_LORD DERBY_
My opportunities of observing Lord Derby at close quarters, were
comparatively scanty. When, in June, 1866, he kissed hands as Prime
Minister for the third time, I was a boy of thirteen, and I was only
sixteen when he died. I had known Lord Palmerston in the House of
Commons and Lord Russell in private life; but my infant footsteps
were seldom guided towards the House of Lords, and it was only
there that "the Rupert of debate" could at that time be heard.
The Whigs, among whom I was reared, detested Derby with the peculiar
detestation which partisans always feel for a renegade. In 1836
Charles Dickens, in his capacity of Parliamentary reporter, had
conversed with an ancient M.P. who allowed that Lord Stanley--who
became Lord Derby in 1851--might do something one of these days,
but "he's too young, sir--too young." The active politicians of
the sixties did not forget that this too-young Stanley, heir of a
great Whig house, had flung himself with ardour into the popular
cause, and, when the Lords threw out the first Reform Bill, had
jumped on to the table at Brooks's and had proclaimed the great
constitutional truth--reaffirmed over the Parliament Bill in 1911--that
"His Majesty can clap coronets on the heads of a whole company of
his Foot Guards."
The question of the influences which had changed Stanley from a
Whig to a Tory lies outside the purview of a sketch like this. For
my present purpose it must suffice to say that, as he had absolutely
nothing to gain by the change, we may fairly assume that it was due
to conviction. But whether it was due to conviction, or to ambition,
or to temper, or to anything else, it made the Whigs who remained
Whigs, very sore. Lord Clarendon, a typical Whig placeman, said
that Stanley was "a great aristocrat, proud of family and wealth,
but had no generosity for friend or foe, and never acknowledged
help." Some allowance must be made for the ruffled feelings of
a party which sees its most brilliant recruit absorbed into the
opposing ranks, and certainly Stanley was such a recruit as any
party would have been thankful to claim.
He was the future head of one of the few English families which
the exacting genealogists of the Continent recognize as noble. To
pedigree he added great possessions, and wealth which the industrial
development of Lancashire was increasing every day. He was a graceful
and tasteful scholar, who won the Chanceller's prize for Latin
verse at Oxford, and translated the Iliad into fluent hexameters.
Good as a scholar, he was, as became the grandson of the founder
of "The Derby," even better as a sportsman; and in private life
he was the best companion in the world, playful and reckless, as
a schoolboy, and never letting prudence or propriety stand between
him and his jest. "Oh, Johnny, what fun we shall have!" was his
characteristic greeting to Lord John Russell, when that ancient
rival entered the House of Lords.
Furthermore, Stanley had, in richest abundance, the great natural
gift of oratory, with an audacity in debate which won him the nickname
of "Rupert," and a voice which would have stirred his hearers if
he had only been reciting Bradshaw. For a brilliant sketch of his
social aspect we may consult Lord Beaumaris in Lord Beaconsfield's
_Endymion_; and of what he was in Parliament we have the same great
man's account, reported by Matthew Arnold: "Full of nerve, dash,
fire, and resource, he carried the House irresistibly along with
him."
In the Parliament of 1859-1865 (with which my political recollections
begin) Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister and Lord Derby Leader
of the Opposition, with Disraeli as his lieutenant in the House
of Commons. If, as Lord Randolph Churchill said in later years,
the business of an Opposition is to oppose, it must be admitted
that Derby and Disraeli were extremely remiss. It was suspected at
the time, and has since been made known through Lord Malmesbury's
_Memoirs_, that there was something like an "understanding" between
Palmerston and Derby. As long as Palmerston kept his Liberal colleagues
in order, and chaffed his Radical supporters out of all the reforms
on which their hearts were set, Derby was not to turn him out of
office, though the Conservative minority in the House of Commons
was very large, and there were frequent openings for harassing
attack.
Palmerston's death, of course, dissolved this compact; and, though
the General Election of 1865 had again yielded a Liberal majority,
the change in the Premiership had transformed the aspect of political
affairs. The new Prime Minister was in the House of Lords, seventy-three
years old, and not a strong man for his age. His lieutenant in the
House of Commons was Gladstone, fifty-five years old, and in the
fullest vigour of body and mind. Had any difference of opinion
arisen between the two men, it was obvious that Gladstone was in a
position to make his will prevail; but on the immediate business of
the new Parliament they were absolutely at one, and that business
was exactly what Palmerston had for the last six years successfully
opposed--the extension of the franchise to the working man. When
no one is enthusiastic about a Bill, and its opponents hate it,
there is not much difficulty in defeating it, and Derby and Disraeli
were not the men to let the opportunity slide. With the aid of the
malcontent Whigs they defeated the Reform Bill, and Derby became
Prime Minister, with Disraeli as Leader of the House of Commons. It
was a conjuncture fraught with consequences vastly more important
than anyone foresaw.
In announcing his acceptance of office (which he had obtained by
defeating a Reform Bill), Derby amazed his opponents and agitated
his friends by saying that he "reserved to himself complete liberty
to deal with the question of Parliamentary reform whenever suitable
occasion should arise." In February, 1867, Disraeli, on behalf
of the Tory Government, brought in the first really democratic
Reform Bill which England had ever known. He piloted it through
the House of Commons with a daring and a skill of which I was an
eye-witness, and, when it went up to the Lords, Derby persuaded
his fellow-peers to accept a measure which established household
suffrage in the towns.
It was "a revolution by due course of law," nothing less; and to
this day people dispute whether Disraeli induced Derby to accept
it, or whether the process was reversed. Derby called it "a leap
in the dark." Disraeli vaulted that he had "educated his party"
up to the point of accepting it. Both alike took comfort in the
fact that they had "dished the Whigs"--which, indeed, they had
done most effectually. The disgusted Clarendon declared that Derby
"had only agreed to the Reform Bill as he would of old have backed
a horse at Newmarket. He hates Disraeli, but believes in him as
he would have done in an unprincipled trainer: _he wins_--that
is all."
On the 15th of August, 1867, the Tory Reform Bill received the
Royal Assent, and Derby attained the summit of his career. Inspired
by whatever motives, influenced by whatever circumstances, the
Tory chief had accomplished that which the most liberal-minded of
his predecessors had never even dreamed of doing. He had rebuilt
the British Constitution on a democratic foundation.
At this point some account of Lord Derby's personal appearance
may be introduced. My impression is that he was only of the middle
height, but quite free from the disfigurement of obesity; light in
frame, and brisk in movement. Whereas most statesmen were bald,
he had an immense crop of curly, and rather untidy, hair and the
abundant whiskers of the period. His features were exactly of the
type which novelists used to call aristocratic: an aquiline nose,
a wide but firmly compressed mouth, and a prominent chin. His dress
was, even then, old-fashioned, and his enormous black satin cravat,
arranged in I know not how many folds, seemed to be a survival
from the days of Count D'Orsay. His air and bearing were such as
one expects in a man whose position needs no advertizing; and I
have been told that, even in the breeziest moments of unguarded
merriment, his chaff was always the chaff of a gentleman.
Lord Beaconsfield, writing to a friend, once said that he had just
emerged from an attack of the gout, "of renovating ferocity," and
this phrase might have been applied to the long succession of gouty
illnesses which were always harassing Lord Derby. Unfortunately, as
we advance in life, the "renovating" effects of gout become less
conspicuous than its "ferocity;" and Lord Derby, who was born in
1799, was older than his years in 1867. In January and February, 1868,
his gout was so severe that it threatened his life. He recovered,
but he saw that his health was no longer equal to the strain of
office, and on the 24th of February he placed his resignation in
the Queen's hands.
But during the year and a half that remained to him he was by no
means idle. He had originally broken away from the Whigs on a point
which threatened the temporalities of the still-established Church
of Ireland; and in the summer of 1868 Gladstone's avowal of the
principle of Irish Disestablishment roused all his ire, and seemed
to quicken him into fresh life. The General Election was fixed
for November, and the Liberal party, almost without exception,
prepared to follow Gladstone in his Irish policy. On the 29th of
October Bishop Wilberforce noted that Derby was "very keen," and had
asked: "What will the Whigs not swallow? Disraeli is very sanguine
still about the elections."
The question about the Whigs came comically from the man who had
just made the Tories swallow Household Suffrage; and Disraeli's
sanguineness was ill-founded. The election resulted in a majority
of one hundred for Irish Disestablishment; Disraeli resigned, and
Gladstone became for the first time Prime Minister.
The Session of 1869 was devoted to the Irish Bill, and Lord Derby,
though on the brink of the grave, opposed the Bill in what some
people thought the greatest of his speeches in the House of Lords.
He was pale, his voice was feeble, he looked, as he was, a broken
man; but he rose to the very height of an eloquence which had already
become traditional. His quotation of Meg Merrilies' address to the
Laird of Ellangowan, and his application of it to the plight of
the Irish Church, were as apt and as moving as anything in English
oratory. The speech concluded thus:
"My Lords, I am now an old man, and, like many of your Lordships,
I have already passed three score years and ten. My official life
is entirely closed; my political life is nearly so; and, in the
course of nature, my natural life cannot now be long. That natural
life commenced with the bloody suppression of a formidable rebellion
in Ireland, which immediately preceded the union between the two
countries. And may God grant that its close may not witness a renewal
of the one and a dissolution of the other."
This speech was delivered on the 17th of June, 1869, and the speaker
died on the 23rd of the following October.