undertaking. Those years were the commencement of what is called the
Eldonine period. The cold and haughty Pitt had gone down to the grave in
circumstances singularly contrasting with his prosperous youth, and he
had carried along with him the inner essence of half-liberal principle,
which had clung to a tenacious mind from youthful associations, and
was all that remained to the Tories of abstraction or theory. As for
Lord Eldon, it is the most difficult thing in the world to believe that
there ever was such a man. It only shows how intense historical evidence
is, that no one really doubts it. He believed in everything which it
is impossible to believe in—in the danger of Parliamentary Reform,
the danger of Catholic Emancipation, the danger of altering the Court
of Chancery, the danger of altering the Courts of Law, the danger of
abolishing capital punishment for trivial thefts, the danger of making
landowners pay their debts, the danger of making anything more, the
danger of making anything less. It seems as if he maturely thought, ‘Now
I know the present state of things to be consistent with the existence
of John Lord Eldon; but if we begin altering that state, I am sure I do
not know that it will be consistent.’ As Sir Robert Walpole was against
all committees of inquiry on the simple ground, ‘If they once begin that
sort of thing, who knows who will be safe?’—so that great Chancellor
(still remembered in his own scene) looked pleasantly down from the
woolsack, and seemed to observe, ‘Well, it _is_ a queer thing that I
should be here, and here I mean to stay.’ With this idea he employed,
for many years, all the abstract intellect of an accomplished lawyer,
all the practical _bonhomie_ of an accomplished courtier, all the energy
of both professions, all the subtlety acquired in either, in the task of
maintaining John Lord Eldon in the cabinet, and maintaining a cabinet
that would suit John Lord Eldon. No matter what change or misfortunes
happened to the Royal house,—whether the most important person in
court politics was the old King or the young King, Queen Charlotte or
Queen Caroline—whether it was a question of talking grave business to
the mutton of George the Third, or queer stories beside the champagne
of George the Fourth, there was the same figure. To the first he was
tearfully conscientious, and at the second the old northern circuit
stories (how old, what outlasting tradition shall ever say?) told with a
cheerful _bonhomie_, and a strong conviction that they _were_ ludicrous,
really seem to have pleased as well as the more artificial niceties of
the professed wits. He was always agreeable, and always serviceable. No
little peccadillo offended him: the ideal, according to the satirist,
of a ‘good-natured man,’ he cared for nothing until he was himself
hurt. He ever remembered the statute which absolves obedience to a king
_de facto_. And it was the same in the political world. There was one
man who never changed. No matter what politicians came and went—and a
good many, including several that are now scarcely remembered, did come
and go,—the ‘Cabinet-maker,’ as men called him, still remained. ‘As to
Lord Liverpool being Prime Minister,’ continued Mr. Brougham, ‘he is
no more Prime Minister than I am. I reckon Lord Liverpool as a sort of
member of opposition; and after what has recently passed, if I were
required, I should designate him as “a noble lord with whom I have the
honour to act.” Lord Liverpool may have collateral influence, but Lord
Eldon has all the direct influence of the Prime Minister. He is Prime
Minister to all intents and purposes, and he stands alone in the full
exercise of all the influence of that high situation. Lord Liverpool
has carried measures against the Lord Chancellor; so have I. If Lord
Liverpool carried the Marriage Act, I carried the Education Bill,’ &c.
&c. And though the general views of Lord Eldon may be described,—though
one can say at least negatively and intelligibly that he objected to
everything proposed, and never proposed anything himself,—the arguments
are such as it would require great intellectual courage to endeavour
at all to explain. What follows is a favourable specimen. ‘Lord Grey,’
says his biographer, ‘having introduced a bill for dispensing with the
declarations prescribed by the Acts of 25 and 30 Car. II., against the
doctrine of Transubstantiation and the Invocation of Saints, moved the
second reading of it on the 10th of June, when the Lord Chancellor again
opposed the principle of such a measure, urging that the law which had
been introduced under Charles II. had been re-enacted in the first
Parliament of _William III._, the founder of our civil and religious
liberties. It had been thought necessary for the preservation of these,
that papists should not be allowed to sit in Parliament, and some test
was necessary by which it might be ascertained whether a man was a
Catholic or Protestant. The only possible test for such a purpose was an
oath declaratory of religious belief, and, as _Dr. Paley_ had observed,
it was perfectly just to have a religious test of a political creed.
He entreated the House not to commit the crime against posterity of
transmitting to them in an impaired and insecure state the civil and
religious liberties of England.’ And this sort of appeal to Paley and
King William is made the ground—one can hardly say the reason—for the
most rigid adherence to all that was established.
It may be asked, How came the English people to endure this? They are
not naturally illiberal; on the contrary, though slow and cautious, they
are prone to steady improvement, and not at all disposed to acquiesce
in the unlimited perfection of their rulers. On a certain imaginative
side, unquestionably, there is or was a strong feeling of loyalty, of
attachment to what is old, love for what is ancestral, belief in what
has been tried. But the fond attachment to the past is a very different
idea from a slavish adoration of the present. Nothing is more removed
from the Eldonine idolatry of the _status quo_ than the old cavalier
feeling of deep idolatry for the ancient realm—that half-mystic idea that
consecrated what it touched; the moonlight, as it were, which
‘Silver’d the walls of Cumnor Hall,
And many an oak that grew thereby.’
Why, then, did the English endure the everlasting Chancellor?
The fact is, that Lord Eldon’s rule was maintained a great deal on the
same motives as that of Louis Napoleon. One can fancy his astonishment
at hearing it said, and his cheerful rejoinder, ‘That whatever he was,
and Mr. Brougham was in the habit of calling him strange names, no
one should ever make him believe that he was a _Bonaparte_.’ But, in
fact, he was, like the present Emperor, the head of what we call the
party of order. Everybody knows what keeps Louis Napoleon in his place.
It is not attachment to him, but dread of what he restrains—dread of
revolution. The present may not be good, and having such newspapers,—you
might say no newspapers,—is dreadful; but it is better than no trade,
bankrupt banks, loss of old savings; your mother beheaded on destructive
principles; your eldest son shot on conservative ones. Very similar was
the feeling of Englishmen in the year 1800. They had no liking at all for
the French system. Statesmen saw its absurdity, holy men were shocked at
its impiety, mercantile men saw its effect on the 5 per cents. Everybody
was revolted by its cruelty. That it came across the Channel was no
great recommendation. A witty writer of our own time says, that if a
still Mussulman, in his flowing robes, wished to give his son a warning
against renouncing his faith, he would take the completest, smartest,
dapperest French dandy out of the streets of Pera, and say, ‘There, my
son, if ever you come to forget God and the Prophet, you may come to look
like _that_.’ Exactly similar in old conservative speeches is the use of
the French Revolution. If you proposed to alter anything, of importance
or not of importance, legal or social, religious or not religious, the
same answer was ready: ‘You see what the French have come to. They made
alterations; if we make alterations, who knows but we may end in the
same way?’ It was not any peculiar bigotry in Lord Eldon that actuated
him, or he would have been powerless; still less was it any affected
feeling which he put forward (though, doubtless, he was aware of its
persuasive potency, and worked on it most skilfully to his own ends); it
was genuine, hearty, craven fear; and he ruled naturally the common-place
Englishman, because he sympathised in his sentiments, and excelled him in
his powers.
There was, too, another cause beside fear which then inclined, and which
in similar times of miscellaneous revolution will ever incline, subtle
rather than creative intellects to a narrow conservatism. Such intellects
require an exact creed; they want to be able clearly to distinguish
themselves from those around them, to tell to each man where they differ,
and why they differ; they cannot make assumptions; they cannot, like the
merely practical man, be content with rough and obvious axioms; they
require a _theory_. Such a want it is difficult to satisfy in an age of
confusion and tumult, when old habits are shaken, old views overthrown,
ancient assumptions rudely questioned, ancient inferences utterly
denied, when each man has a different view from his neighbour, when an
intellectual change has set father and son at variance, when a man’s own
household are the special foes of his favourite and self-adopted creed.
A bold and original mind breaks through these vexations, and forms for
itself a theory satisfactory to its notions, and sufficient for its
wants. A weak mind yields a passive obedience to those among whom it is
thrown. But a mind which is searching without being creative, which is
accurate and logical enough to see defects, without being combinative
or inventive enough to provide remedies,—which, in the old language,
is discriminative rather than discursive,—is wholly unable, out of the
medley of new suggestions, to provide itself with an adequate belief; and
it naturally falls back on the _status quo_. This is, at least, clear
and simple and defined; you know at any rate what you propose—where you
end—why you pause;—an argumentative defence it is, doubtless, difficult
to find; but there are arguments on all sides; the world is a medley
of arguments; no one is agreed in which direction to alter the world;
what is proposed is as liable to objection as what exists; nonsense
for nonsense, the old should keep its ground: and so in times of
convulsion, the philosophic scepticism—the ever-questioning hesitation
of Hume and Montaigne—the subtlest quintessence of the most restless
and refining abstraction—becomes allied to the stupidest, crudest
acquiescence in the present and concrete world. We read occasionally
in conservative literature (the remark is as true of religion as of
politics) alternations of sentences, the first an appeal to the coarsest
prejudice,—the next a subtle hint to a craving and insatiable scepticism.
You may trace this even in Vesey junior. Lord Eldon never read Hume or
Montaigne, but sometimes, in the interstices of cumbrous law, you may
find sentences with their meaning, if not in their manner; ‘Dumpor’s case
always struck me as extraordinary; but if you depart from Dumpor’s case,
what is there to prevent a departure in every direction?’
The glory of the Edinburgh Review is that from the first it steadily
set itself to oppose this timorous acquiescence in the actual system.
On domestic subjects the history of the first thirty years of the
nineteenth century is a species of duel between the Edinburgh Review and
Lord Eldon. All the ancient abuses which he thought it most dangerous
to impair, they thought it most dangerous to retain. ‘To appreciate
the value of the Edinburgh Review,’ says one of the founders, ‘the
state of England at the period when that journal began should be had
in remembrance. The Catholics were not emancipated. The Corporation
and Test Acts were unrepealed. The game-laws were horribly oppressive;
steel-traps and spring-guns were set all over the country; prisoners
tried for their lives could have no counsel. Lord Eldon and the Court
of Chancery pressed heavily on mankind. Libel was punished by the most
cruel and vindictive imprisonments. The principles of political economy
were little understood. The laws of debt and conspiracy were on the
worst footing. The enormous wickedness of the slave-trade was tolerated.
A thousand evils were in existence which the talents of good and noble
men have since lessened or removed: and these efforts have been not a
little assisted by the honest boldness of the Edinburgh Review.’ And even
more characteristic than the advocacy of these or any other partial or
particular reforms is the systematic opposition of the Edinburgh Review
to the crude acquiescence in the _status quo_; the timorous dislike to
change because it was change; to the optimistic conclusion, ‘that what
is, ought to be;’ the sceptical query, ‘How do you know that what you say
will be any better?’
In this defence of the principle of innovation, a defence which it
requires great imagination (or, as we suggested, the looking across
the Channel) to conceive the efficacy of now, the Edinburgh Review was
but the doctrinal organ of the Whigs. A great deal of philosophy has
been expended in endeavouring to fix and express theoretically the creed
of that party: various forms of abstract doctrine have been drawn out,
in which elaborate sentence follows hard on elaborate sentence, to be
set aside, or at least vigorously questioned by the next or succeeding
inquirers. In truth Whiggism is not a creed, it is a character. Perhaps
as long as there has been a political history in this country there have
been certain men of a cool, moderate, resolute firmness, not gifted with
high imagination, little prone to enthusiastic sentiment, heedless of
large theories and speculations, careless of dreamy scepticism; with a
clear view of the next step, and a wise intention to take it; a strong
conviction that the elements of knowledge are true, and a steady belief
that the present world can, and should be, quietly improved.
These are the Whigs. A tinge of simplicity still clings to the character;
of old it was the Country Party. The limitation of their imagination
is in some sort an advantage to such men; it confines them to a simple
path, prevents their being drawn aside by various speculations, restricts
them to what is clear and intelligible, and at hand. ‘I cannot,’ said
Sir S. Romilly, ‘be convinced without arguments, and I do not see that
either Burke or Paine advance any.’ He was unable to see that the most
convincing arguments,—and some of those in the work of Burke, which he
alludes to, are certainly sound enough,—may be expressed imaginatively,
and may work a far firmer persuasion than any neat and abstract
statement. Nor are the intellectual powers of the characteristic element
in this party exactly of the loftiest order; they have no call to make
great discoveries, or pursue unbounded designs, or amaze the world by
some wild dream of empire and renown. That terrible essence of daring
genius, such as we see it in Napoleon, and can imagine it in some of
the conquerors of old time, is utterly removed from their cool and
placid judgment. In taste they are correct,—that is, better appreciating
the complete compliance with explicit and ascertained rules, than the
unconscious exuberance of inexplicable and unforeseen beauties. In their
own writings, they display the defined neatness of the second order,
rather than the aspiring hardihood of the first excellence. In action
they are quiet and reasonable rather than inventive and overwhelming.
Their power indeed is scarcely intellectual; on the contrary, it resides
in what Aristotle would have called their ἦθος, and we should call
their nature. They are emphatically pure-natured and firm-natured.
Instinctively casting aside the coarse temptations and crude excitements
of a vulgar earth, they pass like a September breeze across the other
air, cool and refreshing, unable, one might fancy, even to comprehend the
many offences with which all else is fainting and oppressed. So far even
as their excellence is intellectual, it consists less in the supereminent
possession of any single talent or endowment, than in the simultaneous
enjoyment and felicitous adjustment of many or several;—in a certain
balance of the faculties which we call judgment or sense, which placidly
indicates to them what should be done, and which is not preserved without
an equable calm, and a patient, persistent watchfulness. In such men the
moral and intellectual nature half become one. Whether, according to
the Greek question, manly virtue can be taught or not, assuredly it has
never been taught to them; it seems a native endowment; it seems a soul—a
soul of honour—as we speak, within the exterior soul; a fine impalpable
essence, more exquisite than the rest of the being; as the thin pillar of
the cloud, more beautiful than the other blue of heaven, governing and
guiding a simple way through the dark wilderness of our world.
To descend from such elevations, among _people_ Sir Samuel Romilly is
the best-known type of this character. The admirable biography of him
made public his admirable virtues. Yet it is probable that among the
aristocratic Whigs, persons as typical of the character can be found.
This species of noble nature is exactly of the kind which hereditary
associations tend to purify and confirm; just that casual, delicate,
placid virtue, which it is so hard to find, perhaps so sanguine to
expect, in a rough tribune of the people. Defects enough there are in
this character, on which we shall say something; yet it is wonderful to
see what an influence in this sublunary sphere it gains and preserves.
The world makes an oracle of its judgment. There is a curious living
instance of this. You may observe that when an ancient liberal, Lord
John Russell, or any of the essential sect, has done anything very
queer, the last thing you would imagine anybody would dream of doing,
and is attacked for it, he always answers boldly, ‘Lord Lansdowne said
I _might_;’ or if it is a ponderous day, the eloquence runs, ‘A noble
friend with whom I have ever had the inestimable advantage of being
associated from the commencement (the infantile period, I might say) of
my political life, and to whose advice,’ &c. &c. &c.—and a very cheerful
existence it must be for ‘my noble friend’ to be expected to justify—(for
they never say it except they have done something very odd)—and dignify
every aberration. Still it must be a beautiful feeling to have a man like
Lord John, to have a stiff, small man bowing down before you. And a good
judge certainly suggested the conferring of this authority. ‘Why do they
not talk over the virtues and excellences of Lansdowne? There is no man
who performs the duties of life better, or fills a high station in a more
becoming manner. He is full of knowledge, and eager for its acquisition.
His remarkable politeness is the result of good nature, regulated by good
sense. He looks for talents and qualities among all ranks of men, and
adds them to his stock of society, as a botanist does his plants; and
while other aristocrats are yawning among stars and garters, Lansdowne is
refreshing his soul with the fancy and genius which he has found in odd
places, and gathered to the marbles and pictures of his palace. Then he
is an honest politician, a wise statesman, and has a philosophic mind,’
&c. &c.[18] Here is devotion for a carping critic; and who ever heard
before of _bonhomie_ in an idol?
It may strike some that this equable kind of character is not the most
interesting. Many will prefer the bold felicities of daring genius,
the deep plans of latent and searching sagacity, the hardy triumphs of
an overawing and imperious will. Yet it is not unremarkable that an
experienced and erudite Frenchman, not unalive to artistic effect, has
just now selected this very species of character for the main figure in
a large portion of an elaborate work. The hero of M. Villemain is one to
whom he delights to ascribe such things as _bon sens_, _esprit juste_,
_cœur excellent_. The result, it may be owned, is a little dull, yet it
is not the less characteristic. The instructed observer has detected
the deficiency of his country. If France had more men of firm will,
quiet composure, with a suspicion of enormous principle and a taste
for moderate improvement: if a Whig party, in a word, were possible in
France, France would be free. And though there are doubtless crises
in affairs, dark and terrible moments, when a more creative intellect
is needful to propose, a more dictatorial will is necessary to carry
out, a sudden and daring resolution; though in times of inextricable
confusion—perhaps the present is one of them[19]—a more abstruse and
disentangling intellect is required to untwist the ravelled perplexities
of a complicated world; yet England will cease to be the England of
our fathers, when a large share in great affairs is no longer given to
the equable sense, the composed resolution, the homely purity of the
characteristic Whigs.
It is evident that between such men and Lord Eldon there could be no
peace; and between them and the Edinburgh Review there was a natural
alliance. Not only the kind of reforms there proposed, the species of
views therein maintained, but the very manner in which those views and
alterations are put forward and maintained, is just what they would
like. The kind of writing suitable to such minds is not the elaborate,
ambitious, exhaustive discussion of former ages, but the clear, simple,
occasional writing (as we just now described it) of the present times.
The opinions to be expressed are short and simple; the innovations
suggested are natural and evident; neither one nor the other require
more than an intelligible statement, a distinct exposition to the world;
and their reception would be only impeded and complicated by operose and
cumbrous argumentation. The exact mind which of all others dislikes the
stupid adherence to the _status quo_, is the keen, quiet, improving Whig
mind; the exact kind of writing most adapted to express that dislike is
the cool, pungent, didactic essay.
Equally common to the Whigs and the Edinburgh Review is the enmity to the
sceptical, over-refining Toryism of Hume and Montaigne. The Whigs, it is
true, have a conservatism of their own, but it instinctively clings to
certain practical rules tried by steady adherence, to appropriate formulæ
verified by the regular application and steady success of many ages.
Political philosophers speak of it as a great step when the idea of an
attachment to an organised code and system of rules and laws takes the
place of the exclusive oriental attachment to the person of the single
monarch. This step is natural, is instinctive to the Whig mind; that
cool impassive intelligence is little likely to yield to ardent emotions
of personal loyalty; but its chosen ideal is a body or collection of
wise rules fitly applicable to great affairs, pleasing a placid sense
by an evident propriety, gratifying the capacity for business by a
constant and clear applicability. The Whigs are constitutional by
instinct, as the Cavaliers were monarchical by devotion. It has been
a jest at their present leader that he is over familiar with public
forms and parliamentary rites. The first wish of the Whigs is to retain
the constitution; the second—and it is of almost equal strength—is
to improve it. They think the body of laws now existing to be, in the
main and in its essence, excellent; but yet that there are exceptional
defects which should be remedied, superficial inconsistencies that
should be corrected. The most opposite creed is that of the sceptic,
who teaches that you are to keep what is because it exists; not from
a conviction of its excellence, but from an uncertainty that anything
better can be obtained. The one is an attachment to precise rules for
specific reasons; the other an acquiescence in the present on grounds
that would be equally applicable to its very opposite, from a disbelief
in the possibility of improvement, and a conviction of the uncertainty
of all things. And equally adverse to an unlimited scepticism is the
nature of popular writing. It is true that the greatest teachers of that
creed have sometimes, and as it were of set purpose, adopted that species
of writing; yet essentially it is inimical to them. Its appeal is to
the people; as has been shown, it addresses the _élite_ of common men,
sensible in their affairs, intelligent in their tastes, influential among
their neighbours. What is absolute scepticism to such men?—a dream, a
chimera, an inexplicable absurdity. Tell it to them to-day, and they will
have forgotten it to-morrow. A man of business hates elaborate trifling.
‘If you do not believe _your own_ senses,’ he will say, ‘there is no use
in _my_ talking to you.’ As to the multiplicity of arguments and the
complexity of questions, he feels them little. He has a plain, simple, as
he would say, practical way of looking at the matter; and you will never
make him comprehend any other. He knows the world _can_ be improved. And
thus what we may call the middle species of writing—which is intermediate
between the light, frivolous style of merely amusing literature, and the
heavy, conscientious elaborateness of methodical philosophy—the style of
the original Edinburgh—is, in truth, as opposed to the vague, desponding
conservatism of the sceptic as it is to the stupid conservatism of the
crude and uninstructed; and substantially for the same reason—that it is
addressed to men of cool, clear, and practical understandings.
It is, indeed, no wonder that the Edinburgh Review should be agreeable to
the Whigs, for the people who founded it were Whigs. Among these, three
stand pre-eminent—Horner, Jeffrey, and Sydney Smith. Other men of equal
ability may have contributed—and a few did contribute—to its pages; but
these men were, more than any one else, the first Edinburgh Review.