FOX AND MOORE
Fox did more than any other statesman in the dull reign of George II. to prepare the way for the epoch of Reform, and it was therefore fitting that the statesman who more than any other bore the brunt of the battle in 1830-32 should write his biography. Lord Russell’s biography of Fox, though by no means so skilfully written as Sir George Otto Trevelyan’s vivacious description of ‘The Early History of Charles James Fox,’ is on a more extended scale than the latter. Students of the political annals of the eighteenth century are aware of its value as an original and suggestive contribution to the facts and forces which have shaped the relations of the Crown and the Cabinet in modern history. Fox, in Lord John’s opinion, gave his life to the defence of English freedom, and hastened his death by his exertion to abolish the African Slave Trade. He lays stress, not only on the great qualities which Fox displayed in public life, but also on the simplicity and kindness of his nature, and the spell which, in spite of grievous faults, he seemed able to cast, without effort, alike over friends and foes.
One of the earliest, and certainly one of the closest, friendships of Lord John Russell’s life was with Thomas Moore. They saw much of each other for the space of nearly forty years in London society, and were also drawn together in the more familiar intercourse of foreign travel. It was with Lord John that the poet went to Italy in 1819 to avoid arrest for debt, after his deputy at Bermuda had embezzled 6,000l.Moore lived, more or less, all his days from hand to mouth, and Lord John Russell, who was always ready in a quiet fashion, in Kingsley’s phrase, to help lame dogs over stiles, frequently displayedtowards the light-hearted poet throughout their long friendship delicate and generous kindness. He it was who, in conjunction with Lord Lansdowne, obtained for Moore in 1835 a pension of 300l.a year, and announced the fact as one which was ‘due from any Government, but much more from one some of the members of which are proud to think themselves your friends.’ Moore died in 1852, and when his will was read—it had been made when Lord John was still comparatively unknown—it was discovered that he had, to give his own words, ‘confided to my valued friend, Lord John Russell (having obtained his kind promise to undertake the service for me), the task of looking over whatever papers, letters, or journals I may leave behind me, for the purpose of forming from them some kind of publication, whether in the shape of memoirs or otherwise, which may afford the means of making some provision for my wife and family.’ Although Lord John was sixty, and burdened with the cares of State, if not with the cares of office, he cheerfully accepted the task. Though it must be admitted that he performed some parts of it in rather a perfunctory manner, the eight volumes which appeared between 1853 and 1856 of the ‘Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore’ represent a severe tax upon friendship, as well as no ordinary labour on the part of a man who was always more or less immersed in public affairs.
‘DON CARLOS’
Lord John also edited the ‘Correspondence of John, fourth Duke of Bedford,’ and prefaced the letters with a biographical sketch. Quite early in his career he also tried his hand at fiction in ‘The Nun of Arrouca,’ a story founded on a romantic incident which occurred during his travels in the Peninsula. The book appeared in 1822,and in the same year—he was restless and ambitious of literary distinction at the time, and had not yet found his true sphere in politics—he also published ‘Don Carlos,’ a tragedy in blank verse, which was in reality not merely a tirade against the cruelties of the Inquisition, but an impassioned protest against religious disabilities in every shape or form. ‘Don Carlos,’ though now practically forgotten, ran through five editions in twelve months, and the people remembered it when its author became the foremost advocate in the House of Commons of the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. Amongst other minor writings which belong to the earlier years of Lord John Russell, it is enough to name ‘Essays and Sketches of Life and Character,’ ‘The Establishment of the Turks in Europe,’ ‘A Translation of the Fifth Book of the Odyssey,’ and an imitation of the Thirteenth Satire of Juvenal, as well as an essay on the ‘Causes of the French Revolution,’ which appeared in 1832.
It is still a moot point whether ‘Letters Written for the Post, and not for the Press,’ an anonymous volume which appeared in 1820, and which consists of descriptions of a tour in Scotland, interspersed with dull moral lectures on the conduct of a wife towards her husband, was from his pen. Mr. George Elliot believes, on internal evidence, too lengthy to quote, that the book—a small octavo volume of more than four hundred pages—is erroneously attributed to his brother-in-law, and the Countess Russell is of the same opinion. Mr. Elliot cites inaccuracies in the book, and adds that the places visited in Scotland do not correspond with those which Lord John had seen when he went thither in company with the Duke and Duchess in 1807; and there is no evidence that he made another pilgrimage north of the Tweed between that date and the appearance of thebook. He adds that his father took the trouble to collect everything which was written by Lord John, and the book is certainly not in the library at Minto. Moreover, Mr. Elliot is confident that either Lord Minto or Lord John himself assured him that he might dismiss the idea of the supposed authorship.
After his final retirement from office, Lord John published, in 1868, three letters to Mr. Chichester Fortescue on ‘The State of Ireland,’ and this was followed by a contribution to ecclesiastical history in the shape of a volume of essays on ‘The Rise and Progress of the Christian Religion in the West of Europe to the Council of Trent.’ The leisure of his closing years was, however, chiefly devoted to the preparation, with valuable introductions, of selections from his own ‘Speeches and Despatches;’ and this, in turn, was followed, after an interval of five years, by a work entitled ‘Recollections and Suggestions, 1813-1873,’ which appeared as late as 1875, and which was of singular personal interest as well as of historical importance. It bears on the title-page two lines from Dryden, which were often on Lord John’s lips in his closing years:
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.
A RETROSPECT
The old statesman’s once tenacious memory was failing when he wrote the book, and there is little evidence of literary arrangement in its contents. If, however, Lord John did not always escape inaccuracy of statement or laboured discursiveness of style, the value not only of his political reminiscences, but also of his shrewd and often pithily expressed verdicts on men and movements, is unquestionable, and, on the whole, the vigour of the book isas remarkable as its noble candour. Mr. Kinglake once declared that ‘Lord John Russell wrote so naturally that it recalled the very sound of his voice;’ and half the charm of his ‘Recollections and Suggestions’ consists in the artlessness of a record which will always rank with the original materials of history, between the year in which Wellington fought the battle of Vittoria and that in which, just sixty years later, Napoleon III. died in exile at Chislehurst. In speaking of his own career, Lord Russell, writing at the age of eighty-one, uses words which are not less manly than modest:
‘I can only rejoice that I have been allowed to have my share in the task accomplished in the half-century which has elapsed from 1819 to 1869. My capacity, I always felt, was very inferior to that of the men who have attained in past times the foremost place in our Parliament and in the councils of our Sovereign. I have committed many errors, some of them very gross blunders. But the generous people of England are always forbearing and forgiving to those statesmen who have the good of their country at heart. Like my betters, I have been misrepresented and slandered by those who know nothing of me; but I have been more than compensated by the confidence and the friendship of the best men of my own political connection, and by the regard and favourable interpretation of my motives, which I have heard expressed by my generous opponents, from the days of Lord Castlereagh to these of Mr. Disraeli.’
There were few questions in which Lord John Russell was more keenly interested from youth to age than that of National Education. As a boy he had met Joseph Lancaster, during a visit of that far-seeing and practical friendof poor children to Woburn, and the impression which the humble Quaker philanthropist made on the Duke of Bedford’s quick-witted as well as kind-hearted son was retained, as one of his latest speeches show, to the close of life. At the opening of the new British Schools in Richmond in the summer of 1867, Lord John referred to his father’s association with Joseph Lancaster, and added: ‘In this way I naturally became initiated into a desire for promoting schools for the working classes, and I must say, from that time to this I never changed my mind upon the subject. I think it is absolutely necessary our schools should not merely be secular, but that they should be provided with religious teaching, and that religious teaching ought not to be sectarian. There will be plenty of time, when these children go to church or chapel, that they should learn either that particular form of doctrine their parents follow or adopt one more consistent with their conscientious feelings; but I think, while they are young boys and girls at school, it ought to be sufficient for them to know what Christ taught, and what the apostles taught; and from those lessons and precepts they may guide their conduct in life.’
Lord John put his hand to the plough in the day of small things, and, through good and through evil report, from the days of Lancaster, Bell, and Brougham, to those of Mr. Forster and the great measure of 1870, he never withdrew from a task which lay always near to his heart. It is difficult to believe that at the beginning of the present century there were less than three thousand four hundred schools of all descriptions in the whole of England, or that when the reign of George III. was closing one-half of the children of the nation still ran wild without the least pretence of education. At a still later period the marriage statistics revealed the fact that one-third of the men and one-half of the women were unable to sign the register. The social elevation of the people, so ran the miserable plea of those who assuredly were not given to change, was fraught with peril to the State. Hodge, it was urged, ought to be content to take both the Law and the Commandments from his betters, since a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. As for the noisy, insolent operatives and artisans of the great manufacturing towns, was there not for them the strong hand of authority, and, if they grew too obstreperous, the uplifted sabre of the military as at Peterloo? It was all very well, however, to extol the virtues of patience, contentment, and obedience, but the sense of wrong and of defiance rankled in the masses, and with it—in a dull and confused manner—the sense of power.
THE AWAKENING OF THE PEOPLE
The Reform Bill of 1832 mocked in many directions the hopes of the people, but it at least marked a great social as well as a great political departure, and with it came the dawn of a new day to modern England. As the light broadened, the vision of poets and patriots began to be realised in practical improvements, which came home to men’s business and bosom; the standard of intelligence rose, and with it freedom of thought, and the, sometimes passionate, but more often long-suffering demand for political, social, and economic concessions to justice. It was long before the privileged classes began to recognise, except in platform heroics, that it was high time to awake out of sleep and to ‘educate our masters;’ but the work began when Lord Althorp persuaded the House of Commons to vote a modest sum for the erection of school buildings in England; and that grant of 20,000l.in1832 was the ‘handful of corn on the top of the mountains’ which has brought about the golden harvest of to-day. The history of the movement does not, of course, fall within the province of these pages, though Lord John Russell’s name is associated with it in an honourable and emphatic sense. The formation, chiefly at his instance, in 1839 of a Council of Education paved the way for the existing system of elementary education, and lifted the whole problem to the front rank of national affairs.
POPULAR EDUCATION
He was the first Prime Minister of England to carry a measure which made it possible to secure trained teachers for elementary schools; and his successful effort in 1847 to ‘diminish the empire of ignorance,’ as he styled it, was one of the events in his public life on which he looked back in after years with the most satisfaction. During the session of 1856 Lord John brought forward in the House of Commons a bold scheme of National Education. He contended that out of four million children of school age only one-half were receiving instruction, whilst not more than one-eighth were attending schools which were subject to inspection. The vast majority were to be found in schools where the standard of education, if not altogether an unknown quantity, was deplorably low. He proposed that the number of inspectors should be increased, and that a rate should be levied by the local authorities for supplying adequate instruction in places where it was unsatisfactory. He contended that the country should be mapped out in school districts, and that the managers should have the power to make provision for religious instruction, and, at the same time, should allow the parents of the children a voice in the matter. Prejudices ecclesiastical and social blocked the way, however, and Lord John was compelled to abandon the scheme, which suggested, and to a largeextent anticipated Mr. Forster’s far-reaching measure, which in 1870 met with a better fate, and linked the principles of local authority and central supervision in the harmonious working of public education. When the victory was almost won Mr. Forster, with characteristic kindliness, wrote to the old statesman who had laboured for the people’s cause in years of supreme discouragement:—‘As regards universal compulsory education, I believe we shall soon complete the building. It is hard to see how there would have been a building to complete, if you had not, with great labour and in great difficulty, dug the foundations in 1839.’ Happily Lord John lived to witness the crowning of the edifice by the Gladstone Administration.
COMING BACK TO POWER1857-1861
Lord John as an Independent Member—His chance in the City—The Indian Mutiny—Orsini’s attempt on the life of Napoleon—The Conspiracy Bill—Lord John and the Jewish Relief Act—Palmerston in power—Lord John at the Foreign Office—Cobden and Bright—Quits the Commons with a Peerage.
Lord Johncame prominently to the front in public affairs in the brief session of 1857, which ended in Lord Palmerston’s appeal to the country. He spoke against the Government during the discussions in the House of Commons on the conduct of the Persian War, and he exercised his independence in other directions. Even shrewd and well-informed observers were curiously oblivious, for the moment, of the signs of the times, for Greville wrote on February 27: ‘Nobody cares any longer for John Russell, everybody detests Gladstone; Disraeli has no influence in the country, and a very doubtful position with his own party.’ Yet scarcely more than a fortnight later this cynical, but frank scribe added: ‘Some think a reaction in favour of John Russell has begun. He stands for the City, and is in very good spirits, though his chances of success do not look bright; but he is a gallant little fellow, likes to face danger, and comes out well in times of difficulty.’ Between these two statements the unexpected had happened. Cobdenhad brought forward a motion censuring the conduct of the Government in the affair of the lorcha, ‘Arrow,’ at Canton, and the three statesmen on whom Greville had contemptuously pronounced judgment—Russell, Gladstone, and Disraeli—had supported the Manchester school, with the result that the Government, on March 4, suffered defeat by a majority of sixteen votes. Parliament was dissolved in the course of the month, and the General Election brought Lord Palmerston back to power, pledged to nothing unless it was a spirited foreign policy.
THE CITY FIGHTS SHY
The personal ascendency of Lord Palmerston, whom Disraeli cleverly styled the Tory chief of a Radical Cabinet, carried the election, for there was a good deal of truth in the assertion that nobody cared a straw for his colleagues. The Peace party suffered defeat at the polls, and, amongst others, Cobden himself was turned out at Huddersfield, and Bright and Milner Gibson were his companions in misfortune at Manchester. A vigorous attempt was made to overthrow Lord John in the City, and his timid friends in the neighbourhood of Lombard Street and the Exchange implored him not to run the risk of a contested election. He was assured in so many words, states Lady Russell, that he had as much chance of being elected Pope as of being elected member for the City; and the statement roused his mettle. He was pitted against a candidate from Northampton, and the latter was brought forward with the powerful support of the Registration Association of the City of London, and in a fashion which was the reverse of complimentary to the old statesman.
Lord John was equal to the occasion, and was by no means inclined to throw up the sponge. He went down to the City, and delivered not merely a vigorous, but vivaciousspeech, and in the course of it he said, with a jocularity which was worthy of Lord Palmerston himself: ‘If a gentleman were disposed to part with his butler, his coachman, or his gamekeeper, or if a merchant were disposed to part with an old servant, a warehouseman, a clerk, or even a porter, he would say to him, “John—(laughter)—I think your faculties are somewhat decayed; you are growing old, you have made several mistakes, and I think of putting a young man from Northampton in your place.” (Laughter and cheers.) I think a gentleman would behave in that way to his servant, and thereby give John an opportunity of answering that he thought his faculties were not so much decayed, and that he was able to go on, at all events, some five or six years longer. That opportunity was not given to me. The question was decided in my absence, without any intimation to me; and I come now to ask you and the citizens of London to reverse that decision.’ He was taken at his word, and the rival candidate from Northampton was duly sent to the neighbouring borough of Coventry.
The summer of 1857 was darkened in England by tidings of the Indian Mutiny and of the terrible massacre at Cawnpore. In face of the disaster Lord John not merely gave his hearty support to the Government, but delivered an energetic protest against the attack of the Opposition at such a crisis, and moved an address assuring the Crown of the support of Parliament, which was carried, in spite of Disraeli, without a division. At the same time Lord John in confidential intercourse made it plain that he recognised to the full extent the need of reform in the administration of India, and he did not hesitate to intimate that, in his view, the East India Company was no longerequal to the strain of so great a responsibility. He brought no railing accusations against the Company, but, on the contrary, declared that it must be admitted they had ‘conducted their affairs in a wonderful manner, falling into errors that were natural, but displaying merits of a high order. The real ground for change is that the machine is worn out, and, as a manufacturer changes an excellent engine of Watt and Boulton made fifty years ago for a new engine with modern improvements, so it becomes us to find a new machine for the government of India.’
THE ORSINI PLOT
Before the upheaval in India had spent its force fresh difficulties overtook Lord Palmerston’s Government. Count Orsini, strong in the conviction that Napoleon III. was the great barrier to the progress of revolution in Italy, determined to rid his countrymen of the man who, beyond all others, seemed bent on thwarting the national aspirations. With other conspirators, he threw three bombs on the night of January 14, 1858, at the carriage of the Emperor and Empress as they were proceeding to the Opera, and, though they escaped unhurt, ten persons were killed and many wounded. The bombs had been manufactured in England, and Orsini—who was captured and executed—had arranged the dastardly outrage in London, and the consequence was a fierce outbreak of indignation on the other side of the Channel. Lord Palmerston, prompted by the French Government, which demanded protection from the machinations of political refugees, brought forward a Conspiracy Bill. The feeling of the country, already hostile to such a measure, grew pronounced when the French army, not content with congratulating the Emperor on his escape, proceeded to refer to England in insulting, and even threatening, terms. Lord John, on high constitutional grounds, protested against theintroduction of the measure, and declared that he was determined not to share in such ‘shame and humiliation.’ The Government were defeated on the Conspiracy Bill, on February 19, by nineteen votes. Amongst the eighty-four Liberals in the majority occur the names, not merely of Lord John Russell and Sir James Graham, but Mr. Cardwell and Mr. Gladstone. Lord Palmerston promptly resigned, and Lord Derby came into office. Disraeli, as Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, proceeded with characteristic audacity and a light heart to educate the new Conservative Party in the art of dishing the Whigs.
THE JEWISH RELIEF ACT
The new Ministry was short-lived. Lord Derby was in advance of his party, and old-fashioned Tories listened with alarm to the programme of work which he set before them. For the moment Lord John was not eager for office, and he declared that the ‘new Ministers ought not to be recklessly or prematurely opposed.’ He added that he would not sanction any cabal among the Liberal party, and that he had no intention whatever of leading an alliance of Radicals and Peelites. Impressed with the magnitude of the issues at stake, he helped Lord Derby to pass the new India Bill, which handed the government of that country over to the Crown. He held that the question was too great to be made a battle-field of party, but thorough-paced adherents of Lord Palmerston did not conceal their indignation at such independent action. Lord John believed at the moment that it was right for him to throw his influence into the scale, and therefore he was indifferent to the passing clamour. The subsequent history of the English in India has amply justified the patriotic step which he took in scorn of party consequences. The Jewish Relief Act became lawin 1858, and Lord John at length witnessed the triumph of a cause which he had brought again and again before Parliament since the General Election of 1847, when Baron Rothschild was returned as his colleague in the representation of the City. Scarcely any class of the community showed themselves more constantly mindful of his services on their behalf than the Jews. When one of them took an opportunity of thanking him for helping to free a once oppressed race from legal disabilities, Lord John replied: ‘The object of my life has been not to benefit a race alone, but all nationalities that suffered under civil and religious disabilities.’ He used to relate with evident appreciation the reply which Lord Lyndhurst once gave to a timid statesman who feared a possible Hebrew invasion of the woolsack. The man who was appointed four times to that exalted seat retorted: ‘Well, I see no harm in that; Daniel would have made a good Lord Chancellor.’
Everyone recognised that the Derby Administration was a mere stop-gap, and, as months passed on, its struggle for existence became somewhat ludicrous. They felt themselves to be a Ministry on sufferance, and, according to the gossip of the hour, their watchword was ‘Anything for a quiet life.’ There were rocks ahead, and at the beginning of the session of 1859 they stood revealed in Mr. Disraeli’s extraordinary proposals for Reform, and in the war-cloud which was gathering rapidly over Europe in consequence of the quarrel between France and Austria about the affairs of Italy. Mr. Disraeli’s Reform Bill taxed the allegiance of his party to the breaking point, and when its provisions were disclosed two of his colleagues resigned—Mr. Spencer Walpole the Home Office, and Mr. Henley the Board of Trade, rather than have part or lot in such ameasure. There is no need here to describe in detail a scheme which was foredoomed by its fantastic character to failure. It confused great issues; it brought into play what Mr. Bright called fancy franchises; it did not lower the voting qualification in boroughs; its new property qualifications were of a retrograde character; and it left the working classes where it found them. It frightened staid Tories of the older school, and excited the ridicule, if not the indignation, of all who had seriously grappled with the problem.
LORD GRANVILLE’S IMPOSSIBLE TASK
The immediate effect was to unite all sections of the Liberal Party. Lord John led the attack, and did so on the broad ground that it did not go far enough; and on April 1, after protracted debate, the measure was defeated by a majority of thirty-nine votes in a House of six hundred and twenty-one members. Parliament was prorogued on April 19, and the country was thrown into the turmoil of a General Election. Lord John promptly appealed to his old constituents in the City, and in the course of a vigorous address handled the ‘so-called Reform Bill’ in no uncertain manner. He declared that amongst the numerous defects of the Bill ‘one provision was conspicuous by its presence and another by its absence.’ He had deemed it advisable on the second reading to take what seemed to be the ‘most clear, manly, and direct’ course, and that was the secret of his amendment. The House of Commons had mustered in full force, and the terms of the amendment had been carried. The result of the General Election was that three hundred and fifty Liberals and three hundred and two Conservatives were returned to Westminster. Parliament met on May 31, and Lord Hartington moved an amendment to the Address which amounted to an expression of want of confidence. The amendment was carried by a majorityof thirteen on June 12, and Lord Derby’s Administration came the same night to an end. The result of the division took both parties somewhat by surprise. The astonishment was heightened when her Majesty sent for Lord Granville, an action which, to say the least, was a left-handed compliment to old and distinguished advisers of the Crown. Happily, though the sovereign may in such high affairs of State propose, it is the country which must finally dispose, and Lord Granville swiftly found that in the exuberance of political youth he had accepted a hopeless commission. He therefore relinquished an impossible task, and the Queen sent for Lord Palmerston.
PALMERSTON’S MIXED MULTITUDE
In the earlier years of Lord John’s retirement from office after the Vienna Conference his relations with some of his old colleagues, and more particularly with Lord Clarendon and Lord Palmerston, were somewhat strained. The blunders of the Derby Government, the jeopardy in India, the menacing condition of foreign politics, and, still more, the patriotism and right feeling of both men, gradually drew Palmerston and Russell into more intimate association, with the result that in the early summer of 1859 the frank intercourse of former years was renewed. More than twelve years had elapsed since Lord John had attained the highest rank possible to an English statesman. In the interval he had consented, under strong pressure from the most exalted quarters, to waive his claims by consenting to serve under Lord Aberdeen; and the outcome of that experiment had been humiliating to himself, as well as disastrous to the country. He might fairly have stood on his dignity—a fool’s pedestal at the best, and one which Lord John was too sensible ever to mount—at the present juncture, and have declined to return to the responsibilitiesof office, except as Prime Minister. The leaders of the democracy, Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden, were much more friendly to him than to Lord Palmerston. Apart from published records, Lady Russell’s diary shows that at the beginning of this year Mr. Bright was in close communication with her husband. Lord John good-humouredly protested that Mr. Bright alarmed timid people by his speeches; whereupon the latter replied that he had been much misrepresented, and declared that he was more willing to be lieutenant than general in the approaching struggle for Reform. He explained his scheme, and Lord John found that it had much in common with his own, from which it differed only in degree, except on the question of the ballot. ‘There has been a meeting between Bright and Lord John,’ was Lord Houghton’s comment, ‘but I don’t know that it has led to anything except a more temperate tone in Bright’s last speeches.’ Mr. Cobden, it is an open secret, would not have refused to serve under Lord John, but his hostility to Lord Palmerston’s policy was too pronounced for him now to accept the offer of a seat in the new Cabinet. He assured Lord John that if he had been at the head of the Administration the result would have been different. Both Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright felt that Lord Palmerston blocked the way to any adequate readjustment in home politics of the balance of power, and they were inspired by a settled distrust of his foreign policy. Lord John, on the other hand, though he might not move as swiftly as such popular leaders thought desirable, had still a name to conjure with, and was the consistent advocate, though on more cautious lines, of an extension of the franchise. Moreover, Lord John’s attack on Palmerston’s Government in regard to the conduct of the Chinese war, his vigorous protest againstthe Conspiracy Bill, and his frank sympathy with Mazzini’s dream of a United Italy, helped to bring the old leader, in the long fight for civil and religious liberty, into vital touch with younger men of the stamp of Cobden, Bright, and Gladstone, of whom the people justly expected great things in the not distant future. Lord John knew, however, that the Liberal camp was full of politicians who were neither hot nor cold—men who had slipped into Parliament on easy terms, only to reveal the fact that their prejudices were many and their convictions few. They sheltered themselves under the great prestige of Lord Palmerston, and represented his policy of masterly inactivity, rather than the true sentiments of the nation. Lord Palmerston was as jaunty as ever; but all things are not possible even to the ablest man, at seventy-five.
Although Lord John was not willing to serve under Lord Granville, who was his junior by more than a score of years, he saw his chance at the Foreign Office, and therefore consented to join the Administration of Lord Palmerston. In accepting office on such terms in the middle of June, he made it plain to Lord Palmerston that the importance of European affairs at the moment had induced him to throw in his lot with the new Ministry. The deadlock was brought to an end by Lord John’s patriotic decision. Mr. Gladstone became Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Granville President of the Council; and amongst others in the Cabinet were Sir G. C. Lewis, Mr. Milner Gibson, Sir George Grey, and the Duke of Argyll. Though Cobden would not accept a place in the Government, he rendered it important service by negotiating the commercial treaty with France, which came into force at the beginning of 1860. Next to the abolition of the Corn Laws,which he more than any other man brought about, it was the great achievement of his career. Free Trade, by liberating commerce from the bondage under which it groaned, gave food to starving multitudes, redressed a flagrant and tyrannical abuse of power, shielded a kingdom from the throes of revolution, and added a new and magical impetus to material progress in every quarter of the globe. The commercial treaty with France, by establishing mercantile sympathy and intercourse between two of the most powerful nations of the world, carried forward the work which Free Trade had begun, and, by bringing into play community of interests, helped to give peace a sure foundation.
Parliament met on January 24, and in the Speech from the Throne a Reform Bill was promised. It was brought forward by Lord John Russell on March 1—the twenty-ninth anniversary of a red-letter day in his life, the introduction of the first Reform Bill. He proposed to reduce the county franchise to 10l.qualification, and the borough to 6l.; one member was to be taken from each borough with a population of less than seven thousand, and in this way twenty-five seats were obtained for redistribution. Political power was to be given where the people were congregated, and Lord John’s scheme of re-distribution gave two seats to the West Riding, and one each to thirty other counties or divisions, and five to boroughs hitherto unrepresented. The claims of Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Leeds were recognised by the proposal to add another representative in each case; and the claims of culture were not forgotten, for a member was given to London University. Gallio-like, Lord Palmerston cared for none of these things, and he made no attempt to conceal his indifference. One-half of theCabinet appear to have shared his distaste for the measure, and two or three of them regarded it with aversion. If Cobden or Bright had been in the Cabinet, affairs might have taken a different course; as it was, Lord John and Mr. Gladstone stood almost alone.
The Radicals, though gaining ground in the country, were numerically weak in the House of Commons, and the measure fell to the ground between the opposition of the Tories and the faint praise with which it was damned by the Whigs. Even Lord John was forced to confess that the apathy of the country was undeniable. A more sweeping measure would have had a better chance, but so long as Lord Palmerston was at the head of affairs it was idle to expect it. Lord John recognised the inevitable after a succession of dreary debates, and the measure was withdrawn on June 11. Lord John’s first important speech in the House of Commons was made in the year of Peterloo, when he brought forward, thirteen years before the Reform Bill of 1832 was passed, proposals for an extension of the franchise; and his last great speech in the House of Commons at least showed how unmerited was the taunt of ‘finality,’ for it sought to give the working classes a share in the government of the country.
ACCEPTS A PEERAGE
Early in the following year, Lord John was raised to the peerage as Earl Russell of Kingston-Russell and Viscount Amberley and Ardsalla. ‘I cannot despatch,’ wrote Mr. Gladstone, ‘as I have just done, the Chiltern Hundreds for you, without expressing the strong feelings which even that formal act awakens. They are mixed, as well as strong; for I hope you will be repaid in repose, health, and the power of long-continuing service, for the heavy loss we suffer in the House of Commons.Although you may not hereafter have opportunities of adding to the personal debt I owe you, and of bringing it vividly before my mind by fresh acts of courage and kindness, I assure you, the recollection of it is already indelible.’ Hitherto, Lord John—for the old name is the one under which his family and his friends still like to apply to him—had been a poor man; but the death, in the spring of this year, of his brother the Duke of Bedford, with whom, from youth to age, his intercourse had been most cordial, placed him in possession of the Ardsalla Estate, and, indeed, made possible his acceptance of the proffered earldom. Six months later, her Majesty conferred the Garter upon him, as a mark of her ‘high approbation of long and distinguished services.’ Lord John had almost reached the age of three score and ten when he entered the House of Lords. He had done his work in ‘another place,’ but he was destined to become once more First Minister of the Crown, and, as Mr. Froude put it, to carry his reputation at length off the scene unspotted by a single act which his biographers are called upon to palliate.
UNITED ITALY AND THE DIS-UNITED STATES1861-1865
Lord John at the Foreign Office—Austria and Italy—Victor Emmanuel and Mazzini—Cavour and Napoleon III.—Lord John’s energetic protest—His sympathy with Garibaldi and the struggle for freedom—The gratitude of the Italians—Death of the Prince Consort—The ‘Trent’ affair—Lord John’s remonstrance—The ‘Alabama’ difficulty—Lord Selborne’s statement—The Cotton Famine.
Foreignpolitics claimed Lord John’s undivided attention throughout the four remaining years of the Palmerston Administration. It was well for the nation that a statesman of so much courage and self-reliance, cool sagacity, and wide experience, controlled the Foreign Office in years when wars and rumours of war prevailed alike in Europe and in America. He once declared that it had always been his aim to promote the cause of civil and religious liberty, not merely in England, but in other parts of the world, and events were now looming which were destined to justify such an assertion. It is not possible to enter at length into the complicated problems with which he had to deal during his tenure of the Foreign Office, but the broad principles which animated his policy can, in rough outline at least, be stated. It is well in this connection to fall back upon his own words: ‘In my time very difficult questions arose. During the period I held the seals of the Foreign Office I had to discussthe question of the independence of Italy, of a treaty regarding Poland made by Lord Castlereagh, the treaty regarding Denmark made by Lord Malmesbury, the injuries done to England by the republic of Mexico, and, not to mention minor questions, the whole of the transactions arising out of the civil war in America, embittered as they were by the desire of a party in the United States to lay upon England the whole blame of the insurrection, the “irrepressible conflict” of their own fellow-citizens.’ Both of these questions were far-reaching and crucial, and in his attitude towards Italy and America, when they were in the throes of revolution, Lord Russell’s generous love of liberty and vigour of judgment alike stand revealed.
Prince Metternich declared soon after the peace of 1815 that Italy was ‘only a geographical expression.’ The taunt was true at the time, but even then there was a young dreamer living who was destined to render it false. ‘Great ideas,’ declared Mazzini, ‘create great nations,’ and his whole career was devoted to the attempt to bring about a united Italy. The statesmanship of Cavour and the sword of Garibaldi were enlisted in the same sacred cause. The petty governments of the Peninsula grew suddenly impossible, and Italy was freed from native tyranny and foreign domination. Austria, not content with the possession of Lombardy, which was ceded to her by the treaty of 1815, had made her power felt in almost every direction, and even at Naples her authority prevailed. The Austrians were not merely an alien but a hated race, for they stood between the Italian people and their dream of national independence and unity, and native despotism could always count on their aid in quelling any outbreak of the revolutionary spirit. The governments of the country,Austria and the Vatican apart, were rendered contemptible by the character of its tyrannical, incapable, and superstitious rulers, but with the sway of such powers of darkness Sardinia presented a bright contrast. The hopes of patriotic Italians gathered around Victor Emmanuel II., who had fought gallantly at Novara in 1849, and who possessed more public spirit and common-sense than the majority of crowned heads. Victor Emmanuel ascended the throne of Sardinia at the age of twenty-eight, immediately after the crushing disaster which seemed hopelessly to have wrecked the cause of Italian independence. Although he believed, with Mazzini, that there was only room for two kinds of Italians in Italy, the friends and the enemies of Austria, he showed remarkable self-restraint, and adopted a policy of conciliation towards foreign Powers, whilst widening the liberties of his own subjects until all over the land Italians came to regard Sardinia with admiration, and to covet ‘liberty as it was in Piedmont.’
COUNT CAVOUR
He gathered around him men who were in sympathy with modern ideas of liberty and progress. Amongst them was Count Cavour, a statesman destined to impress not Italy alone, but Europe, by his honesty of purpose, force of character, and practical sagacity. From 1852 to 1859, when he retired, rather than agree to the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Villafranca, Cavour was supreme in Sardinia. He found Sardinia crippled by defeat, and crushed with debt, the bitter bequest of the Austrian War; but his courage never faltered, and his capacity was equal to the strain. Victor Emmanuel gave him a free hand, and he used it for the consolidation of the kingdom. He repealed the duties on corn, reformed the tariff, and introduced measures of free trade. He encouraged publicworks, brought about the construction of railways and telegraphs, and advanced perceptibly popular education. He saw that if the nation was to gain her independence, and his sovereign become ruler of a united Italy, it was necessary to propitiate the Western Powers. In pursuance of such a policy, Cavour induced Piedmont to join the Allies in the Crimean War, and the Italian soldiers behaved with conspicuous bravery at the battle of Tchernaya. When the war closed Sardinia was becoming a power in Europe, and Cavour established his right to a seat at the Congress of Paris, where he made known the growing discontent in Italy with the temporal power of the Papacy.
In the summer of 1858 Napoleon III. was taking the waters at Plombières, where also Count Cavour was on a visit. The Emperor’s mood was leisured and cordial, and Cavour took the opportunity of bringing the Court of Turin into intimate but secret relations with that of the Tuileries. France was to come to the aid of Sardinia under certain conditions in the event of a war with Austria. Napoleon was not, of course, inclined to serve Victor Emmanuel for naught, and he therefore stipulated for Savoy and Nice. Cavour also strengthened the position of Sardinia by arranging a marriage between the Princess Clotilde, daughter of Victor Emmanuel, and the Emperor’s cousin, Prince Napoleon. Alarmed at the military preparations in Sardinia, and the growth of the kingdom as a political power in Europe, Austria at the beginning of 1859 addressed an imperious demand for disarmament, which was met by Cavour by a curt refusal. The match had been put to the gunpowder and a fight for liberty took place. The campaign was short but decisive. The Austrian army crossed in force the Ticino, then hesitated andwas lost. If they had acted promptly they might have crushed the troops of Piedmont, whom they greatly outnumbered, before the soldiers of France could cross the Alps. The battle of Magenta, and the still more deadly struggle at Solferino between Austria and the Allies, decided the issue, and by the beginning of July Napoleon, for the moment, was master of the situation.
VILLAFRANCA
The French Emperor, with characteristic duplicity, had only half revealed his hand in those confidential talks at Plombières. Italy was the cradle of his race, and he too wished to create, if not a King of Rome, a federation of small States ruled by princes of his own blood. The public rejoicings at Florence, Parma, Modena, and Bologna, and the ardent expression of the populace at such centres for union with Sardinia, made the Emperor wince, and showed him that it was impossible, even with French bayonets, to crush the aspirations of a nation. Napoleon met Francis Joseph at Villafranca, and the preliminaries of peace were arranged on July 11 in a high-handed fashion, and without even the presence of Victor Emmanuel. Lombardy was ceded to Sardinia, though Austria was allowed to keep Venetia and the fortress of Mantua. France afterwards took Nice and Savoy; and the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Duke of Modena were restored to power. The Treaty of Zürich ratified these terms in the month of November. Meanwhile it was officially announced that the Emperor of Austria and the Emperor of the French would ‘favour the creation of an Italian Confederation under the honorary presidency of the Holy Father.’
The Countess Martinengo Cesaresco, in a brilliant book published within the last few months on ‘The Liberationof Italy,’ in describing Lord John Russell’s opposition to the terms of peace at Villafranca, and the vigorous protest which, as Foreign Minister, he made on behalf of England, says: ‘It was a happy circumstance for Italy that her unity had no better friends than in the English Government during those difficult years. Cavour’s words, soon after Villafranca, “It is England’s turn now,” were not belied.’[39]With Lord John at the Foreign Office, England rose to the occasion. Napoleon III. wished to make a cat’s-paw of this country, and was sanguine enough to believe that Her Majesty’s Government would take the proposed Italian Confederation under its wing. Lord Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord John Russell, were not, however, the men to bow to his behests, and the latter in particular could scarcely conceal his contempt for the scheme of the two emperors. ‘We are asked to propose a partition of the peoples of Italy,’ he exclaimed, ‘as if we had the right to dispose of them.’