Compared with the two men who have preceded him in this selection, the
life and achievements of Robert Lowe (1811–1892) present a distinction
with a difference. On any public question there could be little doubt
where O’Connell would stand, or, for that matter, Lord Palmerston.
But of Lowe, in some ways more individual than either, the exact
position could hardly be predicated. In short, he was truer to himself
than to any cause or party; and his chief title to fame he won as a
recalcitrant Liberal.
He was an Oxford man, who took a B.A. in 1833 as a good classic, and
thereupon became for a time an University coach. Meanwhile he studied
law, and finding no field at home for his undoubted talents, went out
to Australia, where he laid the foundation of his fortunes. He soon
gained a seat in the Legislative Council for New South Wales, and
having become generally prominent in colonial affairs, in 1850 judged
that the time had come for his return to England. Almost immediately he
was engaged as a writer of leading articles for the _Times_ newspaper.
In 1852, as Member of Parliament for Kidderminster, he began his twenty
years of public service. Particularly in connection with educational
matters, Lowe was soon well known in the House, one of many useful but
not distinguished public men.
It was in the year 1866 that Lord John Russell introduced a bill
for the extension of the suffrage, a measure mild enough in view of
more recent enactments, but a measure that aroused in Lowe all the
opposition of his peculiar nature. For the moment he became more Tory
than the Tories; and in the debates over the bill developed powers
perhaps unsuspected by himself,--certainly so by his colleagues. The
one voice that was heard above all others was that of Lowe, a voice
emphatic, sincere, and, as the event proved, dominant. The bill was
rejected.
The National Biographer says: “Lowe’s triumph at the time was
complete.... He had the success which attends those who believe all
they are saying. At no other time did he attain to such a high level of
perfection in speaking.... Mr. Gladstone and he vied with each other
in aptness of classical quotation, and the keenest partisan on the
ministerial side could not fail to admire Lowe’s courage and sincerity
of purpose.”
It was his _annus mirabilis_. It is whimsical now to read that
contemporaries thought they saw in Lowe a superior to Gladstone; more
whimsical to learn that the very next year the Conservatives, switched
skilfully about by Disraeli, passed a much more sweeping extension of
the franchise than the one Lowe had so successfully opposed. For the
moment, however, his reputation was secure.
In 1868, he was chosen Chancellor of the Exchequer, apparently a step
upward, in reality the beginning of his decline. For he soon became
unpopular, personally by his brusque manner, officially because his
conception of his duty would not allow him to apply the public moneys
to such purposes as the purchase of Epping Forest for a public park,
and the installation of gardens along the Thames Embankment. This
office he eventually resigned. Although, in 1873, he was made Home
Secretary, he had already passed not so much out of the public eye as
out of the public mind. The next year, with the defeat of the Gladstone
Ministry, he made his definitive departure from political life. The
further honor of the peerage awaited Lowe,--from 1880 he was Viscount
Sherbrooke,--but the last twenty years of his life were those of
anti-climax and decay. The peculiar malignancy of fate that latterly
seemed to pursue him was shown in the accidental publication in 1884 of
the inconsiderable booklet, _Poems of a Life_, which he had privately
printed for private circulation. He died in 1892, at the age of
eighty-one. The world had almost forgotten him.
Such, briefly, are the facts of Lowe’s history, a record of honorable
achievement surely, but not the record which others--and probably
the man himself--had dreamed of. It may be asked how the career of
a man who from modest beginnings attained cabinet rank could be in
any sense a failure. But when the supreme episode of his life--the
brief hour of glory, followed by the gradual reversal from almost
universal laudation to wide-spread unpopularity--is remembered the
question should be answered. The causes of Lowe’s failure to justify
his own promise were perhaps largely personal. The temper of the man
was brusque, independent, imperious. In his love for invective and
satire as weapons of oratory, there was something Swiftian; Swiftian,
too, was his general disregard for the feelings of others. This did
not arise from any native insensibility--it is the sensitive who can
inflict the keenest wounds--but from a pride of intellect that made
him despise the slow-minded and the ill-informed. He was not so much
tactless as disdaining tact. Some of the projects he favored were
signally progressive: in 1856 he introduced an unsuccessful bill for
the conversion of partnerships comprising more than twenty persons
into incorporated companies; he was an advocate of public libraries,
of undenominational education; as Chancellor he devised ingenious
budgets and proposed a revenue stamp on match-boxes, a tax which had
already been levied in America; and Mr. A. Patchett Martin claims for
him the original project of Imperial Federation. He was also one of
the earliest enthusiasts over the bicycle. On the other hand, he was
personally opposed to the democratic idea, especially as represented
by universal suffrage. He was never strictly a party man. It is a
tribute to him that the Liberals, under whose banners he nominally
fought, acquiesced in the free play that his erratic temperament
demanded. Something of a cynic, he could laugh about himself or
his own classical attainments; but it is agreed that, with all his
satire and asperity, Lowe was free from that mean joy in another’s
misfortunes--Aristotle’s ἐπιχαιρεκακία--that so often accompanies the
masters of epigram and of scorn.