IN ROUGH WATERS
1848-1852
The People's Charter--Feargus O'Connor and the crowd--Lord
Palmerston strikes from his own bat--Lord John's view of the
political situation--Death of Peel--Palmerston and the Court--'No
Popery'--The Durham Letter--The invasion scare--Lord John's remark
about Palmerston--Fall of the Russell Administration.
ENGLAND in 1848 was not destined to escape an outbreak of the
revolutionary spirit, though the Chartist movement, in spite of the
panic which it awakened, was never really formidable. The overthrow and
flight of Louis Philippe, the proclamation in March of the French
Republic on the basis of universal suffrage and national workshops, and
the revolutionary movements and insurrections in Austria and Italy,
filled the artisans and operatives of this country with wild dreams, and
led them to rally their scattered and hitherto dispirited forces. Within
six years of the passing of the Reform Bill, in fact, in the autumn
after the Queen's accession, the working classes had come to the
conclusion that their interests had been largely overlooked, and that
the expectations they had cherished in the struggle of 1831-32 had been
falsified by the apathy and even the reaction which followed the
victory. Not in one, but in all the great civil and religious struggles
of the century, they had borne the brunt of the battle; and yet they
had been thrust aside when it came to the dividing of the spoil.
The middle classes were in a different position: their aspirations were
satisfied, and they were quite prepared, for the moment at least, to
rest and be thankful. The sleek complacency of the shopkeeper, moreover,
and his hostility to further agitation, threw into somewhat dramatic
relief the restless and sullen attitude of less fortunate conscripts of
toil. Food was dear, wages were low, work was slack, and in the great
centres of industry the mills were running half-time, and so keen was
the struggle for existence that the operatives were at the mercy of
their taskmasters, and too often found it cruel. Small wonder if social
discontent was widespread, especially when it is remembered that the
people were not only hopeless and ill-fed, but housed under conditions
which set at defiance even the most elementary laws of health. More than
to any other man in the ranks of higher statesmanship the people looked
to Lord Durham, the idol of the pitmen of the North, for the redress of
their wrongs, and no statesman of that period possessed more courage or
more real acquaintance with the actual needs of the people. Lord Durham,
though a man of splendid ability, swift vision, and generous sympathy,
had, unhappily, the knack of making enemies, and the fiery impetuosity
of his spirit brought him more than once into conflict with leaders
whose temperament was cold and whose caution was great. The rebellion in
Canada withdrew Lord Durham from the arena of English politics at the
beginning of 1838. Then it was that the people recognised to the full
the temper of the statesmen that were left, and the fact that, if
deliverance was to come from political and social thraldom, they must
look to themselves and organise their strength.
The representatives of the working classes in 1838 formulated their
demand for radical political reform in the famous six points of the
People's Charter. This declaration claimed manhood suffrage; the
division of the country into equal electoral districts; vote by ballot;
annual Parliaments; the abolition of property qualification for a seat
in the House of Commons; and payment of members of Parliament for their
services. The People's Charter took the working classes by storm: it
fired their imagination, inspired their hopes, and drew them in every
manufacturing town and district into organised association.
[Sidenote: A SORRY CHAMPION]
The leader of the movement was Feargus O'Connor, an Irish barrister and
journalist, who had entered Parliament in 1832 as a follower of
O'Connell and as member for Cork. He quarrelled, however, with the Irish
leader, a circumstance which was fatal to success as an agitator in his
own country. Restless and reckless, he henceforth carried his energy and
devoted his eloquence to the Chartist movement in England, and in 1847
the popular vote carried him once more to the House of Commons as member
for Nottingham. He copied the tactics of O'Connell, but had neither the
judgment nor the strength of the Irish dictator. He seems, indeed, to
have been rather a poor creature of the vainglorious, bombastic type. A
year or two later he became hopelessly insane, and in the vaporing
heroics and parade of gasconade which marked him as the champion of the
Chartists in the spring of 1848 it is charitable now to discover the
first seeds of his disorder. However that may be, he was a nine-days'
wonder, for from All Fools' Day to the morning of April 10 society in
London was in a state of abject panic. The troubles in Ireland, the
insurrections and rumours of insurrection on the Continent, the
revolution in France, the menacing discontent in the provinces, and the
threatening attitude of the working men in the metropolis, were enough
to cause alarm among the privileged classes, and conscience made
cowards, not certainly of them all, but of the majority.
Literature enough and to spare, explanatory, declamatory and the like,
has grown around a movement which ran like an unfed river, until it lost
itself in the sand. Three men of genius took up their parable about what
one of them called the 'Condition of England Question,' and in the pages
of Carlyle's 'Chartism' and 'Past and Present,' Disraeli's 'Sybil,' and
last, but not least, in Kingsley's 'Alton Locke,' the reader of to-day
is in possession of sidelights, vivid, picturesque, and dramatic, on
English society in the years when the Chartists were coming to their
power, and in the year when they lost it. Lord John was at first in
favour of allowing the Chartists to demonstrate to their hearts'
content. He therefore proposed to permit them to cross Westminster
Bridge, so that they might deliver their petition at the doors of
Parliament. He thought that the police might then prevent the re-forming
of the procession, and scatter the crowd in the direction of Charing
Cross. Lord John had done too much for the people to be afraid of them,
and he refused to accept the alarmist view of the situation. But the
consternation was so widespread, and the panic so general, that the
Government felt compelled on April 6 to declare the proposed meeting
criminal and illegal, to call upon all peaceably disposed citizens not
to attend, and to take extraordinary precautions. It was, however,
announced that the right of assembly would be respected; but, on the
advice of Wellington, only three of the leaders were to be allowed to
cross the bridge. The Bank, the Tower, and the neighbourhood of
Kennington Common meanwhile were protected by troops of cavalry and
infantry, whilst the approaches to the Houses of Parliament and the
Government offices were held by artillery.
[Sidenote: LONDON IN TERROR]
The morning of the fateful 10th dawned brightly, but no one dared
forecast how the evening would close, and for a few hours of suspense
there was a reign of terror. Many houses were barricaded, and in the
West End the streets were deserted except by the valiant special
constables, who stood at every corner in defence of law and order. The
shopkeepers, who were not prepared to take joyfully the spoiling of
their goods, formed the great mass of this citizen army--one hundred and
fifty thousand strong. There were, nevertheless, recruits from all
classes, and in the excitement and peril of the hour odd men rubbed
shoulders. Lord Shaftesbury, for instance, was on duty in Mount Street,
Grosvenor Square, with a sallow young foreigner for companion, who was
afterwards to create a more serious disturbance on his own account, and
to spring to power as Napoleon III. Thomas Carlyle preferred to play the
part of the untrammelled man in the street, and sallied forth in search
of food for reflection. He wanted to see the 'revolution' for himself,
and strode towards Hyde Park, determined, he tells us, to walk himself
into a glow of heat in spite of the 'venomous cold wind' which called
forth his anathemas. The Chelsea moralist found London, westward at
least, safe and quiet, in spite of 'empty rumours and a hundred and
fifty thousand oaths of special constables.' He noticed as he passed
Apsley House that even the Duke had taken the affair seriously, in his
private as well as his public capacity, for all the iron blinds were
down. The Green Park was closed. Mounted Guardsmen stood ready on
Constitution Hill. The fashionable carriage had vanished from
Piccadilly. Business everywhere was at a standstill, for London knew not
what that day might bring forth. Presently the rain began to fall, and
then came down in drenching showers. In spite of their patriotic
fervour, the special constables grew both damp and depressed. Suddenly a
rumour ran along the streets that the great demonstration at Kennington
Common had ended in smoke, and by noon the crowd was streaming over
Westminster Bridge and along Whitehall, bearing the tidings that the
march to the House of Commons had been abandoned. Feargus O'Connor had,
in fact, taken fright, and presently the petition rattled ingloriously
to Westminster in the safe but modest keeping of a hackney cab. The
shower swept the angry and noisy rabble homewards, or into neighbouring
public-houses, and ridicule--as the evening filled the town with
complacent special constables and their admiring wives and
sweethearts--did even more than the rain to quench the Chartist
agitation. It had been boldly announced that one hundred and fifty
thousand people would meet at Kennington. Less than a third of that
number assembled, and a considerable part of the crowd had evidently
been attracted by curiosity. Afterwards, when the monster petition with
its signatures was examined, it was found to fall short of the boasted
'five million' names by upwards of three millions. Many of those which
did appear were palpably fictitious; indeed the rude wit of the London
apprentice was responsible for scores of silly signatures. Lord John's
comment on the affair was characteristic. After stating that no great
numbers followed the cab which contained the petition, and that there
was no mob at the door of the House of Commons, he adds: 'London
escaped the fate of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. For my own part, I saw
in these proceedings a fresh proof that the people of England were
satisfied with the Government under which they had the happiness to
live, did not wish to be instructed by their neighbours in the
principles of freedom, and did not envy them either the liberty they had
enjoyed under Robespierre, or the order which had been established among
them by Napoleon the Great.'
[Sidenote: PALMERSTON'S OPPORTUNITY]
Lord John's allusion to Paris, Berlin, and Vienna suggests foreign
politics, and also the growing lack of harmony between Lord Palmerston
on the one hand and the Court and Cabinet on the other. Although he long
held the highest office under the Crown, Lord Palmerston's chief claim
to distinction was won as Foreign Minister. He began his official career
as a Tory in the Portland Administration of 1807, and two years
later--at the age of five-and-twenty--was appointed Secretary at War in
the Perceval Government. He held this post for the long term of eighteen
years, and when Canning succeeded to power still retained it, with a
seat in the Cabinet. Palmerston was a liberal Tory of the school of
Canning, and, when Lord Grey became Premier in 1830, was a man of
sufficient mark to be entrusted with the seals of the Foreign Office,
though, until his retirement in 1834, Grey exercised a controlling voice
in the foreign policy of the nation. It was not until Grey was succeeded
by Melbourne that Palmerston began to display both his strength and his
weakness in independent action.
He saw his opportunity and took it. He knew his own mind and disliked
interference, and this made him more and more inclined to be heedless of
the aid, and almost of the approval, of his colleagues. Under a
provokingly pleasant manner lurked, increasingly, the temper of an
autocrat. Melbourne sat lightly to most things, and not least to
questions of foreign policy. He was easily bored, and believed in
_laissez-faire_ to an extent which has never been matched by any other
Prime Minister in the Queen's reign. The consequence was that for seven
critical years Palmerston did what was right in his own eyes, until he
came to regard himself not merely as the custodian of English interests
abroad, but almost as the one man in the Cabinet who was entitled to
speak with authority concerning them. If the responsibility of the first
Afghan war must rest chiefly on his shoulders, it is only fair to
remember that he took the risk of a war with France in order to drive
Ibrahim Pacha out of Syria. From first to last, his tenure at the
Foreign Office covered a period of nearly twenty years. Though he made
serious mistakes, he also made despots in every part of the world afraid
of him; whilst struggling nationalities felt that the great English
Minister was not oblivious of the claims of justice, or deaf to the
appeal for mercy. Early in the Russell Administration Lord Palmerston's
high-handed treatment of other members of the Cabinet provoked angry
comment, and Sir Robert Peel did not conceal his opinion that Lord John
gave his impetuous colleague too much of his own way. The truth was, the
Premier's hands, and heart also, were in 1846 and 1847 full of the Irish
famine, and Lord Palmerston took advantage of the fact. Moreover, Lord
John Russell was, broadly speaking, in substantial agreement with his
Foreign Minister, though he cordially disliked his habit of taking swift
and almost independent action.
[Sidenote: CLIMBING DOWN]
At the beginning of 1848 Palmerston seemed determined to pick a quarrel
with France, and in February drew up a threatening despatch on the
difficulty which had arisen between our Ambassador (Lord Normanby) and
Louis Philippe, which brought matters to a crisis. Louis Philippe had
acted a dishonourable part over the Spanish marriages, and Palmerston
was prepared to go out of his way to humiliate France. At the last
moment, the affair came to Lord John's knowledge through Lord Clarendon,
with the result that the communication was countermanded. Lord
Palmerston appears to have taken the rebuff, humiliating as it was, with
characteristic nonchalance, and it produced little more than a momentary
effect. The ignominious flight of Louis Philippe quickly followed, and
the revolution in France was the signal in Vienna for a revolt of the
students and artisans, which drove Metternich to find refuge in England
and the Emperor Ferdinand to seek asylum in the Tyrol. Austrians,
Hungarians, and Slavs only needed an opportunity, such as the 'year of
revolutions' afforded, to display their hostility to one another, and
the racial jealousy brought Austria and Hungary to open war. In Milan,
in Naples, and Berlin the revolutionary spirit displayed itself, and in
these centres, as well as in Switzerland, changes in the direction of
liberty took place.
Lord John Russell, in an important document, which Mr. Walpole has
printed, and which bears date May 1, 1848, has explained his own view of
the political situation in Europe at that moment. After a lucid and
impressive survey of the changes that had taken place in the map of
Europe since the Congress of Vienna, Lord John lays down the principle
that it is neither becoming nor expedient for England to proclaim that
the Treaties of 1815 were invalid. On the contrary, England ought rather
to promote, in the interests of peace and order, the maintenance of the
territorial divisions then made. At the same time, England, amid the
storm, ought not to persist in clinging to a wreck if a safe spar is
within her reach. He recognised that Austria could hardly restore her
sway in Italy, and was not in a position to confront the cost of a
protracted war, in which France was certain to take sides against her.
He, therefore, thought it advisable that English diplomacy should be
brought to bear at Vienna, so as to 'produce a frank abandonment of
Lombardy and Venice on the part of Austria.' He declared that it was not
to the advantage of England to meddle with the internal affairs of
Spain; but he thought there was a favourable chance of coming to an
understanding with Germany, where the Schleswig-Holstein question
already threatened disturbance. 'It is our interest,' are the final
words of this significant State paper, 'to use our influence as speedily
and as generally as possible to settle the pending questions and to fix
the boundaries of States. Otherwise, if war once becomes general, it
will spread over Germany, reach Belgium, and finally sweep England into
its vortex. Should our efforts for peace succeed, Europe may begin a new
career with more or less of hope and of concord; should they fail, we
must keep our sword in the scabbard as long as we can, but we cannot
hope to be neutral in a great European war. England cannot be
indifferent to the supremacy of France over Germany and Italy, or to the
advance of Russian armies to Constantinople; still less to the
incorporation of Belgium with a new French Empire.'
[Sidenote: OUR POLICY ABROAD]
As usual, Lord Palmerston had his own ideas and the courage of them.
Within three weeks of the Russell Memorandum to the Cabinet he
accordingly stood out in his true colours as a frank opportunist. The
guiding rule of his foreign policy, he stated, was to promote and
advance, as far as lay in his power, the interests of the country as
opportunity served and as necessity arose. 'We have no everlasting union
with this or that country--no identification of policy with another. We
have no natural enemies--no perpetual friends. When we find a Power
pursuing that course of policy which we wish also to promote, for the
time that Power becomes our ally; and when we find a country whose
interests are at variance with our own, we are involved for a time with
the Government of that country. We find no fault with other nations for
pursuing their interests; and they ought not to find fault with us, if,
in pursuing our interests, our course may be different from theirs.'
Lord Palmerston held that the real policy of this country was to be the
champion of justice and right, though professing no sympathy with the
notion that England ought to become, to borrow his own expression, the
Quixote of the world. 'I hold that England is a Power sufficiently
strong to steer her own course, and not to tie herself as an unnecessary
appendage to the policy of any other Government.' He declared that, if
he might be allowed to gather into one sentence the principle which he
thought ought to guide an English statesman, he would adopt the
expression of Canning, and say that with every British Minister the
interests of England ought to be the shibboleth of his policy.
Unfortunately, Lord Palmerston, in spite of such statements, was too
much inclined to throw the moral weight of England into this or that
scale on his own responsibility, and, as it often seemed to
dispassionate observers, on the mere caprice of the hour. He took up the
position that the interests of England were safe in his hands, and
magnified his office, sometimes to the annoyance of the Court and often
to the chagrin of the Cabinet. No matter what storm raged, Palmerston
always contrived to come to the surface again like a cork. He never lost
his self-possession, and a profound sense of his own infallibility
helped him, under difficulties and rebuffs which would have knocked the
spirit out of other men, to adopt the attitude of the patriotic
statesman struggling with adversity. When the session of 1849 closed he
was in an extremely difficult position, in consequence of the growing
dislike in high quarters to his policy, and the coolness which had
sprung up between himself and the majority of his colleagues; yet we
find him writing a jaunty note to his brother in the strain of a man who
had not only deserved success but won it. 'After the trumpetings of
attacks that were to demolish first one and then another of the
Government--first me, then Grey, then Charles Wood--we have come
triumphantly out of the debates and divisions, and end the session
stronger than we began it.'[19]
[Sidenote: STRAINED RELATIONS]
Lord Palmerston's passion for personal ascendency was not to be
repressed, and in the electric condition of Europe it proved perilous as
well as embarrassing to the Russell Administration. Without the
knowledge of the Queen or his colleagues, Lord Palmerston, for instance,
sent a letter to Sir H. Bulwer advising an extension of the basis of the
Spanish Government, an act of interference which caused so much
irritation at Madrid that the Spanish Government requested the British
Ambassador to leave the country. Happily, the breach with Madrid was
repaired after a few months' anxiety on the part of Palmerston's
colleagues. The Queen's sense of the indiscretion was apparent in the
request to Lord Palmerston to submit in future all his despatches to the
Prime Minister. Other occasions soon arose which increased distrust at
Windsor, and further strained friendly relations between the Prime
Minister and the Foreign Secretary. The latter's removal to some less
responsible post was contemplated, for her Majesty appeared to
disapprove of everything Lord Palmerston did. Without detailing the
various circumstances which awakened the Queen's displeasure, it is
sufficient to draw attention to one event--known in the annals of
diplomacy as the 'Don Pacifico' affair--which threatened the overthrow
of the Ministry.
Two British subjects demanded in vain compensation from the Greek
Government for damage to their property. Lord Palmerston came to their
defence, and sent private instructions to the Admiral of the British
fleet at the Dardanelles to seize Greek vessels by way of reprisal,
which was promptly done. The tidings fell like a thunderbolt upon
Downing Street. France and Russia made angry protests, and war was
predicted. At length an offer of mediation from Paris was accepted, and
the matter was arranged in London. Lord Palmerston, however, omitted to
inform the English Minister at Athens of the settlement, and, whilst
everyone in England rejoiced that the storm had blown over, the Admiral
was laying an embargo on other ships, and at last forced the Greek
Government to grant compensation. France, indignant at such cavalier
treatment, recalled M. Drouyn de Lhuys from London, and again the
war-cloud lowered. Lord Palmerston had the audacity to state in the
House of Commons that the French Minister had returned to Paris in order
'presumably to be the medium of communication between the two
Governments as to these matters.' The truth came out on the morrow, and
Lord John, in the discreet absence of his colleague, was forced to
explain as best he might the position of affairs. Although he screened
Lord Palmerston as far as he was able, he determined to make a change at
the Foreign Office.
[Sidenote: PEEL AND PALMERSTON]
In June 1850, Lord Stanley challenged the foreign policy of Lord
Palmerston in the House of Lords, and carried, by a majority of
thirty-seven, a resolution of censure. Mr. Roebuck, in the Commons, met
the hostile vote by a resolution of confidence, and, after four nights'
debate, secured a majority of forty-six. Lord Palmerston made an able
defence of his conduct of affairs, and Lord John Russell, who differed
from him not so much in the matter as in the manner of his decisions,
not merely refused to leave his colleague in the lurch, but came
vigorously to his support. The debate was rendered memorable on other
grounds. Sir Robert Peel, in the course of it, delivered his last speech
in Parliament. The division, which gave Palmerston a fresh tenure of
power, was taken at four o'clock on the morning of Saturday, June 29.
Peel left the House to snatch a few hours' sleep before going at noon to
a meeting which was to settle the disputed question as to the site of
the Great Exhibition. He kept his appointment; but later in the day he
was thrown from his horse on Constitution Hill, and received injuries
which proved fatal on the night of July 2. His death was a national
calamity, for at sixty-two he was still in the fulness of his strength.
There will always be a diversity of judgment concerning his career;
there is but one opinion about his character. Few statesmen have gone to
their grave amid more remarkable expressions of regret. Old and young
colleagues, from the Duke of Wellington to Mr. Gladstone, betrayed by
their emotion no less than by their words, their grief over the loss of
a leader who followed his conscience even at the expense of the collapse
of his power. Lord John Russell, the most distinguished, without doubt,
of Sir Robert's opponents on the floor of the House, paid a generous
tribute to his rival's memory. He declared that posterity would regard
Sir Robert Peel as one of the greatest and most patriotic of statesman.
He laid stress on that 'long and large experience of public affairs,
that profound knowledge, that oratorical power, that copious yet exact
memory, with which the House was wont to be enlightened, interested, and
guided.' When the offer of a public funeral was declined, in deference
to Sir Robert's known wishes, Lord John proposed and carried a
resolution for the erection of a statue in Westminster Abbey. He also
marked his sense of the loss which the nation had sustained, in the
disappearance of an illustrious man, by giving his noble-minded and
broken-hearted widow the refusal of a peerage.
Meanwhile, Lord Palmerston, on the strength of the vote of confidence in
the Commons, was somewhat of a popular hero. People who believe that
England can do no wrong, at least abroad, believed in him. His audacity
delighted the man in the club. His pluck took the platform and much of
the press by storm. The multitude relished his peremptory despatches,
and were delighted when he either showed fight or encouraged it in
others. In course of time 'Pam' became the typical fine old English
gentleman of genial temper but domineering instincts. Prince Albert
disliked him; he was too little of a courtier, too much of an off-handed
man of affairs. Windsor, of course, received early tidings of the
impression which was made at foreign Courts by the most independent and
and cavalier Foreign Minister of the century. Occasionally he
needlessly offended the susceptibilities of exalted personages abroad as
well as at home. At length the Queen, determined no longer to be put in
a false position, drew up a sharply-worded memorandum, in which explicit
directions were given for the transaction of business between the Crown
and the Foreign Office. 'The Queen requires, first, that Lord Palmerston
will distinctly state what he proposes in a given case, in order that
the Queen may know as distinctly to what she is giving her royal
sanction; secondly, having once given her sanction to a measure, that it
be not arbitrarily altered or modified by the Minister. Such an act she
must consider as failing in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to
be visited by the exercise of her constitutional right of dismissing
that Minister. She expects to be kept informed of what passes between
him and the Foreign Ministers before important decisions are taken,
based upon that intercourse; to receive the foreign despatches in good
time; and to have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient
time to make herself acquainted with their contents before they must be
sent off.'
No responsible adviser of the Crown during the reign had received such
emphatic censure, and in August 1850 people were talking as if
Palmerston was bound to resign. He certainly would have done so if he
had merely consulted his own feelings; but he declared that to resign
just then would be to play into the hands of the political adversaries
whom he had just defeated, and to throw over his supporters at the
moment when they had fought a successful battle on his behalf. Lord
Palmerston, therefore, accepted the Queen's instructions with unwonted
meekness. He assured her Majesty that he would not fail to attend to the
directions which the memorandum contained, and for a while harmony was
restored. In the autumn of 1851 Louis Kossuth arrived in England, and
met with an enthusiastic reception, of the kind which was afterwards
accorded in London to another popular hero, in the person of Garibaldi.
Lord Palmerston received Kossuth at the Foreign Office, and, contrary to
the wishes of the Queen and Prime Minister, deputations were admitted,
and addresses were presented, thanking Palmerston for his services in
the cause of humanity, whilst in the same breath allusions to the
Emperors of Austria and Russia as 'odious and detestable assassins' were
made. Almost before the annoyance created by this fresh act of
indiscretion had subsided, Lord Palmerston was guilty of a still more
serious offence.
[Sidenote: THE _COUP D'ETAT_]
Louis Napoleon had been elected President of the French Republic by five
and a half million votes. He was thought to be ambitious rather than
able, and he had pledged himself to sustain the existing Constitution.
He worked for his own hand, however, and accordingly conciliated first
the clergy, then the peasants, and finally the army, by fair promises,
popular acts, and a bold policy. On December 2, 1851, when his term of
office was expiring, Napoleon suddenly overthrew the Assembly, which had
refused a month or two previously to revise the Constitution in order to
make the President eligible for re-election, and next morning all Europe
was startled with tidings of the _Coup d'Etat_. Both the English Court
and Cabinet felt that absolute neutrality must be observed during the
tumult which followed in Paris, and instructions to that effect were
accordingly transmitted to Lord Normanby. But when that diplomatist made
known this official communication, he was met with the retort that Lord
Palmerston, in a conversation with the French Ambassador in London, had
already declared that the _Coup d'Etat_ was an act of self-defence, and
in fact was the best thing under the circumstances for France. Lord
Palmerston, in a subsequent despatch to Lord Normanby, which was not
submitted either to the Queen or the Prime Minister, reiterated his
opinion.
[Sidenote: 'THERE WAS A PALMERSTON!']
Under these circumstances, Lord John Russell had no alternative except
to dismiss Lord Palmerston. He did so, as he explained when Parliament
met in February, on the ground that the Foreign Secretary had
practically put himself, for the moment, in the place of the Crown. He
had given the moral approbation of England to the acts of the President
of the Republic of France, though he knew, when he was doing so, that he
was acting in direct opposition to the wishes of the sovereign and the
policy of the Government. Lord John stated in the House of Commons that
he took upon himself the sole and entire responsibility of advising her
Majesty to require the resignation of Lord Palmerston. He added that,
though the Foreign Secretary had neglected what was due to the Crown and
his colleagues, he felt sure that he had not intended any personal
disrespect. Greville declared that, in all his experience of scenes in
Parliament, he could recall no such triumph as Lord Russell achieved on
this occasion, nor had he ever witnessed a discomfiture more complete
than that of Palmerston. Lord Dalling, another eye-witness of the
episode, has described, from the point of view of a sympathiser with
Palmerston, the manner in which he seemed completely taken by surprise
by the 'tremendous assault' which Lord John, by a damaging appeal to
facts, made against him. In his view, Russell's speech was one of the
most powerful to which he had ever listened, and its effect was
overwhelming. Disraeli, meeting Lord Dalling by chance next day on the
staircase of the Russian Embassy, exclaimed as he passed, with
significant emphasis, 'There _was_ a Palmerston!' The common opinion at
the clubs found expression in a phrase which passed from lip to lip,
'Palmerston is smashed;' but, though driven for the moment to bay, the
dismissed Minister was himself of another mind.
Lord Palmerston was offered the Irish Viceroyalty, but he declined to
take such an appointment. He accepted his dismissal with a
characteristic affectation of indifference, and in the course of a
laboured defence of his action in the House of Commons, excused his
communication to the French Ambassador on the plea that it was only the
expression of an opinion on passing events, common to that 'easy and
familiar personal intercourse, which tends so usefully to the
maintenance of friendly relations with foreign Governments.' Lady
Russell wrote down at the time her own impressions of this crisis in her
husband's Cabinet, and the following passage throws a valuable sidelight
on a memorable incident in the Queen's reign: 'The breach between John
and Lord Palmerston was a calamity to the country, to the Whig party,
and to themselves; and, although it had for some months been a
threatening danger on the horizon, I cannot but feel that there was
accident in its actual occurrence. Had we been in London or at Pembroke
Lodge, and not at Woburn Abbey, at the time, they would have met, and
talked over the subject of their difference; words spoken might have
been equally strong, but would have been less cutting than words
written, and conciliatory expressions on John's part would have led the
way to promises on Lord Palmerston's.... They two kept up the character
of England, as the sturdy guardians of her rights against other nations,
and the champions of freedom and independence abroad. They did so both
before and after the breach of 1851, which was, happily, closed in the
following year, when they were once more colleagues in office. On
matters of home policy Lord Palmerston remained the Tory he had been in
his earlier days, and this was the cause of many a trial to John.'
The Russell Administration, as the Premier himself frankly recognised,
was seriously weakened by the dismissal of Lord Palmerston; and its
position was not improved when Lord Clarendon, on somewhat paltry
grounds, refused the Foreign Office. Lord John's sagacity was shown by
the prompt offer of the vacant appointment to Lord Granville, who, at
the age of thirty-six, entered the Cabinet, and began a career which was
destined to prove a controlling force in the foreign policy of England
in the Victorian era.
[Sidenote: ROME AND OXFORD]
Meanwhile fresh difficulties had arisen. In the autumn of 1850--a year
which had already been rendered memorable in ecclesiastical circles by
the Gorham case--Pius IX. issued a Bull by which England became a
province of the Roman Catholic Church. Dr. Wiseman was created Cardinal
Archbishop of Westminster, and England was divided into twelve sees with
territorial titles. The assumption by Pius IX. of spiritual authority
over England was a blunder; indeed, no better proof in recent times of
the lack of infallibility at Rome could well be discovered. One swallow,
proverbially, does not make a spring; and when Newman took refuge in
flight, other leaders of the Oxford Movement refused to accept his logic
and to follow his example. Englishmen have always resented anything in
the shape of foreign dictation, and deep in the national heart there yet
survives a rooted hostility to the claims of the Vatican. Napoleon's
_Coup d'Etat_, which followed quickly on the heels of this dramatic act
of Papal aggression, scarcely took the nation more completely by
surprise. No Vatican decree could well have proved more unpopular, and
even Canon Liddon is obliged to admit that the bishops, with one
solitary exception, 'threw the weight of their authority on the side of
popular and short-sighted passion.'[20]
Pius IX. knew nothing of the English character, but Cardinal Wiseman, at
least, could not plead ignorance of the real issues at stake; and
therefore his grandiloquent and, under all the circumstances, ridiculous
pastoral letter, which he dated 'From out of the Flaminian Gate at
Rome,' was justly regarded as an insult to the religious convictions of
the vast majority of the English people. Anglicans and Nonconformists
alike resented such an authoritative deliverance, and presently the old
'No Popery' cry rang like a clarion through the land. Dr. Newman, with
the zeal of a pervert, preached a sermon on the revival of the Catholic
Church, and in the course of it he stated that the 'people of England,
who for so many years have been separated from the See of Rome, are
about, of their own will, to be added to the Holy Church.' The words
were, doubtless, spoken in good faith, for the great leader of the
Oxford Movement naturally expected that those who had espoused his
views, like honest men, would follow his example. Dr. Pusey, however,
was a more astute ecclesiastical statesman than Cardinal Wiseman. He was
in favour of a 'very moderate' declaration against Rome, for the
resources of compromise were evidently in his eyes not exhausted. The
truth was, Pusey and Keble, by a course of action which to this day
remains a standing riddle to the Papacy on the one hand, and to
Protestantism on the other, threw dust in the eyes of Pius IX., and
were the real authors of Papal aggression. Lord John Russell saw this
quite clearly, and in proof of such an assertion it is only necessary to
appeal to his famous Durham Letter. He had watched the drift of
ecclesiastical opinion, and had seen with concern that the tide was
running swiftly in the direction of Rome.
England had renounced the Papal supremacy for the space of 300 years,
and had grown strong in the liberty which had followed the downfall of
such thraldom. Oxford had taught Rome to tempt England; the leaders of
the so-called Anglican revival were responsible for the flourish of
trumpets at the Vatican. Lord John's ecclesiastical appointments called
forth sharp criticism. He was a Protestant of the old uncompromising
type, with leanings towards advanced thought in Biblical criticism. He
knew, moreover, what Puritanism had done for the English nation in the
seventeenth century, and made no secret of his conviction that it was
the Nonconformists, more than any other class, who had rendered civil
and religious liberty possible. He moreover knew that in his own time
they, more than any other part of the community, had carried the Reform
Bill, brought about the abolition of slavery, and established Free
Trade. He had been brought into contact with their leaders, and was
beginning to perceive, with the nation at large, how paltry and
inadequate were the claims of a rigid Churchmanship, since the true
apostolical succession is a matter of altitude of spiritual devotion,
and borrows none of its rights from the pretensions of clerical caste.
[Sidenote: THE DURHAM LETTER]
The Durham Letter was written from Downing Street, on November 4, 1850.
It gained its name because it was addressed to the Premier's old friend
Dr. Maltby, Bishop of Durham, and appeared in the newspapers on the day
on which it was dated. Lord John declared that he had not only promoted
to the utmost of his power the claims of Roman Catholics to all civil
rights, but had deemed it not merely just, but desirable, that that
Church should impart religious instruction to the 'numerous Irish
immigrants in London and elsewhere, who, without such help, would have
been left in heathen ignorance.' He believed that this might have been
accomplished without any such innovation as that which the Papacy now
contemplated. He laid stress on the assumption of power made in all the
documents on the subject which had come from Rome, and he protested
against such pretensions as inconsistent with the Queen's supremacy,
with the rights of the bishops and clergy, and with the spiritual
independence of the nation. He confessed that his alarm was not equal to
his indignation, since Englishmen would never again allow any foreign
prince or potentate to impose a yoke on their minds and consciences. He
hinted at legislative action on the subject, and then proceeded to take
up his parable against the Tractarians in the following unmistakeable
terms: 'There is a danger, however, which alarms me much more than the
aggression of a foreign sovereign. Clergymen of our Church who have
subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles and have acknowledged in explicit
terms the Queen's supremacy, have been the most forward in leading their
flocks, step by step, to the verge of the precipice. The honour paid to
saints, the claim of infallibility for the Church, the superstitious use
of the sign of the Cross, the muttering of the Liturgy so as to disguise
the language in which it was written, the recommendation of auricular
confession, and the administration of penance and absolution--all these
things are pointed out by clergymen as worthy of adoption, and are now
openly reprehended by the Bishop of London in his Charge to the clergy
of his diocese. What, then, is the danger to be apprehended from a
foreign prince of no power, compared to the danger within the gates from
the unworthy sons of the Church of England herself? I have but little
hope that the propounders and framers of these innovations will desist
from their insidious course; but I rely with confidence on the people of
England, and I will not bate a jot of heart or life so long as the
glorious principles and the immortal martyrs of the Reformation shall be
held in reverence by the great mass of a nation, which look with
contempt on the mummeries of superstition, and with scorn at the
laborious endeavours which are now being made to confine the intellect
and enslave the soul.'
[Sidenote: 'NO POPERY']
Lord John's manifesto was as fuel to the flames. All over the kingdom
preparations were in progress at the moment for a national carnival--now
fallen largely into disrepute. Guy Fawkes was hastily dethroned, and the
Pope and Cardinal Wiseman were paraded in effigy through the streets of
London, Exeter, and other cities, and burnt at nightfall amid the jeers
of the crowd. Petitions began to pour in against Papal aggression, and
the literature of the subject, in controversial tract, pamphlet, and
volume, grew suddenly not less bewildering than formidable. The arrival
in London of Father Gavazzi, an ex-priest of commanding presence and
impassioned oratory, helped to arouse still further the Protestant
spirit of the nation. The Press, the pulpit, the platform, formed a
triple alliance against the Vatican, and the indignant rejection of the
Pope's claims may be said to have been carried by acclamation. Clamour
ran riot through the land, and spent its force in noisy demonstrations.
The Catholics met the tumult, on the whole, with praiseworthy
moderation, and presently signs of the inevitable reaction began to
appear. Lord John's colleagues were not of one mind as to the wisdom of
the Durham Letter, for if there is one taunt before which an ordinary
Englishman quails, it is the accusation of religious bigotry.
The Durham Letter was an instance in which Lord John's zeal outran his
discretion.[21] Lord Shaftesbury, who was in the thick of the tumult,
and has left a vivid description of it in his journal,[22] declared that
Cardinal Wiseman's manifesto, in spite of its audacity, was likely to
prove 'more hurtful to the shooter than to the target.' Looking back at
the crisis, after an interval of more than forty years, the same
criticism seems to apply with added force to the Durham Letter. Lord
John overshot the mark, and his accusations wounded those whom he did
not intend to attack, and in the recoil of public opinion his own
reputation suffered. He resented, with pardonable warmth, the attitude
of the Vatican, and was jealous of any infringement, from that or any
other quarter, of the Queen's supremacy in her own realms. The most
damaging sentences in the Durham Letter were not directed against the
Catholics, either in Rome, England, or Ireland, but against the
Tractarian clergymen--men whom he regarded as 'unworthy sons of the
Church of England.' The Catholics, incensed at the denial of the Pope's
supremacy, were, however, in no mood to make distinctions, and they have
interpreted Lord John's strictures on Dr. Pusey and his followers as an
attack on their own religious faith. The consequence was that the
manifesto was regarded, especially in Ireland, not merely as a protest
against the politics of the Vatican, but as a sweeping censure on the
creed of Rome. Lord John's character and past services might have
shielded him from such a construction being placed upon his words, for
he had proved, on more than one historic occasion, his devotion to the
cause of religious liberty. Disraeli, writing to his sister in November,
said: 'I think John Russell is in a scrape. I understand that his party
are furious with him. The Irish are frantic. If he goes on with the
Protestant movement he will be thrown over by the Papists; if he
shuffles with the Protestants, their blood is too high to be silent now,
and they will come to us. I think Johnny is checkmated.'[23]
[Sidenote: UNDER WHICH FLAG?]
For the moment, however, passion and prejudice everywhere ran riot, and
on both sides of the controversy common sense and common fairness were
forgotten. A representative Irish politician of a later generation has
not failed to observe the irony of the position. 'It was a curious
incident in political history,' declares Mr. Justin McCarthy, 'that Lord
John Russell, who had more than any Englishman then living been
identified with the principles of religious liberty, who had sat at the
feet of Fox, and had for his closest friend the Catholic poet Thomas
Moore, came to be regarded by Roman Catholics as the bitterest enemy of
their creed and their rights of worship.'[24] It is easy to cavil at
Lord John Russell's interpretation of the Oxford Movement, and to assert
that the accusations of the Durham Letter were due to bigotry and panic.
He believed, in common with thousands of other distressed Churchmen,
that the Tractarians were foes within the gates of the Establishment. He
regarded them, moreover, as ministers of religion who were hostile to
the work of the Reformation, and therefore he deemed that they were in a
false position in the Anglican Church. Their priestly claims and
sacerdotal rites, their obvious sympathies and avowed convictions,
separated them sharply from ordinary clergymen, and were difficult to
reconcile with adherence to the principles of Protestantism. Like many
other men at the time, and still more of to-day, he was at a loss to
discover how ecclesiastics of such a stamp could remain in the ministry
of the Church of England, when they seemed to ordinary eyes to be in
league with Rome. The prelates, almost to a man, were hotly opposed to
the Tractarians when Lord John wrote the Durham Letter. They shared his
convictions and applauded his action. Since then many things have
happened. The Oxford Movement has triumphed, and has done so largely by
the self-sacrificing devotion of its adherents. It has summoned to its
aid art and music, learning and eloquence; it has appealed to the
aesthetic and emotional elements in human nature; it has led captive the
imagination of many by its dramatic revival of mediaeval ideas and
methods; and it has stilled by its assumption of authority the
restlessness of souls, too weary to argue, too troubled to rebel. The
bishops of to-day have grown either quite friendly towards the Oxford
Movement, or else discreetly tolerant. Yet, when all this is admitted,
it does nothing towards proving that Lord John Russell was a mistaken
alarmist. The Durham Letter and its impassioned protest have been
justified by the logic of events. It is easy for men to be charitable
who have slipped their convictions.
Possibly it was not judicious on Lord John's part to be so zealously
affected in the matter. That is, perhaps, open to dispute, but the
question remains: Was he mistaken in principle? He saw clergymen of the
English Church, Protestant at least in name, 'leading their flocks step
by step to the very verge of the precipice,' and he took up his parable
against them, and pointed out the danger to the hitherto accepted faith
and practice of the English Church. One of the most distinguished
prelates of the Anglican Church in the Queen's reign has not hesitated
to assert that the tenets against which Lord John Russell protested in
the Durham Letter were, in his judgment, of a kind which are
'destructive of all reasonable faith, and reduce worship to a mere
belief in spells and priestcraft.' Cardinal Vaughan, it is needless to
say, does not sympathise with such a view. He, however, has opinions on
the subject which are worthy of the attention of those who think that
Lord John was a mere alarmist. His Eminence delivered a suggestive
address at Preston on September 10, 1894, on the 'Re-Union of
Christendom.' He thinks--and it is idle to deny that he has good ground
for thinking--that, in spite of bishops, lawyers, and legislature,
Delphic judgments at Lambeth, and spasmodic protests up and down the
country, a change in doctrine and ritual is in progress in the Anglican
Church which can only be described as a revolution. He asserts that the
'Real Presence, the sacrifice of the Mass, offered for the living and
the dead, no infrequent reservation of the Sacrament, regular auricular
confession, Extreme Unction, Purgatory, prayers for the dead, devotions
to Our Lady, to her Immaculate Conception, the use of her Rosary, and
the invocation of saints, are doctrines taught and accepted, with a
growing desire and relish for them, in the Church of England.'
Cardinal Vaughan also declares that the present churches of the
Establishment are 'often distinguishable only with extreme difficulty
from those belonging to the Church of Rome.' Such statements are either
true or false. If false, they are open to contradiction; if true, they
justify in substance the position taken up in the Durham Letter. Towards
the close of his life, Lord John told Mr. Lecky that he did not regret
his action, and to the last he maintained that he was right in the
protest which he made in the Durham Letter. Yet he acknowledged, as he
looked back upon the affair, that he might have softened certain
expressions in it with advantage. Parliament met on February 4, 1851,
and the Queen's Speech contained the following passage: 'The recent
assumption of certain ecclesiastical titles conferred by a foreign Power
has excited strong feelings in this country; and large bodies of my
subjects have presented addresses to me expressing attachment to the
Throne, and praying that such assumptions should be resisted. I have
assured them of my resolution to maintain the rights of my crown and the
independence of the nation against all encroachments, from whatsoever
quarter they may proceed.'
[Sidenote: THE GIST OF THE WHOLE MATTER]
Three days later, Lord John introduced the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill.
The measure prohibited the assumption of territorial titles by Roman
Catholic bishops; but there is truth in the assertion that no enactment
of the kind could prevent other persons from giving the dignitaries of
the Catholic Church such titles, and, as a matter of fact, the attempt
to deprive them of the distinction led to its ostentatious adoption. The
proposal to render null and void gifts or religious endowments acquired
by the new prelates was abandoned in the course of the acrimonious
debates which followed. Other difficulties arose, and Ireland was
declared to be exempt from the operation of the measure. The object of
the bill, declared Lord John Russell, was merely to assert the supremacy
of the Crown. Nothing was further from his thought than to play the part
of a religious persecutor. He merely wished to draw a sharp and
unmistakeable line of demarcation between the spiritual jurisdiction of
the Pope over the adherents of the Roman Catholic Church in the Queen's
realms, and such an act of Papal aggression as was involved in the claim
of Pius IX. to grant ecclesiastical titles borrowed from places in the
United Kingdom.
The bill satisfied neither the friends nor the foes of Roman
Catholicism. It was persistently regarded by the one as an attack on
religious liberty, and by the other as quite inadequate as a bulwark of
Protestantism. Nevertheless it became law, but not before the summer of
1851, when the agitation had spent its force. It was regarded almost as
a dead letter from the first, and, though it remained on the
Statute-book for twenty years, its repeal was a foregone conclusion.
When it was revoked in 1871 the temper of the nation had changed, and no
one was inclined to make even a passing protest. John Leech, in a
cartoon in _Punch_, caught the droll aspect of the situation with even
more than his customary skill. Lord John relished the joke, even though
he recognised that it was not likely to prove of service to him at the
next General Election. In conversation with a friend he said: 'Do you
remember a cartoon in _Punch_ where I was represented as a little boy
writing "No Popery" on a wall and running away?' The answer was a smile
of assent. 'Well,' he added, 'that was very severe, and did my
Government a great deal of harm, but I was so convinced that it was not
maliciously meant that I sent for John Leech, and asked him what I
could do for him. He said that he should like a nomination for his son
to the Charterhouse, and I gave it to him. That is how I used my
patronage.'
[Sidenote: A MINISTERIAL CRISIS]
Meanwhile, when the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was still under
discussion, a Ministerial crisis had arisen. Finance was never the
strong point of the first Russell Administration, and Sir Charles Wood's
Budget gave widespread dissatisfaction. Mr. Locke King heightened the
embarrassment of the moment by bringing forward a motion for placing the
county and borough franchise on an equal basis; and before the
discussion of the Budget could be renewed this motion was carried
against the Government, though in a small House, by a majority of almost
two to one. Lord John Russell met the hostile vote by immediate
resignation; and Lord Stanley--who four months later became Earl of
Derby--was summoned to Windsor and attempted to form a Ministry. His
efforts were, however, unsuccessful, for Peel had left the Tory party
not merely disorganised but full of warring elements. Lord John,
therefore, returned to office in March, and Locke King's measure was
promptly thrown out by a majority of more than two hundred. The London
season of that year was rendered memorable by the opening of the Great
Exhibition, amid universal plaudits and dreams of long-continued peace
amongst the nations. As the year closed Lord Palmerston's ill-advised
action over the _Coup d'Etat_ in France brought about, as we have
already seen, his dismissal, a circumstance which still further weakened
the Russell Cabinet.
The year 1852 opened darkly for Lord John. Difficulties, small and
great, seemed thickening around him. He had been called to power at a
singularly trying moment, and no one who looks dispassionately at the
policy which he pursued between the years 1846 and 1852 can fail to
recognise that he had at least tried to do his duty. There is a touch of
pathos in the harassed statesman's reply to a letter of congratulation
which reached him on the threshold of the new year from a near relative,
and it is worthy of quotation, since it reveals the attitude of the man
on far greater questions than those with which he was beset at the
moment: 'I cannot say that the new year is a happy one to me. Political
troubles are too thick for my weak sight to penetrate them, but we all
rest in the mercy of God, who will dispose of us as He thinks best.'[25]
When Parliament met in February, Lord Palmerston's opportunity came. On
the heels of the panic about Papal aggression came widespread alarm as
to the policy which Napoleon III. might pursue towards this country. The
fear of invasion grew strong in the land, and patriotic fervour
restlessly clamoured for prompt legislative action. Forty years ago, in
every town and village of England there were people who could speak from
personal knowledge concerning the reign of terror which the first
Napoleon, by his conquering march over Europe and his threatened descent
on the English shores, had established, and, as a consequence, though
with diminished force, the old consternation suddenly revived.
[Sidenote: PALMERSTON'S 'TIT-FOR-TAT']
Lord John Russell had no more real fear of Napoleon than he had of the
Pope, but he rose to the occasion and brought before Parliament a
measure for the reorganisation of the local Militia. He believed that
such a force, with national enthusiasm at its back, was sufficient to
repel invasion--a contingency which, in common with other responsible
statesmen, he did not regard as more than remote. Lord Palmerston,
however, posing as the candid friend of the nation, and the
exceptionally well-informed ex-Foreign Minister, professed to see rocks
ahead, and there were--at all events for the Russell Administration. In
England, any appeal to the Jingo instincts of the populace is certain to
meet with a more or less hysterical welcome, and Palmerston more than
once took advantage of the fact. He expressed his dissatisfaction with
Lord John's Militia Bill, and by a majority of eleven carried an
amendment to it. Lord John met the hostile demonstration by resignation,
and, though Palmerston professed to be surprised at such a result, his
real opinion leaps to light in the historic sentence which he wrote to
his brother on February 24: 'I have had my tit-for-tat with John
Russell, and I turned him out on Friday last.' One hitherto unpublished
reminiscence of that crisis deserves to be recorded, especially as it
throws into passing relief Lord John's generosity of temper: 'I
remember,' states his brother-in-law and at one time private secretary,
the Hon. George Elliot, 'being indignant with Lord Palmerston, after he
had been dismissed by Lord John, bringing forward a verbal amendment on
the Militia Bill in 1852--a mere pretext by which the Government was
overthrown. But Lord John would not at all enter into my feelings, and
said, "It's all fair. I dealt him a blow, and he has given me one in
return."'
Lord John's interest in the question of Parliamentary Reform was
life-long. It was one of the subjects on which his views were in
complete divergence with those of Lord Palmerston. Just before the
'tit-for-tat' amendment, the Premier brought forward a new scheme on the
subject which he had reluctantly waived in 1849 in deference to the
wishes of the majority of his colleagues, who then regarded such a
proposal as premature. At the beginning of 1852 Lord John had overcome
such obstacles, and he accordingly introduced his new Reform Bill, as if
anxious to wipe out before his retirement from office the reproach which
the sobriquet of 'Finality Jack' had unjustly cast upon him. He proposed
to extend the suffrage by reducing the county qualification to 20_l._,
and the borough to 5_l._, and by granting the franchise to persons
paying forty shillings yearly in direct taxation. He also proposed to
abolish the property qualification of English and Irish members of
Parliament, and to extend the boundaries of boroughs having less than
500 electors. Lord Palmerston's hostile action of course compelled the
abandonment of this measure, and it is worthy of passing remark that, on
the night before his defeat, Lord John made a chivalrous and splendid
defence of Lord Clarendon, in answer to an attack, not merely on the
policy, but on the personal character of the Viceroy of Ireland.
[Sidenote: A CONFLICT OF OPINION]
Sudden as the fall of the Russell Administration was, it can hardly be
described as unexpected, and many causes, most of which have already
been indicated in these pages, contributed to bring it about. Albany
Fonblanque, one of the shrewdest contemporary observers of men and
movements, gathered the political gossip of the moment together in a
paragraph which sets forth in graphic fashion the tumult of opinion in
the spring of 1852. 'Lord John Russell has fallen, and all are agreed
that he is greatly to blame for falling; but hardly any two men agree
about the immediate cause of his fall. "It was the Durham Letter," says
one. "Not a jot," replies another; "the Durham Letter was quite right,
and would have strengthened him prodigiously if it had been followed up
by a vigorous anti-Papal measure: it was the paltry bill that destroyed
him." "The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill," interposes a third, "did just
enough in doing next to nothing: no, it was the house tax in the Budget
that did the mischief." "The house tax might have been got over," puts
in another, "but the proposal of the income tax, with all its injustices
unmitigated, doomed Lord John." "Not a whit," rejoins a Radical
reformer, "the income tax is popular, especially with people who don't
pay it; Lord John's opposition to Locke King's motion sealed his fate."
"Locke King's division was a flea-bite," cries a staunch Protestant,
"the Pope has done it all."'
Stress has been laid in these pages on the attempts of the Russell
Administration to deal with an acute and terrible phase of the eternal
Irish problem, as well as to set forth in outline the difficulties which
it encountered in regard to its foreign policy through the cavalier
attitude and bid for personal ascendency of Lord Palmerston. The five or
six years during which Lord John Russell was at the head of affairs were
marked by a succession of panics which heightened immeasurably the
difficulties of his position. One was purely commercial, but it threw
gloom over the country, brought stagnation to trade, and political
discontent followed in its train, which in turn reacted on the prospects
of the Government. The Irish famine and the rebellion which followed in
its wake taxed the resources of the Cabinet to the utmost, and the
efforts which were made by the Ministry to grapple with the evil have
scarcely received even yet due recognition. The Chartist movement, the
agitation over the Papal claims and the fear of invasion, are landmarks
in the turbulent and menacing annals of the time.
The repeal of the Navigation Act bore witness to Lord John's zealous
determination to extend the principles of Free Trade, and the Jewish
Disabilities Bill--which was rejected by the House of Lords--is itself a
sufficient answer to those who, because of his resistance, not to the
spiritual claims, but to the political arrogance of the Vatican, have
ventured to charge him with a lack of religious toleration. He himself
once declared that as a statesman he had received as much favour as he
had deserved; he added that, where his measures had miscarried, he did
not attribute the failure to animosity or misrepresentation, but rather
to errors which he had himself committed from mistaken judgment or an
erroneous interpretation of facts. No one who looks at Lord John
Russell's career with simple justice, to say nothing of generosity, can
doubt the truth of his words. 'I believe, I may say, that my ends have
been honest. I have looked to the happiness of my country as the object
to which my efforts ought to be directed.'
FOOTNOTES:
[19] _Life of Lord Palmerston_, by the Hon. Evelyn Ashley, vol. ii. p.
95.
[20] _Life of E. B. Pusey, D.D._, by H. P. Liddon, D.D., vol. iii. p.
292. Longmans & Co.
[21] Cobden described it as 'a Guy Fawkes outcry,' and predicted the
fall of the Ministry.
[22] See _Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury_, by Edwin
Hodder, pp. 429-435.
[23] _Lord Beaconsfield's Correspondence with his Sister_ (1832-1852),
p. 249. London: John Murray.
[24] _History of Our Own Times_, by Justin McCarthy, M.P. vol. ii. pp.
85, 86.
[25] _Life of Lord John Russell_, by Spencer Walpole, vol. ii p. 143.