Charles, Earl Grey--Advocates Abolition of the Slave Trade--His
Rise to Power--His Aid in Carrying the Reform Bill--Sydney Smith's
Eulogy--His Two Great Measures, Parliamentary Reform and Abolition
of Slavery--The Old and New Whigs--The "Coming Man."
A sketch of Modern English Reformers, which should omit special mention
of CHARLES, EARL GREY, would be defective. For fifty eventful years, he
took an active part in public affairs, and, with scarcely an exception,
was found on the liberal side. With a mind cast in a highly polished,
but not extraordinarily capacious mold, and in the attributes of
originality and genius dwindling by the side of Fox and Brougham, he
fully equaled either of these great men in calm sagacity and firmness of
purpose. And if his oratory was not of the bold and vigorous type which
marked theirs, it was of a high order; graceful, flowing, and classical,
and set off by a manner always dignified, and in his younger days
peculiarly fascinating.
Entering Parliament in 1786, when he had just reached majority, he
immediately distinguished himself by a speech in opposition to the
policy of Mr. Pitt. His rapid rise in the House is attested by the fact,
that two years after his entrance, he was thought fit to occupy a place
on the committee for the impeachment of Warren Hastings, by the side of
Burke, Fox, Wyndham, and Sheridan. The year before, he had given a
remarkable exhibition of the firmness and integrity which formed so
striking a feature in his future life. In the debate on the Prince of
Wales' (George IV) debts, Mr. Fox, by direction of the Prince, had
denied, in his place, the marriage of the Prince with Mrs. Fitzherbert.
The lady was sorely offended. She must be appeased by a public
explanation. Wales applied to Grey to make some ambiguous statement in
the House, which, without contradicting Fox, might seem to her to do so.
Grey contemptuously refused to be the instrument of the royal debauchee,
which ever after made him his enemy.
In 1792, he joined with Whitbread, Erskine, Francis, Sheridan, and
Cartwright, in organizing the society for Parliamentary reform, called
"The Friends of the People," and the same year sustained their petition
in the House by a radical speech, in which he declared, rather than
submit to the existing system of representation, he would adopt
universal suffrage.
He was a member of the Grenville-Fox ministry--ably advocated its great
measure of the abolition of the slave trade--and, on the death of Fox,
assumed his post as Foreign Secretary, with the lead of the Commons. An
attempt to carry a bill to open the army and navy to Roman Catholics
provoked a quarrel with the bigoted old King, which threw out the
ministry, and brought forth Sydney Smith's immortal Peter Plymley
Letters. The death of his father the next year (1807) removed him to the
House of Lords, where, during the following twenty-three years of royal
proscription, his voice was ever heard defending the drooping cause of
human freedom.
His rise to power, and the circumstances under which his ministry
carried the Reform bill, have been detailed. The calm courage of the
Premier steered the Government safely through this unprecedented
tempest. Nerves less firm would have relinquished the helm in
trepidation--an eye less steady would, by some precipitous movement,
have whelmed all in destruction. On that memorable night, when the
galleries, and lobbies, and every passage leading to "the tapestried
chamber," were crowded with anxious spectators, and the venerable
building itself was besieged with excited throngs, representing all
stations in society and all shades in politics, who had come up to the
metropolis from every part of the kingdom, to witness the decision of
the long-pending struggle between the people and the patricians, Earl
Grey, with a dignity and solemn earnestness befitting the august
occasion, told the ancient nobility of Britain, that "though he was
proud of the rank to which they in common belonged, and would peril much
to save it from ruin, yet if they were determined to reject that bill,
and throw it scornfully back in the faces of an aroused and determined
people, he warned them to set their houses speedily in order, for their
hour had come!" History has recorded the result of that appeal. The
vassal rose up a man--the man stood forth an elector. The majesty of the
subject was asserted, and the hereditary rulers of England swore
allegiance to the principle, "the People are the legitimate source of
Power." Never did popular agitation, wielding the peaceful weapons of
truth, more brilliantly display its superiority over physical force, and
the enginery of war, in accomplishing a great and salutary revolution.
Sydney Smith, speaking of Earl Grey, at a Reform meeting, while the bill
was pending, said: "You are directed by a minister who prefers character
to place, and who has given such unequivocal proofs of honesty and
patriotism, that his image ought to be amongst your household gods, and
his name to be lisped by your children. Two thousand years hence it will
be a legend like the fable of Perseus and Andromeda; Britannia chained
to a mountain--two hundred rotten animals[4] menacing her destruction,
till a tall Earl, armed with Schedule A,[5] and followed by his page,
Russell, drives them into the deep, and delivers over Britannia in
safety to crowds of ten-pound renters, who deafen the air with their
acclamations. Forthwith, Latin verses upon this--school exercises--boys
whipt, and all the usual absurdities of education."
[4] Rotten Boroughs.
[5] The List of disfranchised boroughs.
This is rather rapturous; but it is only Smith's way of expressing the
unquestionable fact, that Earl Grey was the very man who could, if
mortal man could, carry such a measure in the face of the aristocracy of
England. The people trusted him, and the sane portion of the hostile
factions opposed him less obstinately than they would some more
boisterous member of the liberal party, whom they could stigmatize as a
"fanatic," or a "revolutionist." And even "the radicals" well knew, that
to make a brilliant onslaught upon a strong Tory ministry, while the
Reform party was weak, and it mattered little _what_ was said and done,
if _something_ was only said and done, was a very different mission from
attempting to lead that party when its swelled ranks required to be
consolidated under a graver chieftain, with experience ripened by once
having been a leading minister of the Crown, who might plant the
conquering flag on the walls of the citadel. Such a chieftain was Earl
Grey.
The two measures of Earl Grey's administration, which made it honorably
conspicuous through the world, and will give it an enduring name with
posterity, are Parliamentary reform, and the abolition of negro slavery.
The defects in the former will be hereafter alluded to. The latter was
clogged by the ill-contrived apprenticeship system. But, defective
though they were, had his administration done nothing more for reform,
the glory of those would atone for all its errors of omission and
commission. The measure by whose magic touch eight hundred thousand
slaves leaped to freedom, and bestowed the munificent gift of twenty
millions sterling upon their masters, gave his Government greater renown
abroad than the reform in Parliament. But the latter was much the more
important event to the British nation. It was an era in its politics,
big with present and future consequences. By bestowing the elective
franchise on half a million of small traders and artisans in the cities
and towns, it struck a blow at the landed monopoly from which it can
never recover--subjected the Government more directly to the influence
of public opinion--and opened the doors of Parliament to a new class of
men, like Cobden, Bright, and Thompson, springing from and sympathizing
with the people, who, by their services within and beyond the walls of
the legislature, have left their enduring mark on the policy of the
country. By recognizing the principle of representation, as opposed to
prescription, it took the first step toward complete suffrage for the
people, uniform representation in the House of Commons, and the election
of the House of Peers. It was as worthy to be called a _revolution_ as
the event that deposed the Stuarts and enthroned William of Orange.
It is a singular fact in political and personal history, that the man,
who, in the freshness of youth and in the face of popular clamor,
broached the measure of Parliamentary reform, should, forty years
afterwards, in the maturity of age, be selected to lead the people in
its consummation. The fitting counterpart is the no less striking fact,
that the very Prince by whose choice he completed this work, and who,
about the period of its commencement, denounced Wilberforce as worthy of
expulsion from Parliament for proposing the abolition of the slave
trade, lived long enough to give his royal assent, in the presence of
that Wilberforce, to a bill for the abolition of slavery itself.
Earl Grey may be regarded as the last of his political school. He was a
singular compound of the aristocracy of the old Whigs, with the
liberality of the new. The trusted leader of the popular party, in the
hour of its first triumph, cherished an exalted opinion of what he
termed "his order," and though he never shrank from any duty or peril in
support of the common cause, and voluntarily shared in the long
exclusion of all grades of reformers from office and court favor, his
pride and austerity were so habitual as to cool his friends while they
exasperated his foes. In exclusiveness and aristocratic bearing, he
seemed to belong to the Whigs of the times of the first two Georges. On
the other hand, he exhibited, in his political sympathies, associations,
and conduct all the democratic tendencies of the Whigs of the Fox and
Russell school.
The old Whigs, of whom Walpole and Grafton were the type, were
distinguished by large possessions, long titles, and "a landed air." By
arrogance, gold, and skill, they ruled England from the death of Queen
Anne to the ascension of Lord North. Then arose the new Whigs, whose
type was Fox and Grenville. Their chief supporters came from bustling
manufacturing towns and flourishing seaports, as those of the old came
from rural districts and rotten boroughs; the sign of the one being the
broadcloth of the stock exchange; of the other, the broad acres of the
agricultural counties. Indeed, on the coming in of the younger Pitt,
parties might be said to have changed places without changing names; the
Tories assuming the power of the old Whigs, and like them ruling _over_
the people; whilst the old disappeared, and the new arose in the place
of the ascendant Tories, and assuming the Tory attitude of opposition,
and basing it on _quasi_ democratic principles, struggled for power
_with_ the people.
Grey's administration was the reign of the new Whigs. It was continued
by Melbourne; but the species is now almost extinct. Another party has
gradually arisen, from seeds sown long ago by liberal hands. It knew not
the ancient Whigs; it regards not the modern. Its type is Cobden and
Hume, with symptoms of affinity in such noblemen as the present Carlisle
and Grey. It once looked forward to the day when its leader and Premier
would be Earl Durham. What remained of this hope after his unlucky
Canadian administration, was soon quenched in his grave. It had now
better select its chief man from the ranks of the people, and put him in
training; for, after a lapse of time, and John Russell, it must rule
England.