LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH
When any man declaims “Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum,” it is not easy to
avoid the suspicion that (whatever his passion for principle) he is
pretty sure that the heavens will not fall. If the heavens did fall
he would forget all about the fine “quillets of the law.” Any woman,
according to Beckie Sharp, can be good on a sufficient income; and
with men, also, the love of principle thrives best in comfortable
surroundings. The true test of honesty is not whether a man will resign
an Under-Secretaryship rather than give his vote for a measure he
disapproves: he may be rather tired of being an Under-Secretary. The true
test is whether he will pay a bill when he has to go without a week’s
dinners to do it. There are no doubt men who pass that test; they should
be honoured, though by the nature of things they seldom are: it is not
that kind of principle which wins fame or money. The kind of sacrifice
to principle which wins reverence is that which is often really not much
sacrifice at all. We applaud a man for being specially and splendidly
honest when the fact is only that he can afford to be unusually stubborn.
[Illustration: LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH.]
Lord Courtney of Penwith is an example of inflexible principle in
politics. In these days we are apt to think of him as representing a
rare type. But it is in fact a quite common type in certain conditions;
that it is not commoner to-day may be explained not by any general
deterioration of human nature, but by the excessive seriousness of the
times. When we condemn an age as immoral we should often be more just to
call it unfortunate. There is no reason, for example, to believe that the
general character of upper-class Englishmen in 1665 was really baser than
that of upper-class Englishmen in 1635. But in the singularly peaceful
and prosperous atmosphere of the early years of Charles I people were
able to indulge their consciences to the point of faddism; the time was
one of what we should call cranks—Calvinistic cranks, ritualistic cranks,
anti-Shipmoney cranks, Filmerite cranks—all so stiff with principle
that they rejected the very notion of compromise on matters essentially
capable of accommodation. On the other hand, after painful experience
of what principle carried to extremes may mean, the men of 1665 erred
in the opposite direction of believing all principle to be a mistake: a
generation of opportunists succeeded that of purists. In the same way the
long Victorian peace produced a race of public men who, like John Bright,
made of principle an idol, and were constantly dodging in and out of
office, like the figures in an old-fashioned weather-glass, according as
their love of influence or their dislike of certain things happened to be
uppermost. They gained a great fame as specially honest men; and they are
constantly quoted against their successors, as Pitt was quoted against
Walpole. But Lord Rosebery was right in thinking of Pitt as a luxury only
to be afforded once in a way, and we could ill bear the expense of many
Brights. The moral splendour of him is no doubt a national asset, but it
had to be paid for; his fame as the man of conscience was achieved at
some cost to the community; many a question bequeathed to us from that
time might have been settled had he and some others denied themselves
one of their two great luxuries—the enjoyment of being powerful and the
enjoyment of feeling sinless. When we compare the robust honesty of some
great Victorians with the supple temper of present-day politicians, we
should be just to our own people. We should remember that the heavens
appeared to be quite a fixture in Victoria’s time, while latterly they
have really looked like tumbling about our ears.
Should an intellectual conviction be always regarded as a moral
imperative? If we think a thing is wrong in the sense of being
politically inexpedient, should we risk the existence of all sorts of
other things, which we think right, in order to save ourselves from the
stigma of inconsistency or lack of principle? On the answer depends
largely our judgment of men like Lord Courtney. To a certain class of
mind he represented, almost more than any man after the death of Bright,
the unspoiled hero in politics. To me he is not a hero. I have tried
extremely hard to think of him as one, and indeed he was not deficient in
something closely resembling heroism. After he had made himself modestly
comfortable in life, he scorned worldly advantage if it could only be
gained at the cost of conscience. He might have been all sorts of things
with a little more compliance, a little less loyalty to his tyrannical
inward monitor. On all questions he took his own view, and if that view
led him into the wilderness, into the wilderness he went, sturdy and
uncomplaining. His abilities entitled him to look forward to the very
highest positions in the State. The Chancellorship of the Exchequer was
easily within his reach, and he might even have become, in due course,
Prime Minister. Instead, he filled one or two minor places in a Liberal
Administration, was for a few years Chairman of Committees of the House
of Commons, failed to get elected Speaker, and finally accepted that
coronet which is for larger men something like the link-extinguisher
still seen on old London houses—it marks the end of the journey. The
career, relatively to the man, was a failure. Of course, it was in some
sense a failure far more honourable than many glittering successes, for
Courtney failed because he would not succeed by embracing the philosophy
expressed in the lines:
“The Lord in His mercy He fashioned us holler
In order we might our principles swaller.”
But the question of proportion always arises, even in questions of
morals. One honours a man who yields his own life rather than consent to
be a liar in the real sense of being a betrayer. But one does not honour
a man who sacrifices, not merely himself, but others, because he will
not sully his lips with a very innocent fib. The Early Christian who
went to the lions rather than deny his faith was admirable. The Early
Christian who sent a comrade to the lions because he would not say “Not
at home” to the Prætorian centurion was less admirable. So, before we are
quite lost in admiration over Lord Courtney’s renunciation, it is just
as well to recall what was the cause of it. It was his enthusiasm for
Proportional Representation, which politicians generally shorten into
“P.R.” because the name is as difficult of pronunciation as the thing
itself is of popular comprehension. In 1884 Mr. Gladstone brought in a
Redistribution Bill; Mr. Courtney wanted it to be accompanied or preceded
by a measure embodying the “true principle of representation,” of which
his appreciation was even then “more than thirty years old.” So while Mr.
Gladstone went his own course, Mr. Courtney would not go with him; and
the two parted with mutual compliments; those on Courtney’s side contrast
rather piquantly, in their almost exaggerated respect, with his downright
statement a few years later that Mr. Gladstone was a “superannuated old
goose.”
Now consistency is certainly important; proportional representation is
no doubt important too. But the consistency of Leonard Courtney rather
recalls the virtue as developed in Dr. Sangrado, who believed in bleeding
and hot water as a cure for everything, and in that belief “made more
widows and orphans than the siege of Troy.” It will be remembered that
Gil Blas once roused a certain doubt in his master by advising him to try
chemical preparations, if only for curiosity. “But,” said the doctor,
“I have published a book, in which I have extolled the use of frequent
bleeding and aquæous draughts; and wouldst thou have me go and decry my
own work?” “You are certainly in the right,” rejoined the accommodating
Gil Blas, “you must not give your enemies such a triumph over you; they
would say you are at last disabused, and therefore ruin your reputation;
perish rather the nobility, clergy, and people, and let us continue
in our old path.” There was always something of this self-indulgent
recklessness of consequence in the conscientiousness of Leonard
Courtney and the school of which he was almost the latest important
representative. “Let my name be blighted, provided France be free,” cried
Danton. “Reputation—O what is the reputation of this man or of that?”
That is the point of view of the hero-blackguard whom great emergencies
so often call forth. “Let what will happen, so no man can call me untrue
to my principles,” is another point of view, that of the man who cannot
be quite fully a hero because he is constitutionally incapable of being
the least bit of a blackguard. Thin partitions divide heroism and
blackguardism; all space lies between them and the great kingdom of the
smug. The best of the smug can rise to very considerable heights, but
their fastidiousness prevents them achieving the splendour of perfect
selflessness; they might be content with the locusts and wild honey of
desert exile, but they could not do without a toothbrush. Lord Courtney
was not afraid of the desert. He could live without popularity and often
went out of his way to flout the herd. He never feared the consequences
of being right. But a greater man would have been less timorous of the
consequences of being occasionally a little wrong. He would, over a
dozen questions—this business of the franchise, for example, Ireland,
South Africa, and the Great War—have struck a balance between opposing
considerations, and in no case would he have cast into either scale the
thought of his own reputation. He would not thus have been false to
himself. But he would have been truer to greater interests than himself.
It may perhaps be said that the real hero of Courtney’s life was not
himself, but his father. At least it is true that to his father he owed
the possibility of exhibiting on a considerable stage those qualities
which might otherwise have made him only a rather crotchety clerk or the
more cavilling kind of accountant. Without the paternal self-sacrifice
Courtney, if still inclined to public life, might no doubt have become
a village Hampden, a parochial “character,” and a terrible thorn in the
side of some Board of Guardians. But he certainly would not have arrived
by the broad road of the University to distinction in the greater life
of the nation. To many by far the most interesting part of Mr. Gooch’s
admirable _Life_ will be the pages which deal with the West-country
home of the Fifties, from which young Courtney emerged to fight his way
in the world. His father was manager of Bolitho’s Bank at Penzance:
a quiet, reserved, intellectual, and rather depressed man, weighed
down with responsibility both in his office and his home; one of those
poorer middle-class fathers to whose devotion and vicarious ambition
the nineteenth century owed so many of its most remarkable minds. Both
he and Mrs. Courtney were Puritans, and their views united with their
circumstances to make the home one of Spartan discipline and simplicity.
But, if the father did not indulge his children, he literally lived for
their futures, and pinched himself woefully to secure them a footing on
the main staircase of life. When he left school young Courtney entered
the bank. The prospects in the service of the Bolithos were not alluring,
and partly with some vague idea of “getting on,” partly through a real
hunger for the things of the mind, he read in his spare time, with a
system unusual in youth. Thus equipped, in 1851 he won a sizarship at St.
John’s, Cambridge, and as a result he was awarded in the course of four
years Exhibitions amounting in the aggregate to about £170. He might, of
course, just as well have had one shilling if his father had not come
to his help; it was the defect then, as now, of our higher educational
system that it gave no chance to the really poor. To find the sinews
of war the elder Courtney had to borrow from the bank, and there is a
singular pathos in the letters of the father, anxious that his son should
have his full chance, but worried over the cost of the experiment of
converting an obviously efficient young clerk into something incalculable
and possibly not at all satisfactory. The father is “a little surprised”
at the first bill, but wishes his son not to be “oppressed by the fear”
that he is running his father too hard; “go on with your studies as
coolly and quietly as possible, expend what is needed, and let me find
the means of keeping up the race.” But he cannot help thinking that
the strain is cruel. “Let no one,” he adds, “laugh you into an expense
which a few minutes’ consideration may point out as unnecessary. Do not
be ashamed of saying you are poor. If any man wishes to bear you down
with his riches and expenditure, let him alone, or crush him down by
intellect. Go on with a quiet, calm dignity, and in a short time no one
will ask you whether your allowance be £50 or £500 per annum.”
When Courtney got the Second Wranglership his admirable parent did not
“feel that elation some may imagine”; all this, he pointed out, was not
the conclusion but the beginning of a career. “It seems,” he remarked,
“you must go on very parsimoniously for the next twelve months, but
do not on any account go in debt. I would rather screw up tighter at
home”—where things were terribly tight already. Young Courtney was
rapidly justifying himself. But even when there came a Fellowship of £160
a year the poor bank-manager refused to rejoice utterly. “Your mother
often observes whatever your gains they seem to be always swallowed
up.... Consider the position of the family if anything should happen to
me. I do not mean to be a miserly niggard, but do not consider a thing
necessary because someone richer than yourself has it. The great curse of
the times is the desire of cutting a dash, being in appearance something
you are not in reality.... I have written this because I find myself
unable to do what I could formerly accomplish with little difficulty.”
It is the old story of the brilliant performer in the field and the
humble munition-maker at home; behind every shining success lies years,
and perhaps generations, of obscure effort; and the feet of the mighty
tread now on dead men’s bones and now on the bodies of the living. The
greatest sacrifices incidental to Courtney’s career were after all not
his own.
The scholastic career did not attract, and Courtney decided for London
and the Bar. How a man of his character, with a rigidity so often
displayed in excess, conceived of law as his appropriate element is
something of a mystery. Probably at this time his chief idea was still
“getting on”; but the choice of the profession in which of all others
a man has to be supple and accommodating is nevertheless singular in
a person of Courtney’s moral and mental make-up. Nor is it easy to
understand how Courtney, in after years so inflexible, could get on well
with _The Times_ under Delane, who “expected writers to reflect with
fair closeness his spirit”—a spirit which was certainly in most respects
as far removed from that of the mature Courtney as anything could well
be. Yet Courtney did get on with _The Times_ and Delane exceedingly
well. He was, indeed, found impossible and “hopelessly wrong” in his
attitude towards the Germans in 1870; he opposed the annexation of
Alsace-Lorraine, while Delane was wholly for Germany and _væ victis_;
but on the whole he seems to have accomplished with fair closeness the
“reflection” of Delane’s views, and was even anticipated as that great
editor’s successor.
The one hopeless “wrongness” which stands out in Courtney’s journalistic
record was not only honourable to himself, but prophetically
characteristic. He represented at once the least and the most amiable
sides of the old Liberal philosophy. His faith in individualism was not
only hard and narrow; it sometimes positively verged on the barbarous.
He talked, indeed, much excellent sense concerning Socialism and “social
reform,” about the need of individual sobriety, prudence, and industry,
and the folly of expecting any one political device to supply their
place. But his satisfaction with the free operation of competition, his
impatience with any attempt to temper it, were marvellous. “I am not
for helping the weak,” he said once; “I wish to remove impediments,
to help those who are helping themselves.” He never seems to have
reflected that his own success simply depended on the principle of
“helping the weak,” and that it was an object for which public means
might have sufficed just as well as the cruel impoverishment of the
self-sacrificing father who pinched and tormented himself to give an
industrious and intelligent boy what every industrious and intelligent
boy, of any class or condition, should receive as a right. In this, as
in other things, he was in his later years the most prophetic and alert
representative of the “Benthamee” philosophy against which Carlyle raved.
But there was a noble side to this rather arid faith, and Courtney was
on that side, as on the other, its complete exponent. He could not see,
or would not see, that complete liberty to the strong, the removal of
all “impediments” in the way of those who “help themselves,” means in
practice the depression and enslavement of the weak. But when the weak
had ceased even to be nominally free, when they wore a brass collar
like Gurth’s, instead of an invisible collar (though stronger and
more throttling), wrought in the factories of Circumstance, his voice
was raised with an old-prophetic fervour in their defence. To him the
oppressed nation’s cause was as sacred as that of the obviously oppressed
individual’s. It is true that his vision was somewhat partial and
occasionally faulty. He had the prejudice of a Protestant in most Irish
matters. He undoubtedly misinterpreted the spirit of the South African
oligarchy, just as he misunderstood the spirit of the German nation when
he urged as early as 1915 the possibility of an honourable and stable
accommodation. But, however mistaken, he was always in these greater
matters animated by a very noble spirit—the spirit which, in spite of
its many limitations, lent a moral dignity to the old Liberalism. It is
no doubt unfortunate that that spirit may be so easily confused with
another, that the generous tolerance of other national aims may be
construed as indifference to one’s own country’s welfare, and that the
attitude of universal benevolence can so often seem to consist with a
practical repudiation of the obligation of the patriot. But, if Lord
Courtney incurred the reproach of loving every nation but his own, the
fault was simply with his manner. At heart he had nothing in common with
any of those anti-patriots who used his great name and fame.
Yet, with the widest charity, it cannot be said that his latest
appearances in public were happy. And if on specific occasions he was far
from helpful, in general his helpfulness was diminished by an exaggerated
sense of the respect due to his own convictions. “My opinion, right or
wrong,” may be not less pernicious an attitude than “My country, right or
wrong,” and there were times when Lord Courtney’s passion for principle
was scarcely distinguishable from mere obstinacy. He would have left
a higher fame had it been his lot, as it was Bright’s, to live wholly
through a period of comparative calm. But in the years when a kind of
moral arthritis had stiffened joints never very supple, he came against
really big things undreamed of in his political philosophy, and there was
something at once grotesque and tragic in his application to them of a
formula equally inappropriate and inadequate. It was even a misfortune
for the moral ideals that he held aloft that they were sustained by one
whose mode of thought was obviously no less antique than the Pickwickian
blue coat with brass buttons and the canary-coloured waistcoat which
proclaimed him the man of a past time.