The defence of Lathom. was not more heroic. They will live in the admiration and the gratitude of an ancient and honourable nation, ever ready to sympathise Avith the pure and £ovb gfcmleg I- noble, and prompt to recognise a natural leader in blood that is mingled with all the traditionary glories of their race. You had now placed your character above suspicion. The most virulent of the hired writers of the faction did not dare to impugn the purity of your motives. You had satisfied the most morbid claims of an honour which the worldly only might deem too chivalrous. When, therefore, I find you at length avowedly united with that eminent man, on whom the hopes of his country rest with a deserving and discerning confidence, and who, in his parliamentary talents, his proud station, and his unsullied fame, is worthy of your alliance, I was rejoiced, but not surprised. It is a fit season to ' stand together in your chivalry.' The time is ripe for union and fair for concord. When, some days back, in my letter to Sir Robert Peel — a letter, let me observe in passing, written by one whose name, in spite of the audacious licence of frantic con- jecture, has never yet been even intimated, can never be discovered, and will never be revealed — [ announced the fact that the great Conservative n;irty was at length completely united, it was a declaration equivalent to England being saved. The debates upon the address have proved the accuracy of my information. The hired writers and the place-hunting dependents of the priestly 126 ^fye Metiers of ^xxntt^mcbc junta triumph over the division in the Commons; they might have read their knell in the voice of the tellers. They assure us, with solemn or with sparkling countenance, that they did not reckon upon a moiety of such a majority. And do they indeed think that the people of England care one jot whether there he ten or twenty traitors more or less in the House of Commons ? It is not a miserable majority in that assembly, either way, that will destroy or preserve the empire. That very debate, my Lord, over the result of which these short-sighted desperadoes affect to triumph, sealed the doom of the faction and announced the salvation of the country. It will fill every loyal and discerning heart throughout England with more than hope. Whatever the hired writers and the expectant runners may bawl or scribble, that division numbered the days of the present Cabinet. And they know it. The sacerdotal delegates know full well that the moment the Conservatives are united, the priestly plot is baffled. When the First Lord of the Treasury was rein- stalled in the office which he won by so patriotic a process, and which he fills with such diligent ability, shrinking from the contamination of O'Connell, the very mention of whose name in his private circle makes him even now tremble with <&ovb §la\\lcv 127 compunctious rage, he declared that affairs might he carried on without 'the victorious rebels,' from the mere disunion of the Conservative camp. No one was more completely aware than his Lordship that the moment that disunion ceased, his autho- rity must tremble. To perpetuate distrust, and to excite division among the different sections of the Conservative party, all the energies of the anti-English cabal have of late been directed. The Municipal Bill filled them with a fluttering hope ; a severance between the Duke of Wel- lington and Sir Robert Peel was announced as inevitable. To-day a great commoner and a learned lord no longer meet ; to-morrow the ap- propriation clause is to be got rid of by some new juggle, and your Lordship and your fellow- leaders are to return to the tainted benches of the Treasury. Now the conferences at Drayton hang fire ; their midnight visits from illustrious Princes bode splits and schisms. We have scarcely recovered from the effect of a suspicious dinner, when our attention is promptly directed to a mysterious call. The debates on the address have laid for ever these restless spectres of the disordered imagination of a daunted yet desperate faction. In a Peel, a Stanley, a Wellington, and a Lynd hurst, the people of England recog- nise their fitting leaders. Let the priestly party 128 Igfye fetters of iltunngmeoc oppose to these the acrid feebleness of a Russell and the puerile common-place of a Howick, Melbourne's experienced energy, and Lansdowne's lucid perception ! February 6, 183G. LETTER X. TO LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK February 11, 1836 K LETTER, X. [Lord William Bentinck had a somewhat singular career. He was next brother to the Duke of Portland, but preferred an active life to one of inglorious ease, and was consequently kept in pretty constant employ- ment by successive Governments. He was only seven- teen when he obtained a commission in the Coldstream Guards, and at five-and-twenty he was entrusted with special duties at the headquarters of Suwarow's army in Italy. In 1803, he being then of the mature age of twenty-eight, was selected to assume the Lieutenant- Governorship of Madras — a post which he held for five years. On his return he joined the army in Spain, but was speedily sent on a diplomatic mission to the Junta in Portugal. Superseded after some months by Mr. Frere, who went out as Minister Plenipotentiary, he again went on active service and commanded a brigade under Sir John Moore at Coruna. Raised to the rank of general of division, he served next under Sir Arthur Wellesley, but was speedily detached from active service to assume the functions of diplomacy. His title was ' Minister Plenipotentiary ' of England at the Court of Naples, but to the functions implied in those words were added the duties of commander-in-chief of the Neapolitan forces. In that capacity he did not succeed in making himself especially popular. Queen Caroline quarrelled with him and hurried off to Vienna, where she actually entered into negotiations with Napoleon with the object of inducing that avowed enemy of her husband and herself to send an expedition to expel the K 2 i32 %ijc ^effcrs of ~g\um\vmebc English from Sicily. Napoleon's hands were fall, how- ever, and the English remained until the peace. Lord William succeeded in inducing Ferdinand to grant a constitution to his subjects on the purest principles of Liberalism ; and when after an erratic military expe- dition to Catalonia which ended in the disaster of Yilla Franca he returned to Naples, he found that the work in which he had been engaged had to be done over again. In 1814 he went to Leghorn to stir up the people of Tuscany to shake off the French yoke, and secured from Ferdinand a solemn promise to respect the constitution to which he had sworn. How Ferdinand kept his oath, the 100,000 Neapolitans who perished by violence in the following thirty years bear witness. True to the traditions of his party, Lord William Bentinck had tried to turn Sicily into a protected State after the fashion adopted with regard to the Ionian Islands in 1815. In the same way he endeavoured to reconstitute the ancient republic of Genoa. In both cases his action was disavowed by the home authorities, but in spite of all he was sent as British Resident to liome. He sat for a short time in Parliament for King's Lynn, where he failed to make any conspicuous figure, and in 1827 he was chosen by Mr. Canning as Governor-General of India. His administration was rendered memorable by one great achievement. In 1829 he succeeded in inducing his Council to declare the illegality of the practice of ' Suttee ' (according to which Hindoo widows were burned to death when their husbands died). He returned to England four years later, ostensibly on the ground of ill-health, but really because the Government at home wished to promote one of their own men, which was done by giving the Governor-Generalship to Lord Auckland. He left a magnificent reputation in India, and a column was erected to his memory in Calcutta, for which Macaulay wrote the inscription. It states amongst other things that, * during seven years he ruled India with eminent £orb William gtenftnck 133 prudence, integrity, and benevolence,' that he ' never laid aside the simplicity and moderation of a private citizen,' that he ' gave liberty to the expression of public opinion,' and ' effaced humiliating distinctions.' He was not, however, quite so popular at home. Greville says of him — and the same thing may be found else- where — that ' his success in life was greater than his talents warranted, for he was not right-headed, and committed some great blunder or other in every public situation in which he was placed.' The Glasgow address was almost universally condemned. Greville, himself a Whig, and a relative of Lord William, plainly speaks of it as ' silly,' and the world at large was a little startled to find a man of high rank and great wealth openly advocating revolutionary change. It answered its purpose, however, and Lord William Bentinck was member for Glasgow until a few days before his death, on June 17, 1839.] To Lord William Bentinck. My Lord, — I have just read your Lordship's Address to the Electors of the City of Glasgow ; and, when I remember that the author of this production has been entrusted for no inconsider- able period with the government of 100,000,000 of human beings, I tremble. I say not this with reference to the measures of which you have there announced yourself the advocate, but to the manner in which that announcement is ex pressed. It implies, in my opinion, at the same time, a want of honesty and a want of sense. 134 %l)c jEcffcrs of ^htnntmtcoc This Address to the Electors of the Citv of Glasgow is made by an individual who has been employed for more than a quarter of a century by his sovereign in foreign service of the utmost importance, ascending, at last, even to the Viceregal throne of India ; he is a member of a family of the highest rank and consideration ; and some very persevering paragraphs in the Government journals have of late sedulously indicated him as a fit and future member of Lord Melbourne's Cabinet. Your Lordship, there- fore, is a very considerable personage ; the public are familiar with your name, if not with your career ; they are instructed to believe you an individual of great mark and likelihood, of great promise as well as of great performance ; as one who is not unwilling to devote to their interests at home all those talents which have been so long exercised, and all that experience which has been so laboriously obtained, in their service in other and distant lands. 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, sings a bard * of that city which your Lordship is to represent : 'tis distance which has invested your Lordship with the haze of celebrity ; but I doubt whether the shadowy illusion will be long proof against that nearer inspection and more familiar experi- i n Campbell. cSLovfc ^Hllictm ^Bcniindi 135 once of your judgment and capacity, which your Lordship has favoured us with in your Address to the Electors of the City of Glasgow. 1 4 The following is the address alluded to : — To the Electors of the City of Glasgow. Gentlemen, — It is only in consequence of the very numerous requisition which I have had the honour to receive, that I could have ventured to aspire to the high distinction of representing you in Parliament. Encouraged by this invitation, I shall at once proceed to state, frankly and explicitly, my opinion upon the various topics and measures that are likely to be brought befoie Parliament in the ensuing session, with a confident hope that in this exposition nothing will be found at variance with those principles which for many years of my life I have pro- fessed and practised ; and upon which alone, and to no particu- lar competency of my own, I can found a claim to your suffrages. Permit me then, in the outset, to give my adherence to the now happily established conviction among all reformers, that by firm union, by the abandonment of all separate and minor views, and by a steady support of Lord Melbourne's Ministry, the present and future cause of reform can alone be supported. With respect to expected measures, I should decidedly sup- port the ministerial plan of Irish Church Reform, imperfect and insufficient as I must consider the measure to be. I, of course, am a decided friend to a complete reform of the Irish Municipal Corporations. I am favourable to the shortening of the duration of Parlia- ments : but without having had occasion seriously to consider this subject, I should prefer, as a present measure, the quin- quennial to the triennial term. With respect to the extension of the suffrage, into the details of which I have never entered, I can only generally state my firm belief that the broader the admission of all the intelligent 136 ^fye potters of "gjtunngtneoe There are some, indeed, who affirm — and those, too, persons of no mean authority — that classes to the government of the country, the greater will be the security of our existing institutions. I am opposed to the vote by ballot ; I consider it a complete illusion. It will not destroy the exercise of undue influence, but it will give rise to another influence still more pernicious — that of money and corruption, against which there is no security but in publicity. At the same time, as the vote by ballot affects no existing right, I would willingly acquiesce in the general wishes of my constituents to vote for it as an experi- mental and temporary measure. I am profoundly penetrated with the indispensable necessity that the two branches of the Legislature should be brought into harmony with each other ; and I am of opinion that the result may be advantageously accomplished through the constitutional exercise of the prerogative of the Crown without any organic change. I need not promise my support to all measures regarding freedom of trade, and economy and retrenchment in every department of the State, consistently, of course, with efficiency and safety. The Corn Laws are a difficult question. I am for their abolition. If railways, as I believe, may become necessary in the race of competition that we have to run with other countries, the prices of subsistence must in a still greater degree contribute to success. I should hope that an equitable com- promise between the agricultural and manufacturing interests might not be found impracticable. I shall advert, in the last place, to the application for a grant of 10,000Z. towards the endowment of additional chapels and places of worship for the Established Church of Scotland. I am entirely averse to this grant. The event, of all others, that in my humble judgment would best establish peace and good will and concord among all classes of men, would be a perfect equality of civil and religious rights. this address may even be considered a manifesto of the least constitutional portion of the Cabinet to whom your Lordship and my Lord Durham are speedily to afford all the weight of your in- fluence and all the advantage of your wisdom. How this may be, events will prove ; the effusion is certainly sufficiently marked by the great cha- racteristic of the Whig- Radical school; a reckless readiness to adopt measures, of the details and consequences of which they are obviously, and often avowedly ignorant. But as this cannot at present be, at least let us be careful not to aggravate an obnoxious distinction. Let the Established Churches retain what they possess, but let nothing more be taken from the public funds. The same religious zeal which exclusively maintains all the places of worship and the ministers of Dissenters, cannot fail to supply those additional aids of which the Established Churches of England and Scot- land may stand in need. I will now conclude with the expression of my very deep regret that the effects of the very long and severe illness which drove me from India, will not allow me, without positive risk, to appear at the election. But if I am so fortunate as to obtain the honour to which I aspire, I shall take the earliest oppor- tunity, after the session, of visiting Glasgow ; and should it then be the opinion of the majority of my constituents that the generous confidence which they have been pleased to place in me has been in any degree disappointed, I shall be most ready to resign the trust confided in me. I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, Your most obedient servant, W. Bentinck. London : February 4, 1836. 138 ^^c ^offers of "gjhtmtmneoe The address itself consists of fourteen para- graphs. In the first your Lordship informs us that you come forward in consequence of ' a very numerous requisition.' What 'a very numerous requisition,' by-the-bye, may be, I pretend not to decipher. It may be Hindostanee ; it may be Sanscrit ; it is not English. With a modesty natural to an Oriental Viceroy, the late Master of the Great Mogul, you then make your salaam to the electors, assuring them that but for this very numerous requisition you ' could not have ventured to aspire to the high distinction of representing Glasgow in Parliament ' — of repre- senting Glasgow after having ruled Calcutta ! Your Lordship then proceeds to state, ' frankly and explicitly,' your political creed, 6 with a confident hope,' which seems, however, but a somewhat hesitating and trembling trust, that * nothing will be found at variance with those principles which for many years of your life you have professed and practised.' How many years, my Lord William ? After eulogising ' union among all Reformers,' but of course in favour of Lord Melbourne's Government, and the abandonment of ' all separate and minor views,' you immediately declare, with admirable consistency, that the Ministerial plan of Irish Church Reform does not go far enough, but is 'imperfect and in- tSloxb William 'gtenfincfe 139 sufficient.' This is certainly a very felicitous method of maintaining union among all Refor- mers. There is no doubt with what section of that rebellious camp your Lordship will herd, you who are, ' of course, a decided friend to a complete reform in the Irish municipal corpora- tions.' Your Lordship, it appears, is also ' favourable to the shortening of the duration of Parliaments,' ! although you ingenuously allow that you ' have had no occasion seriously to consider the subject ; ' and that you are partial to the ' extension of the suffrage,' into the details of which, however, ' you candidly admit you have never entered ! ' Admirable specimen of the cautious profundity of Whig Radicalism ! Inimitable statesman, who busied with concocting constitutions for Sicily, and destroying empires in India, can naturally spare but few hours to the consideration of the unimportant topics of domestic policy. Your decisive judgment, however, on the subject of the ballot will clear your Lordship in a moment from any silly suspicion of superfici- ality. This paragraph is so rich and rare, that it merits the dangerous honour of a quotation: — I am opposed to the vote by ballot ; I consider it 1 It should not be forgotten that the Septennial Act, passed in the second year of George I., was a purely Whig measure. 140 ^f)c obl)0\tze 163 Harwich, which place he represented until 1851, when he was raised to the peerage as Lord Broughton, of Broughton Giffard in the county of Wilts, and faded from the public view.] To Sir John Hobhouse. Sir, — Your metamorphosis into a Whig and a Cabinet Minister has always appeared to me even less marvellous than your transformation into a wit and a leader, after having passed the most impetuous years of life in what might have appeared to the inexperienced the less ambitious capacity of a dull dependent. In literature and in politics, until within a very short period, you have always shone with the doubtful lustre of reflected light. You have gained notoriety by associating yourself with another's fame. The commentator of Byron, you naturally became in due season ' Sir Francis Burdett's man,' as Mr. Canning styled you, to your confusion, in the House of Commons ; and to which sneer, after having taken a week to arrange your impromptu, you replied in an elaborate imitation of Chatham, admitted by your friends to be the greatest failure in parliamentary memory. At college your dignified respect for the peerage scarcely prepared us for your subsequent sneers at the order. Your readiness to bear the burden of the scrapes of those you honoured by your intimacy, m 2 164 ^I)c 242 ^{)c fetters of ijUmntrnteoe you into believing that your sails were to be ever set and your streamers ever flying, the more experienced navigators have long detected the rising of the calm yet steady breeze fatal to your course. It is a wind which may be de- pended on — a great monsoon of national spirit, which will clear the seas of those political pirates who have too long plundered us under false colours. And yet, my Lord, let us not part in anger. Yours is still a gratifying, even a great position. Notwithstanding all your public degradation and all your private annoyances, 1 that man is surely to be envied who has it in his power to confer an obligation on every true-hearted Englishman. And this your Lordship still can do ; you can yet perform an act which will command the gratitude of every lover of his country ; you can — Resign. May 15, 1836. 1 The famous case, Norton v. Lord Melbourne, was making much noise at this time, and was tried on June 26. The jury gave their verdict for Melbourne, and the Whigs were loud in their assertion that Lord Grantley had pushed the matter on for political purposes. The vagaries of Lady Caroline Lamb had been a source of deep and bitter trouble, but they of course had ceased with her death in 1828. THE SPIEIT OF WHIGGISM r 2 [In the following pages Lord Beaconsfield expounds that theory of the English Constitution which he had previously set forth in his pamphlet ' A Vindication of the English Constitution in a Letter to a Noble and Learned Lord.' The same theory is expounded in an- other way in the three great novels, ' Coningsby,' ' Sybil,' and ' Tancred.' His contemporaries never seem to have understood it, while his assailants of a later date appear to have written and spoken concerning him in absolute ignorance of his real political creed. The concluding paragraph of the tract ought, in the minds of all candid men, to disperse at once and for ever the innumerable calumnies levelled at Lord Beaconsfield during and since the Reform struggle of 1859-1867.] CHAPTER T. England has become great by her institutions. Her hereditary Crown has in a great degree insured us from the distracting evils of a con- tested succession ; her Peerage, interested, from the vast property and the national honours of its members, in the good government of the country, has offered a compact bulwark against the temporary violence of popular passion ; her House of Commons, representing the conflicting sentiments of an estate of the realm not less privileged than that of the Peers, though far more numerous, has enlisted the great mass of the lesser proprietors of the country in favour of a political system which offers them a consti- tutional means of defence and a legitimate method of redress ; her Ecclesiastical Establish- ment, preserved by its munificent endowment from the fatal necessity of pandering to the erratic fancies of its communicants, has main- tained the sacred cause of learning and religion, and preserved orthodoxy while it has secured toleration ; her law of primogeniture has sup- 240 ^()c gptrtf of 3Sl)ifl8tsitt plied the country with a hand of natural and independent leaders, trustees of those legal institutions which pervade the land, and which are the origin of our political constitution. That great hody corporate, styled a nation — a vast assemblage of human beings knit together by laws and arts and customs, by the necessities of the present and the memory of the past- -offers in this country, through these its vigorous and enduring members, a more substantial and healthv framework than falls to the lot of other nations. Our stout-built constitution throws off with more facility and safety those crude and dangerous humours which must at times arise in all human communities. The march of revolu- tion must here at least be orderly. We are preserved from those reckless and tempestuous sallies that in other countries, like a whirlwind, topple down in an instant an ancient crown, or sweep away an illustrious aristocracy. This constitution, which has secured order, has con- sequently promoted civilisation ; and the almost unbroken tide of progressive amelioration has made us the freest, the wealthiest, and the most refined society of modern ages. Our commerce is unrivalled, our manufacturers supply the world, our agriculture is the most skilful in Christendom. So national are our institutions, so completely have they arisen from the temper ^I)c gpirtf of 3$f)tg$tsttt 247 and adapted themselves to the character of the people, that when for a season they were appar- ently annihilated, the people of England volun- tarily returned to them, and established them with renewed strength and renovated vigour. The constitution of England is again threatened, and at a moment when the nation is more prosperous, more free, and more famous than at any period of its momentous and memo- rable career. Whv is this ? What has occasioned these distempered times, which make the loyal tremble and the traitor smile? Why has this dark cloud suddenly gathered in a sky so serene and so splendid ? Is there any analogy between this age and that of the first Charles ? Are the same causes at work, or is the apparent similarity produced only by designing men, who make use of the perverted past as a passport to present mischief? These are great questions, which it may be profitable to discuss and wise to study. Rapin, a foreigner who wrote our history, in the course of his frigid yet accurate pages, indulged in one philosophical observation. Struck at the same time by our greatness and by the fury of our factions, the Huguenot exclaimed, ' It appears to me that this great society can only be dissolved by the violence of its political parties.' What are these parties? Why are they violent ? Why should they exist ? In 248 ^^c §ptrif of ^Bljiggisttt resolving these questions, we may obtain an accurate idea of our present political position, and by pondering over the past we may make that past not a prophecy as the disaffected intend 2 but a salutary lesson by which the loyal may profit. The two great parties into which England has during the last century and a half been divided, originated in the ancient struggle between the Crown and the aristocracy. As long as the Crown possessed or aspired to despotic power, the feeling of the nation supported the aristocracy in their struggles to establish a free government. The aristocracy of England formed the constitu- tion of the Plantagenets ; the wars of the Roses destroyed that aristocracy, and the despotism of the Tudors succeeded. Renovated by more than a century of peace and the spoils of the Papacy, the aristocracy of England attacked the first Stuarts, who succeeded to a despotism which they did not create. When Charles the First, after a series of great concessions which ultimately obtained for him the support of the most illustrious of his early opponents, raised the royal standard, the constitution of the Plantagenets, and more than the constitution of the Plantagenets, had been restored and secured. But a portion of the able party which had succeeded in effecting such a vast and beneficial revolution was not content 'SIk g>pmf of Ipljtggism 249 to part with the extraordinary powers which they had obtained in this memorable struggle. This section of the aristocracy were the origin of the English Whigs, though that title was not invented until the next reign. The primitive Whigs — ' Parliament-men,' as they liked to call themselves, ' Roundheads,' as they were in time flubbed — aspired to an oligarchy. For a moment they obtained one; but unable to maintain themselves in power against the returning sense and rising spirit of a generous and indignant people, they called to their aid that domestic revolutionary party which exists in all countries, and an anti-national enemy in addition. These were the English Radicals, or Root-and-Branch men, and the Scotch Covenanters. To conciliate the first they sacrificed the Crown ; to secure the second they abolished the Church. The con- stitution of England in Church and State was destroyed, and the Whig oligarchy, in spite of their machinations, were soon merged in the common ruin. The ignoble tyranny to which this great nation was consequently subject produced that reaction which is in the nature of human affairs. The ancient constitution was in time restored, and the Church and the Crown were invested with greater powers than they had enjoyed pre- viously to their overthrow. So hateful had been 2oo ^(jc gptrif of i^biggism the consequences of Whig rule, that the people were inclined rather to trust the talons of arbit- rary power than to take refuge under the wing of these pretended advocates of popular rights. A worthless monarch and a corrupted court availed themselves of the offered opportunity ; and when James the Second ascended the throne, the nation was again prepared to second the aristocracy in a struggle for their liberties. But the Whigs had profited by their previous experiment : they resolved upon a revolution, but they determined that that revolution should be brought about by as slight an appeal to popular sympathies as possible. They studiously confined that appeal to the religious feelings of the nation. They hired a foreign prince and enlisted a foreign army in their service. They dethroned James, they established themselves in power without the aid of the mass ; and had William the Third been a man of ordinary capacity, the constitu- tion of Venice would have been established in England in 1688. William the Third told the Whigs that he would never consent to be a Doge. Resembling Louis Philippe in his character as well as in his position, that extraordinary prince bafiied the Whigs by his skilful balance of parties ; and had Providence accorded him an heir, it is probable that the oligarchical faction would never have revived in England. The Whigs have ever ^l)c Spirit of l?81)iggism 251 heen. opposed to the national institutions because they are adverse to the establishment of an oli- garchy. Local institutions, supported by a landed gentry, check them ; hence their love of central- isation and their hatred of unpaid magistrates. An independent hierarchy checks them; hence their affected advocacy of toleration and their patronage of the Dissenters. The jDOwer of the Crown checks them ; therefore they always labour to reduce the sovereign to a nonentity, and by the establishment of the Cabinet they have virtually banished the King from his own councils. But, above all, the Parliament of England checks them, and therefore it may be observed that the Whigs at all times are quarrel- ling with some portion of those august estates. They despair of destroying the Parliament ; by it, and by it alone, can they succeed in their objects. Corruption for one part, force for the other, then, is their motto. In 1640 thev attempted to govern the country by the House of Commons, because the aristocracy was then more powerful in the House of Commons than in the House of Lords, where a Peerage, ex- hausted by civil wars, had been too liberally recruited from the courtiers of the Tudors and the Stuarts, At the next revolution which the "Whigs occasioned, they attempted to govern the country by the House of Lords, in which they 252 ^()e Spirit of ]$()iggtsm were predominant; and, in order to guarantee their power for ever, they introduced a Bill to deprive the King of his prerogative of making further Peers. The revolution of 1640 led to the abolition of the House of Lords because the Lords opposed the oligarchy. Having a majority in the House of Lords, the Whigs introduced the Peerage Bill, by which the House of Lords would have been rendered independent of the sove- reign; unpopular with the country, the Whigs attacked the influence of popular election, and the moment that, by the aid of the most infamous corruption, they had obtained a temporary ma- jority in the Lower House, they passed the Septennial Act. The Whigs of the eighteenth century ' swamped ' the House of Commons ; the Whigs of the nineteenth would ' swamp ' the House of Lords. The Whigs of the eighteenth centurv would have rendered the House of Lords unchangeable ; the Whigs of the nineteenth re- model the House of Commons. I conclude here the first chapter of the ' Spirit of Whiggism ' — a little book which I hope may be easily read and easily remembered. The Whig party have always adopted popular cries. In one age it is Liberty, in another Reform ; at one period they sound the tocsin against popery, in another they ally themselves with papists. They have many cries, and various modes of ^Ijc Spirit of iJ$l)tggi£tti 253 conduct ; but they have only one object — the establishment of an oligarchy in this free and equal land. I do not wish this country to be governed by a small knot of great families, and therefore I oppose the Whigs. 254 ^gf)e Spirit of ^Sfjtggtsnt CHAPTER II. When the Whigs and their public organs favour us with their mysterious hints that the constitu- tion has provided the sovereign with a means to re-establish at all times a legislative sympathy between the two Houses of Parliament, it may be as well to remind them that we are not in- debted for this salutary prerogative to the for- bearance of their party. Suppose their Peerage Bill had passed into an Act, how would they have carried the Reform Bill of 1832 ? The Whigs may reply, that if the Peerage Bill had become a law, the Reform Bill would never have been introduced ; and I believe them. In that case, the British House of Lords would have been transformed into a Venetian Senate, and the old walls of St. James's might have witnessed scenes of as degrading mortification as the famous ducal palace of the Adriatic. George III. routed the Whigs, consolidated by half a century of power; but an ordinary monarch would have sunk beneath the Coalition and the India Bill. This scheme was the last ^fyc gptrtf of ^^iggistn 255 desperate effort of the oligarchical faction previous to 1830. Not that they were inactive during the great interval that elapsed between the advent of Mr. Pitt and the resurrection of Lord Grey : but, ever on the watch for a cry to carry them into power, they mistook the yell of Jacobinism for the chorus of an emancipated people, and fancied, in order to take the throne by storm, that nothing was wanting but to hoist the tricolour and to cover their haughty brows with a red cap. This fatal blunder clipped the wings of Whiggism ; nor is it possible to conceive a party that had effected so many revolutions and governed a great country for so long a period, more broken, sunk, and shattered, more desolate and disheartened, than these same Whigs at the Peace of Paris. Prom that period till 1830, the tactics of the Whigs consisted in gently and gradually extricating themselves from their false position as the disciples of Jacobinism, and assuming their ancient }X)st as the hereditary guardians of an hereditary monarchy. To make the transition less difficult than it threatened, they invented Liberalism, a bridge by which they were to regain the lost mainland, and daintily recross on tiptoe the chasm over which they had originally sprung with so much precipitation. A dozen years of ' liberal principles ' broke up the national party of England, cemented by half a 256 ^l)c gpirif of i^^iggism century of prosperity and glory, compared with which all the annals of the realm are dim and lacklustre. Yet so weak intrinsically was the oligarchical faction, that their chief, despairing to obtain a monopoly of power for his party, elaborately announced himself as the champion of his patrician order, and attempted to coalesce with the liberalised leader of the Tories. Had that negotiation led to the result which was originally intended by those interested, the Riots of Paris would not have occasioned the Reform of London. It is a great delusion to believe that revolu- tions are ever effected by a nation. It is a fac- tion, and generally a small one, that overthrows a dynasty or remodels a constitution. A small party, stung by a long exile from power, and desperate of success except by desperate means, invariably has recourse to a coup-d'etat. An oligarchical party is necessarily not numerous. Its members in general attempt, by noble lineage or vast possessions, to compensate for their poverty of numbers. The Whigs, in 1830, found themselves by accident in place, but under very peculiar circumstances. They were in place but not in power. In each estate of the realm a majority was arrayed against them. An appeal to the Commons of England, that constituency which, in its elements, had undergone no altera- ^I)c Spirit of 55I)iggt6m 257 tion since the time of Elizabeth, either by the in- fluence of the legislature or the action of time — that constituency which had elected Pym, and Selden, and Hampden, as well as Somers, Wal- pole, and Pulteney — an appeal to this constitu- ency, it was generally acknowledged, would be fatal to the Whigs, and therefore they deter- mined to reconstruct it. This is the origin of the recent parliamentary reform : the Whigs, in place without being in power, resolved as usual upon a coup-d'etat, and looked about for a stalk- ing-horse. In general the difficult task had devolved upon them of having to accomplish their concealed purpose while apparently achieving some public object. Thus they had carried the Septennial Act on the plea of pre- serving England from popery, though their real object was to prolong the existence of the first House of Commons in which they could com- mand a majority. But in the present instance they became sincerely parliamentary reformers, for by par- liamentary reform they could alone subsist ; and all their art was dedicated so to contrive, that in this reformation their own interest should secure an irresistible predominance. But how was an oligarchical party to pre- dominate in popular elections r Here was the S 258 ^I)c §pmi of ^Sljigcjism difficulty. The Whigs had no resources from, their own limited ranks to feed the muster of the popular levies. They were obliged to look about for allies wherewith to form their new popular estate. Any estate of the Commons modelled on any equitable principle, either of property or population, must have been fatal to the Whigs ; they, therefore, very dexterously adopted a small minority of the nation, consisting of the sec- tarians, and inaugurating them as the people with a vast and bewildering train of hocus-pocus ceremonies, invested the Dissenters with political power. By this cowp-dC etat they managed the House of Commons, and having at length obtained a position, they have from that moment laid siege to the House of Lords, with the intention of reducing that great institution and making it surrender at discretion. This is the exact state of English politics during the last tive years. The Whigs have been at war with the English constitution. Eirst of all they captured the King; then they vanquished the House of Commons; now they have laid siege to the House of Lords. But here the fallacy of their grand scheme of political mystification begins to develop itself. Had, indeed, their new constituency, as they have long impudently pretended, indeed been ' the people,' a struggle ^I)c g>ptrif of ^Ijiggtsm 259 between such a body and the House of Lords would have been brief but final. The absurdity of supposing that a chamber of two or three hundred individuals could set up their absolute will and pleasure against the decrees of a legis- lative assembly chosen by the whole nation, is so glaring that the Whigs and their scribes might reasonably suspect that in making such allegations they were assuredly proving too much. But as ' the people ' of the Whigs is in fact a number of Englishmen not exceeding in amount the population of a third-rate city, the English nation is not of opinion that this arrogant and vaunting moiety of a class privileged for the common good, swollen though it may be by some jobbing Scots and rebel Irish, shall pass off their petty and selfish schemes of personal aggrandise- ment as the will of a great people, as mindful of its duty to its posterity, as it is grateful for the labours of its ancestors. The English nation, therefore, rallies for rescue from the degrading plots of a profligate oligarchy, a barbarisms? sectarianism, and a boroughmongering Papacy round their hereditary leaders — the Peers. The House of Lords, therefore, at this moment represents everything in the realm except the Whig oligarchs, their tools — the Dissenters, and their masters — the Irish priests. In the mean- s 2 260 ^i)c gpitif of 55^iggtsm time the Whigs bawl aloud that there is a ' collision ' ! It is true there is a collision ; hut it is not a collision between the Lords and the people, but between the Ministers and the Constitution. ^f)c Spirit of a&ljtggism 201 CHAPTER III. It may be as well to remind the English nation that a revolutionary party is not necessarily a liberal one, and that a republic is not indis- pensably a democracy. Such is the disposition of property in England, that were a republic to be established here to-morrow, it would partake rather of the oligarchical than of the aristo- cratic character. We should be surprised to find in how few families the power of the State was concentrated. And although the framers of the new commonwealth would be too crafty to base it on any avowed and ostensible principle of exclusion ; but on the contrary would in all probability ostentatiously inaugurate the novel constitution by virtue of some abstract pica about as definite and as prodigal of practical effects as the rights of man or the sovereignty of the people, nevertheless I should be astonished were we not to find that the great mass of the nation, as far as any share in the conduct of public affairs was concerned, were as completely shut out from the fruition and exercise of power 262 ^l)c Jppirtf of ^Sljtgcjtsm as under that Venetian polity which has ever been the secret object of Whig envy and Whig admiration. The Church, under such circum- stances, would probably have again been plundered, and therefore the discharge of eccle- siastical duties might be spared to the nation ; but the people would assuredly be practically excluded from its services, which would swarm with the relations and connections of the sena- torial class ; for, whether this country be governed only by the House of Commons, or only by the House of Lords, the elements of the single chamber will not materially differ ; and although in the event of the triumph of the Commons, the ceremony of periodical election may be retained (and we should not forget that the Long Parlia- ment soon spared us that unnecessary form), the selected members will form a Senate as irre- sponsible as any House of Parliament whose anomalous constitution may now be the object of Whig sneers or Radical anathemas. The rights and liberties of a nation can only be preserved by institutions. It is not the spread of knowledge or the march of intellect that will be found sufficient sureties for the public welfare in the crisis of a country's freedom. Our in- terest taints our intelligence, our passions para- lyse our reason. Knowledge and capacity are too often the willing tools of a powerful fac- ^f)c giptrif of ^Ijiggism 2G3 tion or a dexterous adventurer. Life is short, man is imaginative ; our means are limited, our passions high. In seasons of great popular excitement, gold and glory offer strong temptations to needy ability. The demagogues throughout a country, the orators of town-councils and vestries, and the lecturers of mechanics' institutes, present, doubt- less in most cases unconsciously, the ready and fit machinery for the party or the individual that aspires to establish a tyranny. Duly graduating in corruption, the leaders of the mob become the oppressors of the people. Cultivation of intellect and diffusion of knowledge may make the English nation more sensible of the benefits of their social system, and better qualified to discharge the duties with which their institutions have invested them, but they will never render them competent to preserve their liberties with- out the aid of these institutions. Let us for a moment endeavour to fancy Whiggism in a state of rampant predominance ; let us try to contem- plate England enjoying all those advantages which our present rulers have not yet granted us, and some of which they have as yet only ventured to promise by innuendo. Let us suppose our ancient monarchy abolished, our independent hierarchy reduced to a stipendiary sect, the gen- tlemen of England deprived of their magisterial I ! I l§f)c §>pmf of ^Ijiggism functions, and metropolitan prefects and sub-pre- fects established in the counties and principal towns, commanding a vigorous and vigilant police, and backed by an army under the immediate orders of a single House of Parliament. Whv, O a. » these are threatened changes — ay, and not one of them that may not be brought about to-morrow, under the plea of the ' spirit of the age ' or ' county reform ' or ' cheap government.' But where then will be the liberties of England ? Who will dare disobev London ? the enlightened and reformed metropolis ! And can we think, if any bold Squire, in whom some of the old blood might still chance to linger, were to dare to murmur against this grinding tyranny, or appeal to the spirit of those neighbours whose prede- cessors his ancestors had protected, can we natter ourselves that there would not be judges in Westminster Hall prepared and prompt to inflict on him all the pains and penalties, the dungeon, the fine, the sequestration, which such a trouble- some Anti-Eeformer would clearly deserve ? Can we flatter ourselves that a Parliamentary Star Chamber and a Parliamentary High Com- mission Court would not be in the background to supply all the deficiencies of the laws of Eng- land ? When these merrv times arrive — the times of extraordinary tribunals and extraordi- nary taxes — and, if we proceed in our present ^c gjptrtf of ^fjiggtstn 285 course, they are much nearer than we imagine — the phrase ' Anti- Reformer ' will serve as well as that of ' Malignant,' and be as valid a plea as the former title for harassing and plundering all those who venture to wince under the crowning mercies of centralisation. Behold the Republic of the Whigs ! Behold the only Republic that can be established in England except by force ! And who can doubt the swift and stern termination of institutions introduced bv so unnatural and irrational a process. I would address myself to the English Radicals. I do not mean those fine gentlemen or those vulgar adventurers, who, in this age of quackery, may sail into Parliament by hoisting for the nonce the false colours of the movement ; but I mean that honest and considerable party, too considerable, I fear, for their happiness and the safetv of the State — who have a definite object which thev distinctlv avow — I mean those thoughtful and enthusiastic men who study their unstamped press, and ponder over a millennium of operative amelioration. Not merely that which is just, but that which is also practicable, should be the aim of a sagacious politician. Let the Radicals well consider whether, in attempting to achieve their avowed object, they are not, in fact, only assisting the secret views of a party whose scheme is infinitelv more adverse to their 266 ^f)c Spirit of i^fjiggism own than the existing system, whose genius I believe they entirely misapprehend. The mon- archy of the Tories is more democratic than the Republic of the Whigs. It appeals with a keener sympathy to the passions of the millions ; it studies their interest with a more compre- hensive solicitude. Admitting for a moment that I have mistaken the genius of the English constitution, what chance, if our institutions be overthrown, is there of substituting in their stead a more popular polity ? This hazard, both for their own happiness and the honour of their country, the English Radicals are bound to calculate nicely. If they do not, they will find themselves, too late, the tools of a selfish faction or the slaves of a stern usurper. <£f)c Spirit of 5$f)tggi5ttt 267 CHAPTER IV. A chapter on the English constitution is a natural episode on the spirit of Whiggism. There is this connection between the subjects — that the spirit of Whiggism is hostile to the English constitution. No political institutions ever yet nourished which have been more the topic of discussion among writers of all countries and all parties than our famous establishment of ' King, Lords, and Commons ; ' and no institutions ever yet nourished, of which the character has been more misrepresented and more misconceived. One fact alone will illustrate the profound ignorance and the perplexed ideas. The present Whig leader of the House of Commons, a member of a family who pique themselves on their consti- tutional reputation, an author who has even written an elaborate treatise on our polity, in one of his speeches, delivered only so late as the last session of Parliament, declared his desire and determination to uphold the present settle- ment of the ' three estates of the realm, viz. — 26 8 ^I)c Spirit of ^Sfjiggism King, Lords, and Commons.' Now, his Gracious Majesty is no more an estate of the realm than Lord John Eussell himself. The three estates of the realm are the estate of the Lords Spiritual, the estate of the Lords Temporal, and the estate of the Commons. An estate is a popular class established into a political order. It is a section of the nation invested for the public and com- mon good with certain powers and privileges. Lord John Eussell first writes upon the EDglish constitution, and then reforms it, and yet, even at this moment, is absolutelv ignorant of what it consists. A political estate is a complete and independent body. Now, all power that is independent is necessarily irresponsible. The sovereign is responsible because he is not an estate ; he is responsible through his Ministers ; he is responsible to the estates and to them alone. When the "Whigs obtained power in 1830, they found the three estates of the realm opposed to them, and the Government, therefore, could not proceed. They resolved, therefore, to re- model them. Thev declared that the House of Commons was the House of the people, and that the people were not properly represented. They consequently enlarged the estate of the Commons ; thev increased the number of that privileged order who appear by their repiresenta- ^l)C <5pU"tf Of 5$l)tC$gism 2G9 lives in the Lower House of Parliament. Thev rendered the estate of the Commons more power- ful by this proceeding, because they rendered them more numerous ; but they did not render their representatives one jot more the represen- tatives of the people. Throwing the Commons of Ireland out of the question, for we cannot speculate upon a political order so unsettled that it has been thrice remodelled during the present century, some 300,000 individuals sent up, at the last general election, their representatives to Westminster. Well, are these 300,000 persons the people of England ? Grant that they are ; grant that these members are divided into two equal portions. Well, then, the people of England consist of 150,000 persons. I know that there are well-disposed persons that tremble at this reasoning, because, although they admit its justice, they allege it leads to universal suffrage. We must not show, they assert, that the House of the people is not elected by the people. I admit it ; we must not show that the House of the people is not elected by the people, but we must show that the House of Commons is not the House of the people, that it never was intended to be the House of the people, and that, if it be admitted to be so by courtesy, or become so in fact, it is all over with the English constitution. 270 ^c Spirit of ^^iggism It is quite impossible that a whole people can be a branch of a legislature. If a whole people have the power of making laws, it is folly to suppose that they will allow an assembly of 300 or 400 individuals, or a solitary being on a throne, to thwart their sovereign will and pleasure. But I deny that a people can govern itself. Self- government is a contradiction in terms. What- ever form a government may assume, power must be exercised by a minority of numbers. I shall, perhaps, be reminded of the ancient republics. I answer, that the ancient republics were as aristocratic communities as any that nourished in the middle ages. The Demos of Athens was an oligarchy living upon slaves. There is a great slave population even in the United States, if a society of yesterday is to illustrate an argu- ment on our ancient civilisation. But it is useless to argue the question ab- stractedly. The phrase ' the people ' is sheer nonsense. It is not a political term. It is a phrase of natural history. A people is a species ; a civilised community is a nation. Now, a nation is a work of art and a work of time. A nation is gradually created by a variety of influences — the influence of original organisation, of climate, soil, religion, laws, customs, manners, extraordinary accidents and incidents in their history, and the individual character of their ^gl)c §>ptrif of i^^tggism 271 illustrious citizens. These influences create the nation — these form the national mind, and pro- duce in the course of centuries a high degree of civilisation. If you destroy the iwlitical insti- tutions which these influences have called into force, and which are the machinery hy which they constantly act, you destroy the nation. The nation, in a state of anarchy and dissolution, then becomes a people ; and after experiencing all the consequent misery, like a company of bees spoiled of their queen and rifled of their hive, thev set to asrain and establish themselves into a society. Although all society is artificial, the most artificial society in the world is unquestionably the English nation. Our insular situation and our foreign empire, our immense accumulated wealth and our industrious character, our pecu- liar religious state, which secures alike orthodoxv and toleration, our church and our sects, our agriculture and our manufactures, our military services, our statute law, and supplementary equity, our adventurous commerce, landed tenure, and unprecedented system of credit, form, among many others, such a variety of interests, and apparently so conflicting, that I do not think even the Abbe Sieyes himself could devise a scheme by which this nation could be absolutely and definitely represented. 2-2 ^gf)c Spirit of ^fyxQQXzm The franiers of the English constitution were fortunately not of the school of Abbe Sieves. Their first object was to make us free; their next to keep us so. While, therefore, they selected equality as the basis of their social order, they took care to blend every man's ambition with the perpetuity of the State. Unlike the levelling equality of modern days, the ancient equality of England elevates and creates. Learned in human nature, the English constitution holds out privilege to every subject as the inducement to do his duty. As it has secured freedom, jus- tice, and even property to the humblest of the commonwealth, so, pursuing the same system of privileges, it has confided the legislature of the realm to two orders of the subjects — orders, however, in which every English citizen may be constitutionally enrolled — the Lords and the m Commons. The two estates of the Peers are personally summoned to meet in their chamber : the more extensive and single estate of the Commons meets by its representatives. Both are political orders, complete in their character, independent in their authority, legally irrespon- sible for the exercise of their power. But they are the trustees of the nation, not its masters ; and there is a High Court of Chancery in the public opinion of the nation at large, which exercises a vigilant control over these privileged ^I)c §pixit of ^Ijtggtsm 273 classes of the community, and to which they are equitably and morally amenable. Estimating, therefore, the moral responsibility of our political estates, it may fairly be maintained that, instead of being irresponsible, the responsibility of the Lords exceeds that of the Commons. The House of Commons itself not being an estate of the realm, but only the representatives of an estate, owes to the nation a responsibility neither legal nor moral. The House of Commons is responsible only to that privileged order who are its constituents. Between the Lords and the Commons themselves there is this prime difference — that the Lords are known, and seen, and marked ; the Commons are unknown, in- visible, and unobserved. The Lords meet in a particular spot ; the Commons are scattered over the kingdom. The eye of the nation rests upon the Lords, few in number, and notable in posi- tion ; the eye of the nation wanders in vain for the Commons, far more numerous, but far less remarkable. As a substitute the nation appeals to the House of Commons, but sometimes appeals in vain; for if the majority of the Commons choose to support their representatives in a course of conduct adverse to the opinion of the nation, the House of Commons will set the nation at defiance. They have done so once; may they never repeat that destructive career ! Such are T 274 %fye gphrif of iS^iggism our two Houses of Parliament — the most illus- trious assemblies since the Roman Senate and Grecian Areopagus; neither of them is the ' House of the People,' but both alike represent the ' Nation.' ^I)c §pmi of 'gofjtggism 2 (O CHAPTER V. There are two propositions, which, however at the first glance they may appear to contradict the popular opinions of the day, are neverthe- less, as I helieve, just and true. And they are these : — First. That there is no probability of ever establishing a more democratic form of govern- ment than the present English constitution. Second. That the recent political changes of the Whigs are, in fact, a departure from the democratic spirit of that constitution. Whatever form a government may assume, its spirit must be determined by the laws which regulate the property of the country. You may have a Senate and Consuls, you may have no hereditary titles, and you may dub each householder or inhabitant a citizen ; but if the spirit of your laws preserves masses of property in a particular class, the government of the country will follow the disposition of the pro- perty. So also you may have an apparent despotism without any formal popular control, T 2 276 ^fje gpirif of ^I^tggtsm and with no aristocracy, either natural or arti- ficial, and the spirit of the government may nevertheless he repuhlican. Thus the ancient polity of Rome, in its hest days, was an aristo- cracy, and the government of Constantinople is the nearest approach to a democracy on a great scale, and maintained during a great period, that history offers. The constitution of Prance during the last half century has been fast approaching that of the Turks. The barbarous Jacobins blended modern equality with the refined civilisation of ancient Erance ; the bar- barous Ottomans blended their equality with the refined civilisation of ancient Rome. Paris secured to the Jacobins those luxuries that their system never could have produced : Byzantium served the same purpose to the Turks. Both the Prench and their turbaned prototypes com- menced their system with popular enthusiasm, and terminated it with general subjection. Napoleon and Louis Philippe are playing the same part as the Soleimans and the Mahmouds. The Chambers are but a second-rate Divan ; the Prefects but inferior Pachas : a solitary being rules alike in the Seraglio and the Tuileries, and the whole nation bows to his despotism on con- dition that they have no other master save himself. The disposition of property in England throws ^|lje g>pirtf of IBljiggtetn 277 the government of the country into the hands of its natural aristocracy. I do not believe that any scheme of the suffrage, or any method of election, could divert that power into other quarters. It is the necessary consequence of our present social state. I believe, the wider the popular suffrage, the more powerful would be the natural aristocracv. This seems to me an inevitable consequence ; but I admit this pro- position on the clear understanding that such an extension should be established on a fair, and not a factious, basis. Here, then, arises the question of the ballot, into the merits of which I shall take another opportunity of entering, recording only now my opinion, that in the present arrangement of the constituencies, even the ballot would favour the power of the natural aristocracy, and that, if the ballot were simul- taneously introduced with a fair and not a fac- tious extension of the suffrage, it would produce no difference whatever in the ultimate result. Quitting, then, these considerations, let us arrive at the important point. Is there any probability of a different disposition of property in England — a disposition of property which, by producing a very general similarity of condition, would throw the government of the country into the hands of any individuals whom popular esteem or fancy might select ? 278 ^fje g>ptrif of ^^tggistn It appears to me that this question can only be decided by ascertaining the genius of the English nation. What is the prime characteristic of the English mind ? I apprehend I may safely decide upon its being industry. Taking a general but not a superficial survey of the English character since the Reformation, a thousand circumstances convince me that the salient point in our national psychology is the passion for accumulating wealth, of which industry is the chief instrument. We value our freedom principally because it leaves us unrestricted in our pursuits ; and that reverence for law and all that is established, which also eminently distinguishes the English nation, is occasioned by the conviction that, next to liberty, order is the most efficacious assistant of in- dustry. And thus we see that those great revolutions which must occur in the history of all nations, when they happen here produce no permanent effects upon our social state. Our revolutions are brought about by the passions of creative minds taking advantage, for their own aggrandise- ment, of peculiar circumstances in our national progress. They are never called for by the great body of the nation. Churches are plundered, long rebellions maintained, dynasties changed, parliaments abolished; but when the storm is passed, the features of the social landscape %l)e gpirtf of ^3f)icjcjism remain unimpaired ; there are no traces of the hurricane, the earthquake, or the volcano ; it has been but a tumult of the atmosphere, that has neither toppled down our old spires and palaces nor swallowed up our cities and seats of learning, nor blasted our ancient woods, nor swept away our ports and harbours. The English nation ever recurs to its ancient institutions — the insti- tutions that have alike secured freedom and order ; and after all their ebullitions, we find them, when the sky is clear, again at work, and toiling on at their eternal task of accumulation. There is this difference between the revolutions of England and the revolutions of the Continent — the European revolution is a struggle against privilege ; an English revolution is a struggle for it. If a new class rises in the State, it becomes uneasy to take its place in the natural aristocracy of the land : a desperate faction or a wily leader takes advantage of this desire, and a revolution is the consequence. Thus the Whigs in the present day have risen to power on the shoulders of the manufacturing interest. To secure themselves in their posts, the Whigs have given the new interest an undue preponderance; but the new interest, having obtained its object, is content. The manufacturer, like every other Englishman, is as aristocratic as the landlord. The manu- facturer begins to lack in movement. Under 280 ^gf)e gptrtf of ^^iggtsm Walpole the "Whigs played the same game with the commercial interest ; a century has passed, and the commercial interest are all as devoted to the constitution as the manufacturers soon will be. Having no genuine party, the "Whigs seek for succour from the Irish papists ; Lord John Russell, however, is only imitating Pym under the same circumstances. In 1640, when the English movement was satisfied, and the constitutional party, headed by such men as Falkland and Hyde, were about to attain power, Pym and his friends, in despair at their declining influence and the close divisions in their once unanimous Parlia- ment, fled to the Scotch Covenanters, and entered into a ' close compact ' for the destruction of the Church of England as the price of their assistance. So events repeat themselves ; but if the study of history is really to profit us, the nation at the present day will take care that the same results do not always occur from the same events. When passions have a little subsided, the in- dustrious ten-pounder, who has struggled into the privileged order of the Commons, proud of having obtained the first step of aristocracy, will be the last man to assist in destroying the other gradations of the scale which he or his posterity may yet ascend ; the new member of a manu- facturing district has his eye already upon a ^I)c §pm* of 131jtggtstn 281 neighbouring park, avails himself of his political position to become a county magistrate, meditates upon a baronetcy, and dreams of a coroneted descendant. The nation that esteems wealth as the great object of existence will submit to no laws that do not secure the enjoyment of wealth. Now, we deprive wealth of its greatest source of enjoy- ment, as well as of its best security, if we deprive it of power. The English nation, therefore, in- sists that property shall be the qualification for power, and the whole scope of its laws and customs is to promote and favour the accumulation of wealth and the perpetuation of property. We cannot alter, therefore, the disposition of property in this country without we change the national character. Par from the present age being hostile to the supremacy of property, there has been no period of our history where property has been more esteemed, because there has been no period when the nation has been so industrious. Believing, therefore, that no change will occur in the disposition of property in this country, I cannot comprehend how our govern- ment can become more democratic. The conse- quence of our wealth is an aristocratic constitu- tion ; the consequence of our love of liberty is an aristocratic constitution founded on an equal- ity of civil rights. And who can deny that an 282 ^fje §pmf of ^S^icjgistn aristocratic constitution resting on such a basis, where the legislative, and even the executive office may he obtained by every subject of the realm, is, in fact, a noble democracy ? The English constitution, faithful to the national character, secures to all the enjoyment of property and the delights of freedom. Its honours are a per- petual reward of industry ; every Englishman is toiling to obtain them ; and this is the consti- tution to which every Englishman will always be devoted, except he is a Whig. In the next Chapter I shall discuss the second proposition. Qijc Spirit of l^fyicjcjism 283 CHAPTER VI. The Tories assert that the whole property of the country is on their side ; and the Whigs, wring- ing their hands over lost elections and bellowing about ' intimidation, ' seem to confess the soft im- peachment. Their prime organ also assures us that every man with 6001. per annum is opposed to them. Yet the Whig-Radical writers have recently published, by way of consolation to their penniless proselytes, a list of some twenty Dukes and Marquises, who, they assure us, are devoted to ' Liberal ' principles, and whose revenues, in a paroxysm of economical rhodo- montade, they assert, could buy up the whole income of the rest of the hereditary Peerage. The Whig-Radical writers seem puzzled to re- concile this anomalous circumstance with the indisputably forlorn finances of their faction in general. Now, this little tract on the ' Spirit of Whiggism ' may perhaps throw some light upon this perplexing state of affairs. Por myself, 1 see in it only a fresh illustration of the prin- ciples which I have demonstrated, from the 234 ^c §pixit of ^d^tggism whole current of our history, to form the basis of "Whig policy. This union of oligarchical wealth and mob poverty is the very essence of the ' Sjiirit of Whiggism.' The English constitution, which, from the tithing-man to the Peer of Parliament, has thrown the whole government of the country into the hands of those who are qualified by property to perform the duties of their respective offices, has secured that diffused and general freedom, with- out which the national industry would neither have its fair play nor its just reward, by a variety of institutions, which, while they prevent those who have no property from invading the social commonwealth, in whose classes every indus- trious citizen has a right to register himself, offer also an equally powerful check to the ambitious fancies of those great families, over whose liberal principles and huge incomes the Whig-Radical writers gloat with the self-com- placency of lackeys at the equipages of their masters. There is ever an union in a perverted sense between those who are beneath power and those who wish to be above it ; and oligarchies and despotisms are usually established by the agency of a deluded multitude. The Crown, with its constitutional influence over the military services ; a Parliament of two houses, watching each other's proceedings with constitutional ^ftc g>ptrtf of ^Sljtcjcjism 285 jealousy ; an independent hierarchy, and, not least, an independent magistracy, are serious obstacles in the progressive establishment of that scheme of government which a small knot of great families, these dukes and marquises, whose revenues according to the Government organ, could buy up the income of the whole peerage, naturally wish to introduce. We find, therefore, throughout the whole period of our more modern history, a powerful section of the great nobles ever at war with the national institutions ; check- ing the Crown ; attacking the independence of that House of Parliament in which they happen to be in a minority, no matter which ; patronising sects to reduce the influence of the Church; and playing town against country to overcome the authority of the gentry. It is evident that these aspiring oligarchs, as a party, can have little essential strength ; they can count upon nothing but their retainers. To secure the triumph of their cause, therefore, they are forced to manoeuvre with a pretext, and while they aim at oligarchical rule, they apparently advocate popular rights. They hold out, conse- quently, an inducement to all the uneasy portion of the nation to enlist under their standard ; they play their discontented minority against the pros- perous majority, and, dubbing their partisans ' the people,' they Hatter themselves .that their 286 %fye Spirit of ^Ijiggtsm projects are irresistible. The attack is unex- pected, brisk, and dashing, well matured, dexter- ously mystified. Before the nation is roused to its danger, the oligarchical object is often obtained ; and then the oligarchy, entrenched in power, count upon the nation to defend them from their original and revolutionary allies. If they succeed, a dynasty is changed, or a Parlia- ment reformed, and the movement is stopped ; if the Tories or the Conservatives cannot arrest the fatal career which the Whigs have originally impelled, then away go the national institutions ; the crown falls from the King's brow; the crosier is snapped in twain ; one House of Par- liament is sure to disappear, and the gentlemen of England, dexterously dubbed Malignants, or Anti-Heforniers, or any other phrase in fashion, the dregs of the nation sequester their estates and install themselves in their halls ; and ' liberal principles' having thus gloriously triumphed, after a due course of plunder, bloodshed, im- prisonment, and ignoble tyranny, the people of England, sighing once more to be the English nation, secure order by submitting to a despot, and in time, when they have got rid of their despot, combine their ancient freedom with their newly-regained security by re-establishing the English constitution. The Whigs of the present day have made ^e Spirit of 3&$iggtsttt 287 their assault upon the nation with their usual spirit. They have already succeeded in control- ling the sovereign and in remodelling the House of Commons. They have menaced the House of Lords, violently assailed the Church, and recon- structed the Corporations. I shall take the two most comprehensive measures which they have succeeded in carrying, and which were at the time certainly very popular, and apparently of a very democratic character, — their reform of the House of Commons, and their reconstruction of the municipal corporations. Let us see whether these great measures have, in fact, increased the democratic character of our constitution or not — whether they veil an oligarchical project, or are, in fact, popular concessions inevitably offered by the Whigs in their oligarchical career. The result of the Whig remodelling of the order of the Commons has been this — that it lias placed the nomination of the Government in the hands of the popish priesthood. Is that a great advance of public intelligence and popular liberty ? Are the parliamentary nominees of M'Hale and Kehoe more germane to the feelings of the English nation, more adapted to represent their interests, than the parliamentary nominees of a Howard or a Percy ? This papist majority, again, is the superstructure of a basis formed by some Scotch Presbyterians and some English 288 ^Ije gptrtf of ^^tggisut Dissenters, in general returned by the small constituencies of small towns — classes whose number and influence, intelligence and wealth, have been grossly exaggerated for factious pur- poses, but classes avowedly opposed to the main- tenance of the English constitution. I do not see that the cause of popular power has much risen, even with the addition of this leaven. If the suffrages of the Commons of England were polled together, the hustings-books of the last general election will prove that a very consider- able majority of their numbers is opposed to the present Government, and that therefore, under this new democratic scheme, this great body of the nation are, by some hocus-pocus tactics or other, obliged to submit to the minority. The truth is, that the new constituency has been so arranged that an unnatural preponderance has been given to a small class, and one hostile to the interests of the great body. Is this more democratic ? The apparent majority in the House of Commons is produced by a minority of the Commons themselves ; so that a small and favoured class command a majority in the House of Commons, and the sway of the administration, as far as that House is concerned, is regulated by a smaller number of individuals than those who governed it previous to its reform. But this is not the whole evil : this new class, £l)c Spirit of l&ljigcii&m with its unnatural preponderance, is a class hostile to the institutions of the country, hostile to the union of Church and State, hostile to the House of Lords, to the constitutional power of the Crown, to the existing; system of provincial judicature. It is, therefore, a class fit and willing to support the Whigs in their favourite scheme of centralisation, without which the Whigs can never long maintain themselves in power. Now, centralisation is the death-blow of public freedom ; it is the citadel of the oligarchs, from which, if once erected, it will be impossible to dislodge them. But can that party be aiming at centralised government which has reformed the municipal corporations ? We will see. The reform of the municipal corporations of England is a cover! attack on the authority of the English gentry, — that great body which perhaps forms the most substantial existing obstacle to the perpetuation of Whiggism in power. By this democratic Act the county magistrate is driven from the towns where he before exercised a just influence, while an elective magistrate from the towns jostles him on the bench at quarter sessions, and presents in his peculiar position an anomaly in the constitu- tion of the bench, flattering to the passions, how- ever fatal to the interests, of the giddy million. Here is a lever to raise the question of county I £90 ^gf)e Spirit of ^^io^ism reform whenever an obstinate shire may venture to elect a representative in Parliament hostile to the liberal oligarchs. Let us admit, for the moment, that the Whigs ultimately succeed in subverting the ancient and hereditary power of the English gentry. Will the municipal cor- porations substitute themselves as an equivalent check on a centralising Government ? Whence springs their influence ? Eroni property ? Not half a dozen have estates. Their influence springs from the factitious power with which the reforming Government has invested them, and of which the same Government will deprive them in a session, the moment they cease to be corre- sponding committees of the reforming majority in the House of Commons. They will either be swept away altogether, or their functions will be limited to raising the local taxes which will dis- charge their expenses of the detachment of the metropolitan police, or the local judge or governor, whom Downing Street may send down to preside over their constituents. With one or two ex- ceptions, the English corporations do not possess more substantial and durable elements of power than the municipalities of Erance. What check are they on Paris ? These corporations have neither prescription in their favour, nor property. Their influence is maintained neither by tradition nor substance. They have no indirect authority ^§f)c gpirtf of i3f)igc$ism - ' over the minds of their townsmen ; they have only their modish charters to appeal to, and the newly engrossed letter of the law. They have no great endowments of whose public benefits they are the official distributors ; they do not stand on the vantage-ground on which we recog- nise the trustees of the public interests ; they neither administer to the soul nor the body ; they neither feed the poor nor educate the young ; they have no hold on the national mind ; they have not sprung from the national cha- racter ; they were born by faction, and they will live by faction. Such bodies must speedily become corrupt ; they will ultimately be found dangerous instruments in the hands of a faction. The members of the country corporations will play the game of a London party, to secure their factitious local importance and obtain the consequent results of their opportune services. I think I have now established the two propositions with which I commenced my last chapter : and I will close this concluding one of the ' Spirit of Whiggism ' with their recapitula- tion, and the inferences which I draw from them. If there be a slight probability of ever establish- ing in this country a more democratic govern- ment than the English constitution, it will be as well, I conceive, for those who love their rights, to maintain that constitution ; and il* the 292 ^gfyc <5pirU of 3$f)iggism more recent measures of the Whigs, however plausible their first aspect, have, in fact, been a departure from the democratic character of that constitution, it will be as well for the English nation to oppose, with all their heart, and all their soul, and all their strength, the machinations of the Whigs and the ' Spirit of Whiggisnv S.&H LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOOUK AND CO., NEW-STREET SQIAUL A2JD PARLIAMENT STUKET UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A A 000 232 511 6 THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. Series 9482 >'.''•' •.» . . : '.-i-».'