LITERATURE AND EDUCATION
Lord John's position in 1855--His constituency in the City--Survey
of his work in literature--As man of letters--His historical
writings--Hero-worship of Fox--Friendship with Moore--Writes the
biography of the poet--'Don Carlos'--A book wrongly attributed to
him--Publishes his 'Recollections and Suggestions'--An opinion of
Kinglake's--Lord John on his own career--Lord John and National
Schools--Joseph Lancaster's tentative efforts--The formation of the
Council of Education--Prejudice blocks the way--Mr. Forster's
tribute.
MEN talked in the autumn of 1855 as if Lord John Russell's retirement
was final, and even his brother, the Duke of Bedford, considered it
probable that his career as a responsible statesman was closed. His
health had always been more or less delicate, and he was now a man of
sixty-three. He had been in Parliament for upwards of forty years, and
nearly a quarter of a century had passed since he bore the brunt of the
wrath and clamour and evil-speaking of the Tories at the epoch of
Reform. He had been leader of his party for a long term of difficult
years, and Prime Minister for the space of six, and in that capacity had
left on the statute book an impressive record of his zeal on behalf of
civil and religious liberty. No statesman of the period had won more
distinction in spite of 'gross blunders,' which he himself in so many
words admitted. He was certainly entitled to rest on his laurels; but
it was nonsense for anyone to suppose that the animosity of the Irish,
or the indignation of the Ritualists, or the general chagrin at the
collapse--under circumstances for which Lord John was by no means alone
responsible--of the Vienna Conference, could condemn a man of so much
energy and courage, as well as political prescience, to perpetual
banishment from Downing Street.
There were people who thought that Lord John was played out in 1855, and
there were many more who wished to think so, for he was feared by the
incompetent and apathetic of his own party, as well as by those who had
occasion to reckon with him in honourable but strenuous political
conflict. The great mistake of his life was not the Durham Letter, which
has been justified, in spite of its needless bitterness of tone, by the
inexorable logic of accomplished events. It was not his attitude towards
Ireland in the dark years of famine, which was in reality far more
temperate and generous than is commonly supposed. It was not his action
over the Vienna Conference, for, now that the facts are known, his
reticence in self-defence, under the railing accusations which were
brought against him, was magnanimous and patriotic. The truth is, Lord
John Russell placed himself in a false position when he yielded to the
importunity of the Court and the Peelites by consenting to accept office
under Lord Aberdeen. The Crimean War, which he did his best to prevent,
only threw into the relief of red letters against a dark sky the radical
divergence of opinion which existed in the Coalition Government.
[Sidenote: OUT OF OFFICE]
For nearly four years after his retirement from office Lord John held an
independent political position, and there is evidence enough that he
enjoyed to the full this respite from the cares of responsibility. He
gave up his house in town, and the quidnuncs thought that they had seen
the last of him as a Minister of the Crown, whilst the merchants and the
stockbrokers of the City were supposed to scout his name, and to be
ready to lift up their heel against him at the next election.
Meanwhile, Lord John studied to be quiet, and succeeded. He visited
country-houses, and proved a delightful as well as a delighted guest. He
travelled abroad, and came back with new political ideas about the trend
in foreign politics. He published the final volume of his 'Memoirs and
Correspondence of Thomas Moore,' and busied himself over his 'Life and
Times of Charles James Fox,' and other congenial literary tasks. He
appeared on the platform and addressed four thousand persons in Exeter
Hall, in connection with the Young Men's Christian Association, on the
causes which had retarded moral and political progress in the nation. He
went down to Stroud, and gave his old constituents a philosophic address
on the study of history. He spoke at the first meeting of the Social
Science Congress at Birmingham, presided over the second at Liverpool,
and raised in Parliament the questions of National Education, Jewish
Disabilities, the affairs of Italy, besides taking part, as an
independent supporter of Lord Palmerston, in the controversies which
arose from time to time in the House of Commons. His return to office
grew inevitable in the light of the force of his character and the
integrity of his aims.
[Sidenote: LITERARY WORK]
It is, of course, impossible in the scope of this volume to describe at
any length Lord John Russell's contributions to literature, even outside
the range of letters and articles in the press and that almost forgotten
weapon of controversy, the political pamphlet. From youth to age Lord
John not merely possessed the pen of a ready writer, but employed it
freely in history, biography, criticism, _belles-lettres_, and verse.
His first book was published when George III. was King, and his last
appeared when almost forty years of Queen Victoria's reign had elapsed.
The Liverpool Administration was in power when his biography of his
famous ancestor, William, Lord Russell, appeared, and that of Mr.
Disraeli when the veteran statesman took the world into his confidence
with 'Recollections and Suggestions.' It is amusing now to recall the
fact that two years after the battle of Waterloo Lord John Russell
feared that he could never stand the strain of a political career, and
Tom Moore's well-known poetical 'Remonstrance' was called forth by the
young Whig's intention at that time to abandon the Senate for the study.
When Lord Grey's Ministry was formed in 1830 to carry Reform, Lord John
was the author of several books, grave and gay, and had been seventeen
years in Parliament, winning already a considerable reputation within
and without its walls. It was a surprise at the moment, and it is not
even yet quite clear why Russell was excluded from the Cabinet. Mr.
Disraeli has left on record his interpretation of the mystery: 'Lord
John Russell was a man of letters, and it is a common opinion that a man
cannot at the same time be successful both in meditation and in action.'
If this surmise is correct, Lord John's fondness for printer's ink kept
him out of Downing Street until he made by force his merit known as a
champion of popular rights in the House of Commons. Literature often
claimed his pen, for, besides many contributions in prose and verse to
periodicals, to say nothing of writings which still remain in manuscript
and prefaces to the books of other people, he published about twenty
works, great and small. Yet, his strength lay elsewhere.
His literary pursuits, with scarcely an exception, represent his hours
of relaxation and the manner in which he sought relief from the cares of
State. In the pages of 'William, Lord Russell,' which was published in
1819, when political corruption was supreme and social progress all but
impossible, Lord John gave forth no uncertain sound. 'In these times,
when love of liberty is too generally supposed to be allied with rash
innovation, impiety, and anarchy, it seems to me desirable to exhibit to
the world at full length the portrait of a man who, heir to wealth and
title, was foremost in defending the privileges of the people; who, when
busily occupied in the affairs of public life, was revered in his own
family as the best of husbands and of fathers; who joined the truest
sense of religion with the unqualified assertion of freedom; who, after
an honest perseverance in a good cause, at length attested, on the
scaffold, his attachment to the ancient principles of the Constitution
and the inalienable right of resistance.' The interest of the book
consists not merely in its account--gathered in part at least from
family papers at Woburn and original letters at Longleat--of Lord
Russell, but also in the light which is cast on the period of the
Restoration, and the policy of Charles II. and the Duke of York.
[Sidenote: A CONFIDENT WHIG]
Two years later, Lord John published an 'Essay on the History of the
English Government and Constitution,' which, in an expanded form, has
passed through several editions, and has also appeared in a French
version. The book is concerned with constitutional change in England
from the reign of Henry VII. to the beginning of the nineteenth
century. Lord John made no secret of his conviction that, whilst the
majority of the Powers of Europe needed revolutionary methods to bring
them into sympathy with the aspirations of the people, the Government of
England was not in such an evil case, since its 'abuses easily admit of
reforms consistent with its spirit, capable of being effected without
injury or danger, and mainly contributing to its preservation.' The
historical reflections which abound in the work, though shrewd, can
scarcely be described as remarkable, much less as profound. The 'Essay
on English Government' is, in fact, not the confessions of an inquiring
spirit entangled in the maze of political speculation, but the
conclusions of a young statesman who has made up his mind, with the help
of Somers and Fox.
Perhaps, however, the most important of Lord John's contributions to the
study of the philosophy of history was 'Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe
from the Peace of Utrecht.' It describes at considerable length, and
often with luminous insight, the negotiations which led to the treaty by
which the great War of the Spanish Succession was brought to an end. It
also throws light on men and manners during the last days of Louis XIV.,
and on the condition of affairs in France which followed his death. The
closing pages of the second volume are concerned with a survey of the
religious state of England during the first half of the eighteenth
century. Lord John in this connection pays homage to the work of
Churchmen of the stamp of Warburton, Clarke, and Hoadly; but he entirely
fails to appreciate at anything like their true value the labours of
Whitfield and Wesley, though doing more justice to the great leaders of
Puritanism, a circumstance which was perhaps due to the fact that they
stand in the direct historical succession, not merely in the assertion
of the rights of conscience, but in the ordered growth of freedom and
society.
Amongst the most noteworthy of Lord John Russell's literary achievements
were the two works which he published concerning a statesman whose
memory, he declared, ought to be 'consecrated in the heart of every
lover of freedom throughout the globe'--Charles James Fox, a master of
assemblies, and, according to Burke, perhaps the greatest debater whom
the world has ever seen. The books in question are entitled 'Memorials
and Correspondence,' which was published in four volumes at intervals
between the years 1853 and 1857, and the more important 'Life and Times
of Charles James Fox,' which appeared in three volumes between the years
1859 and 1866. This task, like so many others which Lord John
accomplished, came unsought at the death of his old friend, Lady
Holland, in 1845. It was the ambition of Lord Holland, 'nephew of Fox
and friend of Grey,' as he used proudly to style himself, to edit the
papers and write the life of his brilliant kinsman. Politics and society
and the stately house at Kensington, which, from the end of last century
until the opening years of the Queen's reign, was the chief _salon_ of
the Whig party, combined, with an easy procrastinating temperament, to
block the way, until death ended, in the autumn of 1840, the career of
the gracious master of Holland House. The materials which Lord Holland
and his physician, librarian, and friend, Dr. John Allen, had
accumulated, and which, by the way, passed under the scrutiny of Lord
Grey and Rogers, the poet, were edited by Lord John, with the result
that he grew fascinated with the subject, and formed the resolution, in
consequence, to write 'The Life and Times' of the great Whig statesman.
He declared that it was well to have a hero, and a hero with a good many
faults and failings.
[Sidenote: FOX AND MOORE]
Fox did more than any other statesman in the dull reign of George II. to
prepare the way for the epoch of Reform, and it was therefore fitting
that the statesman who more than any other bore the brunt of the battle
in 1830-32 should write his biography. Lord Russell's biography of Fox,
though by no means so skilfully written as Sir George Otto Trevelyan's
vivacious description of 'The Early History of Charles James Fox,' is on
a more extended scale than the latter. Students of the political annals
of the eighteenth century are aware of its value as an original and
suggestive contribution to the facts and forces which have shaped the
relations of the Crown and the Cabinet in modern history. Fox, in Lord
John's opinion, gave his life to the defence of English freedom, and
hastened his death by his exertion to abolish the African Slave Trade.
He lays stress, not only on the great qualities which Fox displayed in
public life, but also on the simplicity and kindness of his nature, and
the spell which, in spite of grievous faults, he seemed able to cast,
without effort, alike over friends and foes.
One of the earliest, and certainly one of the closest, friendships of
Lord John Russell's life was with Thomas Moore. They saw much of each
other for the space of nearly forty years in London society, and were
also drawn together in the more familiar intercourse of foreign travel.
It was with Lord John that the poet went to Italy in 1819 to avoid
arrest for debt, after his deputy at Bermuda had embezzled 6,000_l._
Moore lived, more or less, all his days from hand to mouth, and Lord
John Russell, who was always ready in a quiet fashion, in Kingsley's
phrase, to help lame dogs over stiles, frequently displayed towards the
light-hearted poet throughout their long friendship delicate and
generous kindness. He it was who, in conjunction with Lord Lansdowne,
obtained for Moore in 1835 a pension of 300_l._ a year, and announced
the fact as one which was 'due from any Government, but much more from
one some of the members of which are proud to think themselves your
friends.' Moore died in 1852, and when his will was read--it had been
made when Lord John was still comparatively unknown--it was discovered
that he had, to give his own words, 'confided to my valued friend, Lord
John Russell (having obtained his kind promise to undertake the service
for me), the task of looking over whatever papers, letters, or journals
I may leave behind me, for the purpose of forming from them some kind of
publication, whether in the shape of memoirs or otherwise, which may
afford the means of making some provision for my wife and family.'
Although Lord John was sixty, and burdened with the cares of State, if
not with the cares of office, he cheerfully accepted the task. Though it
must be admitted that he performed some parts of it in rather a
perfunctory manner, the eight volumes which appeared between 1853 and
1856 of the 'Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore'
represent a severe tax upon friendship, as well as no ordinary labour on
the part of a man who was always more or less immersed in public
affairs.
[Sidenote: 'DON CARLOS']
Lord John also edited the 'Correspondence of John, fourth Duke of
Bedford,' and prefaced the letters with a biographical sketch. Quite
early in his career he also tried his hand at fiction in 'The Nun of
Arrouca,' a story founded on a romantic incident which occurred during
his travels in the Peninsula. The book appeared in 1822, and in the
same year--he was restless and ambitious of literary distinction at the
time, and had not yet found his true sphere in politics--he also
published 'Don Carlos,' a tragedy in blank verse, which was in reality
not merely a tirade against the cruelties of the Inquisition, but an
impassioned protest against religious disabilities in every shape or
form. 'Don Carlos,' though now practically forgotten, ran through five
editions in twelve months, and the people remembered it when its author
became the foremost advocate in the House of Commons of the repeal of
the Test and Corporation Acts. Amongst other minor writings which belong
to the earlier years of Lord John Russell, it is enough to name 'Essays
and Sketches of Life and Character,' 'The Establishment of the Turks in
Europe,' 'A Translation of the Fifth Book of the Odyssey,' and an
imitation of the Thirteenth Satire of Juvenal, as well as an essay on
the 'Causes of the French Revolution,' which appeared in 1832.
It is still a moot point whether 'Letters Written for the Post, and not
for the Press,' an anonymous volume which appeared in 1820, and which
consists of descriptions of a tour in Scotland, interspersed with dull
moral lectures on the conduct of a wife towards her husband, was from
his pen. Mr. George Elliot believes, on internal evidence, too lengthy
to quote, that the book--a small octavo volume of more than four hundred
pages--is erroneously attributed to his brother-in-law, and the Countess
Russell is of the same opinion. Mr. Elliot cites inaccuracies in the
book, and adds that the places visited in Scotland do not correspond
with those which Lord John had seen when he went thither in company with
the Duke and Duchess in 1807; and there is no evidence that he made
another pilgrimage north of the Tweed between that date and the
appearance of the book. He adds that his father took the trouble to
collect everything which was written by Lord John, and the book is
certainly not in the library at Minto. Moreover, Mr. Elliot is confident
that either Lord Minto or Lord John himself assured him that he might
dismiss the idea of the supposed authorship.
After his final retirement from office, Lord John published, in 1868,
three letters to Mr. Chichester Fortescue on 'The State of Ireland,' and
this was followed by a contribution to ecclesiastical history in the
shape of a volume of essays on 'The Rise and Progress of the Christian
Religion in the West of Europe to the Council of Trent.' The leisure of
his closing years was, however, chiefly devoted to the preparation, with
valuable introductions, of selections from his own 'Speeches and
Despatches;' and this, in turn, was followed, after an interval of five
years, by a work entitled 'Recollections and Suggestions, 1813-1873,'
which appeared as late as 1875, and which was of singular personal
interest as well as of historical importance. It bears on the title-page
two lines from Dryden, which were often on Lord John's lips in his
closing years:
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.
[Sidenote: A RETROSPECT]
The old statesman's once tenacious memory was failing when he wrote the
book, and there is little evidence of literary arrangement in its
contents. If, however, Lord John did not always escape inaccuracy of
statement or laboured discursiveness of style, the value not only of his
political reminiscences, but also of his shrewd and often pithily
expressed verdicts on men and movements, is unquestionable, and, on the
whole, the vigour of the book is as remarkable as its noble candour.
Mr. Kinglake once declared that 'Lord John Russell wrote so naturally
that it recalled the very sound of his voice;' and half the charm of his
'Recollections and Suggestions' consists in the artlessness of a record
which will always rank with the original materials of history, between
the year in which Wellington fought the battle of Vittoria and that in
which, just sixty years later, Napoleon III. died in exile at
Chislehurst. In speaking of his own career, Lord Russell, writing at the
age of eighty-one, uses words which are not less manly than modest:
'I can only rejoice that I have been allowed to have my share in the
task accomplished in the half-century which has elapsed from 1819 to
1869. My capacity, I always felt, was very inferior to that of the men
who have attained in past times the foremost place in our Parliament and
in the councils of our Sovereign. I have committed many errors, some of
them very gross blunders. But the generous people of England are always
forbearing and forgiving to those statesmen who have the good of their
country at heart. Like my betters, I have been misrepresented and
slandered by those who know nothing of me; but I have been more than
compensated by the confidence and the friendship of the best men of my
own political connection, and by the regard and favourable
interpretation of my motives, which I have heard expressed by my
generous opponents, from the days of Lord Castlereagh to these of Mr.
Disraeli.'
There were few questions in which Lord John Russell was more keenly
interested from youth to age than that of National Education. As a boy
he had met Joseph Lancaster, during a visit of that far-seeing and
practical friend of poor children to Woburn, and the impression which
the humble Quaker philanthropist made on the Duke of Bedford's
quick-witted as well as kind-hearted son was retained, as one of his
latest speeches show, to the close of life. At the opening of the new
British Schools in Richmond in the summer of 1867, Lord John referred to
his father's association with Joseph Lancaster, and added: 'In this way
I naturally became initiated into a desire for promoting schools for the
working classes, and I must say, from that time to this I never changed
my mind upon the subject. I think it is absolutely necessary our schools
should not merely be secular, but that they should be provided with
religious teaching, and that religious teaching ought not to be
sectarian. There will be plenty of time, when these children go to
church or chapel, that they should learn either that particular form of
doctrine their parents follow or adopt one more consistent with their
conscientious feelings; but I think, while they are young boys and girls
at school, it ought to be sufficient for them to know what Christ
taught, and what the apostles taught; and from those lessons and
precepts they may guide their conduct in life.'
Lord John put his hand to the plough in the day of small things, and,
through good and through evil report, from the days of Lancaster, Bell,
and Brougham, to those of Mr. Forster and the great measure of 1870, he
never withdrew from a task which lay always near to his heart. It is
difficult to believe that at the beginning of the present century there
were less than three thousand four hundred schools of all descriptions
in the whole of England, or that when the reign of George III. was
closing one-half of the children of the nation still ran wild without
the least pretence of education. At a still later period the marriage
statistics revealed the fact that one-third of the men and one-half of
the women were unable to sign the register. The social elevation of the
people, so ran the miserable plea of those who assuredly were not given
to change, was fraught with peril to the State. Hodge, it was urged,
ought to be content to take both the Law and the Commandments from his
betters, since a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. As for the
noisy, insolent operatives and artisans of the great manufacturing
towns, was there not for them the strong hand of authority, and, if they
grew too obstreperous, the uplifted sabre of the military as at
Peterloo? It was all very well, however, to extol the virtues of
patience, contentment, and obedience, but the sense of wrong and of
defiance rankled in the masses, and with it--in a dull and confused
manner--the sense of power.
[Sidenote: THE AWAKENING OF THE PEOPLE]
The Reform Bill of 1832 mocked in many directions the hopes of the
people, but it at least marked a great social as well as a great
political departure, and with it came the dawn of a new day to modern
England. As the light broadened, the vision of poets and patriots began
to be realised in practical improvements, which came home to men's
business and bosom; the standard of intelligence rose, and with it
freedom of thought, and the, sometimes passionate, but more often
long-suffering demand for political, social, and economic concessions to
justice. It was long before the privileged classes began to recognise,
except in platform heroics, that it was high time to awake out of sleep
and to 'educate our masters;' but the work began when Lord Althorp
persuaded the House of Commons to vote a modest sum for the erection of
school buildings in England; and that grant of 20,000_l._ in 1832 was
the 'handful of corn on the top of the mountains' which has brought
about the golden harvest of to-day. The history of the movement does
not, of course, fall within the province of these pages, though Lord
John Russell's name is associated with it in an honourable and emphatic
sense. The formation, chiefly at his instance, in 1839 of a Council of
Education paved the way for the existing system of elementary education,
and lifted the whole problem to the front rank of national affairs.
[Sidenote: POPULAR EDUCATION]
He was the first Prime Minister of England to carry a measure which made
it possible to secure trained teachers for elementary schools; and his
successful effort in 1847 to 'diminish the empire of ignorance,' as he
styled it, was one of the events in his public life on which he looked
back in after years with the most satisfaction. During the session of
1856 Lord John brought forward in the House of Commons a bold scheme of
National Education. He contended that out of four million children of
school age only one-half were receiving instruction, whilst not more
than one-eighth were attending schools which were subject to inspection.
The vast majority were to be found in schools where the standard of
education, if not altogether an unknown quantity, was deplorably low. He
proposed that the number of inspectors should be increased, and that a
rate should be levied by the local authorities for supplying adequate
instruction in places where it was unsatisfactory. He contended that the
country should be mapped out in school districts, and that the managers
should have the power to make provision for religious instruction, and,
at the same time, should allow the parents of the children a voice in
the matter. Prejudices ecclesiastical and social blocked the way,
however, and Lord John was compelled to abandon the scheme, which
suggested, and to a large extent anticipated Mr. Forster's far-reaching
measure, which in 1870 met with a better fate, and linked the principles
of local authority and central supervision in the harmonious working of
public education. When the victory was almost won Mr. Forster, with
characteristic kindliness, wrote to the old statesman who had laboured
for the people's cause in years of supreme discouragement:--'As regards
universal compulsory education, I believe we shall soon complete the
building. It is hard to see how there would have been a building to
complete, if you had not, with great labour and in great difficulty, dug
the foundations in 1839.' Happily Lord John lived to witness the
crowning of the edifice by the Gladstone Administration.