OUT OF HARNESS
1867-1874
Speeches in the House of Lords--Leisured years--Mr. Lecky's
reminiscences--The question of the Irish Church--The Independence
of Belgium--Lord John on the claims of the Vatican--Letters to Mr.
Chichester Fortescue--His scheme for the better government of
Ireland--Lord Selborne's estimate of Lord John's public
career--Frank admissions--As his private secretaries saw him.
LORD JOHN never relinquished that high sense of responsibility which was
conspicuous in his attitude as a Minister of the Crown. Although out of
harness from the summer of 1866 to his death, twelve years later, he
retained to the last, undiminished, the sense of public duty. He took,
not merely a keen interest, but an appreciable share in public affairs;
and some of the speeches which he delivered in the House of Lords after
his retirement from office show how vigorous and acute his intellect
remained, and how wide and generous were his sympathies. The leisured
years which came to Lord John after the fall of the second Russell
Administration enabled him to renew old friendships, and gave him the
opportunity for making the acquaintance of distinguished men of a
younger generation. His own historical studies--the literary passion of
a lifetime--made him keenly appreciative of the work of others in that
direction, and kindred tastes drew him into intimate relations with Mr.
W. E. H. Lecky. Few of the reminiscences, great or small, which have
been written for these pages, can compare in interest with the following
statement by so philosophic a critic of public affairs and so acute a
judge of men:--
[Sidenote: MR. LECKY'S REMINISCENCES]
'It was, I think, in 1866, and in the house of Dean Milman, that I had
the privilege of being introduced to Lord Russell. He at once received
me with a warmth and kindness I can never forget, and from this time
till near the end of his life I saw him very frequently. His Ministerial
career had just terminated, but I could trace no failure in his powers,
and, whatever difference of opinion there might be about his public
career, no one, I believe, who ever came in contact with him failed to
recognise his singular charm in private life. His conversation differed
from that of some of the more illustrious of his contemporaries. It was
not a copious and brilliant stream of words, dazzling, astonishing, or
overpowering. It had no tendency to monologue, and it was not remarkable
for any striking originalities either of language, metaphor, or thought.
Few men steered more clear of paradox, and the charm of his talk lay
mainly in his admirable terseness and clearness of expression, in the
skill with which, by a few happy words, he could tell a story, or etch
out a character, or condense an argument or statement. Beyond all men I
have ever known, he had the gift of seizing rapidly in every question
the central argument, the essential fact or distinction; and of all his
mental characteristics, quickness and soundness of judgment seemed to me
the most conspicuous. I have never met with anyone with whom it was so
possible to discuss with profit many great questions in a short time. No
one, too, could know him intimately without being impressed with his
high sense of honour, with his transparent purity of motive, with the
fundamental kindliness of his disposition, with the remarkable modesty
of his estimate of his own past. He was eminently tolerant of difference
of opinion, and he had in private life an imperturbable sweetness of
temper that set those about him completely at their ease, and helped
much to make them talk their best. Few men had more anecdotes, and no
one told them better--tersely, accurately, with a quiet, subdued humour,
with a lightness of touch which I should not have expected from his
writings. In addition to the experiences of a long and eventful life,
his mind was stored with the anecdotes of the brilliant Whig society of
Holland House, of which he was one of the last repositories. It is much
to be regretted that he did not write down his "Recollections" till a
period of life when his once admirable memory was manifestly failing. He
was himself sadly conscious of the failure. "I used never to confuse my
facts," he once said to me; "I now find that I am beginning to do so."
'He has mentioned in his "Recollections" as one of the great felicities
of his life that he retained the friendship of his leading opponents,
and his private conversation fully supported this view. Of Sir Robert
Peel he always spoke with a special respect, and it was, I think, a
matter of peculiar pleasure to him that in his old age his family was
closely connected by marriage with that of his illustrious rival. His
friendship with Lord Derby, which began when they were colleagues, was
unbroken by many contests. He spoke of him, however, as a man of
brilliant talent, who had not the judgment or the character suited for
the first place; and he maintained that he had done much better both
under Lord Grey and under Sir Robert Peel than as Prime Minister.
Between Lord Russell and Disraeli there was, I believe, on both sides
much kindly feeling, though no two men could be less like, and though
there was much in Disraeli's ways of looking at things that must have
been peculiarly trying to the Whig mind. Lord Russell told me that he
once described him in Parliament by quoting the lines of Dryden:--
'He was not one on picking work to dwell.
He fagotted his notions as they fell;
And if they rhymed and rattled, all was well.'
[Sidenote: HIS EARLY CHIEFS]
'Of his early chiefs, he used to speak with most reverence of Lord Grey.
Lord Melbourne, he said, greatly injured his Government by the manner in
which he treated deputations. He never could resist the temptation of
bantering and snubbing them. Two men who flourished in his youth
surpassed, Lord Russell thought, in eloquence any of the later
generation. They were Canning and Plunket, and as an orator the greater
of these was Plunket. Among the statesmen of a former generation, he had
an especial admiration for Walpole, and was accustomed to maintain that
he was a much greater statesman than Pitt. His judgment, indeed, of Pitt
always seemed to me much warped by that adoration of Fox which in the
early years of the century was almost an article of religion in Whig
circles. Lord Russell had also the true Whig reverence for William III.,
and, I am afraid, he was by no means satisfied with some pages I wrote
about that sovereign.
'Speaking of Lord Palmerston, I once said to him that I was struck with
the small net result in legislation which he accomplished considering
the many years he was in power. "But during all these years," Lord
Russell replied, "he kept the honour of England very high; and I think
that a great thing."
'The Imperialist sentiment was one of the deepest in his nature, and few
things exasperated him more than the school which was advocating the
surrender of India and the Colonies. "When I was young," he once said to
me, "it was thought the work of a wise statesman that he had turned a
small kingdom into a great empire. In my old age it seems to be thought
the object of a statesman to turn a great empire into a small kingdom."
He thought we had made a grave mistake, when conceding self-government
to the Colonies, in not reserving the waste lands and free trade with
the Mother Country; and he considered that the right of veto on
legislation, which had been reserved, ought to have been always
exercised (as he said it was under Lord Grey) when duties were imposed
on English goods. In Irish politics he greatly blamed Canning, who
agreed with the Whigs about Catholic Emancipation, though he differed
from them about Reform. The former question, he said, was then by far
the more pressing, and if Canning had insisted on making it a
first-class ministerial question he would have carried it in conjunction
with the Whigs. "My pride in Irish measures," he once wrote to me, "is
in the Poor Law, which I designed, framed, and twice carried." Like
Peel, he strongly maintained that the priests ought to have been paid.
He would gladly have seen the principle of religious equality in Ireland
carried to its furthest consequences, and local government considerably
extended; but he told me that any statesman who proposed to repeal the
Union ought to be impeached, and in his "Recollections," and in one of
his published letters to the present Lord Carlingford, he has expressed
in the strongest terms his inflexible hostility to Home Rule.
[Sidenote: POLITICAL APPREHENSIONS]
'Though the steadiest of Whigs, Lord Russell was by no means an
uncompromising democrat. The great misfortune, he said, of America was
that the influence of Jefferson had eclipsed that of Washington. One of
her chief advantages was that the Western States furnished a wide and
harmless field for restless energy and ambition. In England he was very
anxious that progress should move on the lines of the past, and he was
under the impression that statesmen of the present generation studied
English history less than their predecessors. He was one of the earliest
advocates of the Minority Vote, and he certainly looked with very
considerable apprehension to the effects of the Democratic Reform Bill
of 1867. He said to me that he feared there was too much truth in the
saying of one of his friends that "the concessions of the Whigs were
once concessions to intelligence, but now concessions to ignorance."
'When the Education Act was carried, he was strongly in favour of the
introduction of the Bible, accompanied by purely undenominational
teaching. This was, I think, one of his last important declarations on
public policy. I recollect a scathing article in the "Saturday Review,"
demonstrating the absurdity of supposing that such teaching was
possible. But the people of England took a different view. The great
majority of the School Boards adopted the system which Lord Russell
recommended, and it prevailed with almost perfect harmony for more than
twenty years.
'In foreign politics he looked with peculiar pleasure to the services he
had rendered to the Italian cause. Italy was always very dear to him. He
had many valued friends there, and he spoke Italian (as he also did
Spanish) with much fluency. Among my most vivid recollections are those
of some happy days I spent with him at San Remo.'
Two years before the disestablishment of the Irish Church, Lord John
Russell, knowing how great a stumbling-block its privileges were to the
progress of the people, moved for a Commission to inquire into the
expenditure of its revenues. The investigation was, however, staved off,
and the larger question was, in consequence, hastened. He supported Mr.
Gladstone in a powerful speech in 1870, and showed himself in
substantial agreement with Mr. Forster over his great scheme of
education, though he thought that some of its provisions bore heavily
upon Nonconformists. The outbreak of war between France and Germany
seemed at first to threaten the interests of England, and Lord John
introduced a Militia Bill, which was only withdrawn when the Government
promised to take action. The interests of Belgium were threatened by the
struggle on the Continent, and Lord John took occasion to remind the
nation that we were bound to defend that country, and had guaranteed by
treaty to uphold its independence:--
'... I am persuaded that if it is once manfully declared that England
means to stand by her treaties, to perform her engagements--that her
honour and her interest would allow nothing else--such a declaration
would check the greater part of these intrigues, and that neither France
nor Prussia would wish to add a second enemy to the formidable foe which
each has to meet.... When the choice is between honour and infamy, I
cannot doubt that her Majesty's Government will pursue the course of
honour, the only one worthy of the British people.... I consider that if
England shrank from the performance of her engagements--if she acted in
a faithless manner with respect to this matter--her extinction as a
Great Power must very soon follow.'
[Sidenote: ATTACKS THE CLAIMS OF PIUS IX.]
Lord John's vigorous protest did not go unheeded, and the King of the
Belgians sent him an autograph letter in acknowledgment of his generous
and opportune words. On the other hand, Lord John Russell resented the
determination of Mr. Gladstone to submit the 'Alabama' claims to
arbitration, and also opposed the adoption of the Ballot and the
abolition of purchase in the Army. The conflict which arose in the
autumn of 1872 between the Emperor of Germany and Pius IX. was a matter
which appealed to all lovers of liberty of conscience. Lord John, though
now in his eighty second year, rose promptly to the occasion, and
promised to preside at a great public meeting in London, called to
protest against the claims of the Vatican. At the last moment, though
the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak, and yielding to medical
advice, he contented himself with a written expression of sympathy. This
was read to the meeting, and brought him the thanks of the Kaiser and
Prince Bismarck. Lord John's letters, declared Mr. Kinglake seem to
carry with them the very ring of his voice; and the one which was
written from Pembroke Lodge on January 19, 1874, was full of the old
fire of enthusiasm and the resolution which springs from clean-cut
convictions:--'I hasten to declare with all friends of freedom, and I
trust with the great majority of the English nation, that I could no
longer call myself a lover of civil and religious liberty were I not to
proclaim my sympathy with the Emperor of Germany in the noble struggle
in which he is engaged.'
Lord John Russell's pamphlets, published in 1868-9--in the shape of
letters to Mr. Chichester Fortescue--show that in old age and out of
office he was still anxious to see justice done to the legitimate
demands of Ireland. He declared that he witnessed with alarm the attempt
to involve the whole Irish nation in a charge of disaffection,
conspiracy, and treason. He contended that Englishmen ought to seek to
rid their minds of exaggerated fears and national animosities, so that
they might be in a position to consider patiently all the facts of the
case. 'We ought to weigh with care the complaints that are made, and
examine with still more care and circumspection the remedies that are
proposed, lest in our attempts to cure the disease we give the patient a
new and more dangerous disorder.' In his 'Life of Fox' Lord John Russell
maintained that the wisest system that could be devised for the
conciliation of Ireland had yet to be discovered; and in his third
letter to Mr. Chichester Fortescue, published in January 1869, he made a
remarkable allusion to Mr. Gladstone as a statesman who might yet seek
to 'perform a permanent and immortal service to his country' by
endeavouring to reconcile England and Ireland. If, added Lord John, Mr.
Gladstone should 'undertake the heroic task of riveting the union of the
three kingdoms by affection, even more than by statute; if he should
endeavour to efface the stains which proscription and prejudice have
affixed on the fair fame of Great Britain, then, though he may not
reunite his party ... he will be enrolled among the noblest of England's
statesmen, and will have laid the foundations of a great work, which
either he or a younger generation will not fail to accomplish.'
[Sidenote: IRISH PROPOSALS]
The proposals Lord John Russell made in the columns of the 'Times,' on
August 9, 1872, for the better government of Ireland have been claimed
as a tentative scheme of Home Rule. 'It appears to me, that if Ireland
were to be allowed to elect a representative assembly for each of its
four provinces of Leinster, Ulster, Munster, and Connaught, and if
Scotland in a similar manner were to be divided into Lowlands and
Highlands, having for each province a representative assembly, the
local wants of Ireland and Scotland might be better provided for than
they are at present.' Lord John went on to say that the Imperial
Parliament might still retain its hold over local legislation, and added
that it was his purpose to explain in a pamphlet a policy which he
thought might be adopted to the 'satisfaction of the nation at large.'
The pamphlet, however, remained unwritten, and the scheme in its
fulness, therefore, was never explained. Evidently Lord Russell's mind
was changing in its attitude towards the Irish problem; but, as Mr.
Lecky points out in the personal reminiscences with which he has
enriched these pages, though in advance of the opinion of the hour he
was not prepared to accept the principle of Home Rule. Although Mr.
Lecky does not mention the year in which Lord John declared that any
statesman who 'proposed to repeal the Union ought to be impeached,' Lord
Russell himself in his published 'Recollections' admits that he saw no
hope that Ireland would be well and quietly governed by the adoption of
Home Rule. In fact, he makes it quite clear that he was in sympathy with
the view which Lord Althorp expressed when O'Connell demanded the repeal
of the Union--namely, that such a request amounted to a dismemberment of
the Empire. On the other hand, Lord John was wont in his latest years to
discuss the question in all its bearings with an Irish representative
who held opposite views. There can be no doubt that he was feeling his
way to a more generous interpretation of the problem than that which is
commonly attributed to him. His own words on this point are: 'I should
have been very glad if the leaders of popular opinion in Ireland had so
modified and mollified their demand for Home Rule as to make it
consistent with the unity of the Empire.' His mind, till within a few
years of his death, was clear, and did not stand still. Whether he would
have gradually become a Home Ruler is open to question, but in 1874 he
had gone quite as far in that direction as Mr. Gladstone.
Lord John, though the most loyal of subjects, made it plain throughout
his career that he was not in the least degree a courtier. His nephew,
Mr. George Russell, after stating that Lord John supported, with voice
and vote, Mr. Hume's motion for the revision of the Civil List under
George IV., and urged in vigorous terms the restoration of Queen
Caroline's name to the Liturgy, as well as subscribing to compensate an
officer, friendly to the Queen, whom the King's animosity had driven
from the army, adds: 'It may well be that some tradition of this early
independence, or some playful desire to test the fibre of Whiggery by
putting an extreme case, led in much later years to an embarrassing
question by an illustrious personage, and gave the opportunity for an
apt reply. "Is it true, Lord John, that you hold that a subject is
justified, under certain circumstances, in disobeying his Sovereign's
will?" "Well," I said, "speaking to a Sovereign of the House of Hanover,
I can only say that I suppose it is!"'[43]
[Sidenote: IMPULSIVE BUT CHIVALROUS]
Looking back in the autumn of last year on the length and breadth of
Earl Russell's public career, the late Earl Selborne sent for these
pages the following words, which gather up his general, and, alas! final
impressions of his old friend and colleague: 'I have tried to imagine in
what words an ancient Roman panegyrist might have summed up such a
public and private character as that of Lord Russell. "Animosa
juventus," and "jucunda senectus," would not inaptly have described his
earlier and his latter days. But for the life of long and active public
service which came between, it is difficult to find any phrase equally
pointed and characteristic. Always patriotic, always faithful to the
traditions associated with his name, there was, as Sydney Smith said,
nothing which he had not courage to undertake. What he undertook he did
energetically, and generally in a noble spirit; though sometimes
yielding to too sudden impulses. As time went on, the generosity and
sagacity of his nature gained strength; and, though he had not always
been patient when the control of affairs was in other hands, a
successful rival found in him the most loyal of colleagues. Any estimate
of his character would be imperfect which omitted to recognise either
his appreciative and sympathetic disposition towards those who differed
from him, even on points of importance, when he believed their
convictions to be sincere and their conduct upright, or the rare dignity
and magnanimity with which, after 1866, he retired from a great
position, of which he was neither unambitious nor unworthy, under no
pressure from without, and before age or infirmity had made it necessary
for him to do so.'
Lord Selborne's allusion to Lord John's sympathetic disposition to those
who differed from him, even on points of importance, is borne out by the
terms in which he referred to Lord Aberdeen in correspondence--which was
published first in the 'Times,' and afterwards in a pamphlet--between
himself and Sir Arthur Gordon over statements in the first edition of
'Recollections and Suggestions.' Lord John admitted that, through lapse
of memory, he had fallen into error, and that his words conveyed a wrong
impression concerning Lord Aberdeen. He added: 'I believe no man has
entered public life in my time more pure in his personal views, and
more free from grasping ambition or selfish consideration. I am much
grieved that anything I have written should be liable to an
interpretation injurious to Lord Aberdeen.' It is pleasant in this
connection to be able to cite a letter, written by Lord Aberdeen to the
Duke of Bedford, when the Crimean War was happily only a memory. The
Duke had told Lord Aberdeen that his brother admitted his mistake in
leaving the Coalition Government in the way in which he did. Lord
Aberdeen in his reply declared that he did not doubt that Lord John
entered the Government on generous and high-minded motives, or that, in
consequence of delay, he might have arrived at the conclusion that he
was in a somewhat false position. Any appearance of lack of confidence
in Lord John, Lord Aberdeen remarked, was 'entirely the effect of
accident and never of intention.' He hints that he sometimes thought
Lord John over-sensitive and even rash or impracticable. He adds: 'But
these are trifles. We parted with expressions of mutual regard, which on
my side were perfectly sincere, as I have no doubt they were on his.
These expressions I am happy in having this opportunity to renew; as
well as with my admiration of his great powers and noble impulses to
assure you that I shall always feel a warm interest in his reputation
and honour.' Lord Stanmore states that his father 'steadily maintained
that Lord John was the proper head of the Liberal party, and never
ceased to desire that he should succeed him as Prime Minister.' Rashness
and impatience are hard sayings to one who looks steadily at the annals
of the Coalition Government. Lord Aberdeen and the majority of his
Cabinet, were, to borrow a phrase from Swift, 'huge idolators of delay.'
Their policy of masterly inactivity was disastrous, and, though Lord
John made a mistake in quitting the Ministry in face of a hostile vote
of censure, his chief mistake arose from the 'generous and high-minded
motives' which Lord Aberdeen attributes to him, and which led him to
join the Coalition Government.
[Sidenote: RELATIONS WITH POLITICAL OPPONENTS]
His personal relations with his political opponents, from the Duke of
Wellington to Lord Salisbury, were cordial. His friendship with Lord
Derby was intimate, and he visited him at Knowsley, and in his closing
years he had much pleasant intercourse with Lord Salisbury at Dieppe.
His association with Lord Beaconsfield was slight; but one of the
kindest letters which Lady Russell received on the death of her husband
was written by a statesman with whom Lord Russell had little in common.
Sir Robert Peel, in spite of the encounters of party warfare, always
maintained towards Lord John the most friendly attitude. 'The idea which
the stranger or casual acquaintance,' states his brother-in-law and
former private secretary, Mr. George Elliot, 'conceived of Lord Russell
was very unlike the real man as seen in his own home or among his
intimates. There he was lively, playful, and uniformily good-humoured,
full of anecdote, and a good teller of a story.... In conversation he
was easy and pleasant, and the reverse of disputatious. Even in the
worst of his political difficulties--and he had some pretty hard trials
in this way--he had the power of throwing off public cares for the time,
and in his house retained his cheerfulness and good-humour.... In
matters of business he was an easy master to serve, and the duties of
his private secretary were light as compared to others in the same
position. He never made work and never was fussy, and even at the
busiest times never seemed in a hurry.... Large matters he never
neglected, but the difficulty of the private secretary was to get him to
attend to the trifling and unimportant ones with which he had chiefly
to deal.'
The Hon. Charles Gore, who was also private secretary to Lord John when
the latter held the Home Office in the Melbourne Administration, gives
in the following words his recollections: 'Often members of Parliament
and others used to come into my room adjoining, after their interview
with Lord John, looking, and seeming, much dissatisfied with their
reception. His manner was cold and shy, and, even when he intended to
comply with the request made, in his answer he rather implied no than
yes. He often used to say to me that he liked to hear the laugh which
came to him through the door which separated us, as proof that I had
been able to soothe the disappointed feelings with which his interviewer
had left him. As a companion, when not feeling shy, no one was more
agreeable or full of anecdote than Lord John--simple in his manner,
never assuming superiority, and always ready to listen to what others
had to say.' This impression is confirmed by Sir Villiers Lister, who
served under Lord John at the Foreign Office. He states that his old
chief, whilst always quick to seize great problems, was somewhat
inclined to treat the humdrum details of official life with fitful
attention.
FOOTNOTES:
[43] _Contemporary Review_, vol. 56, p. 814.